After Pressing the Reset Button...

Looking back on the week just concluded, it feels as though somebody hit the reset button on global financial markets last week and now everything is slowly booting up again.

After a shellacking (the new favorite word this week) administered ten days ago, the S&P500 rose about one percent this week while the Dow and the Nasdaq were about flat. The Shanghai Composite Index was up almost four percent and Nikkei ended the week about where it began.

Commodity prices fell back on Friday after rising for much of the week, although related equities did rather well. The "booting" process is not yet complete, it will continue next week - let's hope that no errors are reported.

Oil breached the $62 level for the first time in quite a while, but fell back on Friday after someone said something about the weather getting warmer. Spring will arrive in less than two weeks - maybe someone should look at the calendar. Gasoline prices were firm as other energy prices fell. This is a part of the normal spring ritual - the weather warms, and gas prices rise.


Oil stocks fell about five percent last week and made almost all of that back this week. It's hard to argue with these share prices when the multiples are so low.


G0ld rose one or two percent while silver was flat. All the hard work of the last two months will have to be done again, but somehow, it feels like there will be another "spring fever" this year with precious metal prices.


Gold mining stocks made up only a few percent of the drubbing from last week. Apparently gold prices are going to have to go a lot higher before anyone gets too excited about gold producers - the smaller companies are a completely different story, but actually producing the metal really doesn't seem to be much fun these days.


And the dollar rebounded back up over the 84 mark on the U.S. Dollar Index. No one knows quite what to make of the U.S. Dollar these days, or any other currency for that matter.

Hopefully, Hank Paulson is accomplishing something over there in China. Maybe he's caught on to the trick where prior to each of his visits, the Chinese central bank announces another loosening of the currency band or something like that so they can't be put on the spot during each visit. Maybe the Treasury Secretary figures that he'll just have to visit every six weeks and, over time, the yuan will seek a "proper" level against the dollar.

At least nothing broke this week.