Lack of fear leaves gold looking vulnerable
After a swift surge in late March and early April, gold (CEC:Commodities Exchange Centre: @GC.1) prices have turned around, losing some 2 percent in the past two weeks. And the pros say that with a general lack of fear in the market, there's little reason to jump into the yellow metal just yet.
"Equities markets are again at all-time highs and keeping safe-haven gold buying to a minimum, as there is clearly no fear," Bill Baruch, senior market strategist at iiTrader, wrote in a note to clients.
The lack of fear is also weighing on the CBOE Volatility Index (INDEX: .VIX), which generally measures how much investors are willing to pay for insurance on the S&P 500 (INDEX: .SPX). On Friday, the VIX closed at its lowest level of the year.
"If the U.S. economy or the global economy continues to improve and if the dollar continues to strengthen, I think gold prices will potentially continue to suffer," Jimmy Lee, CEO of Wealth Consulting Group, said Friday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."
Read More Gold struggles below $1,200 on strong equities; Fed meet eyed
Lee, who manages $500 million for clients, grants that "if we have some sort of a macroeconomic event that might cause us to have the correction that a lot of people have been expecting for a long time, then I suspect we could get a bounce-back. But I'm not sure what the real bottom is in terms of trading."
Still, some believe that there's hope for bullion.
"If you think about the good news, the good news is that the Fed has taken a much more dovish position in recent weeks, and the Bank of China has taken a big move to the dovish side. So you've got dovish Fedspeak, and you've had bad data," said Larry McDonald, head of U.S. macro strategy with Societe Generale.
In other words, McDonald believes that the central banks will continue to foster easy-money policies, potentially spurring the inflation that could help gold rise.
The latest indication of the U.S. central bank's thinking will come Wednesday, when the Fed releases its next policy statement
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