December 20, 2021 - (Gold Market Wire) - Just when you thought Gold was going to show its mettle, the US Dollar rally resumes, and Gold's rally stalls out. Once again, we're back to $1800. And yet again, the only people making money, other than some very disciplined scalpers, are the people who have had the courage and foresight to sell the $1800 options strike. They can now carry that short into Christmas, garnering theta and racking up even more profit.

Ultimately, the headwind of a Federal Reserve tapering and planned interest rate hikes is starting to act like kryptonite to Gold. It hasn't slammed the market lower, but it has paralyzed it and taken away its strength.

As we said in our previous missive "now for the tough part", and strategizing not to chase Gold up here, it has worked out well to take a wait and see stance. At least we haven't wound up chasing the market around. That long tail on Friday's bar chart is not a good sign, when paired with the rising US Dollar - which is, once again, leaning hard on the antipodean currency pairs. Actually Friday's close looks like some fairly solid "tape painting".

So we now return to the regularly scheduled program - "Death at $1794".

We can't see any legitimate move away from this area for the week. It's good to be out of the market, and COTs Friday move looks like the wanted to squeeze the last bit of money out of the public - to pay for the Xmas dinner.