As goes January so goes the year...this just might be accurate for 2009.  The stock market indices struggled to a 8% loss, the worst January ever. Commodities weren't much better but many held their year end level.  Oil and Natural Gas continued to slide down 10% and 25% respectively. Gold rallied 5%, and the grains were down slightly. The collective wisdom now is divided as to whether we are headed for a Spring rout to new lows in the market as the huge task of stopping unemployment from going to 10%, or halting the death spiral in the housing market, can actually happen.  Obama's administration suffered a big setback when he allowed the stimulus bill to show up as anything but an excessive wasteful spending bill that would hardly create anything like the 4 million jobs he has promised.  Many were surprised by this since his rhetoric had indicated a carefully crafted plan that would be hugely stimulative.  The stock market and currency markets spotted this immediately and we saw a hard S&P 500 sell-off and the dollar rallied strongly as investors try to wait out the pain in dollars.  The commodity world is perhaps a little too correlated to stocks right now but over the next few months I expect that to change. Gold remains a good place for money as interest rates are very low and as a store of value remains strong even with a higher dollar. The old highs of 1025 are now within site and I suspect there will be test of those highs within a few months.....that might just coincide with a new low in the stock market if current trends continue. The only hope to avoid a failure of the November lows would be for Obama to re-work his bill into a concentrated effort to help housing, firm up the banking system, stem foreclosures and create jobs......at this moment it doesn't appear that is happening so the January Effect may continue in February and beyond.  With the economy hemorrhaging a half million jobs a month, it doesn't give them much time either, as confidence in government and the banking system is null among investors.