The Great Gold Cup January 29 (February 1, 2026)

I was on the stair machine to burn some calories before Saturday’s beer with chips, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning – not that I wanted beer but what the purpose was of the big gold coup on January 29.

As everyone is now writing about economy/finance, I have started following it like I did in 2008, and since I still have very little to do at work, it amounts to quite a few hours of scrolling.

You recognize it as posts about the Ukraine war, but I also have time for a lot of other things – now even sitting and watching finance/economy.

From memory, what did I see in the week starting January 25, 2026 –

-The price of gold soared on January 26-28, and #fintwitter screamed hoarse about “gamma 6” events and the highest daily gains ever.

-On Monday, I read about the Chinese New Year on February 17 and that citizens usually sell everything they have in the two weeks before – I thought that those who wanted to make money in gold had this week before it started to decline.

-Trump had been saying for weeks if not months that interest rates would go down “we need a stock market rally.”

-Then on the 27th, the dollar plummeted like a stone after FED chief Powell’s statement, which many interpreted as a disaster.

What did we know beforehand –

Gold and silver had a long uptrend behind them, and many fund managers had positioned themselves for higher rates and a falling dollar for gains in gold and silver.

Someone like me, who doesn’t know much, thought that gold and silver should go up now when the stock markets were about to go down, they usually act as a contraindicator.

Then mining companies surged, and everyone talked about a “mining cycle.”

The USA had also invested heavily in MENA and was about to confront Iran – uncertainty and gold and silver as a safe haven.

And not least “Sell America” where, for example, institutional investors in Europe had started selling US government debt.

Friday the 30th is month-end, and probably many will sell then?

Thursday morning, January 29, the abyss opened, and gold fell by 10% and silver by 25-30% during the day.

As I scrolled, “dumping in Bitcoin” came up, and then when I was on DI, the stock markets also fell – all asset classes fell.

Before the big drop, Trump had said that he would nominate his choice for FED chairman next week, sometime between February 2-6.

The decline continued on Friday, and Trump called for an unprecedented press conference where he nominated Kevin Warsh as FED chairman, and he is not at all for low rates but has a reputation for defending the dollar instead – something as unusual as an outspoken critic so everyone knew exactly where he stood on the important issues.

Friday closed down in silver and gold, so there was no rebound.

This coordinated downturn in all asset classes meant that large money managers were involved in different asset classes – you need to have large holdings that you can dump.

Trump’s complete turnaround reinforced the downturn where otherwise there could have been a rebound.

Apparently, many fund managers had positioned themselves for lower rates and a weaker dollar, and now it changed completely over 24 hours.

Earlier, Japan had entered some kind of crisis in its bond market, and all sorts of ideas were flying around, including that China was behind it trying to go after the USA. I was in a phase where I believed the USA had burned all other safe havens for the dollar pre-major crisis.

This was what I saw and knew otherwise – maybe some small error somewhere (besides my guess about Japan, which was wrong), but in broad terms, it looked like this pre-TheBigGoldCoup.

The first casualty I saw was a Chinese fund that was $20 billion in the red.

Those who remember 2008 surely remember all the bank runs, like Cyprus closing its banks, for example?

Who will have orderly bank withdrawals from February 2-17 as planned?

China.

Who has a reputation for being a bit of a high-risk player?

Chinese, perhaps?

Everything we have seen in recent weeks if not months was by design, and the surge on January 26, 2026, was an attempt to squeeze the last drops out of Chinese fund managers before the withdrawals began.

How do you do it best in just one week?

Well, with leverage instruments that everyone thought to sell off on Friday.

The circle of the sworn had to not be too large but had to have enough means – probably they didn’t trust anything European, so we were collateral.

Banks and financial institutions usually try to hide losses and then manipulate their way back to green if they can, but that takes time.

Who doesn’t have time to hide anything and work their way back to green?

Nothing Chinese has time to hide because on Monday morning at 9, the withdrawals for the Chinese New Year begin.

But it doesn’t end there – we are heading towards a major stock market correction, and when a country’s financial institutions and banks start to become insolvent, a country can only hold out for so long.

When the country can no longer support the currency or prop up the banks, the situation becomes uncontrolled and collapses. We saw it in 2008 with PIIGS, for example, where the IMF had to come in and support them.

All underlying problems that have been successfully hidden will also surface, and with a collective “hell of a mess,” it becomes an uncontrolled crash.

What the USA has done is deliver a damaging blow to China by design before the larger correction comes.

It will probably be quite lively over there in the next two weeks when people realize that their fund managers put the entire fund with X15 leverage on gold on January 25, and lost everything.

The allure of leverage is that it starts the day at 0, and then every percent increase is multiplied by the leverage’s increase that you multiply by the amount you paid for it, and a 10% drop was not factored in – very many have lost a lot of money.

Darn, what a setup this was.

China has already shown willingness to attack the USA through Japan, so a highly legitimate target.

They have also supported Russia, so as far as Europe is concerned, they are absolutely a legitimate target, and they have held back rare earth metals for our production.

Not to mention Northvolt – China ruined it even if there was more behind it.

This will probably spill over to European banks, but China took the biggest hit, and it will be an exciting two weeks before the New Year calm settles there.

If my little theory is correct, there will be some kind of bank run in China in the coming week.