Dollar Rises. Gold? Meh.

The week concludes very much as it began. Gold is trading sideways while the dollar strengthens and takes out what little air there is in the tires of the precious metals.

The S&P is hovering around its previous intraday highs of 1900. In fact, all major stock indices except for the FTSE were up in Asia, Europe and the U.S. NASDAQ is looking particularly strong.

Gold's price drop 0.1% this week, which isn't much, but no solace for bulls,or for those trading futures whether long or short. No action means making no money.

The stock market has been surprisingly resilient in the face of decidedly mixed economic news. Even when the markets stumble, they get off the mat and rise some more.

The winner of the week was crude oil, which has been supported by the slowly leaking news about the Monterey shale deposits in California. The find is about 95& smaller than originally thought. And that's not a typo.The reserves were once estimated t be almost 14 billion barrels but now may be as little as 700 million barrels. Sounds like a lot? About 35 days' worth of U.S. consumption.

Noteworthy: this week marks one year since the Fed's loose talk about tapering sent markets cartwheeling in all directions. As it turns out, tapering has been good for almost every price except for commodities as a whole.

We would like to say that India's return to the international buying circles pushed gold ahead, but, obviously it didn't. It will take some months before significantly more gold is booked into the world's formerly second-largest market.

Keep your eye on the elections in Ukraine over the weekend. Keep the other one on Putin The Unpredictable.

As always, wishing you good trading,