DVS Weekly Update 2026-10: Precious Metals | When Structure Says “Cool Off”
If you want the intraday noise and chart spam, check X; that’s where I’ll keep posting fresh updates and shorter takes.
This note is the big-picture rails on gold, silver, platinum, palladium and the silver miners, and it also sets the stage for a pretty chunky reshuffle inside the Core 15.
Over the last couple of weeks we had what you could generously call a “breakout attempt” in the silver miners. You could argue the juniors technically poked through, but the move was so marginal that I only took small starters in CDE and HL. Both got stopped out fairly quickly; I sold the last leftovers late last week.
That price action you’ll see on the charts below, pushes me back toward what has been my primary silver roadmap for months: a deeper reset toward at least the mid-60s / low-60s, with a non-trivial chance we overshoot into the mid-50s based on the big-picture rails. We don’t have to go that deep, but the structures still point that way.
On SILJ specifically, we’ve now broken the purple trendline from the November low on the daily. It’s not a waterfall – we’re still in the top half of the larger secular channel – but the angle of ascent is gone. Combine that with the silver chart and, for me, the distribution of paths roughly looks like this:
Around 50–55%: we get a “normal” deeper retrace in SILJ into about 20–21.
Around 30–35%: we do the full 0.786 / 15–16 wash, in line with a clean back-test of the big purple downtrend and a silver reset into roughly 55–60.
Around 15–20%: the November trend break turns out to be a fake-out and SILJ just grinds or rips higher without giving us those juicy entries.
So yes, I’ve nudged the “no real reset” scenario up from a 10% tail to something in the mid-teens, but my base case is still some form of deeper corrective leg while silver works off that blow-off.
This backdrop also explains why I’m making one of the bigger Core-15 rotations I’ve done in a while. I’m removing three names, adding three new ones, and I’m even dropping two completely new tickers straight into the Core 15 that never sat in the Commodity Bucket. That’s unusual for me. The logic is simple: the multi-decade rails on the metals and the fresh behaviour in the miners say “cool off and respect risk”, while the energy and critical-metals sleeves are quietly setting up for the next leg.
This week’s update will stay focused on:
These precious-metals structures,
The new Core-15 layout,
And the reasoning behind the rotations.
Deep dives on the new names will follow mid-next week, together with an updated Commodity Bucket List and Bench Warmer stack. For now: let’s start with the metals themselves and what the big rails are telling us.
Gold | the cleanest secular trend
Gold still has the tidiest structure of the complex.
Price has been trending inside a ~25-year rising channel starting around 2000. The latest move has driven price right into the upper rail after a near-vertical run. That’s why we’re stalling and chopping here: we’re literally pressing against the ceiling of a multi-decade structure. The secular trend isn’t broken – the angle of ascent is.
This is not where I upgrade expectations; it’s where I respect the rail and demand either a controlled consolidation just under the top, or a proper reset back into the mid-channel before getting aggressive again.
Silver | structure still favours a deeper reset
Silver just had its first real punch through a 40-year lid: the band defined by the 1980 and 2011 peaks. Intraperiod trade ran into the 120s, but we closed way back down – still above the old 50–56 lid, but clearly below the spike.
Zoom in and the pattern is pretty clear: first a steep dump channel, then a counter-trend channel higher, and now a fresh breakdown with a cloned down-channel / measured move that both point into roughly 55–57.
That 55–57 zone is where the 0.618 retrace of the whole leg, the big 50–60 support shelf, and the lower half of the inner 2000s channel all converge.
Very roughly, I’d still put something like 60–65% on a proper reset into the mid-50s, maybe 20–25% on a shallower 60–65 tag and bounce, and a small 10–15% tail where we just consolidate sideways under the highs without giving you that full flush.
On the 3-monthly chart that deeper reset would still be a higher high and a higher low; structurally bullish for the secular story even if it feels brutal in real time.
Platinum | a pullback wouldn’t break the story
Platinum finally caught up and broke out of its long consolidation:
It’s back in the upper half of its secular channel,
It has cleared a long internal downtrend,
But it did it via a sharp “catch-up” spike.
In that context, a pullback into the 1,500 area would be completely normal: it’s a clean back-test of the breakout zone and sits mid-channel, not at the bottom. As long as that secular channel holds, I’d read a move into ~1,500 as a healthy reset, not a trend failure.
Palladium | first impulse, then maybe 1,100
Palladium has looked awful for years, but the structure is trying to turn: a vicious multi-year down-channel off the 2021 blow-off, followed by the first meaningful impulse out of that channel and back into the long-term rails.
If that impulse is real, then a retest into the 1,100 region makes a lot of sense. That’s roughly where a back-test of the broken down-channel and the lower side of the secular channel intersect. That’s the spot I’d watch for accumulation, not capitulation, if we ever get it with the bigger rails still intact.
Silver miners | torque cuts both ways
SILJ (junior silver miners) is just the leveraged expression of the silver chart.
We’ve got a big rising channel from the 2015–16 lows and have just tagged the upper rail in a vertical move. Fibs from the Covid low line up around 0.618 in the 20–21 area and 0.786 around 15, right where a back-test of the broken 2013–2025 downtrend comes in. If silver executes the full 55–57 reset, a SILJ wash into roughly 15 would actually be textbook TA: deep retrace plus clean back-test of the breakout line.
On the daily, that purple trend from the November low is now broken. It’s not a violent, waterfall break; we’re still broadly in the top half of the big channel on higher timeframes – but the angle is gone and a new descending channel is starting to trace out, which, if respected, points to downside risk into roughly June–July.
In probability terms, I roughly see it as: about 50–55% we get the “normal” 20–21 retrace, 30–35% we do the full 15–16 wash, and only 15–20% that the trend break was a fake-out and SILJ just grinds or rips higher from here without giving the deeper reset.
That’s why I’ve started layering SILJ puts up here – not because I’ve turned secular-bear on the space, but because the angle has broken and the next big swing is more likely down than up while silver does its reset.
Conclusion | follow the rails, not the headline of the day
There’s no shortage of narratives – war, politics, central banks – that can be used to justify both wildly bullish and wildly bearish takes on precious metals.
My approach here is simple: let the multi-decade channels define the regime, let the current angle and the Fibs tell us how stretched we are inside that regime, and only change the roadmap when the rails actually break, not because of a single headline.
Gold, silver and the miners can absolutely break out and then hold above these ceilings. If and when that happens, I’ll happily upgrade the roadmap and re-risk into the space. Until then, this is a zone where I respect the rails, lean into hedges, and rotate capital toward themes where the structure is earlier in the move.
With that backdrop in precious metals – rails hit, angles broken, risk skewed more to “reset” than “melt-up” – it probably won’t surprise anyone that the biggest changes this week sit outside the silver space. If the structures are telling me “cool off and respect risk” in one sleeve, I want the Core 15 capital parked where the next 12–24 months have the cleanest asymmetry: critical metals, uranium and energy. That’s what the next section is about.