* The markets are closed on Good Friday, the markets are closed, but I did want to take time to record this podcast
* Some people were wondering why I didn't do a podcast on Wednesday, the day we had a big drop in the price of gold
* Believe me, I love doing podcasts, when the price of gold goes down, because I know a lot of people who are interested in gold want to know what my thoughts are on a day that it happens to go down
* As it turns out, I did have an interview on CNBC Fast Money, and my comments are available on that interview, posted on my YouTube channel
* Gold was down about $30 on that day and declined further yesterday
* Silver was down as well
* Gold is still holding above $1200 and gold is still positive on the year, not so for the U.S. Stock Market, which slipped back into negative territory this week
* Not only was gold weaker but the dollar was considerably stronger, and commodities in general, like crude oil, copper - also went down
* So what was the catalyst?
* You might say maybe it was because gold failed to rally on the news of the terrorist attack in Belgium
* News of this kind often triggers a knee-jerk reaction to buy gold, but the rally really wasn't that big, and when a market doesn't rally on good news, it generally means it is over bought, or it's ready to go down
* To me, however, that was a non-event, as far as gold is concerned
* I don't buy gold because of geopolitical instability - that has nothing to do with my strategy
* The real reason to buy gold has to do with inflation, and the central banks creating it, artificially low interest rates, negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing
* It has nothing to do with terrorism, except to the extent that terrorist attacks lead to more government spending that is not supported by taxes which means more money printing, more inflation and bigger deficits
* In the long run, it is good for gold, but in the short run, it is just a bunch of noise, but traders can certainly jump on these events as a reason to buy or sell and read things into a lack of movement, assuming there is a fundamental reason in the gold market, when there's not
* The more significant factors that hurt gold were comments by several Federal Reserve officials, to the extent that April is now considered a "live" meeting, meaning that they still might raise interest rates
* These comments are coming less than 2 weeks after the official March meeting, where the Fed could have raised interest rates, but didn't
* Not only did they not raise interest rates, they went out of their way to diminish the markets' expectations of future rate hikes
* So that after the March meeting, people who thought the Fed was going to raise rates 3 more times, revised expectations to at most 2, but a lot of people are starting to expect no interest rate hikes at all
* It was a very dovish press conference following the release of their statement
* So now, a week later some of the same guys on the FOMC saying, "We might raise rates in April"
* If you're thinking about raising rates in April, why were you so dovish last week?
* And if you are going to raise them in April, why not raise them in March
* None of this makes any sense, especially looking at the economic released since the Fed decided not to raise rates in March, and in general, it's been weaker expected
* So if the Fed is being given weaker than expected economic news, after they said they wouldn't raise rates, why would they now be raising the spectre of a rate hike coming up next month
* Is this some kind of trial balloon?
* I think the Fed is losing even more credibility when they're so schizophrenic: t...

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Fed Bankers Bark But Won’t Bite – Ep. 154