Gold hit a two-week high on Monday. Then it didn't. Congratulations to everyone who bought at the top and sold at the bottom in the span of eight hours. Your parents are proud.
The official explanation involves a firmer dollar and upcoming Fed minutes. The unofficial explanation is that gold doesn't read Reuters and has no f*cking idea what the Fed minutes say. Gold moved because someone hit a button. Someone else hit a different button. Price discovery happened. But sure, let's pretend it was the dollar.
Retail traders spent Monday refreshing their portfolios and googling "why did gold go down." The answer they found: something about monetary policy and currency strength. The answer they needed: you're gambling on a rock with leverage you can't afford.
The Fed minutes aren't even out yet. They're "in focus," which is financial journalism speak for "we need to fill space before the thing happens." Gold reversed course before anyone read a single word of central bank meeting notes. Causation worked backward. The headline wrote itself into existence.
Somewhere a technical analyst drew a line on a chart connecting Monday's high to a pivot point from two weeks ago. He called it a double top or a failed breakout or whatever the hell sounds smart. The line meant nothing. Gold was going to do what it did regardless of his Crayola presentation.
Two-week high. Not a two-month high. Not a two-year high. Two weeks. Your girlfriend's houseplant has hit a two-week high in water retention. We don't write headlines about it.
The dollar got firmer. Gold got softer. Traders got poorer. The Fed will release minutes that say exactly what everyone already knows, and gold will move again for reasons that will be explained after the fact by people who had no idea it was coming.
Photo by Dash Cryptocurrency on Unsplash
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