11/17/2007

No one wants the dollar


In sentiment term the most hated currency currently is Dollar. Look at this news from India. Why now, why not three years ago. Now everyone gets it. Trends are your friend till sentiments reach extreme.

By Jyotsna Singh
BBC News, Delhi

Foreign tourists to many of India's most famous landmarks will no longer be able to pay the entrance fee in dollars, the government says.

The ruling is aimed at safeguarding tourism revenues following the recent falls in the dollar.

Until now, foreign tourists to sites such at the Taj Mahal have had the option of paying in dollars or rupees.

4 comments:

Chris Beanie said...

FSLR is the monster of monster stocks. Believe it!

qt said...

Even OPEC is discussing the possibility of dropping the dollar as the sole pricing standard, and Saudi Arabia is worried about even mentioning the dollar weakness for fear of worsening the fall.

How does this signal a bottom again?

Pradeep Bonde said...

That is why it is a bottom. If these people were so smart why did they not do it 3 or 5 years ago. When Ahmadinejad and Chavez start trashing dollar , all the smart speculator understand it is no time to be short. Over next 4-6 month you will see a rally. Last time the Economist had a cover story titled Disappearing dollar in 2004, the dollar spent next one and half years going up.
That is how sentiment indicators work.

qt said...

So who is not an idiot then? Only the bullish contrarians as a group?

I recall a short number of months back when the national realtors association and others (interested parties of course) were calling for a bottom in the housing and credit troubles, which at the time seemed very contrarian. But the bad news keeps coming.

How can you tell that any contrarian advice is certain? I don't care if it's Iran and Venezuela bashing the dollar, I only care if that issue begins to be picked up on broadly and countries and international organizations do begin to drop the dollar.

Saudia Arabia didn't want to discuss the topic of a basket of currencies at first because they were worried that even bringing up such a topic might weaken the dollar even more. That doesn't sound like much confidence at all, which means they are likely looking into alternatives behind the scenes to free themselves from such dangers.

Smart people called a top in the market in 2000 but the NASDAQ went up quite a bit more past that before finally turning around. Why are bullish contrarian indicators supposed to be nearly instantaneous whereas bearing contrarian indicators might lag by a matter of years? Is this because the natural momentum of the market (as a whole) is upward? But if this is true of the market as a whole, Why should one believe this is true of specific subsegments of the market, especially ones such as the dollar which has very specific and new challenges and issues?