The slight recovery of the USD has been accompanied by a couple of other interesting trends: falling gold and oil prices, and rising equity and bond prices. What is the connection here? With regard to gold and commodity prices, the prevailing theory was previously that high prices were caused not by supply issues, but rather by the Fed’s easy monetary policy, which was stoking the embers of inflation. The recent rise of the Dollar has poked a broad hole in this theory, because of the simultaneous fall in prices for certain commodities, namely gold. This has led some analysts to conclude that commodity prices are fluctuating irrespective of the Dollar.

With regard to oil, there does exist a 95% correlation between the price of oil and the EUR/USD exchange rate. However, it now appears that strong oil had been driving the weak Dollar, and not vice versa. The Dollar is also deriving some impetus from a rally in equity and bond markets, which have outperformed their European rivals.  Bond yields remain lower in the US, but with the stabilization of the Dollar, perhaps foreign investors will be convinced that the US is the least risky place to invest during the global economic downturn.

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