Gold's having quite the ride today. After absolutely rocketing overnight on geopolitical tensions, it's pulling back off those best levels but still sitting way up. April contracts are up $63.10 or 1.2 percent to $5,311 an ounce, though we saw it touch $5,434.10 earlier - that's a 3.6 percent jump from where we started.

The whole move kicked off after US and Israeli strikes took out Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the weekend. Iran responded with drone and missile waves across the Middle East - Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar all caught in the crossfire. Then today Israel escalated further with airstrikes on Hezbollah positions in Beirut and Lebanon after projectile fire came into northern Israel. Trump's now talking this could drag on for the next four weeks, which obviously has people nervous about a much wider regional conflict.

So naturally crude oil's spiking too, which adds to inflation concerns. But here's the thing holding gold back off those highs - the US dollar's been absolutely crushing it, up 1 percent on the index. When the dollar gets strong like this, it caps upside for gold pretty hard.

On the data side, ISM just dropped their manufacturing report for February. PMI came in at 52.4, down slightly from 52.6 in January but still showing growth (anything above 50 counts). Economists were looking for 51.8, so we beat expectations there.

Gold's definitely worth watching here. The geopolitical premium is real, but the dollar strength is keeping a lid on things. If tensions keep escalating like Trump suggested, we could see another leg up, but don't expect it to hold if the dollar keeps doing what it's doing.