US dollar rallies; stocks and commodities fall sharply


Wow! What a difference a few hours makes. At the beginning of trading today stocks and commodities were steady. Then as the morning wore on, the US dollar strengthened and it all broke loose. Let's look at the numbers: (as of 1:29 EDT)


In past weeks when we've seen these sharp sell offs, the markets jumped back rather smartly in a couple of days. We do know that there were heavy shorts in the US dollar and this may be just short covering. Yet, over in Europe, the German economy is weak and was a factor in the euro's sell off.

It will probably will take the rest of the week to see if the selling persists, or if this just temporary profit taking. In any case, the good news is that the US dollar is rising, keeping pressure on commodity prices, especially oil. The price of gas has risen about 18 cents in the past two weeks and oil traded well above $81.00 per barrel.

The markets often take a breather. Do you believe that this is the start of a bigger decline?

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Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-89.2312,801.23
NASDAQ-23.352,903.88
S&P 500-9.311,342.64

Last updated: February 13, 2012: 02:42 AM

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