Transcription
Everybody seemed to go to focus on something new, a news story, the headline. Like that's the be all and end all of their investment world.
Okay, now think about this. Go back a month or two. We don't we don't hear much talk on financial channels about tariffs anymore. It's peripheral. It's like, you know, that's not an issue anymore. Well, I mean, they're still there. Uh and then suddenly now we have the war.
Michael Oliver is the founder of Momentum Structural Analysis (MSA), operating since 1992. He studies momentum structure across all four major asset classes simultaneously and has a documented track record that includes calling the January 2000 market top, the 2007 financial sector breakdown before the S&P peaked, the 2011 silver top, and the 2015 silver bottom.
This interview with Mario of Monaco 64 was recorded on Thursday, April 2nd, 2026, one month into the Iran war with gold at $4,652 and silver in the violent congestion zone it has been in since January 30th. Four things Oliver covers that define the current moment.
One, why the war is just the latest headline distraction and what the Q1 2026 numbers actually show when you strip away the intraday noise.
Two, why XLF, the financial sector ETF, is the ambush nobody is watching, and why the gold, silver, and minor breakouts versus the S&P are fresh signals, not aged ones.
Three, why Powell clearing the decks on M2 and QE at Harvard is the most important signal for gold that almost nobody noticed.
And four, why the Bloomberg Commodity Index breakout in October at 1650, now at 135 before the Iran war oil move, tells you this is not just a precious metals story.
I I think that nothing has changed as far as our assessment of what monetary metals are doing and that is they're going a lot higher. In particular, in the case of silver, it has been unduly restrained for half a century in a in a range between four bucks and 50 for 50 years. You can you can't find a metal that's done that. Copper broke out of its comparable range back in 2005 and '06 and blew up four four-fold gain in a matter of a couple quarters back then on its own. Uh lead did the same thing. in 2007. It had like a 30-year range and it suddenly said, "Boom, I'm going to a new reality." And it lived in a new reality after that.
Why was silver contained for 50 years in this little box while gold, that it moved with, would make a a sharply higher high in each bull trend, yet silver was capped? Well, you know, whatever the reason, it's undone. It's begun to become undone. And I think silver uh based on a lot of our metrics could easily go to $300 to $500 and do so within a handful of months from now, like by summer. And I think the issue right now is to focus on this congestion zone and we we've started to get this week already some signals that it's it's wants to come up out of here. Uh once it comes up out of there, the next leg up will be even more dramatic than what we've seen since, for example, last November. Uh anyway, we still view silver as being in a massive dramatic change in price, and this is merely a violent congestion zone.
Oliver's Q1 2026 performance observation is worth holding precisely. From December 31st, 2025 to March 31st, 2026. A quarter that included the January 30th silver crash, the Iran war starting on March 1st, and repeated massive intraday swings. Gold finished up approximately 7%, silver up approximately 7%, the silver miners ETF up more than either metal, and the S&P 500 down approximately 6%. If you only looked at the daily charts during that period, you saw synchronized crashes and rallies that appeared to confirm precious metals moving with risk assets. If you looked at the quarterly close, you saw they were moving in completely opposite directions. Oliver's point is precisely this. The headline events create apparent correlation in the short term, while the glacial trend forces produce divergence in the medium term. The glacial force driving that divergence is the same one Oliver has been tracking since October and it is not the war.
The real big issue that we're looking at and we have been for quite a few months since October in fact are is the financial sector. Everybody's still looking at AI and it's important to watch but because everybody's watching it, it's probably not where the ambush is going to come from. You you get the point. Usually it's not where everybody expects it to come from. Maybe later AI will become the leader on the downside as it was the leader on the upside for the last couple years anyway.
Financial sector is very anemic, outright weak. Uh we've even watched uh half a dozen of the great big banks, not the not the medium-sized. Remember a couple years ago we had a lot of regional banks and so forth. That was an issue. I'm looking at the big ones and we've broken major long-term momentum trend structures on too many of the big-name banks and it's reflected in an ETF called XLF, which includes banks and insurance companies and and broker dealers and so forth, financial companies. Uh it's also broken long-term momentum metrics. Price chart also looks anemic, but the momentum charts tell us uh uh oh, you got a real problem here, guys. And yet, nobody's chatting about it too much. Uh there's been a little talk lately about consumer credit problems. We all know they exist. Uh the way these financial companies are behaving, including some of the big credit card companies, Mastercard and Visa, for example, is not good.
