Greeks and Gifts

Greece, the craddle of civilization, now has an immense impact on world financial events, far beyond its economic contribution. The fear is that the Greeks will not be bearing any gifts to their government and voting "yes" in the referendum, if it takes place, risking an implosion of Euroland.

The issue at the moment is uncertainty. While I learned at school that "nature abhors a vacuum", it's a fact that the stock market abhors uncertainty. The bigger uncertainty is: what is a safe store of wealth in today's world? Is my bank safe? Is my broker safe? Is holding the Euro safe? What about dollars?

My conclusion at the moment is a bit of a cop out. I am hedged half into Euros and half into U.S. dollars. If the world comes to an end financially, perhaps the U.S. is most able to cope, so dollars are a must at the moment even though the dollar has been devaluing hugely since 1971 when the U.S. went off the gold standard. We all should have known what was to come. Germany went off the gold standard in 1914 and it was not all that long before it took a truckload of deutschemarks to buy a loaf of bread.

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It was a great day in both the DAX and the Euro. Both these markets get blown about by the events. Here's the Euro trades in the middle of the day. Finishing earlier today as I'm heading to the airport to collect Mrs EL.