At the end of the year 2000, we saw the tech bubble about to burst, and it’s almost literally come full-circle in this year.  Possibly the biggest the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same story of 2009 was that AOL went public,  spinning-off from Time Warner officially earlier this month.

One of the most intriguing stories in tech-media is the advent of social networking sites.  I would love to see the statistics on it, but I am sure there is a high percentage of folks using MySpace, Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis, showing just  how much technology has evolved in the past 10 years.  In fact, an article came out today on Twitter, and how they are in-the-black since it’s 2006 inaugural year.  Remember how long it took tech-retail stalwart Amazon.com to return a profit in the early part of the decade?

Google has also done its part to change the face of technology as well, after going public in 2004.  They’ve been incredibly acquisitive, buying such “hot” technology properties as YouTube and AdMob.  Except for today, when Google almost announced a deal where they would acquire customer-ratings service Yelp.com, however the deal reportedly fell through at the last minute.

Ten years ago, no one had ever heard of “smart phones,” let alone owned one.  Mostly anyone who uses a cellular phone has some kind of  “smart phone” ability, mostly made by Research in Motion or Apple.  Motorola emerged as the Phoenix out of the ashes with its new Droid product this year, making the smart phone choices numerous.

At the end of 2000, websites were shutting down and the “old economy” was thumbing their collective noses at the idea of the “new economy.”  What we’ve seen however in the last ten years is that it’s not only resistant, it has evolved and looks like it is here to stay.  Most of us should be interested to see what is going to happen in the next ten years.

For over a month the S&P 500 has been in a narrow sideways trading range between 1087 and 1110, with exception for Monday when a short-lived breakout was attempted.  The S&P 500 closed out Friday near the middle of this range at 1102.  While the S&P 500 is the broadest stock index, the tech heavy Nasdaq 100 closed out the week at 1807, nearer to the high end of its trading range (1767 to 1810) showing that tech is less susceptible to a rising dollar.  The weakest index, relatively, has been the Dow Jones Industrial Average which closed nearest to the lows of its range at 10,328 (10,300 to 10,480).

The connection the dollar has to stocks is via the much talked about carry trade.  With U.S. interest near zero the weak dollar has been shorted by the ‘carry trade cowboys’ and those funds put to work buying stocks and other ‘risky’ assets.  The relative strength of tech stocks shows that when the dollar rises and the shorts need to cover, the stocks they are least willing to sell to replace these funds are technology stocks.

At the start of the week the biggest story was a monster deal in oil and gas with Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) buying XTO Energy (NYSE: XTO).  Exxon’s fossil fuel portfolio is heavily weighted towards oil and XTO towards natural gas.  This buyout may be a large play to hedge the historically wide spread between the costs on natural gas and oil.  Thus far the 10% rise in natural gas and 4.73% rise in oil has proven this strategy correct.  Monday also saw Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) get clearance from the U.S. Treasury to repay their TARP funds.

The Federal Open Market Committee held their last two-day meeting of the year on Tuesday and Wednesday, and announced they were standing pat on interest rate policy.  Comments on the decision to leave rates unchanged indicated that the Fed saw job losses slowing, but jobs were still being lost.  Of most importance in this announcement may have been that they were ending their quantitative easing program (purchases of agency backed mortgage debt) on February 1, 2010.

Wednesday also saw the Federal Trade Commission file a suit against Intel Corp (NSDQ: INTC).  The lawsuit cites bundling practices and even a secretly redesigned compiler software that makes their competitors chips run a little slower.  Intel competitors Nvidia Corp. (NSDQ: NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) traded higher on this news.

On Thursday, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the government debt of Greece to BBB- causing investors to flee to the safety of the dollar and dump their riskier assets.  This caused the largest losses of the week for stocks as the DJIA dropped 132 points, which comprised most of its total loss for the week.  Citigroup sold 5.4 billion shares and the Treasury, as the secondary price was too low for its liking, decided not to sell any of their shares.  Gold dropped $40 an ounce on the dollar strength.  The SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) closed below its 50 day exponential moving average for the first time since August.

On Friday the dollar traded higher but reversed course and closed flat.  Gold bounced back $15 an ounce and the GLD regained the 50 day EMA, closing just above.  Common technical analysis theory states one of the conditions for a break in a support level to be two consecutive closes below it.  The bounce back in gold saved the technical picture and also, now that the support level has been shown to hold, the bullish picture for gold is a bit stronger.  Beware, this might seem like the bottom of the ‘dip’ that all the gold bulls say you should buy, as the next few days will give a clearer picture as to whether the dip drops or pops.

Friday was a quadruple options expiration day and the action in the last 20 minutes contained more volatility than all day long.  The last 20 minutes saw the stock indexes run up into the close.  Once again, tech was relatively strong as the Nasdaq 100 rose all day long on earnings announcements by Oracle Corp. (NSDQ: ORCL) and Research in Motion Ltd. (NSDQ: RIMM) Thursday after the close.

