It's hard to swallow that these charts are evidence of a free and efficient market. Otherwise, a pattern this predictable would be quickly removed as traders and HFT algos piled in to a "sure" bet.
Instead, this is behavior one would expect to see if powerful interests wanted to suppress the price of gold: hit the price hard and early at the start of the trading week to prevent the price from building upward momentum, as well as to make capital think twice before entering the gold market.
Who is doing this selling at the market open? Is it TBTF ("too big to fail") banks making profit on large short positions? Is it the Fed, through proxies, keeping the gold price contained so as not to signal how badly QE is devaluing the dollar? Allegations swarm across the Internet that it's one of these – or both. But we don't know for certain. The exchanges don't make that information available to the public.

But while these charts above are not enough evidence to prove that the gold price is being manipulated, they sure exhibit the symptoms one would expect to see if it is.

So, the big question is: if the precious metals market is being manipulated, is it wise to be in it?