Founder’s Note: It’s easy to forget that Sam Gatlin is the promising young prospect in the context of the TrendLabs team.
He hasn’t been at it for as long as the rest of us. But he knows what he’s talking about.
Here’s Sam with an update on the world’s oldest form of money… – JC
By Sam Gatlin
Some of the best trades of my career have come from precious metals.
It has been so good to me that at times I’ve contemplated converting to the “Gold Bug” religion.
I kid…
But I mean it when I say these are some of my favorite assets to trade.
Gold broke out on March 4, 2024, and from there, the whole complex basically caught fire.
For months, it felt like every dip was getting bought and every breakout was being rewarded.
That kind of tape is fun, but it also doesn’t last forever.
By late January, the move had gone far enough.
Gold finally peaked, sentiment got too hot, and precious metals entered a brutal corrective wave that lasted most of the first half of this year.
That was painful if you overstayed your welcome, but it was also normal.
Secular bull markets don’t move in straight lines.
They rally, correct, reset, and then begin again.
The trick is understanding when a correction is killing the trend versus when it is simply reloading the next advance.
And right now, I think precious metals are gearing up for a fresh leg higher.
After taking roughly half a year to digest the prior run, the charts are starting to set up again.
The dollar backdrop is improving.
Gold is breaking its downtrend.
And the most speculative precious metals stocks are already ripping from key levels of interest.
This is starting to look familiar…
And for us, that means it’s time to pay attention again.
The Dollar Tailwind Is Turning
Before we talk about gold, we need to talk about the euro.
That might sound strange, but the euro-dollar cross is the most important currency pair in the world.
It also makes up a huge portion of the U.S. Dollar Index, so when the euro rallies against the dollar, it usually creates a much friendlier environment for precious metals.
That matters because precious metals don’t have cash flows.
They are liquidity-driven assets.
When the dollar is strong and global liquidity is tightening, gold and silver usually struggle.
When the dollar weakens and liquidity expands, the metals can moon.
Right now, the euro is setting up for another squeeze:
Look at what happened in late 2024 and early 2025.
Speculators got aggressively short the euro just as price was breaking down from a textbook distribution pattern.
The trade looked obvious…
Everyone agreed the euro was broken, the dollar was king, and the path of least resistance was lower.
Then the market did what it loves to do.
It fooled the majority.
The euro ripped higher in the first half of 2025, forcing those speculators to scramble for the exits.
We also saw a similar setup in the back half of 2022, and now the same playbook appears to be developing again.
Speculators are carrying one of their largest net short positions since that late-2024 period, while price is scooping-n-scoring back above former support.
That’s how squeezes begin.
And if the dollar weakens, precious metals should have the wind at their backs again.
Gold Is Still in a Secular Bull Market
Now let’s talk about gold…
The recent correction was ugly.
From peak to trough, gold fell roughly 30% after its January high, which is enough to scare people out of a trade they loved just a few months earlier.
But this is what secular bull markets do.
They shake people out.
During the last great gold bull market, price rallied roughly 650% from the 2001 low to the 2011 peak.
That move changed lives, but it didn’t happen in a straight line.
There were plenty of double-digit drawdowns along the way, and every single one of them felt like the end of the world in real time.
But these were pauses within a much larger advance:
I think we’re in a similar secular uptrend today.
If gold rallies 650% off its 2015 low, the target is around $8,000.
And that sounds ridiculous to a lot of people, but secular bull markets always sound ridiculous before they happen.
The important point isn’t whether gold gets there tomorrow.
It won’t.
The point is that the long-term structure remains intact, and the recent drawdown looks more like a healthy reset than a broken trend.
After a massive run, gold needed to correct sentiment, positioning, and momentum.
And after half a year, that mission has been accomplished.
Now the next leg higher is getting underway.
Silver Is Gold’s Crazy Cousin
Zooming in, both gold and silver are starting to act better.
Gold has already violated the upper bound of a textbook downtrend line, which is the first sign that the corrective phase is coming to an end.
Silver isn’t quite as clean, but it’s bouncing from the lower bound of a well-defined diagonal support trendline:
Silver is always the wild one.
In good times, it tends to outperform gold.
In bad times, it tends to get absolutely crushed.
Earlier this year, silver traded above $100 before collapsing by roughly 50%, which is exactly the kind of violent action you expect from gold’s crazy cousin.
That volatility cuts both ways.
When the precious metals tape turns higher, silver tends to dramatically outperform gold.
That’s why I expect silver to retest the upper bound of this range, break out, and eventually outperform again.
Triple-digit silver already happened once.
And I don’t think it was the last time.
The Explorers Are Waking Up
If silver is gold’s crazy cousin, gold explorers are the full-blown maniacs of the precious metals world.
These are some of the most speculative stocks in the entire market.
Many of these companies don’t even have producing mines.
They have land, drilling programs, promises, presentations, and dreams.
That’s what makes them so explosive when the metals are working.
The Gold Explorers ETF (GOEX) was obliterated during the correction, falling roughly 40% from its peak earlier this year.
But look at where it stopped falling.
GOEX peaked near the 61.8% retracement of its decline from the 2011 high to the January 2016 low.
Then it corrected and found support near the 38.2% retracement.
That’s exactly where buyers are supposed to step in if the larger trend is still intact.
Now price is ripping from that level.
I think GOEX will retest the $100 area, breakout, and eventually make a run back toward its 2011 peak near $155.
In other words, this ETF can double from here.
That might sound aggressive, but in precious metals bull markets, the speculative stocks can move much further than most investors think possible.
That’s why we care.
The Metals Trade Is Back on the Radar
I’m not saying every precious metals stock is a buy today.
That’s not how we do things here at TrendLabs.
But the evidence is improving quickly.
The euro is setting up for a squeeze, making the dollar vulnerable to a dramatic decline.
Gold is breaking its short-term downtrend.
Silver is bouncing.
And the explorers are already ripping higher.
At TrendLabs, some of our best trades ever came during the prior leg higher in precious metals.
We were all over that move, and I think we’re heading into the kind of environment where those opportunities start showing up again.
The key is finding the best vehicles.
Gold is great.
Silver is better when the tape gets hot.
But the real money is often made in the strongest miners, juniors, explorers, and squeeze setups that can multiply faster than the metal itself.
That’s what we’re looking for now.
Inside The Primary Trend and The Divergence, we’ll be serving up our best trade ideas as this next leg develops.
If this precious metals bull market is ready to resume, there will be plenty of opportunity.
And we plan to be right in the middle of it.
Stay safe out there,
Sam Gatlin
Analyst, TrendLabs