The Daily chart of June Gold Futures below shows the market has been trading in a very tight range (relatively to gold) since March 25th. Markets go between periods of low volatility/tight ranges to high volatility/ wide ranges. One common tool traders use to measure it, is the ATR (Avg. True Range) which hit its lowest point since January of this year.
Two main questions traders have: What way will the breakout take place? And, when?
The last period of low volatility/tight range took place between Nov. 21st 2013 and Feb. 10th 2014, approximately 80 days. This period of low volatility started March 25th 2014 which puts us around June 8th to June 18th for possible timing break out. To be honest that part of the equation does not concern me as much as the main question, which way?
To answer that I need to go into higher time frames of the chart and will take a look at the weekly chart which provided the first bullish signal ( first blue circle after many red circles) in a while back in February as we broke out of the previous range.
So at this point I am facing an equal case for both bulls and bears and will have to resort to the "good, old method of volatility breakout". Knowing that there good arguments for the bulls as well as the bears, I would monitor a break above 1332 or a break below 1268 before trying to establish any meaningful, longer term position using options or futures targeting the previous weekly ranges as seen above.