The best news for gold today is that it did not have to rely on dollar strength to add a few more bucks to its value. More good news is that it crossed some technical thresholds and appeared to be eyeing the crucial 1200 mark.

After the hubbub over the possibility of an announcement of an interest-rate increase in the previous two weeks, since the March FOMC meeting ended, gold has been the beneficiary of a diving dollar.

Gold is about $6 off its high for the day now in late afternoon trading. Any gain the yellow precious metal has seen for the day is due to a weaker dollar. In fact, without dollar weakness, gold would have been off by about a third of a point, instead of showing a substantial gain.

The lack of regular trading follow-through should be noted by gold bulls.

The VIX fell today, although you wouldn’t know that volatility had decreased given today’s movements in markets, which seem fairly extreme.

However, as we mentioned yesterday and will reiterate today, the usual first reactions to Federal Reserve statements often are quickly “corrected” as other analysts and investors  pile into the scrum.

The Fed has (partially) spoken. The markets are reacting, and they like what they hear. In fact, the markets seem to have adjusted very quickly to the dropping of the word “patient” from FOMC language, an alteration to the text we predicted, as we did its replacement with similar verbiage.

Here is the heart of the matter in the statement:

If you are expecting the unexpected from the FOMC meeting, as they say in New York, fuggehdaboudit. The Fed is not inclined toward sudden or ill-considered thoughts, at least on the official newswire. (What is said extramurally by semi-rogue, generally non-voting members is, of course, another matter altogether.)

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.