Archive for the ‘US Dollar’ Category

In April, I declared that the dollar would rally when QE2 ended. That date – June 30 – is now only a few weeks away, which means it won’t be long before we know whether I was right. Meanwhile, the dollar is close to pre-credit crisis levels on a composite basis, [...]

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “Currency Correlations Lose Their Way for Now.” My response: It depends on which currencies you’re looking at. I, too, recently posted about the break-down of multi-year correlations, specifically involving the Australian Dollar and the New Zealand Dollar. However, one has [...]

Well over two years have passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the accompanying climax of the credit crisis. Most economies have emerged from recession, stocks have recovered, credit markets are strong, and commodities prices are well on their way to new record highs. And yet, even the most cursory scanning of headlines reveals [...]

Forex traders have very suddenly tilted their collective focus towards interest rate differentials. Given that the Dollar is once again in a state of free fall, it seems the consensus is that the Fed will be the last among the majors to hike rates. As I’ll explain below, however, there are a number of reasons [...]

While analysts have been busy dissecting the implications of the natural disasters that ravage(d) Japan for forex markets, the focus has naturally been directed towards the Yen. Given all the rumors about the liquidation of foreign (i.e. Dollar-denominated) assets, it’s also worth examining the potential impact on the Dollar. In a nutshell, Japan’s holdings of [...]

Last week, the Obama Administration released its fiscal 2012 budget to much fanfare. Unfortunately, the budget makes only a token effort to address the rising National debt, and forecasts a budget deficit of $1.1 Trillion. While the release of the budget failed to make a splash in currency markets, traders [...]

According to Standard Life Investments, the US Dollar will be one of the top currencies in 2011. (The other currency they cited was the British Pound). How can we understand this notion in the context of record high gold prices and commentary pieces with titles such as “Timing the Inevitable Decline of the U.S. Dollar?”
The [...]

As one strategist recently put it, we seem to be witnessing Deja Vu in the forex markets. The US Dollar in general, and the USD/EUR currency pair in particular, are behaving exactly the same as one year ago: “The greenback rose back then…on a combination of strong U.S. November jobs numbers…and the triple downgrades of [...]

The Dollar is Crashing! The Dollar is Crashing! Such is the perennial claim of doomsday predictors, conspiracy theorists, gold bugs, etc. Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I often come to the defense of the Dollar. Given that it has risen by more than 5% over the last month and is [...]

It sounds like a play on words, based on the Karate Kid refrain, Wax-On Wax Off, and for all I know it was. Still, I rather like this characterization – coined by a research team at HSBC – of the markets‘ current performance. Moreover, you’ll notice from the placement of that apostrophe that I’m not [...]