Um now, see, you look at the price of XLF and you think, well, it's just a just a nice little another little sharp break. The problem is when we plot a momentum chart of that, it's broken massive structures that aren't clear on the price chart, which is usually what momentum does. It leads price. But that's what we're watching with great intent and focus, is the financial sector. On price, they're ascending. On momentum, they're flat. You got down to that red line last month. Okay? Now you're getting a rally this month, but if you close this month out at that number there, 6424. Now we're 65 something right now. So fine, we expected a bounce off this red line, but you've already flipped the page. You go to annual momentum and you'll see something even worse.
This is when we measure S&P on the top left charts uh monthly price and then the monthly closes below in relationship to the 3-year moving average. In other words, how much above or below is this month's close to that average. And you'll see that it has a horizontal balance point line, that red line that we sat squarely on as of last month's close. Uh just a bit higher than what you see right there. But you've already broken an uptrend. So you've broken a major uptrend going back to 2022 and you're challenging now a horizontal. Now you might get a little bounce here, but you've already done damage. The problem is that line is too ripe. You've already broken some major structure. We suspect after a month or so pause, after we get this war issue out of the way and everybody thinks the party's still on again, you get a pause, you get a rally. It's when you roll back through that line and we specify the number there, 22,910. Uh that's subject to some change because well, anyway, it's you've got a vulnerable stock market here. You don't have this situation with the metals. Their long-term metrics are in no way threatened.
Now here's important chart here. As an investor, where do you put your money in that which is performing better than you know, asset category versus another asset category? Gold in the S&P going back to 2015. We can plot a green line across the relative performance action of gold. When you divide it into the S&P, express it as a percent. It was going sideways for a decade. In other words, gold was actually matching the upside price movement in the S&P. Therefore, its spread went sideways. It held the same value roughly speaking to the S&P. But last October, no, excuse me, October, November, you broke out above that green line. That's a 10-year wide base, massive technical base. You broke out. This is a fresh asset class signal of where you need to be now. It's not like gold has been vastly outperforming the stock market for years and therefore is aged. This is fresh. You scroll down, you'll see the gold miners versus the S&P. Same story. Going back 10 or 10 or so years, you broke out of a basing pattern. They are technically a better place to be. Go to silver. Look at it. Massive surge out of the base.
>> Yeah. I guess what we're Sorry to interrupt. Well, I guess what we're seeing right now is just a correction as because nothing goes up in the strength.
>> No, zigzag. Yeah, a minor zigzag that's not threatening anything. Uh, in fact, you're way above the breakout level. Uh, so these charts are telling you from a longer-term investment perspective, what category do you want to be in? Well, it says you want to be in the monetary metals.
Oliver's 2007 comparison for XLF is precise. In the summer of 2007, MSA's momentum analysis on the financial sector broke well before the S&P 500 peaked in October 2007. The S&P then fell 57% from its October 2007 peak to its March 2009 low. Gold, having already broken through $700 before the financial crisis hit, went on to triple from its October 2008 low to the $1,920 peak in September 2011. The financial sector's momentum breakdown preceded the broader market peak by months and the gold tripling by years. Oliver is saying that dynamic is repeating now, but with the current gold, silver, and minor relative performance breakouts from 10-year bases being fresh, not the aged breakouts they were in 2008.
The question that follows from the XLF breakdown is always the same. What does the Fed do when the financial sector breaks? Oliver has a very specific answer and it comes from something Powell said at Harvard.
It also had a basing pattern of in performance going back to 2015, horizontal line at 1 and a.5% divide an ounce of silver to an ounce of gold, express it as a percent, and you broke out massive base at very low valuation levels for silver. By the way, if you go back to the 2011 peak, you'll see there's a high up there at 3%. Plus, that's with silver ounce of gold to an ounce of gold was three over 3%. Right now, you're about 1.6% or so. Okay, still very cheap. And if you go back to 1980, which isn't shown here, you were over 6%. So, on a valuation basis, without even looking at a chart, you say, "Geez, silver's cheap to gold." and maybe it wants to regain its old reality.
