The tech-centric NASDAQ Composite and S&P 500 Indexes again ground their way to new highs Friday on the largest September options expiration in history where $5.3 trillion in notional options value expired. Breadth was negative, however, as the big price moves on Friday were mostly centered in hot, FOMO-related areas like small modular nuclear reactors and quantum computing along with the precious metals space. Precious metals and the precious miners are being driven by fundamentals as gold and silver prices continue to forge all-time and 14-year highs, respectively.
We have reported on miners many times during 2025 with the most latest Pocket Pivot Review in the space coming on Thursday as big-stock miner Barrick Mining (B) posted its second pocket pivot in a row along the 10-dma.It then streaked higher on heavy OpEx volume to post a new 12-year high.
Strong pocket pivot moves were seen in gold and silver miners across the board as money poured into the space on OpEx Friday. We show nine examples below. Many of these are extended from 10-dma or 20-dema support but can be watched for buyable pullbacks from here. While the media and mainstream investors have fixated on AI and the Magnificent 7, the hard fact is that the VanEck Junior Gold Miners (GDXJ) ETF has outperformed the Magnificent 7, Apple (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA) and Tesla (TSLA) by a whopping 95.5% in 2025.
We have certainly not been oblivious to the quiet performance of the precious metals miners in 2025. Some comments on the big-stock institutional favorites below in a screenshot from our August 17th Weekend Review report.
Spot Gold cleared the $3,700 an ounce level, peaking at $3,707.58 on Wednesday before backing down to 10-dma support on Thursday and pushing back to the upside on Friday.
Silver also finished the week at 14-year highs as the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) followed up on a moving average undercut & rally (MAU&R) at the 10-dma on Thursday by posting a big-volume pocket pivot to a new 14-year closing high on Friday.
Bitcoin ($BTCUSD) continues to hold above 50-dma support as it potentially sets up again. As it tracks sideways just above 50-dma support we would watch for low-volume tests of the line as potential long entry spots with the idea of then using the 50-dma as a tight selling guide.
While the precious metals sector was on fire Friday, so were some of the more speculative areas of the market, including nuclear power names operating in the small modular reactor space. Forty-two minutes after the opening bell on Friday we issued a Pocket Pivot Review report on small modular reactor maker NuScale Power (SMR) as it just cleared the 50-dma. From there the stock shot nearly 15% higher to close at 46.77.
We have been following crypto miner turned AI Data Center infrastructure provider IREN Ltd. (IREN) since May, and more recently discussed pocket pivots it was posting along the 10-dma and 20-dema in mid-August, prior to the stock doubling in about four weeks' time. The stock is now quite extended and is just shy of obeying the 10-dma for seven weeks. We would assume that it will continue to do so long enough to invoke the Seven-Week Rule using the 10-day line as a selling guide once it completes its seventh week of following the 10-dma without a technical moving average violation.
The Market Direction Model remains on a BUY signal.