The gold market forged a rather wide trading range and settled lower in the face of a persistently strong Dollar. The fact that oil prices have now forged a pattern of noted declines might be prompting some flight to quality longs to move to the sidelines but it is also possible that comments from the Fed that in turn supported the Dollar were the real source of the selling pressure on Tuesday. With the Fed's Lacker suggesting that the US could actually end up hiking interest rates in the face of a rising unemployment rate probably served to discourage some would be gold buyers as that highlights the Fed's growing interest in fighting inflation, even at a potentially great cost to the US economy.