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* FIEND'S SUPERBEAR MARKET
REPORT *
* January 26,
2026 *
* *
* e-mail:
fiendbear@fiendbear.com
*
* web
address: http://www.fiendbear.com *
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Fiend Commentary
================
Gold
$5,000. Silver $109. When the Measuring Stick Wobbles
If you want
a clean snapshot of how strange this market has become, ignore the “Dow 50,000”
drumbeat for a moment and look at what’s happening in the metals and
currencies.
Overnight,
gold surged above $5,000 and printed a new record high near $5,093. Silver
didn’t just “participate” — it detonated to a record near $109. In the same
move, platinum tagged a new record and palladium hit a multi‑year high.
This is not a normal “risk-on” tape where everything politely inches higher
together. This is a market that is quietly re-pricing confidence — in policy,
in currencies, and in what is (and isn’t) being protected.
Here’s the
uncomfortable point: when gold and silver behave like this, it’s rarely a
statement about jewelry demand. It’s a statement about the measuring stick.
The
confidence trade is turning into a stampede
Gold’s move reads like a classic safe-haven rush — but with an added edge. The
backdrop isn’t one single crisis; it’s the feeling of
multiple stress points accumulating at once:
1.
Currency volatility is back — and it matters
The yen’s violent spikes and the open chatter about intervention are a tell.
When traders start believing there’s a “line in the sand” for a major currency,
markets stop acting like one-way machines.
A stronger
yen (or even the threat of coordinated support) can change global liquidity in
a hurry because it threatens the carry trade mindset that has underwritten so
much “easy money” behavior. You don’t need an actual intervention for
positioning to get nervous — you just need the fear that it could happen at any
moment.
2.
Bond markets are still the real referee
Equities can celebrate records, but the long end of the bond market sets the
true hurdle rate for everything. We’ve already seen how quickly bond markets
can become the main character, especially when Japan’s long-dated yields lurch
and U.S. long yields flirt with levels that start to pinch housing, capex, and
credit.
This is the
setup that spooks smart money: stocks trying to levitate while the discount rate refuses to
cooperate.
3.
Policy uncertainty is feeding the hard-asset
bid
Investors don’t need to agree on the “right” narrative to buy metals. They only
need to agree that the number of plausible narratives is rising — and that the
downside tails are fattening.
Last week’s
tariff theatrics and geopolitical cross-currents (Iran
headlines included) are gasoline on the fire for anything that trades as
“insurance.” Gold is acting like the insurer. Silver is acting like the insurer
that also happens to be the momentum trade of the year.
Silver is no
longer whispering — it’s screaming
Silver clearing $100 and racing to new highs is the kind of move that forces a
re-think.
Silver is
not just a precious metal; it’s also an industrial metal with real supply
constraints, and it has a long history of violent upside followed by brutal air
pockets. What’s different this time is the combination of:
That’s how you
get upside that looks irrational… right up until it becomes the new reference
point.
The market
is also quietly telling you something else: it’s not just gold and silver.
Platinum also hit a record and palladium is waking up.
That matters because it suggests this isn’t a single-metal story anymore — it’s
broader “hard asset” behavior.
Storm risk,
shutdown risk, and oil risk: the inflation wildcard
A major winter storm doesn’t have to crash markets to matter. It can hit the
economy through second-order effects: power prices, fuel logistics, supply
bottlenecks, and a renewed reminder that “inflation” is often a story of
constraints, not just demand.
The U.S.
grid has been under escalating stress from the cold blast, with extreme spikes
in wholesale electricity prices in key regions. That kind of shock can ripple
into headline prices and sentiment fast — even if it fades later.
Meanwhile,
Washington is flirting with yet another funding fight. The shutdown threat tied
to the Homeland Security funding dispute isn’t just politics-as-usual — it
risks freezing or distorting the flow of official data again, which would
further destabilize confidence and amplify rumor-driven trading.
And then
there’s oil. Iran-related pressure is back in the headlines, and every trader
on Earth knows the same basic math: the Strait of Hormuz is a choke point that
matters. If markets start to price even a small probability of disruption
there, you can get an energy spike that makes “inflation is contained” feel
like a fragile assumption.
What to
watch this week
If this rally is going to keep accelerating, or if it’s going to snap into one
of those violent “air pocket” pullbacks, the tells will likely come from a few
places:
Bottom line
A Dow headline at 50,000 will get the confetti. But gold over $5,000 and silver
printing record highs is the more important headline —
because it’s not really a price story. It’s a confidence story.
When the
“measuring stick” starts wobbling, everything priced in that stick becomes
harder to trust — including the calmness investors keep projecting through
record stock prices.
If this is
just another January fake-out, we’ll see it first in the dollar stabilizing and
the long bond calming down. If it’s not a fake-out, the metals are telling you
the next chapter of 2026 may be written in much bigger numbers than anyone felt
comfortable forecasting a year ago.
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