Market Recap with USD and Commodities Analysis

Markets were up slightly today after some decent US economic news. Europe still remains in focus though as the EU begins its two day meeting tomorrow to discuss the crisis which few expect anything important to come out of.

(UPDATE: On my ipad at home and just watched a great interview with Barry Ritholtz, stock blogger extraordinaire, on Daily Ticker with Aaron Task discussing the current market. "It's the economy, stupid!" Highly recommend it. link.)

Today's StockCharts.com had a nice chart on the US dollar bumping up against resistance, comparing it to several commodities which traditionally have an inverse relationship. From the post,

If the $USD chart stalled or falls at this level, it should help the commodities or the mineral miners. I don't know if its a new bull market, but if the USD kept falling as it has done 3 previous times at this line, it would be bullish for commodities.

Here's the chart and note ticker WTIC is oil,

Click to enlarge

Alongside this, Bespoke had a great chart of oil inventories which continue to remain high. So much for those record gas prices we all predicted at the beginning of the year. From the post,

Crude oil inventories (from the Department of Energy) for the latest week fell 133K barrels, which was much less than the consensus forecast for a decline of 1.3 million barrels. The chart below updates the current inventories of US crude oil and compares them to the average of the last ten years as well as the average going back to 1984. As shown in the chart, crude oil inventories remain near all-time record highs and are nowhere near where they normally are at this time of year.

Click to enlarge