Gold stretched higher early Thursday afternoon, with futures prices briefly touching $1,060 an ounce. The conventional wisdom on Wall Street is that gold's run higher is fueled by some alchemy of inflation concerns and dollar worries.

Bond traders don't buy the inflation side of the argument. They point to the low yields on the 10-year Treasury note -- which have been below 3.2% -- as one reason why. These yields have been moving lower since early August. Bond yields fall as bond prices rise. So investors have been buying...