Retail sales came in stronger than expected this morning.

That sent yields higher on the day, and nudged expectations of another Fed move a touch higher.

But with the Middle East situation continuing to escalate, there are clues that it will become a global war.  And with that, my bet is that the next move by the Fed will be a cut.

Among the (global war escalation) clues, the way gold behaved this past Friday…

As you can see in this chart above, Friday’s 3.4% move in gold puts it in company with some major event-risk days of the past twenty-plus years.

And as you can see, we now have this technical breakout in gold.  A retest of the record highs looks very likely.