When the euro began to tumble earlier today on the news out of Greece, the Swiss thought and thought as euro-investors streamed into the franc. Then the Swiss National Bank sold its own currency to make it less attractive as a haven.

The Shanghai stock index fell 7.3% today, taking mainland China’s equities to 4193, now off almost a thousand points from their high only eighteen days ago. That’s down 20% from June 8th. Trading was suspended for almost two hours to stem the drop but to no avail.

Can’t Find The Handle Today But You Can Bet It Isn’t Made Of Gold

What to make of a day when U.S. consumer spending rose its most in six years but equities worldwide, gold, and crude oil are all down? (Gold is down about $2.30 in late afternoon trading.) Additionally, currencies are trading mixed with no clear direction. Bond yields are up marginally.

It’s already time to focus again on the possibilities surrounding a Fed interest-rate hike. Yes, it’s like a zombie. Cut it, burn it, run away from it, bury it… it keeps showing up. (Maybe that’s more like your aunt and uncle from Toledo, but you get the idea.)

The U.S. dollar popped up strong and proud today beating back gold traders who tried in regular trading to move the yellow precious metal off its current down trend.

Will Greece default or not? That has been the question. But it grows less relevant by the day as U.S. and European equities shrug off the minor gravitational blip created by the little country dangling off the south of the continent.

For a variety of factors, westerners tend to view China’s rise to the top as inevitable. However, this certainly isn’t so when looking at the world’s supposedly second-largest economy. Today saw the Shanghai and CSI indexes plunge more than 6% each.

Gold is holding a very fine gain despite the fact that the U.S. dollar has recovered some its losses. We need to be wary of what lies over the horizon, however, and we do mean the immediate horizon.

Markets are by nature reactionary. So, if today gold bulls are bidding up the yellow precious metal we can count on profit taking, if not tomorrow, then shortly thereafter.

We think that in the FOMC press release (which you can read in its entirety below with significant phrases and words bolded), the seeds can be found of a further pushing back of a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike until December. Strikingly, the most important sentence of the release is contained in the last paragraph.

With the June FOMC meeting in focus today, we expect markets to remain somewhat range bound until Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s news conference tomorrow in midafternoon.