Craig Hemke (00:00)
Hello again from SprottMoney, SprottMoney.com. We've now reached the month of March. One sixth of 2026 is behind us. It's a new month. We're ready to fill your inbox and your timeline with a whole new month of content from SprottMoney. We're going to kick it all off as we always do with your precious metals projections. I'm your host, Craig Hemke and joining us is technical analyst extraordinaire, Chris Vermeulen of the technicaltraders.com.
Chris, let's do it. How you doing here on Monday, March the second.
Chris Vermeulen (00:31)
I am good. can feel spring is coming as blue sky. The snow is starting to melt. It feels good. And we got lots of price action in the markets today shaking things up.
Craig Hemke (00:40)
For sure we do. ⁓ Hey, again, as we get started, I'm just gonna keep reminding everybody of this. Do your taxes here in the US. We gotta get them done in about the next six weeks. You're looking to save a little on your taxes. Start an RSB or an IRA here in the US. Put some money away for retirement and hold physical precious metal when you do. All kinds of good deals at Sprott Money as well. So go to SprottMoney.com. Learn more about retirement planning. Learn more about precious metal stacking.
course, you can always give him a call at 888-861-0775. Okay, Chris, February turned out okay. Gold moved up well. Mining shares had a great month with some great earnings reports. Even silver, though it didn't move a whole lot of the month, was up like 40 some odd percent from its February the fifth lows. So we finished the month strong. Then over the weekend, we got news. Hey.
World War III, well not quite yet, but it's still pretty nasty stuff. ⁓ On Monday, March the second we record this, markets are all over the place. What do you make of all this and what should, more importantly, what should our listeners make of all this?
Chris Vermeulen (01:51)
Yeah, well, I think we're seeing a lot of of extremes being reached today. We've got the Middle East, obviously, creating huge price swings. You know, we can kind of start off with the price of crude oil. We've got a huge move up. Crude oil rallied about 12, just over 12 % on the news ⁓ over the weekend on Sunday night with kind of everything happening. And so we're seeing this giant move up. Now, overall, I think a lot of people got very bullish. think oil is going to go to
to the moon, but when we step back and look at the bigger picture of oil, so it's always good to step back and get a feel for what it is doing. And if we were to just draw a really rough line through a lot of these highs through here, you'll notice that the market is in a overall downtrend. We're in a bear market. Oil has been in a bear market for several years and within bear markets, doesn't matter what the asset class is, you get some of the strongest and the biggest rallies, very short term explosive moves.
And the last time we had something kind of like this where bombs are being dropped, it was this big spike over here. So while this seems like big news and it is big news, when it comes to price action, this is a very emotional fear-driven move. It's a strong pop and rally within a downtrend. And typically this will fizzle out within a few trading days. Obviously, unless things escalate and things become a lot more severe,
Craig Hemke (02:56)
Back in June.
Chris Vermeulen (03:18)
oil could hold up or continue to move higher. But right now, this is a very strong pop based on news and price really had this huge gap. When we look at oil, it had this massive gap higher. And as we know, most gaps get filled. so we have a trifecta here. We've got this gap being filled. We're having this huge gap above resistance, above this trend line. And then, of course, it was also a strong news driven move that happened over the weekend that
gives people a little bit of time to like kind of let the ideas run wild in their head and become more fearful than they may need to be. And so it created this huge pop, this massive gap up of about 12%. And so now it's fading back down. This was kind of that trifecta of just everything hits all at once on a Monday at the open and now it's fading back down. So overall I'm not bullish on oil. In fact, I feel this is very much so a topping tale, a topping sign, a candle on the chart.
So we'll have to see how this unfolds, but the big move in oil, think it's getting a lot of people bullish. To me, it's actually screaming kind of a bearish sign at this point still.
Craig Hemke (04:27)
If it doesn't break out, think I'll wait for it to drop back down to 55 again. I can see that those succession of lows there on that chart, too. It's like it's a big wedge.
Chris Vermeulen (04:36)
Yeah, yeah, mean, this could very easily be right back down testing this 55. Who knows, right? There's a lot at play here. We just have to really follow price. the market tell us which way it wants to go. But right now, it's just a big bounce within a downtrend.
Craig Hemke (04:42)
Yeah.
Yeah. Hey, let's look at Stonks, ⁓ S &P or NASDAQ, whatever you'd prefer. know, overnight or at least at the open back on Sunday evening and then overnight, gold and silver up, crude oil up, stocks, indices down. And then during the American day, at least as we record this, it's a reversal of all that. What should folks be watching if, you know, there's a lot of, there's always people out there and I mean, I've been there.
Chris Vermeulen (04:55)
you
Craig Hemke (05:21)
Lots of times too thinking, okay, stocks are rolling over and what does this mean? And then it bounces right back. What are some key levels to watch here?
