The drumbeat of dollar bears has grown louder in recent months, with some of my colleagues suggesting that a collapse is imminent. Technically speaking, I’m just not seeing it. The Dollar Index has in fact been one of the world’s most boring trades for the last three years and is currently thrashing around near 80, about where it was ten years ago. In the intervening decade, although there have been some big swings, it has crossed trendlessly up and down through 80, the approximate midpoint of a 20-point range, no fewer than 15 times. If I had to bet which direction the next, presumably insignificant, move will be, I’d give 6-5 odds that it will be up.
Don’t’ get me wrong: I completely agree with those who tirelessly assert that the dollar is crap. Even so, it is the crap the world chooses to hoard against the threat of financial collapse; it is the crap that financiers bet on whenever some geopolitical crisis causes a global tremor; and it is the crap that the paper shufflers bet with — to the tune of a quadrillion dollars — whenever they want to make big money with relatively little work. These factors greatly outweigh any reservations they may have about taking dollars in exchange for all of the things that Americans consume. Crap or not, the dollar will remain buoyant until the day the rest of the world realizes the U.S. economy is kaput and that the confidence that supports the financial shell-game was egregiously misplaced. This will happen with the swift, destructive force of a nuclear blast, by the way, rather than via a comfortable and more or less predictable process of depletion. _______ UPDATE (March 2, 9:56 p.m. EST): The dollar has bounced precisely from the 79.68 target shown (see inset), but if the support gets taken out within the next couple of days it would be evidence of further weakness to come. _______ UPDATE (March 17): The downside target has gotten schmeissed. Expect a test of the watershed low at 79.00 recorded back in October, but if it fails, this vehicle will fall to at least 77.81 in search of traction.