Crunch time for the euro. We are about to give up the ghost for the embattled security. It is right where it has teetered before two other times, and at the very moment of max despair, which we are bordering on, Germany let it be known that there are plans and that no one should panic.
This time I don't know. We just had a meeting, and it looks like we got the good news of bank safety nets, but because we have nothing new for sovereign debt, you need to have some way to buy that debt without losing on the currency, so it is easy to see why you would sell the euro and buy, say, some Italian paper and get a nice return, if you could somehow limit the loss if the euro went up.
I think that's a trade that is being put on, now that we know that the sovereigns have no backstop.
I look at this mess of a market today, and I marvel that here we are again, with the buyers who were frantic about owning shares on Friday disappearing today.
It is a reminder of how fickle the market is and how you have to find non-fickle stocks, the same ones I have pounded again and again -- yield-producing alternatives to cash or tech or banks -- if you want to get through this period intact if not up.
