In case you’re wondering why it was that airline stocks went boom today — the reason was the usual suspect. That reason was the rise in the price of oil.

Today the price of a barrel of crude picked up a cool 2.19, closing at 95.46.

By the way, anyone looked at the price of platinum lately? Hey, maybe some of you were thinking of giving something made of platinum to your sweetie for Valentine’s Day. So my question to you would be — did you buy it? Conversely, if you had been expecting something made of platinum at the bottom of your box of Godivas, did you get it?

The reason I ask this is because the price of an ounce of platinum closed at a whopping 2012.00 today. Gold, meanwhile, closed at 911.00. New record for platinum. Gold hit its high in January at 927.10.

Every time I look at the price of gold, I keep thinking about the car driver in Phoenix I used to use to pick me up at the airport — he was originally from New York and a little over three years ago he and I had a big discussion about gold. He told me he had decided it was time to buy some. He told me he was going to shed some of his stocks and buy about $30K of gold stocks.

I hope he did. It was priced around $375 an ounce at the time.