The U.S. dollar and oil share the end of year spotlight but for two very different reasons.

Crude oil, although up modestly today – 50 cents or so per barrel – is down more than $20 per barrel on the year. Oil is in a pricing crisis but it is not in a production or consumption crisis, an interesting turn of events.

With very little else happening to give the equities fundamental direction, crude stepped in and influenced the U.S. and European bourses.

Crude prices were down. West Texas Intermediate and Brent North were both down and are selling for about the same amount per barrel. They are at parity and trading in tandem.

The sell-then-buy effect is in gear as we end the year. Sell your losses hard to take losses that will be reflected in your tax liability come 2016, then immediately buy back your favorites out of the stocks you just sold. Nifty, eh?

Blessed are they who expect nothing during holiday weeks, for they shall not be disappointed.

Excess supply weighed on crude oil prices and that drove West Texas Intermediate down more than 3.30% and Brent North Sea just a touch more. (Brent is still trading below the Texas black gold, by the way.)

It’s no surprise that on this half day of trading before Christmas, U.S. equities barely moved. The biggest change was in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was down a bit more than 0.25%. About the only market trading higher on the day was gold.

Crude oil bounced up today, surprising everyone with its strength. That buoyed U.S. and European equities.

In a not-wholly-unexpected development, Brent North Sea crude and West Texas Intermediate reached effective parity on world markets today.

Nevertheless it comes as a bit of a bucket of cold water in the face. It is one of those moves you can’t quite be psychologically prepared for regardless of your experience level.

November’s Chicago Federal Reserve National Activity Index that had been predicted to rise 0.10 from the downwardly revised earlier figure of -0.17 actually dropped to -0.30.

As we concluded yesterday, now that the Federal Reserve rate hike is in the rearview mirror, analysts and traders have begun to focus on other issues.

Before getting into the meat of our look at today’s fundamentals, we have to observe one more time that karma is a force that often works strange wonders in the universe.