In the gold trading pits, economic uncertainties are taking a back seat to uncertainties of a different nature these days. |
Increases in oil inventories and a firmer dollar put a dent into gold prices early Tuesday. Gold fell about 1% before recovering slightly and stabilizing. |
It will take either a sharp sequence of rate increases ... or a significant reversal of rate hikes ... to move the gold market in a meaningful way at this point. |
None of this probing [to the downside] will negate the fundamental nervousness the market continues to experience, and the hair-trigger volatility will continue to be an integral feature of the metals complex as news keeps coming at it. |
Surely, corrections will come; but when and if they do they will continue to be regarded as buying opportunities for the long-run, not the beginning of the end. |
Tehran's own silence this week ... left strategic analysts with but one conclusion: it's looking like either sanctions or a pre-emptive clean-up strike against enrichment plants in Iran might be the solution left. |
That's a pretty big impact on the drivers. |
The dollar took enough of a hit to convince traders that gold was a safer place to park funds in for the next few sessions. |
The gold price is now flirting with critical support levels ($532-$535), and it faces a possible short- to medium-term trough -- one that could even breach the $500 level. |
The gold price is now flirting with critical support levels ($532-$535), and it faces a possible short- to medium-term trough – one that could even breach the $500 level. |
The hikes are not as much an attempt to stave off inflation as they are designed to attract investment into the dollar by would-be debt holders (China, Japan, etc.) of the U.S. currency. |
The huge pool of global liquidity out there has not found a better place to rush into, and is enchanted with gold and its prospects. |
The precious metals markets have all the ingredients necessary to repeat the performance they were once famous for. |
The saber rattling (albeit strongly watered down in the past few hours) coming from the White House and the wayward chatter coming out of Tehran once again clashed on the world political scene. |
The trigger fingers hovering over all of the instability-sensitive commodity 'buy' buttons (gold, oil, etc.) are as jittery as ever. |