If Crimea vote to go Russian does not pop gold then look for a pullback.

Gold and silver are often bought up when there is threat of war.  However, the recent vote in Crimea suggests that war is not as likely as originally believed.  Why?  Because people in Crimea overwhelmingly voted to be Russians.   How can the US warmongers like McCain sit there and convince the American people to spend money on a foreign war where about 75% of the affected people are in favor of the move?  How is Putin's move here going to be communicated as a bad thing?  Putin was very smart to call this referendum as it greatly supports his stated motives for moving troops in there.

I'm not saying that war will not eventually break out.  These things move in waves like everything else.  The Crimea move could have been a first wave and now we could get a 2nd wave of apparently reduced tensions.  It could be the underpinnings for the 3rd wave which could be, for example, Putin using Crimea as a staging ground to launch a take over the the rest of Ukraine.  Nobody knows what the master plan is.  But if Putin is smart, and I think he is, he will not try to do too much too quickly.  He will take his time setting up his pawns in the big chess game.

In any case, when trying to understand how the herd views these things I like to look at several indicators and from several angles.  It might all be "one market" as Prechter likes to say, but there are absolutely different frequencies involved with the waves and wave counts.  You will know that major changes are happening when the phases of the minor players and of the major players all add up at the same time producing a higher signal than is possible for any of the groups individually.

Case in point is DRD gold.  They are still clearly still recovering from the wild speculation / mania that occurred in their shares back in 2002.  Their shares hardly participated in the big pump in gold prices over the past decade.   The odds are that the decade long bear in DRD will coincide with the next pop in metals and miners.  The percentage gains from the bottom are likely to be very dramatic - hundreds of percent or more.  At some point there will be a big move back into real dividend producing shares (instead of purely speculative, non interest bearing shares like GOOG, FB and so many others).  With higher gold prices, DRD's new mill will begin churning out big profits and DRD's goal is to post 30% of the profits as dividends.  They are clearly in business to reward shareholders with cash payments, not the promises of higher share prices.  In truth, they will receive both once the price of gold rebounds again.

I just indicated that DRD was still recovering from the Ponzi pump of 2000.  Recovering implies "retracement" and not "going away to  become BK".    I'm not guessing at this; the chart is telling me so.  How??  Look at the shape of the wave through the last half of 2002.  That is clearly a horizontal triangle.  That means it was the penultimate wave which means it was the B wave.  That means that what is playing out right now is a C wave down (i.e. a retracement), not a 5th wave down.  The C wave itself should consist of 5 waves, which it does.  We are currently working on the 5th wave of a large ending diagonal.  The amount of time involved has enabled everyone who bought into the Ponzi pump to curse the day they were born and to sell at a loss.  It has tested the patience of even the strongest believers in the company and they are at the capitulation stage.  Once they are all gone, a new wave of buyers, including yours truly, will step back in and ride it back up while those who do not know how the EW principle works will sit watching in amazement.

Having said that, the DRD chart looks like it has one more small wave down.   While small on the chart, it will still be significant in terms of percentage.  Now, it is always possible that this could turn out to be a failed 5th wave.  Sometimes the 5th wave of an ending diagonal stops mid channel during the 5th wave.  But the trigger points for buying are either a break out above $6 or a break down to sub $3.  Dollar cost averaging a partial position is not a bad strategy at times like this for people who think they always have to be invested.  I think time will tell very quickly if the bottom is in by looking at the overall market, other players, etc.

Here is the zoom in of just the last wave of the ending diagonal (the 5th wave).  It should consist of a 3 wave move (5-3-5).  C waves and 3rd waves often show EW characteristics more strongly than other waves.  In other words, the count is often more clear.  Here I count a very clear red 1-2-3-4.  The red 4 wave is itself formed by a perfect horizontal triangle and triangles, according to Prechter, are always the penultimate waves.  Thus it makes sense that this is the 4th wave.  The herd is undecided about buying into it and so we see the up and down volatility as the old sellers are getting out on the peaks and the new buyers are buying the dips. 

If this model is correct then we should see pain for gold and miners going into late April but then the metals and miners will finally find a long term bottom, perhaps as Yellen reverses the QE tapering or some other corrupt move designed to protect the con men running the show at the expense of the American people.