Ford Motor (NYSE: F) hit a new 52 week high today of 9.14 before afternoon profit taking came in and pushed shares lower. The stock has been very strong lately, and recently was considered to be the stock of the year from the writers of CrossingWallStreet. Shares finished the day down slightly at $8.94, down 0.45%.

Technology giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) also rose to a new 52 week high today. Shares of the company hit a day today of $30.14. Shares of MSFT finished today trading session up 0.4% to $30.11, just three pennies off its new 52 week high.

Gold prices continue to rise, and Yamaha Gold (NYSE: AUY) has been benefiting from the recent gold rush, setting a new 52 week high earlier in the session at 13.49. After hitting another new high today, the profit takers came in and sold the stock off a bit, which ended the day slightly lower at $13.15, down 0.23%. Gold prices rose as high as 1146.5 but closed down 70 cents to 1,140.5.

What are your favorite stocks right now? Which stocks do you see rising to new highs in the near future?

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.

According to the Labor Department, inflation moved up 0.2% in April, which was slightly under the 0.3% inflation in March. Analysts had been expecting to see inflation rise by 0.3% again in April.

If you exclude food and energy costs, then you are left with a core inflation, which was really well behaved in April, only rising by 0.1% during the month. Analysts had been expecting to see core inflation growth of 0.2% for the month.

While it is good to see that inflation is not rising as rapidly as some had thought, you have to take into account the current run up in oil prices. With oil trading up close to $127 a barrel, inflation could be getting ready to really jump. Analysts are warning that the current record high oil prices have still not be felt at the consumer level yet, and their impact could be rather dramatic.

Looking at inflation for the year, overall inflation is now running at an annual rate of 3%, compared with the 4.1%  increase that we saw in all of 2007. The Federal Reserve, which has been slashing interest rates lately in an attempt to fight off a recession, has signaled that it would more than likely pause the rate cuts in order to fight off any unwanted inflation in the months to come. The next time the Fed meets will be the third week in June, and dont expect the April numbers to lead them to change their stance and cut rates. I am sure that everyone is still waiting for the other shoe to drop on the recent run up in energy prices.

You can find a pretty nice graph of CPI inflation since 2000 over on economistblog

There are a lot of reasons to believe that oil prices will continue to move higher, and according to Goldman Sachs, we could easily see prices move as high as $200 a barrel over the next two years.

The market was already trading higher today, but once the new analysis from Goldman came out, prices spiked even higher. Oil traded up as high as $122.73, and is currently trading at $121.89, up $ 1.92. At the current price, we have witnessed oil moving up pretty close to 100% over the past twelve months from the $62 a barrel it was trading at this time last year.

The US Department of Energy has also raised its estimate for the average cost of a barrel of oil this year. The EIA is now predicting that oil will average $110 a barrel in 2008, $9 higher than its previous estimate.

It’s always easier to grasp how much something is moving by seeing it visually, so let’s close with a current graph of oil prices…. as you can see, it’s been quite an impressive couple of months:

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:

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?

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.