By Evaldo Albuquerque

The dollar has been rallying for the last few days. But can it last? Have we seen the bottom of the dollar decline? A look at the forces behind this recent dollar strength can give us some insight.

The rally started last Friday right after the much better than expected unemployment numbers. Traders started to speculate that the Fed would raise rates much sooner than expected. So that was very bullish news for the dollar.

By Ashish Advani

If you get your trading tips from the President, then we have every reason to be confident about the economy.

According to the most recent news, President Obama is cautiously optimistic about the latest job numbers we all heard on Friday.

As a country, we only lost 11,000 jobs. Granted, we’re still losing jobs. But we all clearly remember what it was like earlier this year when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month.

By Ashish Advani

Panic! Calm Down! Panic! Calm Down…..

Even after two decades in the markets, I am still beginning to get a whiplash keeping up with the gyrations of the stock markets these days.

We have seen the markets go through bouts of doubt, then optimism, then anxiety attacks…and back to optimism again.

By Evaldo Albuquerque

The British pound, like many other currencies, has been appreciating against the battered dollar lately. However, UK and U.S. share a lot of the same problems, especially regarding the levels of public debt.

Granted, UK’s economy has shown some signs of improvement, especially in the housing market. Besides that, the labor market has stabilized and manufacturing activity has picked up.

By Evaldo Albuquerque

The latest data on manufacturing activity, released yesterday morning, fell to levels lower than expected. But who cares, right? As long as the numbers are printing above the 50 boom/bust level, we’re ok. At least, that’s the way the market is interpreting that piece of data.

But what if that manufacturing recovery doesn’t last too long? I think the likelihood of that happening is quite high. A look back on how companies reacted to the crisis may help us understand why.

By Sean Hyman

You may have heard John Paulson’s name before.

Paulson is the now legendary hedge fund manager who shorted the subprime markets, when he correctly predicted the decline of the U.S. housing market.

His personal cut from his hedge fund at the time was $2.8 billion! Now hedge fund mangers only make 2% upfront and 20% of their profits, so you can imagine how well his hedge fund performed if his personal cut was that large.

By Ashish Advani

Just two short weeks ago, I wrote to you to tell you about the biggest purchase of gold in the history of mankind…

In case you missed it, India’s Reserve Bank (RBI) had just bought 200 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To give you some perspective on how much 200 tons really is, imagine 45 full-grown elephants balancing on a scale. That would just equal the amount of gold that India bought two weeks ago. 

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