Nyah, nyah, Vladimir Putin

We guess the world — at least the part of it that buys gold — is not afraid that Russia will invade the rest of Ukraine. Gold dropped under $1300 an ounce and has stayed there for two whole days.

This suggests that the blip up in the past couple of weeks was due (in part anyway) to war jitters (almost always good for gold if not for anyone else) and now it has resumed its predicted long decline until . . .

$1300 itself is probably not an important price level. It’s easy to remember, and when I was a business reporter nice round numbers were often described as “important psychological marks,” but there’s not much evidence that this works for something that is traded by so many people in so many countries and in so many currencies as gold.

India is a big market for gold, and the $1300 price point in dollars does not work out to a round number of rupees. In fact, it’s 77,831 rupees.