Friday, February 29, 2008

After Brief Strength Stocks Become Volatile

After remaining strong for some trading sessions, stocks again are showing weakness with large volatile moves. Hedge funds and other very high networth individuals are focussing on commodity trading, thus newer highs for major commodities. U.S. Dollar has again become weak against major basket of currencies, it's trading at 104 against the japanese Yen, and is very close to technical level of 100 mark. Crude oil continues to boil and is trading comfortably at U.S.$103 per barrel mark. This volatility in major currencies is leading to overall turbulance in global financial markets. However, some stock markets like Brazil, Pakistan are at their old heighs, and is amusing to many market players. This majot shift of tremendous money flow to commodity markets is making equities very volatile and causing inflation in slowing global growth. There is now a debate raging on in financial cirles about Stagflation where economic growth slows down but inflation continues to rise along with job losses. It's not difficult to guess as commodity prices refuse to come down and central banks refuse to stop printing money and hence demand for these commodities remains as usual. U.S. central bank must limit the amount of money it can print, otherwise value of that currency will continue to plunge and commodities which are dollar denominated will continue to remain firm. This uncertainity will not be going anytime soon and this will cause stocks and commodity prices to remain volatile.