morrienelson- Well thought out & most certainly a possibility. The election is going to be a mess one way or the other & your suspicions very well could play out that way. Hopefully the charts will be our guide to successfully navigate through what I suspect will be a very volatile market over the next couple of months. Thx for sharing your thoughts.

Randy – From a political conversation topic perspective I am seeing one major item and remember a past second item that could be used as the excuse for no rate hike on the 21st. Currently you are seeing HRC and the MSM paint Russia as being involved in tampering with the US election process, and in the same tone attempting to pin Trump to Putin since Trump is not denouncing Putin. So in the event that HRC loses the election, Obama can chime in and claim Russia tampered with the election and Loretta Lynch and the Justice department along with the HRC sided FBI can support the claim and hence either change the outcome or nullify the election. Secondly I recall back when Yellen went before Congress 3 or so months ago for what I believe was Humphrey Hawkins testimony or some other annual meeting before Congress, she was asked her opinion of Trump’s economic policies. Her answer to me is striking given that the Fed claims to be non-partisan but she proved otherwise by stating that Trump’s economic policies were troubling and could stifle growth. So now that she has played her hand and shown bias for HRC I would not all be surprised that if we are down 7% or so on the SPX by FOMC that she doesn’t hike and cites the global reaction to a potential Trump Presidency as the reason for the current market instability. You know as well as I do that the MSM would take this and run like crazy with it to scare the mainstream masses that are not paying one ounce of attention to what is going on with the markets at the moment. They have tried everything else to keep HRC in the lead (changing polling methodologies, press slamming anyone to talk about her health issues, crucifying Matt Lauer of NBC, typing Trump to Putin, etc). Apologies for the ramble but to me this scenario just makes too much sense.

Thx morrienelson. Although anything is possible, it seems to me that we could have a Boy That Cried Wolf scenario going on here. Over the last couple of years, every time that chatter about a possible rate hike at the next FOMC meeting emerged, the stock market kicked & screamed (sharp sell-off) and got its way, with the Fed cowing down & keeping rates steady. This time around, here we are just less than 2 weeks away from the decision & the market is just off ATH’s… absolutely no fear.

One day that big bad wolf (a rate hike) will come & unless the market sells off very hard over the next week or so, this is the perfect chance for the Fed to test the waters with a 0.25% rate hike as being right near ATH’s the market can easily afford a 10% or so correction if they do hike without inflicting too much damage to consumer confidence. If I were Yellen, I’d pull the trigger now, even if we get a half-decent drop before the 21st. JMHO

Shambo- From the looks of the charts, I still think at best GDX is likely to grind around in a big trading range for a while (weeks & possibly months). While I’m still short some individual miners, I have a core NUGT swing short that I plan to ride out the minor rips & dips for now (using the term minor relatively speaking as minor rips & dips in NUGT are measured in double digit percentage moves). Looking for a move below SLV 18.10 and GLD 125.10 to help firm up the intermediate-term bearish outlook for the PM sector and likely increase my short exposure but keeping it relatively light until then. Should that happen, min. target on GDX would be the 23.30 area.