Stuff That Interests Me

Stock markets have taken quite a tumble this past week or so, and there has been a great deal of noise about the end of the tech bubble. Even with some 70%-plus corrections, many tech companies’ valuations remain extraordinarily high. What seems to have gone rather less reported is the extraordinary battering that metals have taken too. Whether base or precious, ferrous or platinum group, Russia-centric or dispersed, they have been walloped. The reason? Their nemesis has risen…The US dollar is the most important price in the worldWe have have been fretting about the US dollar for some time now. A year ago in June, over at Moneyweek, we wrote that “everything hinges on the direction of the dollar” and then in November we warned investors to “beware - the most important price in the world is rising”.We were worried, first, it would rise and then that it was rising. Well, talk about risen.The US dollar has been, of late, doing its best impersonation of