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Gold has traded between $1,333 and $1,342 so far today…as of 11:15 am Pacific, bullion is flat at $1,337…Silver has retreated 25 cents to $19.59…Copper has enjoyed a good week and is up another penny at $2.19…Crude Oil has slipped nearly $2 a barrel to $44.50 on OPEC rumors while the U.S. Dollar Index is up slightly at 95.47…

Gold is headed for its best weekly performance in 2 months, thanks to central bank decisions in the U.S. and Japan this week, while the metal is also on track to post a 3rd straight quarterly gain in what would be the longest rally since 2011…

Holdings of SPDR Gold Trust rose for a second straight session yesterday, adding 0.69% to 950.92 tonnes…Gold assets in global ETFs have expanded every month this year apart from a dip in April, when they lost less than 1%…

China’s peak season for Gold demand kicks off next week with the National Day holiday, lasting until Lunar New Year early next year…meanwhile, demand for Gold in India (lackluster for much of 2016) is expected to improve in the final quarter due to the wedding season as well as festivals such as Diwali and Dussehra…

Rumors Swirl Around Next Week’s OPEC Meeting

Oil prices came under pressure today on a Bloomberg report that Saudi Arabia did not expect an agreement at talks next week among major Crude exporters aimed at freezing production…

Prices were headed for their largest weekly gain in more than a month, reacting earlier this morning to a Reuters’ report that Saudi Arabia has offered to reduce production if rival Iran caps its own output this year…

Canadian Oil Exports To U.S. Surge, More Pipeline Capacity Urgently Needed

Canada is sending a record amount of Oil to the U.S., filling pipelines to capacity and threatening to push more Crude into rail cars…U.S. imports from its northern neighbor jumped 17% to 3.46 million barrels a day last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday in a preliminary report…that’s the most since the agency began collecting such data in 2010…exports have surged as Alberta recovers from wildfires that disrupted supplies earlier this year…

Supplies from the Oil sands are piling up as producers bring back output and projects that had been delayed by the fires come online…the glut highlights Canada’s dependence on the U.S. market after TransCanada Corp.’s 7-year struggle to get approval for the Keystone XL link to the Gulf of Mexico was blocked by the Obama administration, while its proposed Energy East line to the Atlantic Coast faces mounting opposition from radical environmentalists and native groups…the stress on existing lines means more Crude will be hauled by rail at higher costs and the discount on Canadian Crude will likely widen…

Canada’s Crude output is expected to rise about 5% to more than 4 million barrels a day in 2017, above the country’s pipeline export capacity, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers…Canadian Crude-by-rail exports rose to a 6-month high of 109,000 barrels a day in April before declining after wildfires took about 1 million barrels a day of production off the market, National Energy Board data show…

50 Indigenous Communities In Canada Unveil “Treaty” To Target Oil Sands Expansion

A coalition of First Nations leaders is ratcheting up pressure on Canada’s Oil Sands industry…at news conferences in Montreal and Vancouver yesterday, representatives of 50 indigenous communities in Canada unveiled a “treaty” that commits them to work together to stop all new pipelines, rail projects and increased tanker traffic that would facilitate Oil sands expansion. “Our Nations hereby join together under the present treaty to officially prohibit and to agree to collectively challenge and resist the use of our respective territories and coasts in connection with the expansion of the production of the Alberta Tar Sands, including for the transport of such expanded production, whether by pipeline, rail or tanker,” the agreement says…

In Today’s Morning Musings…

1.  TSX Gold Index update – what’s around the corner?…

2.  Momentum builds in Cannabix Technologies (BLO, CSE)…

3.  The case for Minco Silver (MSV, TSX)…

4. Daniel’s Den – America’s coming infrastructure boom…

Plus more…click here to read the rest of today’s Morning Musings and all BMR exclusive content, through a risk-free Pro, Gold or Basic package, or login with your username and password…

Gold has traded between $1,331 and $1,344 so far today…as of 10:30 am Pacific, bullion is up $5 an ounce at $1,340 after yesterday’s big jump following the Fed’s decision not to raise interest rates…Silver is 17 cents higher at $19.98…Copper has jumped 4 cents to $2.18…Crude Oil is $1.11 higher at $46.41 while the U.S. Dollar Index has fallen one-fifth of a point to 95.29…

Holdings of SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest Gold-backed exchanged-traded fund, rose 0.60% to 944.39 tonnes yesterday…

Spending on Gold exploration in July and August was up sharply from a year ago, says SNL Metals and Mining Research…the consultancy reports that spending totaled $986.5 million, compared to $324 million in the same period last year…drilling activity in Canada accounted for 39% of all significant Gold results announced between July 1 and September 8, with a further 29% hosted by the Asia-Pacific region…

The Fed’s Very Wobbly Interest Rate “Table”

The rate hike that was on the “table” again last month, what happened to it this time?…

Stocks and commodities are cheering the fact that Ma Yellen has kept the liquidity tap on, while the Bank of Japan unveiled a new scheme yesterday (“yield curve control”) aimed at boosting the Japanese economy and winning the battle against deflationary pressures…highly accommodative monetary policies continue, unabated, in the U.S., Asia and Europe…the era of cheap money has further to run…

It’s amazing that the Fed still expects to initiate a rate hike in 2016, and that the market is pricing in a better than 50–50 chance that just the 2nd rate increase in more than a decade will occur in December, after all that we’ve been through this year…in December 2015, the central bank told the market to expect 4 rate hikes in 2016…astute investors gave the Fed the finger, questioning its assumptions, and aggressively accumulated Gold…bullion investors got it right…

At last week’s Precious Metals Summit in Colorado,  Rob McEwen stated quite plainly, “The big argument against Gold used to be its storage cost. Right now, it’s costing you money to store your cash.”

