The U.S. economy has given us some weak data points in the last two weeks as we discussed over that course of time in our fundamentals section. Employment remained soft into April; retail sales are very soft; manufacturing has been spotty.

Flat retail sales in April ignited a sell off of the U.S. dollar today, boosting gold all by itself by not quite 1.00%. Investors and traders joined in the love fest and kicked the yellow precious metal even higher.

A decline in the U.S. dollar today gave gold the boost it was looking for, accounting for more than half of the session’s rise of over $9.00.