Chris Vermeulen (05:29)
Yeah, so we've seen this across the board with pretty much all of the key indices. Now, the S &P 500, the NASDAQ, the Russell, the micro cap sector, they've all done the same thing. So we have the news hit, obviously war tends to spark fear, which we saw in the VIX today, which also looks like a very, significant top in the VIX. So what that created is everybody to panic and sell stocks.
Craig Hemke (05:47)
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (05:55)
We saw the S &P 500 drop about 1.75 % in pre-market. And then of course the markets opened and it's rebounded and it dropped into this blue box. This is a very significant support level. And so when we have a gap on the stock market, gaps tend to get filled. So if the gap's lower, you usually have to expect it's gonna fade back up and fill most of that gap. Not only that, but again, very similar to oil. It was news driven.
And the S &P 500 fell down to this support level where buyers are naturally going to step in. And because the long-term trend of the stock market, which we can really look at with this 150 day moving average, we're still in a rising tide environment. so big moves to the downside are still being bought. It's still a buy the dip mentality until the major trend reverses to the downside. ⁓ We're going to keep seeing people buying every dip and ⁓
That's what we need to be aware of. Now the S &P 500 is holding up much better than the NASDAQ. If we look at the NASDAQ, it definitely has a lot more, let me just clean this chart up a bit, a lot more noise to it. And it has definitely a weaker pattern. So if we were to just look at this kind of support level, the NASDAQ's putting in what looks to be, it could be a major top. There's also this other resistance level kind of right through here, this pivot point on the charts where we saw the NASDAQ break down below it.
Craig Hemke (06:58)
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (07:19)
It's been ping ponging around between support and resistance, which is actually ⁓ seen as a bear flag chart pattern. And it actually points to lower pricing, which means we'd break this critical support level. So the markets are at this very key turning point and the type of price action you just mentioned, Craig, where price has this huge move down and then it just gets bought right back up. believe we, the strength today could carry over for one or two more sessions and see that.
Craig Hemke (07:36)
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (07:49)
move back out, there's one or 2 % upside. The key question is what's going to happen when the S &P 500 and the NASDAQ get up into resistance? Are they going to get slammed again? And then are they going to start to break down? And so very short term wise, we could see a little bit more of a bounce. There's a lot of momentum buying in stocks today. But overall, the bigger picture is very neutral at best. And it looks like it wants to head lower when it comes to the equities markets.
Craig Hemke (08:15)
Can you pull that out a little further, Chris? Turn that into like a weekly chart or something. Is this part of a pattern for things like the NASDAQ? Has it been going up in sideways or is it, I mean, I'm looking at it, is it kind of analogous to that period? I guess that's back in the spring time last year, right there. Yeah, I'm just curious how that looks. So please, what do you think?
Chris Vermeulen (08:18)
Yeah. ⁓ sure. Yeah.
Yeah, it's very similar. In fact, the underlying technicals of how we look at cycles and how we look at intermarket analysis across about 12 different assets, actually have this, where we are right now is very similar, almost identical to what we had over here. Now, this was a tariff driven move. This could be a war driven move. It really doesn't matter what the news is. Price usually does the same thing when it starts to break down, it collapses very quickly.
Craig Hemke (08:51)
Hmm.
Yeah? Yeah?
Chris Vermeulen (09:04)
But there is a very similar scenario set up in terms of the momentum that is built into this is very similar to the setup. And we can see a very quick unwinding of easy 10 to 20 % downside, I think in the stock market, which would, you know, obviously wreak havoc for most investors who are going to hold through that.
Craig Hemke (09:07)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you know what? I'm looking at that chart thinking, hmm, we got a sharp pullback within a little bit of that green line you got there. ⁓
Chris Vermeulen (09:33)
Yeah, I mean,
that's a pretty significant drop from where we are. That's about that 20 % point. It'd be interesting. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what some of these drops were. These are about the same distance, right? The stock market gets about 30 % away from the 150 day and then has a 20 plus percent correction. It's been 30 % away and we're on the verge of going for a deeper correction. Now it's still bullish. The long-term trend is still bullish here.
Craig Hemke (09:39)
Yeah, that'd be about a quarter of a panic.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah,
yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (10:01)
Definitely
don't want to like go betting on a falling market because right now we've stepped aside. We're not long and we're not short. We are waiting to see which way the stock market wants to go because there really isn't much direction when the daily chart really shows this very well. When we look and we go back to the October highs, if we go back to the October highs over here, the stock market has been going sideways for months. It's been a really crappy market and money has been flowing into precious metals.
