By: Christopher Lewis

The central banks of Switzerland, Canada, Japan, the United States, England, and the Euro Zone have all stepped into the markets by lowering swap rates for Dollars on Wednesday. The US dollar is by far the most important currency for international transactions, and the move was seen as an attempt to ease the credit lines for EU based banks in order to avoid another Lehman Brothers incident that was so damaging in 2008.

The initial reaction was to sell the Dollar, and buy all riskier assets. However, it is still far too early to determine if we are actually going to rally in the risk category, or if we are simply seeing a short-covering rally at this point. There are many questions left to be solved in the EU, and although this particular move doesn’t solve the debt issues, it does help keep the specter of a bank not being able to get funding away for the time being. Ultimately though, Europe has a solvency problem, not a liquidity one.

Some of the possible clues that are showing up in the markets are as follows:

The EUR/USD pair slammed into the 1.35 level, and has pulled back after not being able to get above this crucial resistance area for the bulls to take complete control.

The Light Sweet Crude markets rose to $102, but pulled back, failing to make a new high.

The EUR/CHF is sitting at the lows for the week, which is very counterintuitive to a “risk on” move.

Gold is up huge for the day. “Risk On” or “Safety Trade?”

AUD/USD testing the 1.03 level, which is the 50% Fibonacci retracement from the massive drop recently.

All of the points above suggest that the move higher in risk could run into potential problems. All of these points are things that we will be watching until the market decides which side of these markers it wants to be on.