* The price of gold fell about $12/oz today; silver prices were down another .28

* Both metals have been falling since recent new yearly highs

* Gold, though is not very much below the highs

* The real carnage has been in the mining stocks, particularly today; today was one of the biggest down days I've seen all year

* The GDX index was down just over 7%

* Some of the mining stocks were down 10% or more on a very small move in the price of gold and silver

* In fact, we've wiped out the last 2 months of gains in the mining stocks

* What is the catalyst for this?

* Early this morning, around 8:30 - 9:00 New York time before the U.S. Stock Market opened

* No news - gold was up 1 or 2 bucks...

* All of a sudden a huge sell order hits and gold drops about 7 or 8 bucks on no news

* Somebody decided to dump a lot of gold on the market, at one time and didn't really care what the execution price was

* Considering how large the sell order was, it didn't really knock the market down very much

* But the gold stock market was a different story

* It kind of made me think that the rationale for getting gold to drop was the impact it might have on the gold stocks themselves

* My guess is that a lot of people who were running with stops, that's when you have an order to sell below the market to try to protect your profits

* My guess is that they hit a lot of stops today in a lot of these mining stocks and maybe, some of the bigger players were able to buy more gold stocks based on the shake-out that was created

* By a relatively modest drop in the price of gold

* Meanwhile, the dollar didn't rise very much today; the downtrend still seems to be firmly in place

* What everybody seems to be focusing on is the Fed

* People are worried about what Janet Yellen might say on Friday

* The Fed's Jackson Hole Conference gets underway tomorrow and Janet Yellen speaks on Friday

* I guess the thoughts are: "Maybe she will say something hawkish."

* Maybe she'll say the U.S economy is strengthening and the Fed is getting closer to meeting its objectives

* And that a rate hike is possible in the near future

* So what? That's what she always says.

* Now she's not going to come out and say, "We're raising rates for sure. We're moving rates in September."

* The only thing she could say is that a rate hike is still possible

* That is no different than anything that she has said in the past

* So people being nervous about a possible unprecedented hawkish statement makes no sense

* Even in Janet were to say she is raising rates in September and she followed through a rate hike

* So what?

* It's not going to hurt gold and it's not going to help the dollar

* Expected rate hikes were already baked into the dramatic rise of the dollar in 2014-2015

* Gold declined from a high of almost $1900 to a low of $1050 because it was discounting all the rate hikes that are never going to materialize

* Even if we get one or two more, that is nothing compared to market expectations

* Even if we get a couple of small rate hikes, even if we get to .75 or even 1%

* That is still not enough to hurt gold or help the dollar

* When are people going to figure out it doesn't matter what the Fed does


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