Gold Margins Lowered in After Hours

I don't know what the catalyst for this one is, some say it's a move to regain credibility, in essence a show that the COMEX is NOT manipulating precious metals. I don't buy this theory, if they wanted to gain some credibility, they should loosen up the margin requirements on silver which they hiked 5x, even after the silver rally was dead-I guess one for good measure.

In any case, they lowered initial and maintenance requirements by 10%. We'll want to watch 3C very carefully to see if this is going to provide legs to a trade. Right now GLD is in a very tight consolidation that implies a directional breakout one way or the other. GLD is also sitting right on the short term trendline, a break of which could send gold lower.

Here's the charts

 The short term trendline

 The long term trendline.

 The 150-day moving average-a buy at the 150 sma is pretty much a no brainer

 Here's the consolidation with a directional move quite likely. The first move is not always the real move as we know.

And here Bollinger Band's volatility is very narrow, again suggesting a directional move coming very soon.

In other CME news after hours, they hiked margin rates on Corn by 50% and Lean Hogs by 66%, also raising margin on Wheat, Soy Beans, Lumber, Dry Whey and Cattle. The hikes sound a little political.