Laozi, the 6th century B.C. scholar knew about the future. His view of it concludes today's fundamentals section of our email.

 One set of stellar data for the U.S. economy and one set of moderately negative data, but traders and investors focus on the former while ignoring the latter. From a world composed of 1's and 0's, we have moved to a world of only 1's.

There are only 20 days left in 2013. We can look into some of the baseline reasons that gold's price has dropped now, and then review the year in further detail as time goes on.

With all the gyrations and with all the verbal pyrotechnics coming out from, and about, the Fed, it's no wonder we've seen a spike in prices this week. Traders and analysts have been spinning themselves into a tizzy over the prospect of tapering or not tapering for eight months now.

Bargain hunters, bottom fish, and short covering traders sent prices back into positive territory on Monday after Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said, with an important set of caveats, that tapering will become increasingly likely as long as the labor market continues to improve.

Strong, stronger, strongest. That's how we can best describe the economic news that this week streamed out of the United States, official and unofficial. And, like many aspects of growth, sentiment counts.

There is a flurry of economic reporting activity this week. The first out of the gate, ADP's labor report, seems to have initially depressed gold prices, then that dip inspired investors to step in on bargain-hunting and short covering.

Gold essentially held steady today in advance of more data due out later this week from the U.S. Department of Labor. Many analysts and traders are figuring that, one way or another, employment data will drive the FOMC meeting later this month and into 2014.

Being on the right side of a trade is comforting.

Gold prices dropped Monday when a better-than-expected U.S. factory report beat expectations and fueled demand for the dollar by shoring up expectations that the Federal Reserve will begin to scale back monetary stimulus programs in early 2014.

Gold turned higher today in thin trading on a slow roller coaster day.

Gold saw its worse price drop in November since June for a variety of reasons, some of them right on, others terribly misguided. But prices are about 5% lower for the month, regardless of the quality of analysis.

The Dow, S&P and NASDAQ are all up healthily today.

 The monetary conditions that are creating the boom in equities is, as we go deeper into quantitative easing is turning out now to be bad for gold and silver. The effect has operated on two curves, gold on one and equities on another.