Gold

Equities have gotten the word, from Asia to London to New York. The Fed is not interested in a rate rise anytime soon. Consequently, those markets, except for the Nikkei (which was down marginally), are all up. The German DAX and Shanghai were each up over 2%.

The U.S. dollar traders have gotten the word, too, finally taking some wind out of the sails of the greenback rally.

Sometimes in sports, one team barely beats out another. It’s a victory, sure. But maybe the winning side loses a star player, or certain plays on the field just don’t go right, making for an awkward win. It’s called “winning ugly.”

The push and pull of dollar strength fighting with regular-trading investors has bounced gold from plus to minus, back and forth a number of times today – but in a very narrow range. Economic news was the inspiration for the indecision.

As Bob Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Indeed, you don’t need to be an expert to understand why gold prices are being pushed down today (or yesterday, or the previous days). The U.S. dollar is simply crushing every other market in sight. Gold is, however, off its lows for the day in mid-afternoon.

It’s always something. The dollar returned in pure powerhouse mode today and everything in sight was beaten up, dragged around and kicked down the alley.

The dollar peeled $11.50 from the price of gold, even as regular trading was adding almost $5.50. The net in mid-afternoon trading is that gold is off $6. Not that it was alone in its dollar-driven drop.

With no economic news today, the focus of markets was the reevaluation of economic data that astounded last week, namely the overheated new-jobs-creation figure of 295,000.

Initial market reactions to the announcement by the U.S. Department of Labor that 295,000 new jobs had been added in February were surprisingly downbeat. The reason is clear.

The euro is down about 0.45% against the U.S. dollar and gold is suffering at the hands of that dollar strength. The euro, though which has recovered a tiny amount, dropped below 1.10 for the first time since 2003. That is a particularly hard climate for gold to prosper in.

There was no winning for gold against the powerful U.S. dollar surge that came on the back of twin releases of good news for the American economy. Curious, though, was the softening of U.S. equities markets. The uptick in oil, despite dollar robustness, was a small surprise but fully explicable.

Despite a helpful push from a lower U.S. dollar, today gold is struggling right around the 1202/1203 mark in late afternoon trading in New York. It’s not alone in its struggle.