Barry Stuppler

A weaker U.S. equity market is bringing in fresh buyers to the precious metal trading pits . . . .

A higher U.S. Dollar, interest rates, and Equity Market are putting pressure on the Gold price . . . .

After reaching a high of $1,346 in Asia, Gold sold off in European and U.S. Markets . . . .

Despite the headwinds of rising interest rates, gold was the best performing metal this week, although down slightly by 1.24 percent.  Gold traders are bullish for the fourth week in a row after the yellow metal posted its biggest monthly advance in five months in January, according to Bloomberg’s weekly survey . . . .

A couple of weeks ago, my Foolish colleague Alan Oscroft asked whether recent large falls in the price of Bitcoin should be taken as a sign for investors to start buying the cryptocurrency. His conclusion? Definitely not. Not only do I agree with him but I think investors should really consider getting some exposure to a different asset . . . .

We have been noting silver’s relatively positive Commitments of Traders (CoT) alignment vs. that of gold. Before Friday’s pervasive market disturbance that likely improved both CoTs, the reading in silver was already constructive . . . .

In my article from 4 months ago about gold versus bond yields, I concluded that gold would reach $1330-1350 from the $1280 level at the time of writing the analysis. So where do we go from here? . . . .

Last Friday, with interest rates and the U.S. Dollar rising, the financial markets started to react negatively, and the Nunes memo gave the markets the momentum to drive the Dow Jones down 665 points and caused Gold to drop $10 per ounce . . . .

Gold briefly moved below the key $1,330 support price in Asian markets, then quickly rallied $5 per ounce . . . .

Today the Labor Department said that U.S. employment increased by 200,000 jobs for January. This caused the U.S. Dollar and interest rates to rally and Gold/Silver and equity markets to decline . . . .