Theory My wild conjecture on yesterday's strange mid-day price action. Someone was nervous that if Bernanke said the wrong thing at Jackson Hole this morning then gold could tank, and so the overly prudent seller wanted to, as traders say, "go flat" (not short or long the market) ahead of the speech...even if that meant shooting themselves in the foot to the tune of several percentage points by pounding the bid on the way out. Luckily for us longs in this market, whatever nuance the market found in Bernanke's remarks certainly didn't tank gold...but the chart shows how nervous people were. Personally, I think he wanted to address the U.S. tea party's objection to central bank intervention by loudly saying that QE has worked and will work to help things in the future. That leaves him open, once the ECB is ready to move, for a concerted easing with the ECB and the central banks of China, Japan and Canada onboard. Nice to take off for a long weekend with the 24 hour AU chart standing straight up.
Good luck to all, and pardon the opinion of an uneducated coot.