Chart for 1 February 2013 market close.
The Market Sentiment drifted for the week ending 1 February 2013 without confirming or disproving the uptrend call from 25 January.
Going into next week, the week ending 8 February 2013, the MS and POG are continuing to track each other quite well and are still relatively trending upward, although the past week the trend has been sideways or undecided. That is the 1 February 2013 MS is still above the 7 January 2013 MS lows. A break below the 7 January 2013 MS low would indicate that the MS uptrend call from 20 December 2012 has failed and that the market is trendless and possibly setting up to reestablish the downtrend that formed in early October, 2012 -- a break below the 20 December 2012 low would put the continuation of the early October 2012 down trend back in play.
The Kitco Gold Survey of market participants completed 1 February 2013 has 46% of the participants bullish while 38% are neutral. Taking the Kitco survey results as a contrary indicator suggests next week is more likely to be neutral (i.e. trendless MS continues) than bullish. On 25 January 2013 the Kitco survey was bearish on gold prices -- the 1 February 2013 POG was up slightly relative to 25 January 2013. As always, the next week of trading will show the truth.