- The dollar gets sent to the woodshed
- Gold & Silver are back!
Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Not that this is a sports page, but my beloved Cardinals won 3-0 last night over the Mets… Day game today, but I’m in no condition to go downtown… I told you that I’ve been having with short breath… It seems to get better and then relapses over and over again… I see my oncologist first next week, and then the heart doctor, so we’ll get to the bottom of this soon… The Patti Smith group greets me this morning with their song: Because The Night
Well, maybe a dollar bug or two read the Pfennig yesterday and saw all the things stacked up against the dollar and they quit buying dollars yesterday… The BBDXY lost 7 index points, quite a big move in one day, but the dollar was deserving of it… The euro is back above 1.15, and the Chinese renminbi was allowed to go to a 6.88 handle VS the dollar. It might take us some time to get back to the 1,888 the BBDXY was before the PPT came in and rescued the dollar from falling further… But in my humble opinion, the dollar will return to that level and sink even further going forward…
Gold & Silver had good days… It’s interesting to me that is, that when the metals rally, all the pundits out there start printing articles about how Gold is going to the moon… Now, it may, and they’ll look like geniuses… But, again in my humble opinion, I said at the beginning of the year that while I suspected Gold to continue going higher in 2026, certainly not with the OOMPH that it held in 2025… So, more higher moves, but at a slower pace…. that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Ahhh, yes, did I tell you that my first wife was a young Elizabeth Taylor? HA!
The great John Lovitz on SNL many moons ago, when the show was actually funny… I took that last line from a skit John used to play about the habitual liar….
Ok, Oil did some aerobics yesterday… first up, then down, and finally back to where it started the day… You see the POTUS said some soothing words for the markets, but in the end the Oil traders didn’t believe him and began to markup Oil again… Oil ended the day trading with a $102 handle.
The 10-year saw some more buying… The Fed Heads must really be serious about this bond buying, because the 10-year lost some yield yesterday and ended the day trading with a 4.30% yield.
In the overnight markets last night… it was as if the currency traders woke up from a dream and said, “What the hell are we doing buying dollars?” The dollar is getting taken to the woodshed, and rightly so, in my opinion… The BBDXY has lost 6 index points overnight.. That makes 12 index points the dollar has lost since Monday… The POTUS said yesterday that the U.S. will bring everyone home in 2-3 weeks… Really? Are we going to swallow that bait hook, line and sinker like we always do? Oh, well, it’s not for me to question the POTUS, on the war, but for other pundits… But these words have taken the “safe haven” status from the dollar and we’re back to the underlying weak dollar trend… It seemed like forever that the dollar was rallying, but in reality, it was just about 10 days…
Gold is kicking tail this morning and taking names later. Gold is up $86 to start our day, and has climbed past the $4,700 level again… Silver is trying to participate in Gold’s rally, and is up 42-cents… This is really as if currency and metals traders woke from a horrible dream and had a come to Jesus event and realized what hell they had done and are in the process of correcting it….
The price of Oil has dropped $4 overnight… I guess if the war ends in 2-3 weeks but wait! There was no mention of the Strait of Hormuz opening to anything that isn’t paying renminbi for Oil… (China) So, why is the price of Oil dropping? I guess the euphoria of a war ending overtook everyone’s psyche and caused them to make rash decisions… Oh well, it is what it is…
The bond traders have acquiesced to the Fed Heads… I didn’t think I would ever see the day the bond boys cowered but we have now… the yield on the 10—year has dropped to trade with a 4.28% yield, and the Fed Heads and the yield control are winning…
Well, the selling of bonds wasn’t just the bond boys, telling the Fed that they were behind the eight ball regarding inflation… Foreign Central Banks were also the culprit… here’s the FT.com with their take on that thought: “Foreign central banks have slashed their holdings of Treasuries at the New York Federal Reserve to the lowest level since 2012, as countries sell the U.S. government bonds to prop up their economies and currencies in the wake of the Iran war.
The value of Treasuries held in custody at the New York Fed by official institutions — a group that is largely made up of central banks but also includes governments and international institutions — has dropped by $82 billion since February 25…to $2.7 trillion, according to Fed data.”
Chuck again… So? What happened to that selling? Have Foreign Central Banks decided that the war is over, and they can come out from their hiding places now? I doubt it… But it sure looks like that, as the yields on the bond curve have dropped…
In yesterday’s Pfennig I reminisced about how I used to have to take the bus 25 miles to downtown St. Louis, to my job… They weren’t good memories for sure! But I was referring to my thought that the price of gas was turning the Average Joe away from the gas pump and he would have to resort to taking the bus! Well, in relation to that thought I found this from Reuters, “Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned the economic shocks of the war in the Middle East would be felt for months and encouraged citizens to take public transport.”
Hey! A government official that agrees with me! It’s the new me, I guess… NOT!
And in my comments about not questioning the POTUS’s war comments, I found this article that got my mind thinking of China taking over the world… check it out: “Beijing and Islamabad issued a joint 5-point peace initiative to “restore peace and stability” in the region, according to statements by Pakistan’s and China’s foreign ministries on social media.” I wonder if Iran will ignore this peace plan like they did the US.’s plan? Oh well, I guess we’ll see, eh? But I have to question China’s involvement…
The U.S. Empire is dying… I’ll just state that and move along because that would require a lot of words typed that I don’t have space for… But think about it… the dying began in the year 2,000…
The currencies have gotten out of their sick beds again, and hopefully this is the last time they have to visit the sick ward, at least for the next couple of years… The euro is back above the 1.16 handle, and the rest of the currencies are following the Big Dog euro, off the porch to chase the dollar down the street… Shoot Rudy, even the Japanese yen has rallied away from the 160 level… And the Chinese renminbi is getting marked stronger VS the dollar again… Yes, the dollar has returned to the underlying weak trend… the dollar’s fate is not a ONE-WAY Street, it will have times like the last 10 days when it rallies, but we need to keep in mind that the dollar is in an underlying weak trend, and it will get back o it in time… So, your diversification with currencies and metals is doing just fine….
