For some time now Russia, along China and few other countries, have been publicly questioning the role of US Dollar as its role as a reserve currency.  As a matter of fact, this is going to be debated in Moscow this week, during a meeting of financial authorities for some of world’s leading exporters. Our largest creditors expressed concern over fiscal sustainability of the US in light of increasing borrowing. 
Much to everybody’s surprise, a little different story emerged from a G8 meeting over the weekend. Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, made an interesting statement. According to him Russia has confidence US Dollar is a good shape and has no intention to overdiversify away from USD. Quite a change from the rhetoric’s of last few months, but very typical of Russia. I’m sure the story will change, perhaps as early as before the weekend. Mr Kudrin also said there was no alternative to the US dollar as a reserve currency. Hard to keep it straight.
If this is not confusing enough, the Treasury Department  released figures of foreign purchases of U.S. financial assets. Net acquisitions of stocks, notes and bonds obtained by foreigners fell to $11.2 billion in April. In March they reached $55.4 billion. This is a steep decline, and flies in the face of assurance from Russia about the “confidence” in US. No wonder people trading news are running around like chicken with their heads cut off, not knowing what to do. One can go nuts trying to figure this mess out.
Remarks by Russian minister are largely seen as reason behind a good day by USD. More importantly to me, Yen also became much stronger, which validated my closing of GBP-JPY on Friday. Good feeling. Now, I’ll have to see if this complex is going move even lower. For that I’m choosing CAD-JPY.

I expect support at 86 area. With this in mind, two sell orders are placed. If the price moves sharply up, I’d like to sell it 88.50. Chances of that happening are fairly small, but any lower wouldn’t give a good S/L. Once the price develops a little more, 87.30 might be better. Second sell order is not strictly defined yet. Bounce in price is needed first. At that time sell order will be placed just under the low. This pair has a potential to fall under 84.00, or about 200 pips from sell point.
Price swings were large today, which also created additional set ups I’m looking for.

NZD-CHF looks to be in a process of making an intermediate term top. Well, could be just a congestion zone, but it points to lower prices. I placed a sell order at 0.6860. This is hourly chart, so my target must be in line with price swings on this magnitude time frame. It is modest 70 pips.
Aussie had a seriously bad day. It will probably continue for most of the week. I’ll expect trades on a short side there in next few days.

Mike K.