Gold prices have moved up $9.50 an ounce today to $1,114.0o an ounce. As the recession has hit the dollar hard, gold prices have been steadily moving higher, and it looks to close out the first quarter with its sixth consecutive quarterly gain.

The dollar has been pretty weak, and continued to move lower today on news that the economy shed more jobs during March that analysts had forecast.

The 6 quarter streak for rising gold prices is the longest gold rally since 1979.

Last week it had started to look as though the dollar was making a comeback, but that has changed, and now the dollar is once again dropping, and as a result oil prices are moving into new territory. The euro is moving higher, and is now sitting above $1.5750 in Asian trading.

To put things more in perspective as far as just how strong oil prices have been moving lately… today is the 11th time in the last 13 trading sessions that oil has hit an all time high, or record high closing price… or both.

The bottom line is that, unfortunately, if you were hoping to see some relief in your gasoline prices, don’t hold your breath. The way oil is moving we could be looking back at $4 gasoline as the “cheap days”. Let’s hope that is not the case.

According to a report from the Commerce Department today, the economy grew at 0.6% during the first quarter of the year. That is the same growth that we saw in the last quarter of 2007. While the news could have been better, it definitely could have been a lot worse. Many analysts were expecting to see growth slow to 0.5%, or even possibly lower.

We have been hearing rumblings for the past year about the looming recession on the horizon, and many thought that this would be the quarter that we saw economic growth fall into negative territory, and now there are already analysts coming out and predicting that the current second quarter will definitely see such an event. Let’s hope they are wrong once more, but the writing is definitely on the wall… but then again it has been for some time now too.

Soaring energy prices, and the continuing credit crunch that has gripped a large part of the country will continue to apply pressue to consumers. Will we get some relief in the months to come? Only time will tell. Currently oil is trading at $114, so prices would still have a long way to fall before we got back into any sort of “cheap oil” environment.

So, it could have been a lot worse. At least we are seeing growth, just really really slow growth. We will see just how today’s report impacts the expected rate cut from the Federal Reserve later today.

The market had been pretty flat for most of this morning, in anticipation of today’s report. What we have seen is a drop of oil inventories of 3.2 million barrels, and a decline of gasoline inventories of 3.4 million barrels. What is weighing the most of the market is the gasoline inventories, as the nation is already dealing with record high gasoline prices, that are only predicted to go up even higher as we progress into the heavy demand summer driving months.

While the nation is dealing with the record high gasoline prices, it is expected that for the first time in 20 years, Americans will actually demand less gasoline this summer. This is definitely being viewed as a direct result of just how high prices have hit lately.

For a better illustration of just how strong oil prices have been lately, let’s close by taking a current look at an oil graph:

So what are your thoughts? Are you going to let current gasoline prices impact your summer travel plans? Or will you continue to pay the high prices in order to keep your vacation plans alive?

Here are a couple of nice blog entries worth reading:

1. A good article on adding money to your savings by paying yourself first and then living on what is left
2. Article on the problems of high priced stocks
3. I often hear investing compared with gambling. An interesting comparison between investing and gambling
4. Learn to save, before you start to invest

According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded has now reached record levels of $3.303 for a gallon.

The current price of gasoline has been rising in reaction to the recent run up of oil prices and the weak dollar, and resulted in a 22% jump year over year in prices at the pump.

The highest averaging states are California and Hawaii, both of which have average prices above the $3.60 mark.

For a full write up on the current situation, you can read my article on record high gasoline prices over on BloggingStocks.

Ironically, it was Bernanke himself that had initially put the markets into the red when he stated that there was a decent chance that the U.S. economy would contract during the first half of this year. With all the recession rumors and fears floating around these days, his comments earlier were enough to spook the markets into an early sell off.

Luckily, Bernanke testified in front of Congress that we should not expect to see any additional financial institutions collapsing the way we saw Bear Stearns go down last month. After hitting a massive liquidity crisis, Bear Stearns was forced to look for help, and was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, and JP Morgan which is in the process of finalizing its purchase of the company.

It is no secret that the past 6 months have been tough on Wall Street. The credit crunch, weak dollar, and collapsing real estate market have taken their toll, but we are starting to see some signs that traders are beginning to bet that the worst has come and gone. How long the recent rebound will last (if at all) remains to be seen.

There are three main factors contributing to the erosion of consumer confidence currently; falling stock prices, falling home values, and finally… the dollar setting record lows against the euro. It seems like everyday we turn on our televisions and are instantly fed more bad news regarding the overall economy, so it should really come to no surprise that confidence has suffered.

Housing prices are also in the news, as the S&P/Case- Shiller home price index fell 10.7% during the month of January. This comes on the heels of a 9% decline in December, and marks the 13th straight month that the index has fallen.

This month’s confidence numbers had been expected to drop, but not nearly as much as it actually did. Analysts had expected to see a drop from 75 to 73.5.

The market was initially heading into the red early this morning, but has rebounded in the afternoon session, and the major indexes are all up about 0.5% with a couple hours left in the day.

Helping this morning is a strong earnings report out of shoe and apparel giant Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) which reported strong third quarter earnings numbers last night. The company posted net profit of $463.8 million ($0.92 cents a share), and that its total sales surged by 16%, to $4.5 billion. Helping the company during the period were strong international sales and the weak U.S. dollar.

For right now, the market is leaning on the NKE report as a indication that not all company’s are having a tough time in the current market. Will this bullish sentiment hold through the day? We will just have to wait and see. I know that I for one would love to see the market end the short holiday week on an up day.

Oil update: We saw yesterday how oil prices were pulling back from their recent highs, and today they are continuing to move lower. Prices are trading down $2.17 to $100.37. (be advised that today the April contracts are expired, so we are now looking at the May deliveries).

While the increase was lesser than had been expected, it was enough to catapult prices much lower this afternoon. Analysts had been expecting to see an increase of 2.3 million barrels, but the actual figure came in with only an increase of 200,000 barrels. So, why are prices lower? Well, it appears to me as though traders have started to focus on what is important again… demand.

This is the ninth time in the past ten weeks that inventories have risen, but in the past analysts have been over looking this fact and continued to push prices higher. Why? Simple… the weak dollar has had people spooked into thinking that oil would be the safe haven to use as a hedge against the falling dollar. The logic makes sense, but is it enough of a reason to push prices up to the $110 mark? I don’t think so, and it looks like the market is starting to agree.

The fears that the U.S. economy is going to fall into an all out recession has started to weigh on traders that understand that a slowing economy equals less demand. In fact, over the past 4 weeks overall consumption of oil products was 3.2% lower than it was for the same 4 week period last year. Perhaps this was the news that had prices moving sharply lower.

As of the time of this report, prices have fallen by $4.01 down to $105.41 after moving as low as $104.37 earlier.

Will oil prices continue to head lower, or can we expect to see a bounce after today’s sell off? Well, I wish I could give you that answer, but the oil market is tricky thing and we will just have to wait and see how this all plays out over the days to come. Should be interesting!