The U.S. Data Cupboard finally has some real economic data for us today… First up is the ADP Employment Report for March… Then a delayed Retail Sales print for Feb… The BHI indicates to me that this will be an OK month, not good, not bad… And finally, the ISM Manufacturing Data will print for March and it will show that Manufacturing is healing… I don’t know how, but it’ll be a better report than previous ones… I feel it in my bones…
To recap… Chuck thinks that maybe a dollar bug or two read is Pfennig yesterday where he dissed the dollar big time because the BBDXY lost 7 index points yesterday… The currencies have peeked out from under their covers but still aren’t ready to get out of their respective sick beds… The POTUS had some more comforting words for us yesterday, and yet the bombing continues… And the Fed Heads are really serious about this yield control plan that they have…
For What it’s Worth… I have a special treat for you today… I’ve quoted stuff that Dave Gonigam has said in his 5 Bullets newsletter previously, but this time I’m brining you one of his 5 Bullets from yesterday, and you can find it here: Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets
Or, here’s your snippet:”Fed chief Jerome Powell has begun his farewell tour by saying everything that happens from here on is NOT. HIS. FAULT.
From the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal…
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Monday the central bank is inclined to hold rates steady and look past the energy shock from the war in Iran but cautioned that it might not be able to sit on the sidelines if rising prices shift the public’s expectations about inflation over time.
Powell, speaking to students at Harvard University, laid out the textbook case for patience: Energy disruptions tend to be short-lived, and monetary policy works too slowly to counteract them in real-time. He added a critical caveat, however, by noting how five years of above-target inflation made it harder to assume the public would simply shrug off another round of rising prices.
“You can have a series of these supply shocks and that can lead the public generally — businesses, price setters, households — to start expecting higher inflation over time. Why wouldn’t they?” Powell said.
On the one hand, Powell is right. Monetary policy can’t offset rising energy prices. It’s that old saying about how the Fed can’t print barrels of oil.
But c’mon. It’s plain as day. Powell is using the Iran war as cover to slough off responsibility for every boneheaded decision on his watch for the last eight years — decisions you’re living with right now.
Powell has about six weeks left as Fed chair — maybe more if there’s a struggle in Congress over the nomination of his successor.
Time flies: The narrative surrounding Powell when he ascended to the chairmanship in 2018 was that he’d be different from his predecessors.
Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke? They were haunted by the 1930s and the Great Depression — which is why they printed money to a fare-thee-well and kept short-term interest rates pinned near zero for seven years once the 2008 financial crisis reached critical mass.
You wanted safe, reliable income in T-bills or CDs? Go pound sand they said — we’ve got to do a solid for our cronies on Wall Street.
Powell, we were told, was haunted instead by the inflation of the 1970s. He’d be a more responsible steward of monetary policy.
Powell raised short-term interest rates in baby steps for the first several months of his term — until Wall Street threw a hissy fit at the end of 2018, sending the S&P 500 down 20%.
And that was the end of his first rate-raising cycle. It went down in history as the “Powell pivot.”
He started cutting rates a few months later. Then he started printing money anew in the fall of 2019 amid a crisis in financial instruments called repos, or repurchase agreements.
Once more the Fed was riding to the rescue — fixing a crisis made on Wall Street, at the expense of everyday Americans.
Coming barely a decade after the 2008 bank bailouts, there was real potential for a torches-and-pitchforks moment — until COVID conveniently came along.
The Fed could bail out the system once more — this time with the excuse of You don’t want a financial collapse on top of a pandemic, do you?”
Chuck Again… yes, you get his newsletter when you sign up for one of the Printing companies’ newsletters… That’s the only way you can get it… So, what are you waiting for? Dave gives us professionally done analysis of what’s going on related to the markets that I don’t think you can get anywhere else! Oh, and Dave referred to the Fed/ Cabal/Cartel chairman as “Pontus Pilate Powell”…
Market Prices 4/1/2026: American Style: A$ .6959, kiwi .5776, C$ .7197, euro 1.1606, sterling 1.3319, Swiss $1.2627. European Style: rand 16.7749, krone 9.6588, SEK 9.3874, forint 329.29, zloty 3.6884, koruna 21.1216, RUB 80.23, yen 158.41, sing 1.2816, HKD 7.8376, INR 94.57, China 6.8749, peso 17.86, BRL 5.1805, BBDXY 1210, Dollar Index 99.45, Oil $98.63, 10-year 4.28%, Silver $75.42, Platinum $1,993.00, Palladium $1,514.00, Copper $5.61, and Gold… $4,756
That’s it for today… And welcome to April.., It’s April Fool’s Day… I used to do elaborate set ups for April Fool’s Day, but no longer do that… The weather for the last two days has been warm, but that’s going to start changing today, and by Easter Sunday it will only be in the 50’s… UGH! Rain off and on today, so no outside reading for me! Big day for college basketball on Saturday… I’m trying to lose the extra weight I put on while in Florida, and it’s very difficult… but I’ll do it! My PCP doctor told me at my last visit that I needed to stop dieting and losing weight… So when I see him later this month, I’ll tell him it was his fault! HA! The Guess Who take us to the finish line today with their great 70’s song: Undun… I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler