Oil rose above $44 a barrel on Friday, after sinking 4 percent in the previous session, gaining support from a weaker dollar and a meeting of OPEC later this month.

In the currency market, the dollar rose slightly against the euro. Late Tuesday, the euro was trading at $1.2560 vs. $1.2565 on Monday.

T.G.I.M (Thank goodness it’s March). Unfortunately, that’s what investors were saying when they closed the books on January and times have only gotten worse.

Gold terms record highs in sterling terms, Indian futures… SPDR Gold (GLD) Trust sees near 5 percent inflow…

Microsft Corp. (MSFT) and Intel Corp. (INTC) yesterday (Thursday) announced they will cut up to 11,000 jobs and could no longer give quarterly forecasts with global economic uncertainly, after the two tech giants announced declines in the final three months of 2008.

It is important that we understand that the stock market is not the economy. Even people who are not investors tend to make this mistake. It’s easier to make that mistake if you’re personally invested. On the surface, however, it’s obvious that economies don’t change as dramatically as the market does. Paper losses can be painful, but they don’t translate directly into the destruction of real assets.

U.S. retail sales fell 2.7% last month and will likely continue on a downward trend as job losses mount.  Total retail sales dropped to a seasonally adjusted 343.2 billion last month, the Commerce Department reported. That’s a decrease of 2.7% from the previous month and 9.8% decline from December 2007.

Retail Jobs are cut in December! …  Dollar rallies on renewed Trading Theme…  Looking for the Obama bounce…  High yielders get sold… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that an analysis of his stimulus proposal found that the capital infusion could save or create as many as 4 million U.S. jobs by 2010, nearly 90% of them in the private sector.