Gold sank pre-Fed, falling as low as $862 in London trading, then seesawed through the New York session on Wednesday, before shooting upward in the Globex market after the interest rate announcement and finishing at $876.60, up $5.50. Overnight, gold has fallen off.

Different week, same three “Fs”. Food, fuel, and finance. We mentioned a few weeks ago that these three investment themes intersect, interconnect, and generally get all tangled up. Expect more tangling this week. Let’s try to untangle them a bit for you today.

With the dollar weakness overnight, gold has bounced back over $5. Oil has pushed back to within spittin’ distance of $119. Could this be the beginning of the next leg up for the commodities against the dollar?

The base metals were mixed on Friday. Copper pushed above the $4 level in the pre-dawn hours, but once again was unable to hold there, as it fell sharply through the first hour of the New York session, but then came off its lows to finish at $3.9512/lb., down less than 2 cents.

Good day… When I signed off yesterday, several of the currencies were at or near record levels versus the U.S. dollar and the U.S. data that were going to be released didn’t look supportive.

What a strange economy Australia has. A country in the midst of a record boom still manages to run a trade deficit. Yesterday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the February trade deficit blew out by 30%, from a revised $2.59 billion in January to $3.29 billion in February.

Gold prices climbed higher in early London trade as the dollar remained under pressure following weak U.S. payrolls data on Friday, reports Thomson Financial.

Friday’s grim jobs news has put further downward pressure on the already weak dollar, by reinforcing the widely-held view that the US economy is in a downturn.

At 9:27 am., spot gold was trading at $914.78 an ounce against $909.80 in late New York trades on Friday, according to Thomson.