Does any takeover, or economic news in the market really even matter anymore? Today, Microsoft Corp.(NASDAQ:MSFT) bought Skype for $8.5 billion. The stock market does not care about that deal. The stock market only cares about the U.S. Dollar Index. If the U.S. Dollar Index dips or declines the major stock indexes will trade higher and vice versa. Nothing else even matters at this point. Wall Street simply wants to know if the inflation rally is still on or is it off.
Last Friday, the government reported a much better than expected job report. The major stock indexes soared higher after the announcement. However, once the U.S. Dollar Index traded higher that rally faded throughout the day and the major stock indexes barely closed higher on the day. The Wall Street computer algorithms are programed to trade inverse to the U.S. Dollar Index. Often the major stock indexes will trade inverse to the U.S. Dollar Index tick for tick. The same type of action can be seen this morning and it is not yet 10:00 am EST right now.
Everything inflates higher when the U.S. Dollar Index trades lower. The entire stock market rally from March 2009 has been on a weaker U.S. Dollar Index. In fact, the only corrections that the stock market has seen have been when the U.S. Dollar Index rallied higher. Oil, gold, silver, copper, coffee, cotton, gasoline, and almost every commodity except natural gas have benefited from a weaker U.S. Dollar Index.
The problems in Europe do not seem to be going away anytime soon. Greece is looking to possibly leave the European Union if they do not get more favorable borrowing terms. The problem is that if Greece does get new borrowing terms countries such as Ireland, and Portugal will also look to get more favorable lending terms. This is just another domino effect that will take place in the European Union. Should all of this transpire in Europe over the next few months then the U.S. Dollar Index could actually trade higher. Hence, when the dollar is higher the inflation rally over.
It will be very interesting to see how the central banks are going to handle this situation. Obviously, they will need to keep the U.S. Dollar Index down at all costs in order to keep asset prices inflating higher. Right now the CME continues to increase margin rates on many of the leading commodities in order to keep these prices from climbing. We shall see how they try and accomplish this task in the coming months.
Nicholas Santiago
InTheMoneyStocks.com
