Gold

As the United States developed, it blocked spawning by salmon, and other fish, who had to make their way upriver to complete their life cycles.

Gold is facing a number of dams as it makes its way upstream. Some are probably temporary, some are structural, perhaps permanently.

Let's start with the temporary.

Let's go directly to what the Chairwoman of the Fed said:

The second of a one-two punch today - the drop in weekly jobless claims - was all that gold could take. It's off today over 1%.

Other people may be taking the ALS fund-raising ice-water bath challenge, but gold bulls got plenty of cold water dumped on them.

Fastening their claws onto one short phrase of the Fed in the FOMC minutes released today, some traders read it as a sign that interest rate hikes will arrive sooner rather than later.

The phrase was:

Gold is still hewing tightly to its range, buffeted by contradictory economic trends born of the uneven, yet persistent U.S. recovery. In fact, it can be safely said that, given the economic troubles in Europe and the credit crunch in China, the U.S. is carrying the world recovery on its back.
 

Gold has been mired in a range, or two sets of ranges recently. But, the strength the yellow metal is showing in the face of lowered world tensions and in the face of renewed risk appetite for equities is quite impressive.

What are the reasons behind both the range-bound nature of the market and gold's resilience? The two seem at odds with each other at first glance.

itters began early over what might be revealed in the release of the FOMC meetings minutes.

That is the only explanation for the gold market's stubborn refusal to respond to the renewed fighting between Ukraine and Russia.

The most that can be said for today's trading in gold is that it reacted proportionately to the news on July retail sales in the U.S. Not too strong, not too weak. Just right.

After touching 1318 earlier in the day, gold has settled back in afternoon trading to only a modest gain. Curtailing some of gold's head of steam was a stronger dollar.

The tensions in Ukraine, and to a lesser extent in Iraq, are keeping gold prices stronger than they might otherwise be in the calm, windless seas of late summer.