This post is a follow-up from a previous post about Going Long The Dollar. There were some valid arguments for being bullish on the dollar, however, based on yesterday’s economic news, they no longer sound very convincing.

The jobless claims came out and the national unemployment rate is now at 5.5% (and this is after the bogus birth-death model numbers that are used to under-represent the actual unemployment figures).

Oil prices shot up 8.4% to $139/barrrel, marking the highest ever one day gain for oil prices. This occurred after the U.S. dollar nosedived on speculation that the European Central Bank would raise its key lending rate and on worries that a bigger-than-expected spike in unemployment meant the U.S. economy was far weaker than feared.

I actually had taken a small position in RYBSX, but I closed it for a small loss after hearing Friday’s news.

It’s much easier to predict long term trends rather than short-term trends. In the long term, I still think the Dollar is going down, so there’s no point buying RYBSX – might as well just stick to my Australian Currency shares ETF that has done so well for me. I continue to believe that we’re going to see stagflation and have been investing accordingly. I think it commodities like gold and foreign currencies will continue to do well.

I also think it’s much easier to make money on sure things like Countrywide(CFC) and WCI Communities (WCI) going bankrupt. (Disclaimer: even though my direction for the CFC and WCI trades was correct, I was just a few weeks early and still lost money!). I’ve been harboring suspcions about Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac(FRE) going bankrupt. Not wanting to get in to early, I’ve missed the major decline in both stocks, but there seems like theres still a bit of downward movement. Let’s see how that pans out.