Friday Recap (1/31/2025)

AU: $2801 ($2770- Last Week Spot)AG: $31.27 (30.54)
HUI: 312 (305)
DXY: 108 (107)
S&P: 6039 (6101)
10-Yr: 4.5% (4.6%)
Oil: $72 (74)

Interesting week. Gold is up $30 and the S&P 500 is down 60 points. Gold traded at an ATH high today at $2817 and closed above $2800 (spot) for the first time. Gold is leading. Hmm. That's interesting. What's gold telling us? Tariffs will create inflation? Perhaps. Tariffs will create a recession? Perhaps. Trump is trapped? Perhaps. Or, is it just the fallout from the threat of tariffs causing the COMEX in New York to hoard gold? It's probably the latter, but don't dismiss the other reasons!

This was a busing week for news. NVIDIA took a dive from the DeepSeek news. That's not a nothing-burger. The Fed paused their rate cuts, setting up a confrontation with Trump, who wants lower rates. The Financial Times ran a piece saying that the LBMA is delaying gold deliveries 4-8 weeks, when historically it only took 2 days! That's not a nothing-burger.

Trump's honeymoon period remains intact. Oil prices dropped to $72, and the 10-year rate dropped to 4.5%, both are good for Wall St, which remains bullish. I expect the S&P 500, gold, silver, and the HUI to all trend higher in February. But March might not be so smooth. In fact, I'm sticking with my call that this is a fake-out and not a breakout. I expect the S&P, gold, silver, and the HUI to all have lower lows than where they currently are at today. In other words, the lows aren't in for 2025. The big elephant in the room is an overvalued stock market and an economy that is weakening. That's a bad combination.

Since there are always new readers, here are my current targets. 2025 lows: $2350-$2450 gold, $26-$27 silver, 245-265 HUI, 3500-4000 S&P. 2025 highs: $3200-$3400 gold, $45-$65 silver, 600-800 HUI, 6300-6500 S&P.

The gold/silver miner breakout levels for me are $3000 gold, $35 silver, and 350 HUI. We need all three before the breakout is real. One thing is obvious when you get a breakout in the miners: they tend to rip higher day after day (a bull market becomes obvious). We have not seen that since 2009 to 2011. In order to get a breakout in all three, we are going to need economic turmoil. If you look at the only two extended gold/silver miner bull markets (1970s and 2000s), they both had economic turmoil. Today, we don't have that turmoil yet.