In a week when most assets turned in excellent performances, bitcoin once again outshone all others. The only things that lost ground this week were mining stocks and silver.
Currencies were all higher, led by bitcoin, which added an astounding 24.6% to close at 520.7 mg, within spitting distance of its all-time high of 598 mg. In fact, in all of bitcoin's history, there are only 3 days on which it was traded at higher levels.
Filed under Bitcoin, Bonds, Coffee, Commodities, Cotton, Dow Jones Industrials, EUR, Euro, Platinum, Real Estate, S&P 500, Silver, Stocks, US Dollar by
Recently, I got a great question about compound interest. Everyone is taught the power of compounding… Usually the story goes something like "If you invested $1,000 in 1900 at 5% compound interest, it would be worth $236,000 today!".
Filed under Banking, Bonds, Interest Rates, US Dollar by
Bitcoin continued to rocket upward this week, with long term treasuries a distant second place. Coffee and the Nikkei Index were the biggest losers.
Government issued currencies were mixed, with the Yen down 2.6% and the Euro down 0.5%, while the Canadian Dollar rose 0.5% and the US Dollar was unchanged. In contrast, the free market currency, Bitcoin, gained 8.2% to close at 418 mg. The BTC is up 62% in the last month.
This was a good week for everything but gold stocks and coffee.
All the currencies were higher, led by the free market Bitcoin, which continued its near vertical ascent, adding 8.1% to last week's 9.1% rise, closing at 312.2 mg. The Euro was the strongest of the government issued currencies, up 1.8% while the CAD was weakest, up only 0.2% – now at parity with the USD at 18.7 mg. More on the USD below. The Japanese Yen closed up 1.7% at 0.210 mg, hovering near its all-time low of 0.205 mg, set the weekend before. Look for more weakness here as the Japanese government printing presses begin to run overtime.
More on Market Update 25 Jan 2013 – Everything Up but Gold Stocks
Stocks, bonds, and currencies (other than Bitcoin) were weaker this week, while commodities, with the exception of copper, were higher.
Among the government issued currencies, the Japanese Yen was weakest, falling 2.8%, while the Euro was the "least weak", declining only 0.3%. The US Dollar ended 2012 right at its 200 day moving-average, pushed above it in early January – reaching 18.9 mg on Jan 7th, 10.1% above the half-life predicted value – and has since retreated, ending this week at 18.4 mg, down 1.2%, and sitting 7.8% above the half-life curve forecast.
This was a volatile week, but most of the volatility was to the upside.
Among the currencies, the EUR was strongest, rising 4% to close at 24.9 mg. The USD was second, up 2.7%, closely followed by BTC, which gained 2.4%. The laggard was the JPY, which still managed a respectable 1.8% gain. More comments on the USD later in this post.
More on Market Update 21 Dec 2012 – Get ready to sell the USD
Filed under Bitcoin, Bonds, Coffee, Commodities, Cotton, Dow Jones Industrials, EUR, Euro, Real Estate, Silver, Stocks, US Dollar by
This week's largest price swings were in the commodities, with coffee the biggest loser, falling 3% and setting another new all-time low, and cotton the biggest winner, up 4.3% to close at 13.8 mg/lb. Crude oil continued to rise this week, up 1.2% to 1.59 g/bbl, while silver continued its decline, dropping 0.7% to close at 0.596 g/oz.
Most assets were higher again this week, with bitcoin leading the way. Silver, gold stocks and crude oil were the only exceptions.
Currencies were all higher, but bitcoin was in a league of its own, rising 7.8% to 244 mg. The Euro was in second place, gaining 2% to close at 23.8 mg. The weakest of the bunch was the Japanese Yen, which still rose a respectable 1.1%.
This was a good week for most asset classes, with currencies and bonds all higher, stocks mixed, and commodities all higher except for coffee, which made a new all-time low of 26.3 mg/lb on Tuesday, but rallied to finish the week down 0.3% at 26.7 mg/lb.
More on Market Update 16 Nov 2012 – Bitcoin up, Gold Stocks down
Since 2001, the US Dollar has lost half of its value every 4 years. Of course, its actual value dithers about, sometimes more than this theoretical value and sometimes less, but as you can see from the chart below, it tracks very close to this decay line. The chart below also projects this line into the future, giving a reasonable guess at what the continuation of the last decade's policies will do to the USD's value in gold terms.
Filed under US Dollar by
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.