Wednesday, June 9, 2010

"Seven Reasons to Love the Euro" (FSLR; TSL)

EUR/USD is at 1.2017.
On Monday we posted "Ready for a Positive Euro Surprise?" with the euro at 1.1917, having bounced off 1.1877. The EUR/USD price was one of the reasons we said FSLR would bottom after the Hapoalim sell reiteration on Tuesday. The stock was at $102.86 and traded down to $100.19. It is currently changing hands at $106.08.
Time will tell if we nailed the immediate-term turn in both the euro and FSLR.
Here's MarketBeat:
With black eyes and a few teeth missing, the euro clawed its way back over the $1.20 barrier Wednesday morning.
With the nearly unilateral beating the currency has taken over the last few months — the common currency is down 16% year-to-day — it’s nice to see somebody stick up for the currency, which Brown Brothers Harriman currency analyst Audrey Childe-Freeman does in a note Wednesday entitled “Seven Constructive Remarks About the Euro.” Here they are, in somewhat abridged form:
  • A weaker euro is good news for the euro zone economy: The benefits of a weaker euro are already feeding through the data, in Germany in particular. This is well captured by surging net exports (the cumulative German trade surplus to April 2010 stands at Eur51bn which compares to a Eur37bn at the same time last year), with strong positive spill-over effects on industrial orders and industrial production.
  • Debt Crisis has been an incentive to address long-term structural problems in the euro zone: Euro zone structural problems are hardly news and we would argue that if it was not for the crisis, those issues would never have been addressed – as they are politically highly unpopular and usually associated to social unrest. In aftermath of the Greek, we would argue that countries such as Spain, Italy or Portugal undertook a series of fiscal tightening measures that would otherwise probably not have been considered.
  • Euro zone a step ahead vs the US when it comes to addressing debt problems: While the euro zone is being pushed into fiscal consolidation and into addressing the huge debt burdens, the US is doing little in this domain. This is clearly not a dollar concern at this point, but it could prove more of a bearish force for the greenback later in the cycle.
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