Craig Hemke (10:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (10:30)
We actually have been seeing money move away from the U.S. equities. We've been seeing the Toronto Stock Exchange actually do very well. And this is what happens typically into the end of an economic cycle. When we see the stock market come to a peak, we see commodity-rich stock indices start to do very well. The TSX did very well before the 2008 financial crash. It just took off and outperformed. We have emerging markets like EEM. People have been moving overseas, getting into
Craig Hemke (10:32)
you
Chris Vermeulen (10:59)
into those. So there's definitely money rotating and worried about the US stock market and they're looking for safety. The one thing I think people need to be aware of is that when they move to these defensive or these alternative plays, there is still a point you need to get out because when we go through a bear market, you can overlay all the global indices on top of each other when the US stock market enters a bear market.
Craig Hemke (11:00)
Yeah? Korea?
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (11:26)
all of them correct and sell off dramatically. There is no safe haven. The big question or the only real difference here is just before this U S stock market goes off a cliff, we tend to see a few other country like indexes do very well. Canada emerging markets. Sometimes it's the DAX, something like that, but these will eventually get pummeled if we do enter a bear market. So it's not something you just park in and you're like, I've picked something that's going to buck the U S trend.
Craig Hemke (11:28)
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (11:54)
No, you pick something that does well until the music comes to an end. And then you really do need to exit equities in general.
Craig Hemke (12:02)
Yeah, you got to stay sharp. Within the stock market itself, how about our sector? The mining shares, can pick whatever ETF you want to use, GDX or one of the Sprott ones, it doesn't really matter. They all look about alike. ⁓ New highs finished with the monthly chart looking pretty good. The weekly chart's not too shabby either, though, of course, down today. ⁓ Is that a sector like some of those emerging markets that you were talking about?
Chris Vermeulen (12:29)
It has
been for sure. Well, the precious metal space, doesn't matter if it's gold, silver or miners, they are kind of seen as a defensive play in this market condition. They're all the same. They're all moving up. just they move up a little bit different from day to day percentage wise. So here's the monthly chart. Looks very strong. If we go drop down to the weekly, as you said, let's take a look here. Again, it's still very strong. All the moving averages here are fanned out nicely. They're all sloping up.
And so we're seeing that move. When we move into the daily chart, we definitely, you know, there's been a big movement in the precious metal space where a lot of people have been moving out of maybe overbought metals like silver, sell your silver at these kind of parabolic prices and move into miners. And so that's what we've seen. I think we've seen a lot of people moving out of silver and moving into something into miners more or less. And I think that's created quite a big movement.
in this space. And that's why I think we're seeing mining stocks do very well versus if we take a look at silver, people aren't as excited about silver. They're actually selling silver and moving into miners to try and catch a higher, you know, beta, a bigger play that maybe the fundamentals haven't caught up with the miners themselves. So overall, this space still, I have mixed feelings. Silver, I'm still pretty bearish, but gold, I really do like. ⁓ If we look at the gold chart and just zoom out,
As you and I have talked about this before, there's always like these 20 % rallies and then pauses, right? And, and if we take a look, you know, we, we go into a big rally and then we have some volatility and it takes months to recover. We have another rally and then it takes months to recover. And we've had another rally. And now the question is, you know, how is this going to react? I mean, we've had, we've had more of these. had another one back over here and each time we tend to see, you know, gold come up near the highs.
Craig Hemke (14:00)
Yeah. Yep.
Chris Vermeulen (14:26)
And it, and it builds a launch pad and then it breaks out and has a run and then eventually has some rallies and it pushes up and then eventually breaks out and it has a really nice run. And so here we are kind of in a, I think a somewhat of a similar scenario. Volatility is definitely higher than it used to be back over here, but we're back up to these highs. Maybe gold's going to pull back and kind of build some launch pad and create a bit of a bull flag and then eventually start to break out and run and.
Craig Hemke (14:30)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Vermeulen (14:55)
The next target on gold using Fibonacci extension is pointing to about 6,100. So there's still some very good upside, but I'm not a big fan of buying gold right, particularly now gold has pushed right up into resistance. It's happened on news and it's happened inside these, this giant red bar. And this is, you know, called a
Craig Hemke (15:18)
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (15:21)
You know, in these are inside bars, you have one big red bar and all of these are stuck inside it and it drifts up into resistance. And then at any point we could actually have a big red bar and it gets wiped back out. And so that's what I'm worried about is gold has now drifted up inside of a bearish chart pattern. It's at resistance. We just had news create a big gap that pushed us there. So I feel like it's a little bit of a short-term high. I'm not saying gold's going to crash. I'm saying I think gold is going to fizzle out.
