Although we wrote up Tuesday's ballistic rally as little more than a meaningless gusher of mass hysteria, most of it short-covering, we were still surprised at how quickly it receded back into near-nothingness. Nearly two-thirds of the Dow Industrials' gains vanished with yesterday's 293-point decline, providing fresh evidence that investors are not nearly so ebullient as the nightly news commentators would have us believe. However, it was not the cascade in stocks that deserves comment, but rather the across-the-board selloff in commodity markets. Gold was down $58, ending a six-day winning streak that took quotes above $1000 for the first time, and the price of a barrel of crude fell by nearly 5%, to $104.48. Some of the agricultural contracts were limit-down, retracing parabolic spikes at the same steep pitch as the rallies that had created them. Some saw the collapse in commodities as signaling a reversal of the dollar's long slide. If so, we lack the imagination to see how this trend could persist for more than a few days. Someone in the Rick's Picks chat room mentioned that he'd never seen sentiment swing so heavily against any investable as it has against the dollar. We wouldn't argue otherwise, since it is true that the dollar has few friends in the world right now, and almost no one expects it to turn around any time soon. But there are good reasons for its pariah status, and they seem likely to persist for the foreseeable future. We note that 'Helicopter Ben' Bernanke has lived up to his nickname, and nothing he has said or done in the last six months would suggest that the value of the dollar is much of a concern to officialdom. Treasury's Paulson mentioned the need for a strong dollar in a speech he gave the
LATEST TRADES
