Euroland crisis: I posted my target for the Euro in 2010 (1.15-1.25) back in December when the Euro was near 1.50. It seemed far fetched.
Now that we are at 1.38 2 months later, it doesn't sound quite so outlandish. Morgan Stanley was correctly bearish at the time, and now dropped their target to $1.24 from $1.32. They feel that the Euro is overvalued by 19%. An overvalued currency in the midst of a crisis. The Euro is currently oversold and could bounce at any time, but I believe we'll see 1.30-1.32 pretty soon. The Euroland crisis was discussed further last month and now, the PIIGS are in freefall and have contaminated risk taking and destroyed the US dollar carry trade.
This is in my investment outlook for 2010 (not posted) and will be part of the unravelling of the USD carry/reflation trade of 2009. Currently, I see the S&P bottoming around 990-1020 over the next few weeks before bouncing a little. The real bear action will likely take place later in spring. I believe S&P 666 is going to fall in the second half of 2010, with new highs in the US dollar index.
What does Greece have to do with the Dow? Nothing per se, but the whole world has too much debt (much of it US dollar denominated) and is long risky assets (emerging markets, commodities, stocks). Greece's coming default/restructuring hurts risk appetites and is hurting the Euro and strengthening the US dollar. Since there are too many people with US debt, the rising value of the US dollar hurts those long risky assets. They sell the assets to pay off debt. Mr. Margin doing his magic after taking 2009 off....
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