UPDATE

Most of you are probably wondering what happened to the gold price today. It looks to us like the prime culprit was the Japanese yen which suddenly spiked lower early in the U.S. trading session. The yen has been under pressure following comments by the new BoJ governor Ueda that the central bank would keep its ultra-easy monetary policy running on all cylinders. He reiterated that position at a G-20 conference in Washington yesterday, and announced doing so this morning. Of course, the inverse to a drop in the yen is a rise in the dollar, and nothing sets off algorithmic trading in the gold market like a sudden break in the US Dollar Index (in either direction). The indirect connection between sudden moves in the yen and the price of gold is often overlooked in press reports. Here is what it looks like on a chart.

Gold and Japanese yen
(One day, Japanese yen inverted)

Chart courtesy of TradingView.com