The gold market once again showed a pattern of early morning weakness followed by a mid morning recovery bounce. Well ahead of mid session today the February gold contract had managed a bounce of roughly $27 an ounce and in the process the market reached up to the highest level since early Monday morning. The gold market apparently wasn't discouraged by the lack of aggressive action from the ECB, which reduced rates by a relatively paltry 75 basis points. Rumors of a plan to lower mortgage rates to perhaps 4%, a series of somewhat up beat statements from US officials this morning and favorable US equity market action all seemed to give the gold bulls a leg up.