As hopes for a more stable and subdued trading day in equities faded, gold leaped ahead to start the week. In late afternoon, gold is up over $16.

In fact, the whole precious metals complex, reflecting not just the appeal of haven buying but an overall interest in metals for profit, is up heartily. Platinum boomed up over 2.00% on the session.

Gold fell back today, based primarily on strength in the U.S. dollar, which on its own pushed the yellow precious metal down 0.70%. Nevertheless, it is on track for a solid weekly gain. Aside from the swaggering greenback, gold was facing headwinds from early up-moves in oil and equities, although as both of those markets soured; gold did not commensurately rise in reaction.

What is the feeling in your financial ear? That’s the dizziness from the swooping, climbing, falling and twisting of oil prices and the effects of those maneuvers on other markets.

One month ago, crude oil closed at 33.35. Today it settled at $32.15. In between those marks, the swing above and below $30 per barrel has been about 10% on either side of the line. It hasn’t budged out of the range. Normally, 10% is a big number. Given the painfully low price of oil, the 10% has been devalued, if not in reality, then psychologically.

Gold rose today by 1.00% (as of 3PM in New York). It was up about $12. Silver was also up but by a smaller percentage, 0.4%.

Oil and equities drove haven plays. Traders were also doing some short covering – emergency surgery to repair Monday’s larger-than-expected drop.

There is a moment when springtime is just about to pop and a beautiful warm day tells you, “Yes, yes… this is it!”

Oil booms, U.S. equities boom, Asian and European stocks also jumped, the dollar strengthens and the world seems right (except for gold’s plunge).

Gold stayed more or less steady as the session and week neared an end. Spot gold was down, but the April futures contract was up. While it’s easy enough to name suspects in today’s maintenance of the status quo in the yellow precious metal’s price, we will cite some real reasons below.

While fundamental analysis is necessarily confined by events (including rumors, fears and passing asteroids), the good news in gold is that it continues to show a life of its own beyond acting as a safe haven.

Gold’s solid, if modest, rise today is significant not only because of technical factors that will be discussed in today’s video, but because the yellow precious metal showed fundamental strength in the face of very strong up-moves in equities and crude oil.

At least for today, equities and the continually gyrating price of crude oil decoupled, leading to similarly unexpected results in other markets. Even the two benchmark oils couldn’t get on the same page.

At 3PM in New York, West Texas Intermediate has fallen about 1.40% while Brent North Sea is down 3.50%. The price of natural gas has fallen 3.00%.