Dollar Breaks Down; NovaGold Breaks Out

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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The U.S. dollar had a serious technical breakdown last night. The trade-weighted dollar traded as low as 75.44 in the pre-market this morning, well below important support at 76.00. Almost every currency on earth is rising against the greenback in a global orgy of dollar dumping. Behind the scenes buying efforts of central banks to prop up the U.S. currency have failed so far. They have yet to bring out the big guns, although they have little ammunition to put in them if they do. Even under the best of circumstances holding up a collapsing currency is like trying to stop a tsunami.

Gold and silver have become the collateral damage of the central bank efforts, but this is only evident in U.S. trading. Gold hit another record high last night in Hong Kong, selling for over $1070 at one point. It traded in the mid $1050s in early New York trading. Silver hit $18.09 in Hong Kong, another yearly high, but was $17.71 shortly after U.S markets opened. You can expect the battle for gold and silver pricing will eventually be won in Asia.

The best performing mining stock in North America yesterday was NovaGold (NG). This has been the favorite mining stock of the New York Investing meetup for a few months now and members have been encouraged to accumulate it at $4 and under this summer. Nova closed at $6.02, a new yearly high, yesterday and broke out of the handle of a cup and handle formation. While earnings were released yesterday, current income is not the relevant factor in NovaGold's stock price. It owns probably the biggest untapped gold deposit in the world. This asset only becomes more valuable as the price of gold goes up. The bears have been trashing Nova all the way from its recent low around $3.30 to the current $6.00 price telling everyone to sell the stock. Expect them to come out of the woodwork now that the breakout has taken place and they are really getting killed in their short positions.

The falling dollar is helping to prop up other commodities (all of which are priced in U.S.dollars). Light sweet crude oil almost hit $74 this morning and looks like it might finally reach an important Fibonacci retracement around $77. Seasonal weakness is likely to restrain oil prices this fall and early winter however. There may be more follow through today in the big rally in grains that started Monday (GRU is the ETF for this investment). There should be a pull back within the next couple of weeks or so that provides another entry point however. Long term bonds were also selling off this morning and interest rates rising. Double short ETF TBT, which rallied strongly off a bottom last Thursday and Friday should be watched. Holding a country's paper assets when its currency is declining is never a good idea.

NEXT: The Dollar, the Fed, Housing and the Economy

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.