G'day opm2010, Imo and this is my view only, I think you have to...

G'day opm2010, Imo and this is my view only, I think you have to ignore "Some" economists and commentators out there and do the research yourself.These guys never seem to get anything right.When things go up they get on board and say how wonderful things are and when the reverse happens then you here the doom and gloom preaching.Now the main drivers for a specific currency is the health/status of there economy.Interest rates,jobs,retail figures,trade balance,gdp e.t.c. are good examples of currency direction when the numbers are released. Basically speaking Economic number releases daily/weekly will give you more insight as to the current status of and focus on the actual number and see how much that deviates from the forecast number.Example if non farm forecast is 100k and the actual is 200k with no prior revisions and unemployment rate remains the same then this is considered stronger for the u.s meaning eur/jpy, gbp/jpy , usd/jpy will rally.Same goes for aud employment numbers; if the actual job numbers are stronger than the forecast number by lets say 15k and unemployment rate drops by 0.1 or 0.2 then this is considered bullish for the aussie dollar and one will witness a rally on say the 2nd Thursday of the Month at 11:30am when the jobs report gets released.This is where the pros get out there news trading auto clickers and beat the brokers by a few seconds.

Anyhow main thing here is to do the research yourself and try and picture where you think the u.s economy is headed say 5- 10 years out from now. If you are bullish then buy the u.s dollar but if you are bearish like myself then buy commodities i.e silver and gold which will trade much higher in the coming years.The bull in commodities has at least another 10-15 years to go yet.

cheers and good luck.