Overnight U-Turns

Welcome back from the long Thanksgiving holiday, which was spent eating and then watching Bitcoin soar toward what seems to be a now-inevitable crossing of a $10,000 value. I was reading last night about the poor chap who accidentally threw away his hard drive with 750 bitcoins on it. That’s about $75 million now. So if you think YOU are having a bad day……

Anyway, just a few intraday charts: the US dollar is weakening against the Yen. Perhaps faith that the (completely stupid) tax reform is going to pass is starting to wane. Apparently this is a crucial week for the tax bill (sort of like all the “crucial weeks” we had for the health care bill earlier this year, which went down completely in flames). Again, stupid bill. I hope it fails.

Of more direct interest to me is crude oil. It’s a “big week” here too, since OPEC is doing their twice-yearly shindig, and by Wednesday it should be clear what kind of agreement is in place. Oil has had a spectacular run, climbing about 50% to nearly sixty dollars, but it’s starting to edge away from those peaks. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a shock to the downside this week.

Because of the dollar’s weakness, gold bugs are finally gettinga break, and maybe we’ve got a little basing pattern going on. What would really send gold bugs into a happy frenzy would be if the tax bill does go the way of the health care bill (e.g. Trump fail-a-thon). We shall see!