Craig Hemke (15:33)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Vermeulen (15:50)
And it's going to, I think the short term gains here are done and we need potentially a few more weeks. And I mean, I'm, I'd like to be bullish on gold. I'd like to see it build out a pattern like this in breakout and play another big trade to the upside. ⁓ but short term wise, I'm a little bit bearish because this, these inside bars can turn into a very big, you know, wipe out in price very quickly. And if for some reason, this stuff in the middle East,
for some reason kind of clears up very quickly, or some good news comes about it. I think some of this was already priced into it and we could easily see it would give a reason for gold to pull back and for people to sell into it. They're like, oh, the war is over, and it can pull back kind of just like that. The markets move very quickly and these inside bars are actually very similar to, and I think you and I had pulled this up last time. If we take a look at the bottom chart, the silver chart in 2011, you have a huge red bar down.
both the same as what we had just now in 2026. And then it drifts up near the upper end of the range. And then you see another bout of selling. And so it's a very short term chart pattern that we're looking at here for gold and even silver. If we look at silver, it's doing the same thing. It is slowly working itself up. And ⁓ today's price action for silver is pretty bearish. It's an engulfing bearish candle, meaning it's gapped above the previous bar.
Craig Hemke (17:06)
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (17:16)
it's sold off and it's closing at this point, it's set to close below it. That is a reversal bar that is actually pointing to a couple more red bars after that. yeah, so that's kind of where we're at. have this mixed signal. Silver doesn't look too exciting yet. I think silver needs to build more of a base, right? If it could carve out a rounding formation and pull back and build a bit more of a base, I might be more excited when it starts to break out a bit later, but.
Craig Hemke (17:26)
often does.
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (17:45)
I think it's still very volatile. could really ping pong around in here for a while.
Craig Hemke (17:45)
huh.
In the meantime, still following kind of that longer trend, especially as you mentioned in gold on this. So now two years ago, guess two years ago today, was March the first that gold broke out to new all time highs above 2100 on March 1st, 2024. And it's been following that pattern, Chris, that we've been following as well of 20 % rallies followed by multi weeks or even months of consolidation. It's funny you mentioned 6,100 because add 20 %
to this current one and you get about 6,061 hundred again. you know, I, just.
Chris Vermeulen (18:23)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, when you
when you look at the precious metal space, the short term price action for silver is a little bit bearish, but miners and gold are still strong. And when you look at the long term trends, I mean, they're they're still they're still holding up. Right. So there's mixed signals, a short term chart for silver to me looks still pretty bearish. But the longer term trends are supporting it. And ⁓ yeah, so it has, you know, really, we just got to let the market work itself out.
and we'll see how it digests with the news. think silver's got a headwind. I think there's kind of a little bit more of people exiting silver and looking towards gold and miners as the play at this point.
Craig Hemke (19:03)
Like you said, for the short term, okay. And for the long term, focus on that bigger picture. You do a great job with the short term though, Chris. ⁓
Chris Vermeulen (19:11)
Yeah, the bigger
picture for silver, Craig, is the Fibonacci level is pointing to about $140 an ounce for silver. So if silver can base out and build what looks to be a nice chart pattern that I find is a good setup to get long, I'm to be excited to get long gold and silver because I think both of them have some really good upside potential. just want to wait. I'm not about trying to pick a bottom because short term, it's kind of actually still somewhat in a downtrend and I don't really want to fight this.
this trend, but once it builds a launch pad, man, there is some good potential in silver for, we might still have one more parabolic move to the upside. ⁓ And it could, you don't really want to miss it if there's a good clean setup.
Craig Hemke (19:53)
And like you said, Chris, you just got to stay nimble. Your job is always to find the best asset now while you wait for that next big move. Tell everybody how they can find out more at the technicaltraders.com.
Chris Vermeulen (20:07)
Yeah, well, they can, the best spot to follow is on YouTube. You go to the technical traders or go to my website. If you really want to see my daily videos every morning, you want to know exactly what I do with my portfolio. I manage my own money. I share my exact analysis, all of my trades. We actually take the trades. I issue them to subscribers. At the same time, we all enter the trades the following day together. So we pretty much navigate the markets as a group and ⁓
very educational, you'll learn a lot from the videos and how we walk through the markets. And it's pretty straightforward way to know when to own stocks, no end, own bonds or a currency or the metals. And we just kind of rotate to whichever asset is moving up at any given time.
Craig Hemke (20:50)
The technical traders dot com, correct? All right, the technical traders dot com. Chris, thank you. It's always always so interesting to visit with you. And I always like it that we do it here at the beginning of the month, because it's then you let the month play out and you come back in. Then we get together again the beginning of the next month. OK, well, that's interesting how that work. What can we learn and how can we use that going forward? You do a great job, my friend. So thank you for your time.
Chris Vermeulen (21:14)
Thanks,
Craig.
Craig Hemke (21:16)
And from all of us here at Sprott Money, SprottMoney.com. Thanks for watching. But again, keep an eye on this channel as the month of March begins, because we've got a whole month of content headed your way. Thanks for watching everyone.
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