Fed move leaves yen as last safe haven standing
The Japanese yen soared 2% Monday after the Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates and add $700 billion to its balance sheet by buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. The dollar was down 0.66% Monday against the DXY Spot Index, a basket...
Buying this yen ETF for Jubak Picks to hedge market risk–and maybe gain 5% or so
Earlier today in a post “One consequence of change in Fed policy likely to be a weaker dollar” I noted that a number of Wall Street and big international banks have forecast a drop in the dollar as a result of the Fed’s decision to back off on...
One consequence of the change in Fed policy likely to be a weaker dollar
A number of Wall Street and big international banks are forecasting a drop in the dollar as a result of the Fed’s decision to back off on raising interest rates in 2019. Morgan Stanley, for example, says that the dollar has peaked and has forecast the yen...
Adding yen exposure to Jubak Picks and Volatility Portfolios
On December 27 I switched to the Invesco Currency Shares Japanese Yen ETF (FXY) from the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA) in my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio (on my subscription sites JugglingWithKnives.com and JubakAM.com) in an effort to get more yen exposure...
Dollar falls as President Trump criticizes Federal Reserve policy again
For a second straight day President Donald Trump has tweeted out criticism of the Federal Reserve’s policy decision to raise interest rates. In his tweets today the President wrote: “China, the European Union and others have been manipulating their...
Here we go again on the euro: The bad news is that Italy’s financial crisis is political
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down as much at 505 points today–before rallying to a loss of “just” 391 points or 1.6%–on fears that a crisis in Italy could once again put the entire EuroZone project in danger. Italian stocks were down...
How to manage risk in this market when the traditional risk safe havens aren’t working
If you spend a significant part of your day staring at your computer to watch the markets, you know that, perplexingly, the traditional safe havens for mitigating portfolio risk haven’t been working very well. For example, gold, which is supposed to go up when...
Haven assets in demand after day of heated rhetoric on North Korea and nukes
Not surprisingly haven assets such as gold and the Japanese yen are up today. So are volatility measures such as the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX.) Surprisingly, the rush to safety hasn’t been as strong as you might expect after a day when...
We’ve moved to a risk-off market–for how long?
It’s a classic risk off market today as of 4 p.m. New York time. All the safe havens are up. The yen is ahead 1.2% to 109.65 to the dollar, breaching the 110 level for the first time since November. Gold is 1.73% higher to $1275.60 an ounce. The 10-year U.S....
Dollar climbs on Trump speech; markets bet on more U.S. growth and sooner rather than later interest rate increase
Today, March 1, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index jumped 0.4%. That was a fourth straight daily gain and let the dollar close in on its highest level since January 27. With the dollar climbing, the yen fell 0.8% and the euro dropped 0.3% to $1.055. Yields on the 10-year...
Trump talks down dollar–and U.S. stocks
The U.S. dollar fell today after President-elect Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. currency was too high–in part because China holds down the price of the yuan. On the comments the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was down 1.1% as of noon New...
Funny money in Japan just keeps getting funnier–are you laughing?
The Bank of Japan continues to go where no central bank has gone before. We’re talking “Let’s make it up” territory. The basic problem is that the Bank of Japan’s massive buying of government debt has failed to either raise the inflation...
Pre-holiday move to safety starts a little early
With trading volumes already starting to slip–trading in Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks was running about 25% below its average for this time of day at noon today–traders and investors are locking in some gains and seeking safety for the week...
Traders long U.S. dollars figure there’s another 2% to 3% free money in this trade before the end of the year
Yesterday the dollar rose another 1.2% against the euro to $1.0415, the highest since January 2003. And the US. currency climbed by another 1.4% against the yen. The Dollar Index added to its gain to hit a 15-year high. Today the dollar has backed off a bit. Not...
3 moves for a vulnerable market
If this market is vulnerable, what should I do? I’ve been asked that question repeatedly since I first called this market vulnerable back in my October 11 post “Suddenly U.S. stocks seem vulnerable.” To answer that–the what should I do...
This “vulnerable” market looks to be shifting to a risk off stance
On the surface and if you look only at the market wide indexes, nothing much happened today. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, for example, finished just 0.31% lower–that’s 6.63 points–to 2132.55. But look at which assets and sectors...Japan's yen intervention has failed–which means Japan will intervene again to weaken its currency against the dollar
Now that worked out just swell, didn’t it? Remember way back on September 15 when Japan intervened in the currency markets to drive down the soaring yen. The yen had just stormed through the 83 yen to the dollar level that a number of large Japanese exporters had...It's not just Japan: Brazil is trying to drive down the price of its currency too
Japan isn’t the only country to intervene in the markets in an attempt to drive down the price of its currency. Brazil’s central bank has moved to buy dollars and to sell the Brazilian real repeatedly in the last week. Until it fell on September 20 and 21, Brazil’s...Japan's intervention to drive down the yen is more dangerous than it looks–remember Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression?
It’s starting to feel a little bit like June 1930. And that’s worrying. In that month President Herbert Hoover, despite deep misgivings, signed the Tariff Act of 1930, known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff after its two authors, into law. By raising U.S. tariffs, the act...Can anyone stop the appreciation in the yen? Not the Bank of Japan or the country's government it appears
Talk about a no-win situation: Japan’s central bank is damned if it doesn’t intervene to weaken the yen and quite possibly double-damned if it does. The Japanese yen climbed yesterday, August 31, to 83.92 to the U.S. dollar. That’s near the 15-year high for the...Trouble in Japan and the U.K. add up to a stronger U.S. dollar
Expect the dollar to keep moving higher in the near term. Credit rating worries in Japan and disappointing economic numbers in the United Kingdom pretty much guarantee that the U.S. dollar will continue to gain on the yen and the pound. On January 25 Standard &...And now for something shocking: The dollar and stocks start to move up in tandem
I’m seeing the first signs of a new relationship between stocks and the U.S. dollar. Ever since Lehman Bros went into bankruptcy in the fall of 2008, the dollar and stocks have been negatively connected. When the dollar went up, stocks went down, as investors saw any...A rising dollar stalls all boats (so far)
The rising dollar (and the falling euro and yen) has been enough to stall the emerging economy stock markets that have outperformed the U.S. Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index since this huge rally began on March 9. The “stall” is just that. Emerging economy stock...The yen looks headed to replacing the dollar as the world's weak currency of choice
Trying to figure out whether the dollar is headed up or down over the next six months? That’s not exactly a purely academic exercise since a rising dollar has been linked lately to falling stock and commodity prices and a falling dollar has corresponded to rallies in...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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