February 21, 2022 - (Gold Market Wire) - The fear of going into Friday short, or even flat was too much for Crude Oil and the market staged a huge late rally to recover the trend line. The long tail shows just how far the push down was.

All the way down to $90 a barrel, and then a screaming rally before the close to get us to $93.54. As we laid out Friday -we didn't take the full ride. Even for a Friday, we were too concerned that the market would use "summit" news, not to mention repeated statements by Ukrainian politicians that they saw no invasion coming from Russia in the immediate future, as a reason to sell off. As we have been long for months, we took the opportunity to exit. We note in this context one famous Gold trader who always reminded me, "only idiots and liars try to call tops in markets...the rest of us take something out of the middle and go home." Yes, we did just that... and so, had a weekend without checking the headlines every two hours to assess and shape the diplomatic landscape prior to the Monday opening in Asia. In short, we got a relaxing weekend in. (We're probably going to need that going forward.)

What next?

Well, even though it would have been better to stay with the market, we think it's time for a re-assessment of the runes. And such re-assessments are best done when flat.

We now consider whether or not what we are sitting in, is a Box formation between $90 and $96. Increasingly we think so.

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It all looks like a place for scalping, and small at that. Whether that's done from the long or short side is a complete red/black guess at this point.The market will be on hold until the latest diplomatic foray is resolved.

We will leave this morning's missive with two thoughts. First, Gold is a great indicator of geo-political uncertainty and has done the job well as of late. We may keep and eye on it to indicate...and vice versa as well.

Secondly, we ask, of the two sides involved, who stands to gain, "politically", from a conflict over Ukraine? We leave each person to contemplate that on their own.

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...shades of Baker-Aziz are starting to appear, for those who remember.

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