A big theme for me this year has been the US Dollar and how it will impact stocks as an asset class. The thought process coming into 2019 was simple. The Dollar had rallied throughout 2018 to reach some pretty critical levels. The idea was that if the Dollar was going to rip right through there, it was more than likely happening in an environment where investors would be fleeing to safety. That’s the type of market where stocks are selling off. The opposite of that argument was that if the Dollar was not breaking out, that stocks would likely be doing well, both in the U.S. and more importantly globally.

Fast forward to today, almost 1/3 of the way done with the year, and stock have performed very well. In fact, as Piper Jaffray’s Craig Johnson mentioned in this week’s podcast, stocks have had an incredible entire year already, just a few months in. Look what the US Dollar Index has done during this period: Nothing. [Read more…]