The day after a release of somewhat controversial Federal Reserve meeting minutes finds us with markets in reconnoitering mode.

The wait for and the actual release of the Fed minutes from the April FOMC meeting has been steering the ship of finance as of late and definitely throughout today’s sessions. Gold has been particularly sensitive to the fears surrounding the perceived hawkish mood at the Fed.

While we await the Fed minutes – fingernail-biting positions, everyone – we are faced with a boatload of conflicting information, currents and crosscurrents.

As West Texas Intermediate soared 3.25% and Apple finally found its wings again today, equities in the U.S. jumped.

The price of precious metals this week have been on an absolute roller coaster ride, with dynamic upside surges, and substantial price corrections. 

US dollar strength and weakness have been a prevalent factor throughout the week influencing the price of precious metals.

It’s hard to label recent action in markets across the board as volatile. It is more a matter a sort of indecisive approach first by traders in equities, switching then to precious metals, then crude, then currencies, then bonds – round and round and round we go.

Today’s trading is another example of a number of contradictory currents running through markets.

For our purposes, though, the price of gold is of great interest because, as the U.S dollar tumbled, the yellow precious metal profited. It also was helped by a slight change in sentiment in regular trading.

Today’s big movers were crude oil’s two benchmark products, West Texas and Brent.

That gave U.S. equities strong push up, as other materials and components also showed strength. It is too early to call emphatically, but we could be looking at a commodities and materials inspired rally after the bottoming out we witnessed Monday in the sector.

The big news for traders today is that we ran into a plunge in gold and silver prices that caught most people off guard. The regular selling was based on the technical apprehension that gold failed to break through the $1300 mark Friday.

One might have believed that was a distinct possibility because of the weak U.S. jobs number. Alas, it did not occur.

The disappointing jobs report for April issued by the Labor Department today might be just the prescription for stabilizing markets across a broad spectrum.

That statement does not endorse any price-move direction in particular but merely indicates rough waters have become smoothed out to some extent. In fact, the CBOE’s VIX showed volatility decreased by more than 6.00% today.