Gold, Long Term

For several years I've been following the accelerated long term uptrend in gold which started in 2008.  For good price and volume trading data, I've been using GLD, the gold etf, since it tracks (one tenth of) the price of gold very closely and since its volume data captures the sentiments of gold traders.  From time to time, I've shared with friends my monthly bars chart of GLD which contains the Midas S curves and TopFinder (TF).  But before today, I hadn't looked at it for many months.  So, after yesterday's big drop in gold, this morning I pulled up this chart to see what it can tell us.  Here it is, updated through yesterday, but otherwise not altered in any way:

The TopFinder, TF2, followed the uptrend, and ended at the end of July 2011.  Immediately after that, price popped up into what I call an Overhead Consolidation, a formation that I explain in detail in our book.  Briefly, it is one of the forms of a consolidation that can follow the end of a TF.  

Notice that in late 2011, price broke and closed below S4.  If one were not using the TF, that event would've signaled the end of the uptrend, five months after the TF signaled it.  

Yesterday's price drop drove the April price bar well below both S3 and S2.  The month isn't over yet, so we don't know where this bar is going to close.  If it closes below S3, then we're in a new long term downtrend in gold.  However, if it closes above S3, then that bar will be what the Wyckoff folks call a Spring, which is actually bullish.  I'll revisit this chart and post it again here after the end of the month.