After three consecutive days of gains, gold took a breather today as the USD fought back against recent losses.  US Retail Sales m/m data increased by 1.2% in May while April figures were revised upwards by .2%.  Besides this positive USD news, there was also some discord in Europe related to Greece from earlier in the trading day.  The International Monetary Fund announced that it had left talks in Brussels over fundamental differences of opinion with Greece.  Greece, however, needs an agreement in place in order to not default on repayment to the IMF.  Further complicating the picture for Greece, there was also a headline out that Germany’s Merkel may refuse a Greek bailout extension.  While some might reasonably assume that the geopolitical uncertainty of the overall Greece debacle would cause gold to catch bids, the whole scenario instead caused the USD to surge and for gold to trend lower.  Gold still remains very much range bound with minor near term support at $1,170 and a variety of technical resistance indicators converging around $1,200.