Market News

What’s the story? Is bad news priced into the markets? More specifically, is the crummy potential for first quarter US earnings season priced into markets?

Now that gold has slipped below seeming near-term chart support at $893; is the next level at 858 in the cards?

A new world order has emerged. Well, Mr. Gordon Brown said so!

Rumors around the G-20 so far seem to be leaning towards positive. No doubt, expectations had been set very low. Not surprising to us, for several reasons. Among them …

This isn’t kung-fu fighting, but it could get a little bit frightening – for the US dollar in the least. China seems to be indulging in another kind of kung-fu fighting in a new cold war style, while trying to assert, its new found economic dominance, into the world order.

A reader sent an email the other day asking us if we could stop being so depressing in Currency Currents. I told him we’d try.

Thomas Griffith was quoted as saying, “The news is staged, anticipated, reported, analyzed until all interest is wrung from it and abandoned for some new novelty.”

We expected a major G‐20 bust, and thank goodness it is shaping up to be so. We say that not because we want global economic failure, but because we believed this idea that throwing more money at our problems was only a recipe

Does today’s price action foreshadow things to come after the G-20 meeting? Or is it another chance to sell the dollar again at a higher price?

Referencing the Quotable section above, I wonder what “thought leadership” really means. When I hear such a term used to describe any government body my instincts tell me it can’t mean anything positive, regardless of its intent.

“Analysts expressed hopes that the Chinese government’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus spending package would eventually ease the downturn, which has hammered Asian economies that are heavily reliant on exports for growth,”

I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United Currency of the World, and to the International Monetary Fund, for which it stands, one Money, more powerful than dollars, indivisible, stealing economic advantages and liberty from all.

We all know that the US dollar has traditionally served as a world reserve currency as also a hedge in times of economic uncertainty. For China, the US dollar has also served as a major investment destination in the form of US treasuries.

-verb (used without object) 1. to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course: The stream meandered through the valley. 2. to wander aimlessly; ramble: The talk meandered on.

The gold bugs are smelling blood. The new global currency crowd is out in full. And of course, just like that, we should all give up our sovereignty to some global policy committee so they can determine monetary policy for all.

The global economic crisis, which battered investor confidence across the board, seems to have led to overpricing of the dollar, when in reality it was not backed by sound economic fundamentals.

Growing economic risk in Japan, reflected in the plunge in the Nikkei 225 stock index, seems to be finally hurting instead of helping the Japanese yen.

The World Bank’s latest projections suggest that the global economy is all set to shrink in 2009, with major economies registering negative growth. Earlier it was expected that the global economy may register marginal growth, but the impact of the unexpected contraction in the Japanese economy seems to be leading to a situation, where the overall picture for the global economy is emerging to be gloomier.

Ebb and flow from risk appetite to risk aversion still seems the key driver.

Australia – a country made famous to the United States thanks to Outback Steakhouse, Foster’s beer and the Crocodile Hunter…and of course, The Black Swan.