Monday Open: $1,219.30
Weekly High: $1,248.90
Weekly Low: $1,212.50
Friday Close: $1,228.80

The gold market may be hitting a short- to medium- bottom. Despite many positive economic reports, gold didn’t flinch as much as might be expected.

Monday opened steady, with news about China potentially pulling back on their gold demand in 2014. Still, even though some analysts predict that China’s gold imports will drop 10% to 900 million tons, gold still clocks in as China’s second largest import and they surpass even India in gold demand.

Tuesday hit a five-month low by the end of the trading day ahead of multiple economic reports due out later in the week and an ADP report that showed a rise in employment for November. The drop, however, was tempered by a lower position of two key outside markets, oil and the U.S. dollar.

Wednesday regained Tuesday’s losses as bargain hunters entered the market. Overnight news brought a new element to the table: the OECD reported that inflation in the EU’s 34 member countries has been dropping dramatically. This means that bankers will likely keep a loose monetary policy so as to prevent deflation. This puts gold in a good position.

The price of gold fell again on Thursday, losing Wednesday’s gains ahead of the European Central Bank’s monthly monetary planning meeting and press conference.

On Friday, the U.S. employment report for November showed that the country added 203,000 non-farm jobs, higher than the expected 180,000. Unemployment also fell to 7.0%, the lowest it has been since 2008. Positive economic growth translates to poor performance for the yellow metal, and gold hit a fresh five-month low on the news. However, the price of gold rebounded fairly quickly and stayed steady, which indicates that a bottom may be near. Also to this point, the general sentiment in the gold market is that the U.S. Fed’s tapering program is very near, so prices are not changing as drastically as earlier in the year.