Gold prices are modestly lower in early U.S. trading Thursday, pressured by some more chart consolidation and profit taking from recent gains that earlier this week saw the metal hit a four-month high. More risk appetite has been injected into the market place as the week progresses, and that’s also a negative for safe-haven gold. April gold was last down $4.80 at $1,335.50 an ounce. Spot gold was last quoted down $1.90 at $1,335.50. May Comex silver last traded down $0.014 at $21.225 an ounce.

The situation in Ukraine has for now changed from a serious geopolitical matter to more of a regional issue of lesser significance—from a market place perspective. This has been bullish for world stock markets and bearish for safe-haven gold, the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries.

The monthly monetary policy meeting from the European Central Bank is Thursday. The ECB did not make any significant monetary policy moves. None were expected given some recent, generally upbeat economic data coming out of the European Union. As always, the press conference by ECB president Mario Draghi will draw close scrutiny from traders and investors.

The big economic report of the week is the U.S. employment report on Friday morning. The forecast is for the key non-farm payrolls figure of the jobs data to come in at up 150,000 in February. Any reading that deviates significantly from that forecast is likely to move the markets. In recent weeks, U.S. economic data has mostly missed the pre-report forecasts and have been on the weak side of those forecasts.

U.S. economic data due for Thursday includes the weekly jobless claims report, the Challenger job cuts report, manufacturers’ shipments and inventories, and ICSC chain store sales trends.

Wyckoff’s Daily Risk Rating: 6.0 (The Ukraine situation has de-escalated—for now.)

(Wyckoff’s Daily Risk Rating is your way to quickly gauge investor risk appetite in the world market place each day. Each day I assess the “risk-on” or “risk-off” trader mentality in the market place with a numerical reading of 1 to 10, with 1 being least risk-averse (most risk-on) and 10 being the most risk-averse (risk-off), and 5 being neutral.

The London A.M. gold fix is $1,334.25 versus the P.M. fixing of $1,337.00.

Technically, April gold futures prices are still in a two-month-old uptrend on the daily bar chart and have seen some chart consolidation the past two days. The gold bulls still have the near-term technical advantage. Bulls’ next upside near-term price breakout objective is to produce a close above technical resistance at this week’s high of $1,355.00. Bears' next near-term downside breakout price objective is closing prices below technical support at last week’s low of $1,318.70. First resistance is seen at Wednesday’s high of $1,340.20 and then at $1,350.00. First support is seen at this week’s low of $1,330.70 and then at $1,325.00.  

May silver futures bulls and bears are on a level near-term technical playing field. Silver bulls’ next upside price breakout objective is closing prices above solid technical resistance at the February high of $22.215 an ounce. The next downside price breakout objective for the bears is closing prices below solid technical support at $20.63. First resistance is seen at Wednesday’s high of $21.34 and then at Tuesday’s high of $21.54. Next support is seen at last week’s low of $21.025 and then at $20.63.

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