Gold Clears $1600 - Psychological Boost to Bulls

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The abillity of the gold market to push a "16" handle on the price can be considered a minor victory for the bulls. You can see from the chart below, that within its broader consolidation pattern, gold had been experiencing a somewhat tightening or constricting of its range. The upper boundary of that "mini-pattern" has been the $1600 level. The ability of the bulls to take it through this region gives them a very slight advantage over the bears in the immediate term and provides the possibility of a push towards more stubborn resistance beginning near the $1620 level.

Keep in mind that every bit of today's move higher was predicated on the notion being floated that the Fed is going to ease and provide additional stimulus measures as soon as next month. What the Fed giveth, the Fed can taketh away in a real hurry. What this means is that as long as traders feel fairly confident that the stimulus is coming sooner rather than later, gold will attract dip buyers. On the other hand, if anything comes along to disabuse them of this notion, the market will drop back down towards the bottom of the recent range where the big Asian buyers are lurking.

I have stated many times that I believe any additional bond buying programs are an enormous waste of time which will do absolutely nothing to deal with the underlying problems in the US economy, which are structural in nature. Simply put - there is already too much debt in the system. Trying to lower interest rates even further in order to encourage additional borrowing is a fool's exercise.

For Pete's sake, the yield on the Ten Year note is at 1.406% today. Speaking sarcastically here I am sure that all those fence sitters out there just itching to spend money they do not have will immediately launch forward with those plans if the Fed manages to push the yield down to 1.25%.

They can do all they want to entice banks to lend instead of holding money at the Fed and earning interest but if consumers are afraid of sinking further into debt in this jobless economy, what good will conjuring up more attempts to entice lending do?

Also do not forget - the Fed has spent a minimum of $2.5 Trillion between QE1 and QE2. What lasting good did any of that do??? Answer - nothing.