Gold bulls are sniffing, looking, digging, listening with ear to the ground - everything short of consulting the tea leaves - to find some shred of news that will drive prices up.

Alas, today was not much different than yesterday.

Putin put his saber back in the scabbard. Or so he says. One way or another, as the elections in Ukraine approach, (May 25), the rhetoric has been turned to "keep warm." Cooler, business heads seem to be prevailing.

The U.S. economy seems to be standing alone on the sunny side of the street. Worries elsewhere are a drag on the whole world, and Europe, Japan and China can't expect the U.S. to carry the whole burden of interminably providing growth.

To say today was a risk-off day is a lavish understatement. It was a classic risk-off day, in fact.

Why classic?

Luckily for gold bulls, the doomsayers were out in force today raising a ruckus about the unexpected bump up in producer prices.

There is some hope for gold despite the dollar's strengthening against the euro.

"Regular" trading lifted gold by about 0.2% today, demonstrating that investors and traders are showing modest faith in the chief precious metal.

Unfortunately, the dollar's strength wiped all of that gain out and then some, pushing gold down at 4 o'clock in New York, so it stands off $1.30/$1.70.

You go to a show - a musical, a play - and as the scene is changed, the stage goes dark but from your seat you can glimpse people scurrying around in the wings doing things to get ready for the next scene.

So it was over the weekend. One could sense there very well might be a change of scenes but wasn't sure how long the stage hands would take to move the props around.

With no fresh news to propel it, gold is trading quietly lower today as we head into the weekend.

All we got out of Tsar Putin was more posturing militarily. The absurd parade that shows off Russia's military hardware every year was particularly grotesque this go round given the tense situation in Ukraine.  

With no fresh news to propel it, gold is trading quietly lower today as we head into the weekend.

All we got out of Tsar Putin was more posturing militarily. The absurd parade that shows off Russia's military hardware every year was particularly grotesque this go round given the tense situation in Ukraine.  

There was little in the way of hard news to drive gold far either up or down. So, we had subdued trading, which if you look only at the "normal" trading, was positive.

Gold was up about $2.50 before the strengthening dollar drove it back down to near even on the day.