The simple answer is that what makes a market, opposing views. The more complex answer is there are both many reasons to sell and to buy and all investors or traders whether retail or institutional have different timelines, rationale and requirements for capital. This is why some only follow price action and others take a longer view, it's takes all kinds to make a market.

I'm not sure what happened for sure with the gold price decline early yesterday morning but I can say that at 2AM on Monday night the dollar index was weak and showing signs of breaking down after dropping precipitously below .80 cents. Almost immediately gold shot higher toward $1340, which has been a line in the sand now since Sept 25th, and was stopped once again as the dollar was moved back higher fairly quickly. This failure to breach this hard defended level once again after many tries may have finally been interpreted by some large holder or trader as official defense line in the sand and before the CRIMEX opened on Tuesday morning they threw in the towel on a rumoured $1 billion dollar sell order over a short period of time which hit the stops and caused a further $10 billion in selling.

Another view is that there was both official intervention at 2AM in London to stop the advance of gold and this was followed by more manipulative intervention in the illiquid time before CRIMEX open to effect not only some protection of the dollar but ease concerns of the US government shut down.

What we now know is the dollar index is even lower today and gold is higher so whatever happened seems to have not worked but you could argue that was contained gold from attaining a higher level in circumstances that should be gold positive so there will be some that think the intervention was successful.

I would bet money that no matter why the sell-off that gold bullion cartel banks were buyers on the move lower. The question then is will the next assault on $1340 be the one that finally works, if it does this should bring $1420 into focus fairly quickly which it the next big level.