Written by Andrew Butter

There was a letter in the local rag Tuesday about how a couple in Dubai had tried to buy gold bars (physical) at the spot price then about $1,400; the bullion dealer told them he was out of stock. They suspected he was lying...and they were complaining, "Can't SOMEONE force the scoundrel to sell?"

A friend asked me what I thought. I told him if I had some I wouldn't sell, but I wouldn't buy either. He said he had bought at $900 and as far as he was concerned gold is the only "safe haven" so he was not selling.

That's the thing, bottoms happen when the sellers dig their heels in and stick; it doesn't matter if there are no buyers or hardly any, if no one wants to sell then the price sticks, a bottom is not when the buyers flood in, it's when the sellers stick.

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Investing Daily Article of the Week

by Roger Conrad, Investing Daily

Last year about this time, the price of gold was pushing toward $1,800 an ounce. I was a guest speaker on a well-produced Caribbean cruise, where the consensus was that gold $6,000 was inevitable if not imminent.

Given that the yellow metal has since declined by more than $400 an ounce, I suspect many former enthusiasts now feel differently. SPDR Gold Holdings has fallen from the second to the third largest exchange-traded fund (ETF), as many have given up on gold entirely.

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Bullion Vault Article of the Week

Written by Ben Traynor, Bullion Vault

With gold plunging, talk of a bear market has taken off...

We don't make price forecasts at BullionVault (one reason we're not on CNBC very often).  Nor do we claim gold must only go higher forever.  There's a good time to own gold, we think, and a bad time.

So far, 2013 isn't proving much fun, despite fresh Eurozone crisis, plus ongoing attacks on the value of currency by central banks everywhere.

How come? Money managers have clearly grown tired of the financial crisis, if not blasé. After a full decade of year-on-year gains, gold's drop is a natural outcome, and by no means does this fall undermine gold's safe haven appeal. It may well, however, be costing you money you'd really rather not lose.

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by Erik McCurdy, Prometheus Market Insight

Editor's note: This was written last weekend with charts as of market close Friday (12 April 2013).  As of the time of publication (after market close in New York 17 April), gold has declined another $130 to $1,369

Since late March, gold prices have struggled to rebound off of the last intermediate-term cycle low (ITCL), favoring a continuation of the bearish translation that has persisted since October. This week, gold plunged 5 percent. The weekly close well below the ITCL in March reconfirms the current bearish translation and forecasts additional intermediate-term weakness heading into the next ITCL in late June or July.

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Money Morning Article of the Week

by David Zeiler, Associate Editor, Money Morning

If you want a lesson on how to manipulate gold prices, you need only look at what Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) has been doing over the past few months.

Goldman set the table by predicting a turn in gold prices back in December 2012, which no doubt contributed to the precious metal's 5% decline in the first two months of the year.

At the end of February, Goldman issued a research report that said the big Wall Street bank had soured on the yellow metal, and dropped its three-month target for gold prices from $1,825 an ounce to $1,615, its six-month forecast from $1,805 to $1,600, and its one-year outlook from $1,800 to $1,550.

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