With gold prices up 6.8 percent since the start of 2012, it’s tough to say it’s been a bad year for gold, but momentum for the metals seems to have waned.

“Right now, the disappointment of the gold bulls, you can actually feel it,” Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG, told Bloomberg during an interview early in April. While Weinberg believes this will present a buying opportunity “in the coming months,” it probably won’t happen soon. Even in early April, he was predicting gold would dip through June or July – perhaps below $1,600 an ounce.

The malaise in the gold market is probably due in part to seasonal trends, and in part to a need for the metal to cool after an unprecedented, two-year surge during which investors saw prices climb from $900 to $1,900 an ounce.

It’s been tough for gold bulls to stomach, though, as prices in other commodities have outperformed gold. Brent crude, for instance has nearly doubled gold’s performance year to date, with the commodity up 12.5 percent. Gasoline prices are up 12.19 percent, and soybean prices are up 12.35 percent year-to-date (per Index Mundi).

Weinberg argues that gold doesn’t behave like commodities such as oil and grains because it’s not. In his words, it’s a currency, and there are a lot of factors that are colluding to drive down gold as a currency. Specifically, Weinberg cites three things:

• The Fed is signaling QE3 is less and less likely
• The global economy is showing early signs of a recovery
• The dollar is strengthening as other economies pump more cash into their systems

Still, Weinberg remains “structurally bullish” on gold.

“I’m staying bullish on the longer-term and believe that the negative real interest rates, the inflation fears, and longer-term concerns about the economy are likely to keep the prices, the long-term trend intact and the prices are likely to reach another all-time high by year-end.”

The market’s overly optimistic on the state of the economy, Weinberg argues. But we’re not out of the woods yet, and that fact should start hitting home come mid-summer. When it does, gold prices will once again power higher.

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Gold and silver have officially entered the pre-summer doldrums. And that’s got some investors wondering if the decade-long bull market in precious metals is coming to a close. In fact, it looks like the metal’s going through a much-needed consolidation period that probably has a few more months to play out. Here’s why:

1) The consolidation could last 15 months. Gold’s run from $900 to $1,900 an ounce was a largely uninterrupted 25-month sprint, and that means we should expect a consolidation. In fact, this current consolidation hasn’t been long enough based on gold price corrections in the past, according to Jordan Roy-Byrne, the proprietor of Trendsman Research.

“This 25-month advance has been followed by an 8-month correction,” Roy-Byrne writes. “Using Fibonacci retracements implies a ‘time’ correction of 9.5 months, 12.5 months or 15.5 months. This indicates that Gold should correct (in terms of time) for at least few more months.”

2) Gold speculators are on holiday. “Open interest (for COMEX gold) stands at 1,284.9 tonnes – a new 12-month low,” Standard Bank wrote in its Commodities Daily report on April 23, 2012. “ETFs are still net sellers of gold, with 2.2 tonnes sold over the past week. However, the modest nature of the selling is once again a sign that ETFs do not have a particularly bearish view either.”

It’s almost as if gold investors aren’t bullish or bearish. They’re just plain apathetic right now. And that will probably continue until we get a catalyst for a big move up or down (see our post Say hello to the catalysts that could push gold prices up overnight for more).

3) Fears of recession linger. The disappointing GDP numbers released last week didn’t make investors want to run out and buy precious metals. In fact, the general consensus is that things are going to get worse before they get better. If that’s the case, commodities (including oil, precious metals and base metals) will likely suffer in the short-term, then rocket higher before the recession starts to lift or Bernanke announces a new round of quantitative easing.

“Virtually all commodities made a sharp correction in the 2008 selloff,” writes Robert Hallberg at Seeking Alpha. “Oil and silver were hit the worst and even gold made a sharp downturn. But by the time we were out of the recession gold had already made new highs and silver [was] back to where it started while oil was still down.”

4) Gold aiming for $1,500s? The current gold price correction is “shaking out every weak-handed holder possible,” Paul Schatz, president of Heritage Capital, tells Money News. “But I think it’s going to bottom some time this quarter.”

Schatz sees prices dipping into the $1,500s, before starting a fresh climb – one that could see gold prices break $2,000 an ounce. If that’s the case, look for more pain before we start seeing profits in gold.

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