The S&Ps opened down a touch after crude rallied another couple percent overnight. Trump also interestingly threatened to destroy a bridge or power plant for every ship that Iran fires on the straits, and Iran of course threatened right back to take out the power plants of all its neighbors.

That small down opening didn't last long though, and the S&Ps proceeded to rally up into slightly positive territory, where we ran out of gas and slowly faded all day to end back where we had started with a loss of just a touch.

The dollar index was flat. However, yields pushed higher again, with the 2yr yield hitting another new 52-week high and flattening the curve once again.

BTC fell a percent, and MSTR tumbled 2 percent. These are still a crime scene.

Commodities were mixed. As I alluded to above, crude popped another couple percent. Copper, however, slipped half a percent, while platinum rose a percent.

Gold rallied to as high as $4140 overnight and then backed off to $4110 ahead of the US open. Once the US session began, however, the yellow metal rallied again in face of a firming dollar and rising yields and a higher oil price (for a second day in row). Unlike overnight, the yellow metal blew through its downtrend since the high and squirted up to as high as $4165 before slipping into the close to go out back down around $4130 but still notably above that key downtrend since the high and still up over a percent.

Silver similarly popped overnight and then faded ahead of the US open. Once the US session began, the white metal exploded up to nearly $61 before also fading to go out back just under $60 for a gain of a percent and a half.

The GDX gapped up on the open again and surged with the metals, but as the metals began to fade, the GDX faded as well. For the close, the GDX would go out above the open but still down near the lower levels of the day with a gain of over 3 percent.

Once again, the metals and GDX all closed above the 5 dma, which leaves the bulls statistically in charge.

This was also the third day in a row that we saw the metals fade into the close, which looks like a bear hook to me. In other words, like with the prior two days, a late fade into the close that still ends with prices higher may be giving shorts hope that prices will reverse despite losing money each day. That in turn potentially sets up tomorrow for more upside, and only once prices close on the highs will we finally see short term exhaustion of short covering and bull chasing.

Again, this is just a hunch on my part based on prior experience. There could be nothing to it, but there's enough evidence there that we could be seeing this psychology that I thought it was worth pointing out.

Only a move above the July high is likely to really force the hands of both bears that remain short and bulls that are waiting for a pullback to buy.

Today was also another day where the metals ignored the dollar, yields, and oil, which is noteworthy too since it could point to a market that is way too short.

Again, I don't know whether "the bottom" is in or not, but we do clearly have a rally brewing and given how bearish sentiment is, the rally (even if a failing one) could be substantial.

We don't always get what we want in this business, but if I could script a bull move from here, it would be to see the metals and miners surge above their July highs over the next couple days and then back and fill early next week ahead of the FOMC before then surging again into month-end post-FOMC. Again though, that's just what I would like to see, not what we necessarily will see. The setup is certainly there though.

My gold model remained at neutral.

Metals: Long GDXU and AGQ. I also added some more SLV 54.5 calls for today on the open and then later sold all of them, including the ones I bought yesterday for 9 cents, for 19 cents, which wasn't great considering that they printed 60 cents. I then added some SLV 56.5 calls for Friday for 11 cents in the afternoon.

Stay flexible my friends...