Studying the charts and trading action in the US dollar has provided some thoughts and observations. (full disclosure, I spent a brief period in FX sales and trading at a major NY bank in the mid nineties.)  While I normally don’t spend a lot of time or effort following the dollar and other currencies, I have been reviewing the charts, more recently, since I posted about it back in October having said it had topped and would be heading lower from there. The dollar will experience a “death cross”(50 day mvg. avg crossing below the 200 day) either later this week or early next. I normally don’t put  too much emphasis on the death and golden crosses, as I recently explained when mentioning that silver was about to have a golden cross last week. The one place where they are more meaningful, is in currency trading. In markets like futures trading of precious metals, and even stocks, short term trading is more easily manipulated, even if you can’t buck the long term fundamentals of a commodity or particular equity. In the case of currencies, (the largest and deepest markets of all, especially the US dollar) it is virtually impossible to manipulate. That is why in checking back on past death crosses for the US dollar over a handfull of years, I noticed that after a death cross the dollar almost always continues lower for at least another 3-6 months. The declines can be modest but most often are fairly significant. Bounces sometimes occur along the way but the trend is clearly down for at least that additional quarter or two. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the dollar moves related to gold and silver, as I recently mentioned they are only a concern when entering or exiting a trade, but having a weaker dollar over the next three to six months should be an additional tailwind to the expected rise in gold and silver prices.