This rally isn’t quite ready to quit yet. And it looks like a test of  1120 on the Standard & Poor’s 500 is still in the cards. (See my post https://jubakpicks.com/2009/09/21/is-1120-the-next-big-test-for-the-sp-500/ .)
In my overnight post I said watch today’s action to see if the sectors that have led this market upward–commodities, materials, financials, and industrials–would be able to reverse their retreat on Monday. If they couldn’t and the market saw continued rotation into cheaper, safer, and weaker sectors such as biotechs and healthcare, I thought it would be a sign that the rally was exhausted.
Well, no worries for at least another day.
 Following the lead of Asian markets that moved up after the Asian Development Bank raised its forecast for growth in Asia–excluding Japan–to 3.9% in 2009 on faster than expected growth in China, India, and Indonesia, the U.S. markets stormed ahead with everything from retail to oil stocks rising.
The underlying driver for global stock markets as a whole is the same today as it’s been for weeks: A sinking U.S. dollar.
The dollar fell again today on the news on faster growth out of Asia–if those economies are going to grow faster than the U.S. economy why invest in safe U.S. Treasuries?–and that led to a rally in commodities such as oil that are denominated in dollars.
To give you an idea of how optimistic the stock market is Macy’s (M)Â is up 6.6% for the day as I write this at 2 p.m. (ET) on an upgrade from Citigroup (C).
Hi Jim would now be a good time to get in FSUMF?
“The underlying driver for global stock markets as a whole is the same today as it’s been for weeks: A sinking U.S. dollar.” Weeks? Aside from a brief reversal from 8/08 to 3/09, when things were so bad even the dollar seemed better, the dollar’s been sinking since at least 2002. It may not have been driving global stock markets as much as has been the case more recently, but it’s certainly been a wind at the back of foriegn investments.