And all I got was this lousy birth certificate....

The world has woken to the news that public enemy number 1 (well at least the US enemy number 1) - Osama Bin Laden - has been killed in a mansion in Pakistan in a joint special forces attack. It has been almost 10 years since that fateful day since September 11th and you can understand the relief in the US that this fight has been "won".

The cynic in me suggests that this news probably puts paid to Donald Trumps presidential ambitions.... All he could produce was a birth certificate of sorts for Barack Obama....

... no wonder Obama thought he probably was justified in taking a dig at the property billionaire in the press conference yesterday.

So what does this mean for markets and trading?

- I gotta fess up. Friday's spike in Gold burnt me and I was stopped out there.
- Still in with my short oil from $125 and long US$ / short Japanese Yen trade

In my head I had suspected a bit more of a "patriot rally" in terms of the US dollar but lets wait it out. The yen is weakening and as the rest of global markets digest the news, there might be a bit more enthusiasm for the trade.

Oil at $125 is in my humble opinion overbought and being driven by this commodity bubble and being held up unnaturally high with social tensions in places like Libya, Syria, Egypt etc. But there is nothing new in these areas to suggest that this kind of price is justified, especially with economic data suggesting the economy is staggering.

I do agree with the early analysis from STRATFOR that this probably means that the US can hasten its departure from Afghanistan. While the US has made a lot of noise about its humanitarian support / obligations to the region, the fight has been going on for 9 and a half years and Americans are tired of this battle. Since the initial "shock and awe" they've been left fighting for a country which is politically and economically worthless.

With the US elections around the corner, it will do a lot for popularity ratings to show US soldiers packing their bags and heading home to their loved ones. US soldiers departing the Middle East will invariably be good publicity in the near-term.

So for now I'll stay short oil and long the dollar... counter-intuitive maybe but its probably about time the world started to settle down for a bit and put this chapter behind us.