As the Federal Reserve works with foreign central banks to close its temporary liquidity swap agreements by February 1, the US dollar may continue to rally and pressure gold. Longterm, however, the US government is still swimming in an ever growing mountain of debt and will have to continue to monetize it by buying US treasuries with freshly printed dollars. Other countries, including China, are already decreasing their US Treasury purchases. I also have to think that China is salivating at the declining price of gold and may be buying gold with some of its surplus dollars as the price of gold declines.
The daily trend of gold is clearly down as seen on the attached chart. However, commercial traders are increasing their buying and the market is oversold at support favoring a bounce.
Therefore, the short-term fundamentals (closing liquidity swaps) as well as the downward daily trend favor continued selling, while the long-term fundamentals (debt) and technicals (trading at support, oversold and upward weekly trend) favor a bounce. These mixed signals are leaving me on the sidelines for now. However, if the price of gold and silver continue to decline and if commercial buying significantly increases with the next COT report, I plan to get back into GLD and/or SLV.