(Kitco News) – Aug. 22 –Sometimes the best trade is no trade at all. The gold market continues to languish within a developing triangle pattern on the daily chart as traders await comments from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Friday at the Fed summit in Jackson Hole Wyoming. Not a whole lotta action right now.

Could Janet trigger a triangle breakout? As nearly 500 million people in advanced industrialized nations remain mired under negative interest rates policies –what if any answers do global central bankers have for the current sluggish growth prospects? Will Fed Chief Janet Yellen have any answers this week? Read more here.

In the meantime, as the gold market lumbers quietly in a tight range, it may open the door to several trading mistakes. Do any of these sound familiar?

Trading Mistake #1: Sometimes sheer boredom can trigger you into a trade.

• Looking for some excitement? Don’t look to the markets for that. Don’t take unplanned trades. Write your trades down ahead of time, with your entry points, objectives and stop-loss levels.

Trading Mistake #2: Trading outside your timeframe.

• Are you a short-term intraday trader?
• Are you a multi-day swing traders?
• Are you a long-term investor?

One of the elements of a successful trading and investing plan is to know your timeframe and stick to it.

Trading Mistake #3: Getting stuck and trading your “opinion.”

The markets will tell you where they are going –all you have to do is watch the charts. The markets –gold or otherwise – are not going to change direction just because you doubled down on a losing trade. Good traders listen to the markets – and follow price. Markets don’t care that you “know” gold has to go up right now because of XYZ.

Triangle update: Comex December gold futures remain stuck in a developing daily triangle. As a reminder, triangles are most often “continuation” patterns, which means upon a confirmed upside breakout, gold would resume its previous uptrend. See Figure 1 below.

What you need to know now:

• The triangle has not been confirmed
• The short-term picture within the triangle is weakening as gold dropped below its 20-day moving average.
• Momentum is weak-ish and lackluster.
• Watch the triangle support and resistance trendlines –it would take a sustained rally and close above the top triangle trendline to confirm an upside breakout.

Learn more about Triangles here >>  Technical Analysis 101.

What’s you trading plan right now?

By Kira Brecht, Kitco.com
Follow @KitcoNewsNOW