If the stock market weakens, we know the data points are going to go south quickly. That's usually you go back and look at bare markets, you'll see that the real dark unemployment numbers, etc., factory output, all that, all they go real dark after a stock market peaks and that's when the Fed goes berserk. Uh the question is will Powell before he steps down finally decide that well, I better cut because I don't want to get blamed for what's going on in the financial sector because you could bet he's aware of that. The investors aren't, but you can bet the Fed is aware of the bank weakness uh and the the credit problems they're having, commercial credit, so forth. So he doesn't want to go out as the Fed chair and then, you know, a month later, we collapse in the stock market in the financial sector and he could be blamed for it. You know, he he wants to go out with a something good. Um I suspect he's, you know, let's see what happens to unemployment tomorrow. Now, that that could be an inducing factor for the Fed to go ahead and cut uh, you know, it's their mandate, so they can they can use that excuse. And he already said, which I think is very subtle, the other day, that the rise in oil is likely temporary and we can we could sort of overlook it. Well, he's in other words, he's saying the other mandate is not threatening us, meaning, you know, inflation as they measure inflation. Uh, instead, we need to focus on employment. So he's sort of opened the door in a way to maybe respond to any data point he can hook on to. And of course, what powers gold in the long run always the ongoing degradation in money units, the real buying power of the yen, the euro, uh, the dollar, uh, the pound. Uh, because, you know, look at an M2 chart, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's explosive upside, you know.
Well, the other thing, the other thing he said, I think he was being interviewed at Harvard. He said that uh M2, the growth of M2 was not what caused inflation, even though you and I know that that is inflation, right? So he's join and also uh QE didn't cause inflation either. So he's uh he seems to be like clearing the decks for an acceleration maybe of >> that's a subtle point. I mean, they're they're comamaos. Uh, the Fed started buying bonds, according to the president of the New York Fed, back in November. He said they're going to start buying bonds to provide quote liquidity, right? Good excuse. Uh, they've been buying bonds, but T-bond prices have been going down. Have a little rally the last few days, but they're they're weak as heck. They're laying near multi-year lows, yields at highs. There's no relief in long-term rates. That's choking a lot of borrowers, corporate borrowers, especially commercial real estate. Uh, that's a big problem. It's not mortgages now, it's US government debt. Okay? And uh the Fed has to respond to that without admitting it. So I think gold knows this. Um it's it's an ongoing underlying issue for the rise in gold over the years and the decades is the ongoing degradation in the money in it and its brutal buying power. Yeah. Yeah.
>> The other day you said that if we broke 114 in the T-bond that was uh and it did and but now we're see here we're right around 114.
>> Yeah. It's rallied back up to that level.
>> Yeah. A lot of a lot of people think oh once this war is over bonds are going to rally but I don't think so.
>> I I have no opinion about the war effect on the bonds. The bonds have real long-term decadent problems and we know that the Japanese are a good example. They're leading us a bit in terms of the degradation of their bonds and their their prime minister has said, you know, we're going to print print print. Well, you know, that's a heck of an admission for a woman who claims to be somewhat like Trump intellectually in terms of being conservative supposedly, uh meaning not not printing money. Uh yet she wants to print to save their bonds. Well, European bonds aren't in much better shape either. So, this isn't just Japan. It's also US. And whether the bonds puke hard or not, there's problems out there that will provoke the Fed into a panic mode. And I don't know what new tools they can come up with, but I'm sure they'll come up with something good.
>> Yeah. Yeah. um something that sounds really technical but in the end of the day is money printing.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Sure it is. And gold knows that.
The Bloomberg Commodity Index observation Oliver is about to make is one of the most important and underreported data points in this entire conversation. Most analysts have attributed the commodity complex move in early 2026 to the Iran war and the oil spike that began March 1st. Oliver's momentum data shows the Bloomberg Commodity Index had already broken out of a long-term momentum base in October 2025 and was trading well above 120 before the Iran war started. The war did not create the commodity rotation. It accelerated something that was already underway, an asset reallocation from bloated equities into cheap commodities that MSA had been tracking for months. Here is where Oliver says that capital should now be allocated and why silver $300 to $500 by summer and gold at $8,500 are not predictions so much as the straightforward implications of matching two historical precedents.
