Despite the broad market sort of collapsing, gold isn't doing much. In fact, Barrick Gold (ABX) looks like a short to me for the third time in three years. Frayed-shirtcuff Elliott Wavers spotted a short set-up in February 2014, and again in May 2015. Now in January 2016, the voodoo is projecting a target price of $4ish. Ugly.
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Even though gold is deeply out of favor and probably heading back below $1,000 an ounce, it doesn't mean it's no good to play from the long side during a trend down day in the broad market. You can see the jump in GLD as the market fell apart in the morning, but it was that lunchtime zigzag that I love to see that offered the low-risk trade. On a bad day like Thursday you're going to be keeping an eye on the bonds and gold for a play.
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Candlevolume chart of the GLD (Inception date: 11/18/2004) ... the width of the year shows you how active trading was ... 2014 shaping up to be a "thin" year as price falls and activity drops. 2012 thin, 2013 thinner, 2014 thinnest. You can see that in the early years of the boom, 2004 05 06 07, there was very little trading in the GLD. Everyone who purchased after May 2010 and held is underwater. A lot of latecomers are bagholders now, that's for sure.
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