From a technical perspective, Gold’s immediate challenge is to overcome its 50-day moving average (SMA) at $1,336…

Of particular significance yesterday was the volume behind Gold’s $20 move – the highest since the Brexit vote…the $1,290 to $1,320 support band held over the summer, so it’s reasonable to expect a Q4 run to the next measured Fib. resistance level which is $1,427…how soon this unfolds remains to be seen…

Silver has outperformed Gold this week, and that’s what one would expect in the breakout scenario we outlined in our piece last night…Silver has already pushed above its 50-day SMA in the $19.60’s…its biggest near-term hurdle is resistance just below $21…when that is cleared, there is little in Silver’s way until the mid-$20’s…

Will Gold and Silver get “spooked” again by sudden new hawkish rhetoric from Fed officials, particularly the 3 who dissented yesterday?…they could but shouldn’t, given the Fed’s pattern of all talk and no action…

Oil Update

The U.S. Energy Information Administration yesterday reported a 6.2 million barrel drop in Crude Oil inventories last week, the second biggest drop in a year…the drawdown, along with a more benign outlook for U.S. monetary policy, overshadowed news that Russian Oil output hit a new record above 11 million barrels per day this week and that Libya had exported its first Oil cargo since at least 2014 from the port of Ras Lanuf…

Next week, the world’s largest producers will gather in Algiers to discuss ways to stabilize the Oil market, including a potential freeze in output, which is already at, or near, record highs in countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia…

Venture 4-Month Daily Chart

For proper context, we refer readers to our important piece earlier this month – “September, Q4 and Venture Bull Markets“…

The Venture, which held quite steady in August despite the sharp pullback in the TSX Gold Index, has continued to lead the broader equity markets and commodities to the upside this month – a classic signature of Venture bull markets…

The Venture’s short-term chart shows how momentum has picked up significantly entering the final 7 trading days of the month, but tomorrow will be a key day…

• Sell pressure (CMF), dominant since the 3rd week of August, has transitioned into weak buy pressure;
• The Index has climbed back above its EMA(8) and EMA(20), and both have turned higher;
• RSI(14) has held support around 50% and is climbing;
• ADX indicator shows “neutral trend” at the moment but +DI is gaining strength and has pushed above -DI.

Historically, the Venture has performed exceptionally well in September and in Q4 during bull market years going back to 2003…the average gain from the August close to the end of December is almost 30%, additional compelling evidence that the Venture has an excellent chance to challenge its next measured Fib. resistance at 978 by the end of 2016…

A strong close to the week tomorrow would reinforce the probability of a very good finish to the month…

In Today’s Morning Musings…

1.  Colorado, Serengeti take hits on news…

2.  What a “bellwether” stock is saying about the Gold market…

3.  Kootenay Silver (KTN, TSX-V) update…

Plus more…click here to read the rest of today’s Morning Musings and all BMR exclusive content, through a risk-free Pro, Gold or Basic package, or login with your username and password…

Central banks are becoming increasingly confused and even desperate, a 2016 theme that Gold seized on again today.  All the hawkish rhetoric from Fed officials last month, which drove Gold stocks down (temporarily) much more than the metal, seemed even more foolish today when Ma Yellen sheepishly admitted that there was not a strong enough case to hike rates this month (keep in mind, The Fed Who Cried Wolf has only raised rates once in more than a decade, so what are the chances of even a December increase?).

“Our decision does not reflect a lack of confidence in the economy,” she said during her quarterly news conference after the FOMC meeting. “Conditions in the labor market have strengthened and we expect that to continue, and while inflation remains low we expect it to rise to our 2% objective over time.”

If that’s the case, Ma Yellen, what harm could another small rate hike do right now?

The decision of investors to pour into Gold this year does reflect a lack of confidence in the Fed, not to mention governments across the globe that seem inept at handling fiscal policy (confusing central bankers even more).

Meanwhile, just hours before the Fed decision to “delay” yet again, the Bank of Japan cooked up a new kind of sushi monetary policy.  They abruptly shifted to targeting interest rates on government bonds to achieve their elusive inflation goals, after years of massive money printing failed to jolt the economy out of decades-long stagnation (the massive money printing continues, however).

The end result today was Gold jumping $20 an ounce to $1,335.  Silver also had a stellar day, surging 61 cents to finish at $19.81.

In our Monday article, “Silver Update, And The Fed“, we covered the very encouraging outlook for Silver and concluded, “Silver’s downside at the moment is truly limited, and that’s why investors should be accumulating good quality Silver stocks that have backed off from recent highs.”

Tonight, a fascinating look at Gold after today’s move from the individual with a growing reputation for the most accurate and timely Gold charts in the business!

Click here to quickly become a BMR member and read the rest of tonight’s special report on Gold, or login with your username and password…