The gold market came under pressure in the wake of a slight upward extension in the US Dollar, but it is also likely that initial weakness in oil prices and even more significant weakness in a host of other physical commodity markets contributed to what seemed to be a broad based commodity liquidation effort early in the trade. The scheduled US economic data flow might have contributed to the slide in gold prices, as a headline contraction in the US retail sales reading failed to trip up the Dollar and instead those figures seemed to renew concerns of slowing in gold. However, the trade could have embraced the excluding auto's component of the retail sales report as a positive economic sign, especially since the US Treasury market and the currency markets saw the retail sales figures to be something positive. On the other hand, with a host of physical commodities trading markedly weaker in conjunction with weakness in the US equity market this morning, it was at least a little easier to buy into the slowing view. However, oil prices did manage a strong mid morning recovery bounce, seemingly led by strength in natural gas prices, but eventually it was clear that talk of an Iranian production cut was really behind the sharp morning recovery. However, despite the renewed strength in oil prices the early negative bias in gold prices wasn't markedly altered. In fact, even in the face of a Business inventories reading that was not up as much as was expected the gold market simply seemed to mostly remain back on its heels.