With crude oil prices down 25 percent for 2018, and with major OPEC producers struggling to find ways to charge more for it, this may be a good time to examine an old relationship: oil and gold. What does it tell us about future price movements?

For years, crude oil gurus have argued that Arab oil traders think in terms of gold (not American dollars, German marks, British pounds or other currencies) when pricing their product. In short, we can forget about exchange rates and inflation risk, it’s a commodity-for-commodity market.