Last week most risk assets sold of on the prospects of QE withdrawal following strong job numbers out of the U.S. Here's how things shaped up:
The S & P 500 was down well over 1%
Gold was down close to 1%
Oil was down close to 10%
Copper was up about 2.5%
Emerging markets were down close to 3%
The clear winner was the dollar which surged nearly 2%
If markets were really bothered about inflation, gold and oil would be going through the roof instead they have absolutely collapsed over the past year:
In addition the flight to quality trade that surfaced during the recession of 2008 into the dollar seems to have emerged with a vengeance:
While one may want to brush aside the emergence of deflation which has already started to surface in recent PPI and CPI numbers, let's not forget what it did to Japan since the early 90's. Despite the all out war to contain deflation in Japan interest rates are still negative and the stock market which has rallied off late is still down over 50% from the highs it set in 1989.
