The U.S. dollar edged higher and that helped knock gold down a bit, although moves in the currency and the commodity were modest. The buck moved up on a couple of news items.

Some haven demand today pushed gold higher along with a quietly softer U.S. dollar. In Europe, Ukraine and the terrorists in Iraq and Syria weighed a bit on equities sentiment. We wouldn’t call it a tidal wave but there are some concerns about the world economy, with China leading the worry party.

The U.S. labor market looked provocatively robust today. Indeed, the unemployment rate ticked up 1 tenth of a point to 5.7% but that was largely because more people are re-entering the job market. The labor force actually expanded by 703,000 persons in January, a whopping huge number. The 257,000 new positions created last month couldn’t counter that.

As the dollar and the euro continue to engage in a high-spirited dance, today saw the greenback fall dramatically. This was an indication that the Greek financial predicament “feels” solved. The euro’s rise was also indicative of newfound strength in Germany’s industrial sector. The weighted measure of Germany’ growth in that sector leaped to its highest since 2008.

There’s nothing like scads of excess supply to drive down the price of a commodity. That’s what happened today when it was revealed that there were record stockpiles of crude oil. Consequently, West Texas Intermediate fell around 8%, Brent was down 5.5%, and wagging its tail behind them, natural gas was off by 3.4%. But, wait a minute before you think of buying a gas-guzzler.

While we live in the Age of Anxiety, the Age of Irony, and the Age of Social Media, we also live right now in the Age of Volatility. The markets proved it again today.

The Dow and the S&P 500 bounced up in a lively manner, the former adding 1.6%, the latter, 1.25%. NASDAQ fared only marginally less well. All European exchanges were up and in Asia, only the Nikkei was down.

Gold struggled today even though it was buoyed up by a decline in the U.S. dollar, which, of course accounted for whatever vitality there was in the prices. Without the dollar assist, gold would have been off almost $12.00.

Although we were off the mark in predicting lower GDP growth (we said 3.3% while the reality for Q4 was 2.6% growth), the trend is what counts and clearly Wall Street didn’t like what it read in the latest report. U.S. and all major world averages, except the Nikkei, were off today. U.S. equities were hit the hardest; the big three all were off more than 1%.

A small bit of U.S. greenback strength nicked a dollar off gold today. It was regular trading that stuck a dagger into the precious metals, however.

While waiting for the Fed to speak, it seems almost all sectors of the marketplace were holding their collective breath. The U.S. dollar stayed extremely strong, except against the yen, which seems to have escaped gravity’s pull.

All of gold’s loss today is attributable to dollar strength.