Gold Over At Seeking Alpha This Morning

Dian Chu has written a good summary of the gold market and its drivers. She concludes with the standard long-term-bullish, short-term-cautious recommendation typical of bull markets.

Prieur du Plessis uses the notorious Mark Dice video to make the point that "gold fever" has not arrived yet, becuase too few U.S. investors know or care about gold as of now. Gold hasn't been mainstreamed yet.

Joe Kunkle, though, notes that gold is in the process of being mainstreamed. He also makes the point that recent forecasts were suspiciously bullish, given the "easy money" trade of going long gold and short the greenback had worked so well for months: "Between CNBC guests calling for $2,500 gold (more than double current prices), the US Mint running out of gold coins, gold companies unravelling hedges, and even my grandparents beginning to talk to me about the price of gold, it is obvious that a bubble is forming, although it takes a certain fortitude to bet against John Paulson,..." The rest of his analysis uses option market data to show similar frothiness. He makes it clear that he's not calling for an all-out pop of a bubble.

Finally, TraderMark shows Fed-funds futures market data indicates that the market sees a good chance of a Fed rate increase as early as next March, and a greater than 50% chance for June. He reiterates his own call that the Fed won't do so until 2011, and expresses his confidence that the long gold/short greenback trade will work (though not automatically, of course) for the next several years.