Amidst an off-handed remark by Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen about stocks being very high.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen made the comment at a panel discussion with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. "I guess I would highlight that equity valuations at this point generally are quite high," Yellen said.

The U.S. dollar traded lower today, giving gold almost all of its upward movement.

Gold recovered from the steep decline last week. Yet it is still trading within a range, and probably will continue to do so until the Federal Reserve takes some sort of concrete action concerning interest rates.

This week we will see any strong bullish tendencies in gold prices troubled by the U.S. Labor Department’s report on job creation for the month of April.

Mayday is a bank and trading holiday in Europe. That thinned out the trade volume for gold and other precious metals, as well as affecting other markets.

But, as we know, rust never sleeps. The dollar was bid up robustly today and that helped knock gold down by about $5 in afternoon trading in New York. (Gold is off its lows for the day at 4 PM New York time.)

Traders in different markets seem to be singing from very different hymnbooks today.

Gold was smacked around by analysts’ interpretation that the Fed statement was quite hawkish to which we reply: “Huh?”

The statement issued after the FOMC meeting today reflected pretty much conditions in the U.S. economy as seen by a large cross section of economists, investors and traders.

The slowdown in the first quarter was due to transitory influences.

The dollar turned lower after the Conference Board reported that consumer confidence slumped to 95.2 in April, well below a forecast of 102.5 and down significantly from 101.4 in March.

Additionally, inflation-rate expectations were the lowest since February 2007.

Last Friday gold sank to five-week lows of $1175. Smelling a bargain, investors and traders stepped in today and began snapping up the yellow precious metal. They sent it up almost 2%.

The brightest side of today’s action for bulls is that the great, great majority of the rise came through regular trading although a weaker dollar lent a small bit of assistance.

The regular trading sell off in gold continued today, knocking it down more than $15 an ounce in late afternoon action. Gold was off its lows for the day, however.

A weakening dollar helped to take some of the sting of loss out of declines throughout the precious metals complex.

The U.S. dollar fell against a basket of world currencies as news from Europe prompted some analysts to guess that the Greek debt crisis will be resolved within the framework of the union.