Friday, October 17, 2008

U.S. Dollar Continues as Safe-Haven Choice

With many gold funds needing cash, along with ongoing deleveraging, the U.S. dollar continues to be the refuge of choice for many jittery investors.

With the dollar and the yen basically mirroring the movement of the equities market, they have been the cheif beneficiaries of current market conditions.

The yen is still playing its customary role of measuring risk, and the dollar is moving pretty closely in step, playing a similar role as well.

For the yen, when stocks strengthen - investors sell, when stocks plummet, they're quickly buying the Japanese currency.

The yen continues to be pressured because risk-adverse investors are abandoning carry trades at this time; that has helped the U.S. dollar hold its strength. It'll continue to be difficult to guage risk while the market seesaws back and forth.

Those currencies which will be most negatively impacted by the continuing strength of the dollar will be the British pound and euro.

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