Maybe it’s just too hard to focus on hard data. Maybe the lazy in the world like to talk a good game and get their panties in a bunch over opinions (in the FOMC minutes) that we’re all familiar with by now. 

Every day, fundamentals analysts are called upon to divine the future. So, a theory has to be found for almost everything. Drought? Gold rises. No, wait: drought plus wildfire? Gold falls. It can get a little silly.

However, there are some cyclical movers of markets that border on technical forces but aren’t, of course.

We’re watching crude oil prices, especially West Texas Intermediate, as we head into the middle part of August because in a secondhand way it will be the deciding factor in whether the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in September.

WTI and Brent North Sea were both down on the day and week. Today, though, Brent took the brunt of the punishment, losing almost ½ of a percent.

The China seas calmed themselves today, basically on talk from the People’s Bank Of China.

Summers Are For Roller Coasters – Welcome To The One Called China

After taking a tremendous beating today, the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ slipped back up to near even by the close. The plunge was precipitated by shakiness in oil, but as crude stabilized, U.S. equities recovered.

Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.

• Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911

No doubt everyone one is familiar with today’s yuan devaluation by China, the one big inescapable driver in all markets – except in Shanghai equities.

We open the week with a peek into the world of crude oil, which, as everyone knows by now has been falling precipitously. Right now, both benchmark prices – West Texas Intermediate and Brent North Sea – find themselves at the center of a tussle between ferocious long-term bears and a kind of cult that keeps repeating the mantra that the price of crude will “re-balance” itself.

After rising today following the U.S. Department of Labor’s employment report for July, the U.S. dollar weakened as afternoon trading wore on. It was a kind of Goldilocks report, not too hot, not too cold, just about right. Therefore, markets are finding it difficult to find meaning in it.

Everyone is hoping that tomorrow’s July employment report from the U.S. Department of Labor clarifies the mixed bag of data we’ve seen much of this week and last. Projections are for 223,000 new jobs to have been added, although today Goldman Sachs upped its own estimates from 215,000 to 225,000.

The heavyweight champ – the dollar – was up, it was down, it was back up, no, it’s back down.

Gold struggled into positive territory on and off throughout the day, but as the afternoon waned and the dollar slipped back to just about even, the yellow precious metal suffered.