Gold rode all the way up to $1245 today before profit taking began with a vengeance, driving it modestly down for the day. The dollar, continuing its mad rise, is accounting for all the negativity in the gold price.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell below $46 per barrel today and it scared the pants off equities traders, who now see the plummeting price as a barrier to profits in the sector. Energy stocks account for about 13% of the old-line stock exchanges.

Although in late afternoon gold is off its highs for the day, the yellow precious metal is up nearly 1%. Today, there was no headwind from the dollar; in fact, a lower dollar helped gold gain and keep traction.

The precious metals digested the news gleaned from the FOMC’s minutes and, for most of the morning and into early afternoon, the metals took heart.

Imagine a game of tug of war but with four opposing forces, four ropes and an indecisive referee. That sums up what we experienced today.

The precipitous drop in crude is being factored into the equities markets this afternoon, as we can see after prices in New York bounced off the day’s low. This has profound implications for the bull market we’ve experienced recently. Once the jitters are gone over oil, a more bullish attitude will prevail – for a while, anyway.

Many financial pundits are saying that the nearly catastrophic decline in crude prices is at the heart of today’s steep drop in stocks. That steep drop is, in turn, responsible for a movement into gold, so goes the argument.

The holidays are slouching toward an end and the dollar almighty is ruling the road. The euro was down about 1% against the U.S. currency and, accordingly, oil fell – but even more than that, around 1.3%.

Buyers looking for a bargain helped gold achieve a small gain today, but they were smacked upside the head by the continuing robustness of the dollar.

Today, oil took another licking and gold came along for the ride. The dollar was up strongly once more, except against the British pound. Contradicting the usual expectations, U.S. equities were down, although that might be expected as those who are ready to book their losses do so before the bell tolls on 2014.

You Say Stop And I Say Go Go Go

So, sang the Beatles back in the day. They had a point about contradictory flows of feeling and thought, just as we have now in the precious metals markets.

End-of-year fear came scuttling out of the woodwork today, driving equities down and gold up. Even crude oil found something under its feet other than quicksand today.