Well, I would be I would go with the winners. And it's by the way, it's not just monetary metals and their miners. There are definitely a place to be heavily emphasized. But commodity-based stocks, and I don't just mean oil stocks. I'm talking about base metal miners, copper miners, um, also the grain area. Watch it. It's turning up. Bloomberg broke out by our metrics on a long-term momentum basis in October. Price of Bloomberg then was crossing through 10650. Right now, it's trading about 135. Yet, no headlines. Uh, you know, it's it's had quite a percent move. And yet it wasn't by the way, it was not just oil. Uh it got up well over 120 before the oil move even started. So Bloomberg Commodity Index, which holds, you know, grains and base metals, gold, silver, oil, etc., uh is saying, hey, you know, the whole complex. So there's something going on in commodities and I think what it is is an asset reallocation by investors into that which is cheap, therefore lower risk and higher reward potential than something that is bloated and highly vulnerable, the stock market. Uh, and I think that will prevail for several years.
>> and even I I would say the bond bond market, government bond markets because even if the central banks are able to keep it like uh afloat, they're going to have to print a lot and all that's going to do is help commodities even more.
>> Mhm. Yeah.
>> The money goes somewhere. It does not always go into the stock market. We know that uh once a stock market breaks, they print money like crazy. But it doesn't stop the 2007-9 bare market, the 2000 to 2002 bare market. It didn't stop it. Uh they collapsed anyway. So yeah, I think there's an asset class shift and it's being led by gold and silver, but now recently commodity complex is joining in.
>> Yeah. And I mean, you just need a a few a little bit of uh the uh capital from stocks and bonds to to come over to
>> Yeah.
>> gold uh silver and commodities to make it I mean explosive.
>> Mhm.
>> So, it's only begun.
Here is the complete picture from Michael Oliver, recorded April 2nd, 2026, on the war as distraction. The Iran war is the latest headline event people are treating as the be-all and end-all of their investment decisions, just as tariffs were before it and are now forgotten. The glacial trend factors move markets. Q1 2026 confirms this. Gold and silver each up 7%, silver miners up most, S&P down roughly 6%. They are not moving together. They are moving in opposite directions. The violent congestion in silver since January 30th is not a top. MSA's long-term momentum metrics are not even threatened by the recent drop. When silver exits this congestion zone, the next leg will be even more dramatic than what has occurred since November.
On the real ambush, XLF, the financial sector ETF, has broken major long-term momentum trend structures across a half-dozen of the biggest banks, plus Mastercard and Visa. The price chart shows just another little sharp break. The momentum chart shows something much worse, exactly what it showed in 2007. The S&P quarterly momentum has already broken the uptrend from 2022. The NASDAQ has broken the parallel channel from 2022. After the war issue fades and everybody thinks the party is on again, NASDAQ 22,910 is the trigger for the real break. Meanwhile, gold, silver, and miners all broke out of 10-year relative performance bases versus the S&P in October, November. These are fresh signals.
On Powell and printing. Powell said at Harvard that M2 growth did not cause inflation and QE did not cause inflation. As Oliver notes, M2 is inflation by definition. Powell is clearing the decks for more printing. T-bond futures are near multi-year lows with the Fed secretly buying since November. Japan's prime minister said, "Print, print, print." Whatever new tools the Fed comes up with will sound technical. In the end, it is money printing and gold knows that.
On the commodity complex, Bloomberg Commodity Index broke out of a long-term momentum base in October at 10650. It is now at 135. It was already above 120 before the Iran war oil move. This is not just oil. It is grains, base metals, copper, everything. It is an asset reallocation from bloated equities into cheap commodities. It will prevail for several years. Silver $300-$500 by summer. Gold at $8,500 matches both prior eight-fold bull markets on logarithmic scale. And JP Morgan projects $9,200. The current gold price looks massive on arithmetic charts, but on log scale, we are only halfway up the pole. It's only begun.
Drop a comment below. Did you know the Bloomberg Commodity Index had already broken out in October before the Iran war even started? And does Oliver's observation about Powell clearing the decks at Harvard change how you read the Fed's next move? Tell us below. Subscribe and hit the bell. See you next time.