Archive for the ‘Dollar’ Category

Oil hits $130 on weak U.S. dollar

Posted by Michael on May 21st, 2008

Oil prices have continued to move higher today, hitting a new record high of $130.47 as investors continue to push prices higher in reaction to the slumping American dollar.

Last week it had started to look as though the dollar was making a comeback, but that has changed, and now the dollar is once again dropping, and as a result oil prices are moving into new territory. The euro is moving higher, and is now sitting above $1.5750 in Asian trading.

To put things more in perspective as far as just how strong oil prices have been moving lately… today is the 11th time in the last 13 trading sessions that oil has hit an all time high, or record high closing price… or both.

The bottom line is that, unfortunately, if you were hoping to see some relief in your gasoline prices, don’t hold your breath. The way oil is moving we could be looking back at $4 gasoline as the “cheap days”. Let’s hope that is not the case.

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Posted in Bad News, Consumer Experience, Dollar, Energy, New Highs, Oil No Comments »

Economy is slow, but still growing

Posted by Michael on April 30th, 2008

With all the concerns that we have been hearing about a possible recession this year, it was good to see that the U.S. economy did grow during the first quarter, even if it was just bit a small amount.

According to a report from the Commerce Department today, the economy grew at 0.6% during the first quarter of the year. That is the same growth that we saw in the last quarter of 2007. While the news could have been better, it definitely could have been a lot worse. Many analysts were expecting to see growth slow to 0.5%, or even possibly lower.

We have been hearing rumblings for the past year about the looming recession on the horizon, and many thought that this would be the quarter that we saw economic growth fall into negative territory, and now there are already analysts coming out and predicting that the current second quarter will definitely see such an event. Let’s hope they are wrong once more, but the writing is definitely on the wall… but then again it has been for some time now too.

Soaring energy prices, and the continuing credit crunch that has gripped a large part of the country will continue to apply pressue to consumers. Will we get some relief in the months to come? Only time will tell. Currently oil is trading at $114, so prices would still have a long way to fall before we got back into any sort of “cheap oil” environment.

So, it could have been a lot worse. At least we are seeing growth, just really really slow growth. We will see just how today’s report impacts the expected rate cut from the Federal Reserve later today.

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Posted in Consumer Experience, Dollar, Economy, Federal Reserve, Good News, Oil, Recession No Comments »

Oil prices jump on this week’s inventory report

Posted by Michael on April 9th, 2008

Oil prices have continued their recent surge following this week’s inventory report from the Energy Department. Oil has jumped $2.65 to $111.15, and are very close to hitting its historic all time high of $111.80. Prices moved up as high as $111.43 immediately following today’s report.

The market had been pretty flat for most of this morning, in anticipation of today’s report. What we have seen is a drop of oil inventories of 3.2 million barrels, and a decline of gasoline inventories of 3.4 million barrels. What is weighing the most of the market is the gasoline inventories, as the nation is already dealing with record high gasoline prices, that are only predicted to go up even higher as we progress into the heavy demand summer driving months.

While the nation is dealing with the record high gasoline prices, it is expected that for the first time in 20 years, Americans will actually demand less gasoline this summer. This is definitely being viewed as a direct result of just how high prices have hit lately.

For a better illustration of just how strong oil prices have been lately, let’s close by taking a current look at an oil graph:

oil chart

So what are your thoughts? Are you going to let current gasoline prices impact your summer travel plans? Or will you continue to pay the high prices in order to keep your vacation plans alive?

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Posted in Consumer Experience, Dollar, Energy, Forecasts, New Highs, Oil, Recession No Comments »

Interesting articles to check out

Posted by Michael on April 6th, 2008

I have decided that starting this weekend I will start using Sunday’s as a day to post some interesting blogs I run across online. Since I just decided this this weekend, the posts for today will be mostly articles over the past day or two, but starting next week I will begin collecting articles through the course of the week so I can list articles from the whole week.

Here are a couple of nice blog entries worth reading:

  1. A good article on adding money to your savings by paying yourself first and then living on what is left
  2. Article on the problems of high priced stocks
  3. I often hear investing compared with gambling. An interesting comparison between investing and gambling
  4. Learn to save, before you start to invest

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Posted in Consumer Experience, Dollar, Economy, Investment Strategies, Trading No Comments »

Gasoline prices set new high

Posted by Michael on April 4th, 2008

gasoline pumpGasoline prices moved up overnight to set a new record high last night… the second record high in as many days.

According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded has now reached record levels of $3.303 for a gallon.

The current price of gasoline has been rising in reaction to the recent run up of oil prices and the weak dollar, and resulted in a 22% jump year over year in prices at the pump.

The highest averaging states are California and Hawaii, both of which have average prices above the $3.60 mark.

For a full write up on the current situation, you can read my article on record high gasoline prices over on BloggingStocks.

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Posted in Consumer Experience, Dollar, Economy, Energy, Major Moves, Market Updates, New Highs, Oil 4 Comments »
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