On the week the action was in the fossil fuels and gold.  Below are some ETF and stock index movements that sum up the week.

Dow Jones Industrial Average  -143 points, -1.36%

S&P 500  -3.94 points, -0.36%

Nasdaq 100  +15.26 points, +0.85%

Gold ETF (GLD) -$0.37, -0.34%

Copper ETN (JJC)  -1.3 cents, -0.03%

Coal ETF (KOL)  +14 cents,  +0.4%

Oil ETF (USO)  +$1.18, +3.33%

Natural Gas ETF (UNG)  +$1.05, +10.97%

Steel ETF (SLX)  -11 cents, -0.18%

Agriculture ETF (DBA)  -1 cent, -0.03%

Dollar ETF (UUP)  +$0.33, +1.45%

Besides the earnings driven technology sector and a bounce back in commodities, the market was flat with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 20 points (+0.19%, 10,328.89), the S&P 500 up 6.31 points (+0.57%, 1,102.47).  Looking at the intra-day charts of both these indexes shows you that the Dow gained 45 points and the S&P 500 rose 4 points, all in the last 20 minutes of trading.  The Nasdaq 100 was up over 29 points (+1.63%, 1,807.32) and strong all day.

Gold and commodities got hit hard yesterday on a strong dollar and today they bounced back while the dollar stayed flat.  New York Spot Gold was down $40+ yesterday but recouped $14.70 an ounce today to $1,111.80 (+1.34%, 4:18 p.m.).  This morning, oil jumped almost $2 a barrel to $74.33 on news that Iranian soldiers took over an Iraqi oil well.  By 4:12 p.m. this rise had traded down to $73.18 (+$0.53, +0.73%) as it seems this  is not an uncommon occurrence.

The carry trade and the recent strength in the dollar has caused much concern that the stock market would get hit if the dollar started to rise.  Over the past few years, ETF’s have made it possible for the common investor to diversify into commodities.  Let’s take a look at what kind of effect this week’s strong dollar had on the stock market and select commodities;

Dow Jones Industrial Average  -143 points, -1.36%

S&P 500  -3.94 points, -0.36%

Nasdaq 100  +15.26 points, +0.85%

Gold ETF (GLD) -$0.37, -0.34%

Copper ETN (JJC)  -1.3 cents, -0.03%

Coal ETF (KOL)  +14 cents,  +0.4%

Oil ETF (USO)  +$1.18, +3.33%

Natural Gas ETF (UNG)  +$1.05, +10.97%

Steel ETF (SLX)  -11 cents, -0.18%

Agriculture ETF (DBA)  -1 cent, -0.03%

Dollar ETF (UUP)  +$0.33, +1.45%

Looking at these numbers you can see that while the DJIA and the S&P 500 maintained their inverse relationship to the dollar, the tech heavy Nasdaq 100 is bucking the trend.  Also, it seems that the dollar strength did not translate into as much commodity weakness as you may have thought.  The worst performer of the above listed commodities is gold down 0.34% while the dollar strengthened over four times as much, up 1.45%.  Natural gas and oil crushed the dollar effect as natural gas actually rose seven times as fast as the dollar dropped and oil was up more than twice the drop.  Completing the fossil fuels sector, coal finished positive on the week and the strength of these three may be attributed to the cold weather sweeping North America.

In the Tracked.com’s ‘Strange-but-true-irony’ category it is freezing and snowing heavily in Copenhagen as politicians gather to discuss ‘global warming’ and Former Vermont Governor and consummate left-winger Howard Dean says he would not vote for the current health-care reform bill.  A little advice for the pro-global warming crowd; start holding your conferences in the desert in August as all the ones we keep seeing are during ice storms, blizzards and cold weather and this hardly makes for the press you want.  Advice for Howard Dean; run for office and win, then we just might care what you would vote for and then you could actually vote.

So up is down, down is up and who cares – the weekend is here.

Have a great weekend.

These headlines caught my attention for several reasons.

One is – even in a recessionary period, tech can still pique the interest of so-called “fan boys” of these types of gadgets.  Though Stephen King said there will still be a need for books in the traditional paper form though these e-books are incredibly helpful, it’s evident that consumers will still find the money to test these new electronic-media based products (not to mention the lack of paper waste will make any green-fanatic interested).

The other is – Microsoft is finally coming up to speed with its mobility products and bolstering it’s cellphone strategy, according to the Journal.  It’s no secret that Microsoft is way behind in the times with getting its competition to the iPhone or Blackberry.  But this is an interesting concept – work on the applications availabitlity and it’s distribution?

My last thought was on since it’s release in July 2008, the iPhone has kind of taken a backseat to other new gadgets being released such as a G1 T-Mobile Google Phone and the Blacberry Pearl Flip (which has those incredibly funny commercials).

Can the bloom be off the rose for the electronic gadget darling Apple iPhone?  Or should we be hearing about the next generation iPhone in the upcoming months?