What an Interesting Week it Was

Earlier this morning, Google forced this blog to transition from "Old Blogger" to "New Blogger". There were no major problems until now. For some reason, the old method of editing the .html to get the full size version of an image in the main panel is no longer effective - now you have to click on it to get the bigger, less-fuzzy version that would have fit in the main panel.

That's progress.

Anyway, it was an interesting week for hard assets and the dollar. Thanks to some cold weather, kidnappings in Nigeria, and an announcement that the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve was being doubled, crude oil rose a dollar or so.
The oil companies did well up until that nasty sell off in equities on Wednesday.
Gold tested $650 and retreated. One more test, another retreat, and then ...
The gold miners fared much better than last week.
And the dollar looks strong - for a little while at least.
This just about reverses the losses experienced by commodity investors during the first week of the year. That's the way it usually works - steady gains followed by a brutal sell off - rinse, lather and repeat - you end up with a larger portfolio and shiny hair after a few cycles.

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UPDATE - January 27th, 9:30 AM:

Better images are now available - hosted at the website. Bloggers days are probably numbered here - they've done things to simplify usage for the masses (understandable), but in the process, have made things much more difficult here.