"I have just seen the piece by Bill Downey which you posted on Monday. The gold market may have been crashed last week by a grand conspiracy but the dogs have been barking for the last three months that it was going to break down. One only has to look at the five year charts for gold, the major gold indices and individual gold stocks to see that all had formed long-term ranging patterns or consolidations out of which the stocks broke down in Jan/Feb. The longstanding conventional wisdom is that stocks lead the metals. I suspect that the smart money simply took advantage of the obvious. By the way, the Aussie gold stocks are still going down, the small gold price recovery in recent days notwithstanding. The price action of the last few days looks to me suspiciously like a flag flying at half mast. If it is, the next leg down could be dramatic as well."

David Fuller's view You are right - gold shares gave an early and decisive lead to the downside. For evidence, here is the S&P/ASX All Ord Gold Index (weekly & daily) and also a weekly chart of gold in AUD. Gold shares sometimes lead to the upside as well, but not in 2009, as the weekly charts show.

Gold bullion in USD (weekly & daily) had been losing its uptrend consistency characteristics since the last failure to break above $1800 in early October 2012. Selling on Friday the 12th and Monday the 15th of April was climactic, but only for two days. Consequently, there are probably overhanging sell orders and this would be confirmed if gold encounters resistance beneath the top area and then gives up most of its recent technical bounce. In that event it would almost certainly go somewhat lower. My guess is that this is a cyclical bear trend which has temporarily interrupted the secular bull market.

(See also Eoin's comments on gold below.)