From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Yesterday we posted a mystery chart and asked you all to let us know what you would do. Buy, sell, or do nothing?

The responses seemed pretty unanimous, suggesting selling at current levels...and one of you even guessed what it was! Maybe we're making these too easy.

Anyway, we agree with that bearish bias, but were posting to see what other viewpoints might be out there. I guess we got our answer.

Let's get into the real chart and why we feel it's relevant.

I'm in Vancouver for a few days. While I'm here, I need to meet with Gold Bugs and ski Whistler. That's what you do around here right? I'm good with both.

It's hard to have a serious conversation with the true yellow metal cult followers. These clowns are bullish at all times and have been expecting Gold to make a huge move every day since their last big move that ended in 2011. "This is it", I've been hearing for years. But Nope. Not only have they not made any money, but the opportunity cost (what else could they have done with that cash) is through the roof. It's been painful to watch them.

For our purposes, open minded investors, in other words, we don't care if Gold doubles or goes to zero. We could not care less. Our jobs aren't dependent on them. Our "investment strategy" is not tied to rising prices for precious metals and since we don't have "a narrative", we don't need to make things up to justify our existence.

You guys who know me already know that this is my favorite exercise of them all. We only do this 12 times a year. Let's just say that it takes you an hour, if you really want to take your time, that's 12 hours of your entire year. Think about the amount of time you spend each year performing other analysis. As far as I'm concerned, it's not even close. These 6 hours (for me it's 6) are easily the most valuable 6 hours I spend all year analyzing markets.

This process allows us to take a step back, which forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend. It's impossible not to, especially when you're seeing similar themes across Indexes, sectors and asset classes.

Here's what stands out from this month's review:

With every month comes a new set of monthly charts, so I want to use this post to step back and point out the major changes since the last time we looked at them in November.

Tuesday I posted a mystery chart and asked you all to let me know what you would do. Buy, sell, or do nothing. Most of you agreed with me it looked like a structural breakdown that we should be selling as long as prices are below support.

So today I want to reveal the full chart and share why I feel it's relevant.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Short-term strength in Precious Metals continues, so I want to do an in-depth analysis of the space like I did last August to see if we're now entering "The Golden Age of Precious Metals".

One chart that I think sums up how I feel about Precious Metals is an equally-weighted index of Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium. While no longer in a long-term downtrend, it's not in an uptrend either. All that can be said is that it's testing the top of a multi-year range. Not all that exciting.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

As we wrap up 2018, it's time to forget everything that happened this quarter and this year and start from scratch. It’s irrelevant. We’re moving forward with fresh eyes. This is our Q1 2019 Playbook.

This is one of my favorite things to do: Forget everything that happened this quarter and this year and start from scratch. It doesn't matter what we did or how we felt in 2018. It's irrelevant. We're moving forward. This is my Q1 2019 Playbook.