Another Piece of Economic Data - Another Reaction in Gold

The drama remains exactly the same as it has for some time now....a piece of economic news is released and it either confirms or dispels ideas of Fed tapering of bond buying. This time it was the jobless claims number which came in at 305,00 first time claims versus market expectations of 330,000. The news was interpreted as a jobs market improvement or more accurately, a job market that is not deteriorating as bad as some expected and therefore bolstered Fed tapering ideas. Up goes the US Dollar and down goes gold as a result.

Get used to this - every single economic data release is going to be dissected and examined for "clues" to our monetary masters' next move. This is the tragic state to which our once proud financial market system has been reduced. As stated many times here before, go and grab a Daisy and start plucking the pedals as you recite the phrases, "She loves me; she loves me not" and you pretty much have the modern trading algorithm.

If you have noticed, even the bond market has been reduced to playing this infernal game as it has lower today, with interest rates subsequently moving back up again. Up and down, up and down....

The only major markets seemingly unaffected by this were the equity markets which rose on the news. Then again, they rise on any news these days, whether bad or good. What else can be expected here in the land of perpetual bull markets in equities  where bear markets have been rendered an obsolete concept from days gone by.

From a technical analysis perspective, gold is having trouble maintaining its footing above key resistance centered between $1330 - $1335. Rallies are attracting selling and dips towards $1300 are attracting buying. It is still in a range until it proves which way it wants to go. Weakness in the gold mining shares would seem to indicate that it wants to break lower but thus far that has not been the case. In other words, I have no idea where this thing is headed in the short term.

I have included the RSI or Relative Strength Indicator to show you the range trade and lack of clear direction. Notice that for the better part of three weeks, this indicator has been mostly confined between 60 on the top and 20 on the bottom; not a particularly friendly reading. We did get that sharp spike on the day of the FOMC statement which took the RSI through the top of this range and looked as if more promising things were ahead for the metal but it quickly surrendered its gains with the indicator reverting back to its previous pattern.

On this time frame, the RSI would need to clear at least 65 for me to get the least bit excited about the metal but more importantly, it would have to push past the previous price peak made the day of and the day after the FOMC statement. At this point, that does not appear to be in the cards WITHOUT ANOTHER CATALYST coming from somewhere. After all, if gold cannot sustain a rally with a clear statement coming from the Fed that the economy is too weak for them to consider tapering at this time, then what in the world is it going to take to push this metal higher? My answer to that is the same - a LOSS OF CONFIDENCE in the currency and with the Dollar refusing to break down significantly right now, we are not seeing any signs of that. Perhaps the upcoming federal debt ceiling will change some minds in that regards but the jury is still out on that.

The problem for gold remains the same thing I have been saying for weeks now - speculative money is not interested in chasing prices higher. Money inflows are simply not there and without them, this market cannot sustain any rallies. Something is going to have to change in investor/trader sentiment to bring this hot money back into the gold market, and the silver market, for that matter. Until it does, it looks to me like the bears still have the advantage until proven otherwise.