The weather could become Topic A around here if the markets get any more boring than they have been. Yesterday’s snooze fest was impressive in one respect, though: It demonstrated that the Dow can fall 265 points, as it did on Friday, and wake up Monday morning with no trace of a hangover.  Did stocks perhaps fall because cyclical forces had ordained it?  We’ll never know.  But whatever may have been troubling traders as the week drew to a close, it was not a factor in Monday’s gratuitous waft higher. The Industrial Average closed with a gain of 56 points, showing no particular strength or enthusiasm, only a mild propensity to take the path of least resistance.  The hum-drum price action is corroborated by some widely followed technical indicators, including the McClellan Oscillator. We’ll be hearing more about the McClellan later this week from our friend and colleague Larry Amernick, who thinks that tedium will be with us for yet a while longer. From a McClellan standpoint, he says, traders can only get in trouble by taking a plunge right now.

Continuing a pattern that has persisted for some weeks, yesterday’s unimpressive strength in the broad averages was matched by unimpressive weakness in Gold futures. The Comex August contract was down nearly $12 at the lows, trading for 1176.90.  This is the lowest the futures have been since May, but it stopped shy of breaching a major supportive low at 1168.00 recorded on May 21.  Actually, we have been anticipating somewhat worse by way of a Hidden Pivot target at 1140.10.  Bulls will have a chance to take a stand at 1155.00, the corrective target of a lesser pattern and our minimum downside objective for the near term. But if the support fails, you can infer that more weakness to at least 1140.10 is coming.  At that price the August contract will have fallen $126.40 from the record high reached on June 21, the summer solstice. That’s almost precisely ten percent, which is no big deal in the context of the 38 percent increase that gold’s price had racked up since last July. If the upward trek continues at the same pace, sliding back one step for each four steps gained, Gold shouldn’t have much difficulty reaching a key Hidden Pivot target at $1364 by year’s end or early next.