Financials pressed the SP 500 lower all day, and Goldman broke hard to the downside into the close as a story on Reuters suggested that Lloyd Blankfein had hired a white collar criminal defense attorney named Reid Weingarten.
On Friday Bernanke will be speaking at Jackson Hole, and the markets are looking for some indication of the latest subsidy to the markets from the Fed. If not a flat out QE3, then perhaps Benny will speak about a program to control the longer end of the yield curve.
All this uncertainty had investor flocking into the safe haven of gold sending it to the 1890's. This has been a brutal rally for the metals bears.
This Thursday the 25th is the option expiration on the Comex. I have to admit that I am concerned that gold has been allowed to rise up into the oxygen depletion zone here, as had been done with silver not all that long ago, and that applications of bear raids and margin increases will bring it tumbling back down to support.
I wouldn't try and get in front of this comet, because we are not quite sure what is driving it. Chavez' margin call on the Bank of England's gold could be triggering this parabolic run. It would nice if gold consolidated its gains soon. I am playing the markets defensively for now.
Let's see what happens.
