As markets become more and more influenced by factors other than true price discovery(central bank interventions and especially outright price manipulation in gold and silver trading) one has to rely on fundamentals, sentiment and other factors in determining when to trade. The following paragraph from Michael Ballanger’s recent post captures the point. “However, because it was an “event-driven” takedown where capturing quarter-end profits was the obvious objective, I took the other side of the trade late Wednesday by wading into the iShares Silver Trust ETF (SLV:US) (that everybody hates) under US$20, (equivalent to US$21.55 for December silver) for a number of reasons but the main one was that every blogger and newsletter guru was looking at the double bottom just above US$22 and the island gap at $18 and assumed that technical analysis would prove foolproof. What they forgot is that breakdowns of support and resistance levels work in all markets around the globe except the gold and silver markets. In gold and silver, you buy “breakdowns” and you sell “breakouts” and the reason that you make this a rule of thumb is really quite simple. Technical analysis does not work in markets that are totally and completely rigged. (I learned that in 1979.)” I read this today but had similiar feelings and reasons for saying last week that I wanted to be “all in” silver by October 1st. The first short term downtrend line in silver has been broken to the upside and the longer, more important one will be broken once silver trades and holds above 23.50 or so where the 50 day mvg. avg. is quickly heading to.