Aye, Laddie.

Danger and delight grow on one stalk.
        - Scottish Proverb

Scotland is about to vote for disunion with the United Kingdom. While it is (forgive the pun) a royal pain for the rest of the kingdom, the Scots are in for a rough ride. There will be a hundred questions to be resolved before anything of note can be accomplished.

Infrastructure will be a very, very touchy subject. Who owns all the stuff?

Even harder to factor in is the oil in the North Sea. If Scotland can't get a share of that, they're nothing but a small, struggling, cold place with a failed economy.

We shall see what happens. Meanwhile, the British pound is taking a beating and the chief beneficiary of the sinking UK currency is the mighty dollar. The dollar is also up strongly against the yen and modestly against the euro.

This is wreaking havoc on the price of gold, silver - all the precious metals, in fact.

There are really no other outside factors working on gold fundamentally. (As we will see below, however, there are plenty of technical factors). But, as of 5:00 Eastern Time, the rising dollar is accounting for about 65% of the loss in gold today, with an overall loss of about 1.00%

Equities markets were mixed around the globe today. Asia did the best early in the day. The U.S. markets were down modestly except for the NASDAQ, which rose modestly.

Oil, which is weathering the late summer of its discontent, was down again today and appears ready to flirt with breaking below the $90-per-barrel level.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury's yield rose while face price fell.

Call us crazy, but it feels as if the U.S. and Europe are headed toward a serious war with ISIS. However, the radical Islamism won't be blunted until the battle is taken to Quatar, Kuwait and Iran. As long as there is money from those places, there will be arms and support for the head-choppers.

Please pay very close attention to technicals as the fundamentals area seems to be producing wads and wads of contradictions.

As always, wishing you good trading,