Gold opened Q3 at 1325; gold closed Q3 at 1319. Now hang on for a sec...that's a net loss for the quarter of six points, dare we say, "percentagely immaterial".

Of course en route, by early July gold had vaulted the vaunted 1240-1280 resistance zone such as to revise our targeted high for this year from 1280 up to Base Camp 1377, there to which it took just seven days. And come 06 July, then in Q3 up 52 points (+4%), by nary one further has 1377 been breached. So is that it? Is gold "done" with but three months left to run into 2016's setting sun?

There's no doubt about it: Friday's settle at 1319 still finds gold historically in an outlier year at +24%; were it now year-end, that'd be its seventh-best since '74: a technically remarkable performance, to be sure. But then, more remarkable remains how far gold's present price of 1319 is below our "dollar debasement value" of 2645, fundamentally for which so many other dominoes are aligned:

Yes, 2016 is swiftly flying by, but we've 63 trading days left in the balance. And with silver still leading the charge through the 189 trading days year-to-date, here is the overall BEGOS Markets state:

Of course for you precious metals equities aficionados out there, gold's currently being +19% from this date one year ago is mere peanuts compared to Goldcorp (GG) +36%, Franco-Nevada (FNV) +63%, GDX (the prominent exchange-traded fund of the Gold miners) +97%, SIL (the popular exchange-traded fund of the Silver miners) +133%, and Newmont Mining (NEM) +148%:

Still, such worthy celebratory performance aside, while Q3 closed basically flat for gold, the above five equities actually declined an average of -5%. Further, as we below go to the year-over-year view of the weekly bars, the trend for gold obviously has been down (red line) since the week of the 1377 peak, albeit within the overall linear regression uptrend (dashed diagonal line) and ascending parabolic Long trend (blue dots). That said, the latter is under threat to be flipped to short given there's just 16 points of wiggle room above the noted 1303 flip price; gold's "expected daily trading range" is presently 14 points, and the "expected weekly trading range" 36 points. Fortunately, as has been their "proven barrier wont", we'd expect the Whiny 1290's to provide ample price support, if need be:

Meanwhile, our own San Francisco Fed head John "It's All Good" Williams told Reuters this past week that "I would support an interest rate increase ... I think that the economy can handle that. I don’t think that would stall, slow or derail the economic expansion." Expansion?  It is the case per the headline number, the final revision to Q2 GDP coming in at an annualized growth rate of +1.4%. Now let's flash back to last 24 November: that day gave us the first revision to 2015's Q3 GDP: +2.1%. Then came the 16 December Federal Reserve Bank Funds rate hike that we regularly note on the below Economic Barometer. Did the economy handle that?

Now, this coming 28 October brings us 2016's first Q3 GDP reading, the down tilt of the Econ Baro suggesting it won't be any better than Q2, and thus less than it was a year ago. Then we get the "Federal Open Market Committee meeting about which nobody knows" in November, followed by the fallout from the November 8  U.S.  elections. Still, one wonders if in recent weeks the economy stopped by the gas station to pump in some pre-election premium:

Then, of course, are those dominoes at which we earlier looked. Their order of falling doesn't really matter given the ultimately inner-connective state of all things financial. One material case of "Gimme back my money" and there they'll go. "You've a derivative claim on what, Ma'am? Ha! Ha! Ha!" Or the infamous "That was the 401k's worth when your statement was cut, Sir, but then everything leapt below our protective stop limit sell orders, so we unloaded at-the-market."

Moving beyond the well-documented Deutsche Bank woes and the Commerzbank oh-nos comes the WTO's measure of the slowest growth in global trade since the Black Swan Event of 2008/2009. The World Trade Organization went on to note that increasing protectionism is therein playing a role. One wonders if that includes repatriating one's gold such as to keep it under one's nose. Good idea.

Now admittedly, the technical Market Rhythm Target for gold 1364 herein mentioned a week ago was since nixed, (which if you read the daily Prescient Commentary page you already know). Thus for the near-term, we may see more ebb than flow. So we next go to gold's three-months of daily bars (below left) and 10-day Market Profile (below right). The baby blue dots denoting the day-by-day consistency of the 21-day linear regression trend are smack on "trendless" at the 0% axis, while in the trading profile, 1318 is the sole supporter:

Similarly for silver is the two-panel graphic of the same analytics. Whither from here near-term for the precious metals? We hope not too much wither.

Naturally it being month's, indeed quarter's-end, we shan't slip out without bringing up our broad-based chart of gold's structure and its defined strata. The bars are monthly from gold's All-Time-High-to-date:

So into Q4 we go, again noting that this being 01 October, the Bank for International Settlements today officially awards China's Yuan an 11% standing in its "special drawing rights" currency basket ... and deservedly so, given China is the world's second largest economy. But it does come with a bit of an eerie tinge, given a swiftly spreading "neo-Maoist" movement afoot within the Great Red Dragon.