Euro's Rebound Finds Analysts Changing Tune --- In Course of a Few Weeks Several Factors Alter The Market Psychology
LONDON -- If Dr. Frankenstein were a money manager or foreign-exchange trader, would the euro be his currency of choice?</br></br>A month ago, Steve Barrow, a currency strategist at Bear, Stearns & Co. in London, vigorously argued yes.</br></br>"Europe seems to have created the currency equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, and it is running amok," he wrote to clients, noting forecasts that the euro would become a "big" currency in terms of trade, bond issuance, investment and as a reserve asset held by central banks. Europe's common currency, he predicted, would fall toward 75 U.S. cents next year.</br></br>Now Mr. Barrow, whose euro predictions have been better than most, is singing a different tune -- and that's without a visit from Mary Shelley, the monster's creator. The 38-year-old native of East London now says he sees the euro at 95 cents in six months and $1.05 in 12.</br></br>Mr. Barrow has lots of company. Confronted with the euro's 5.7% surge in the past three weeks, untold numbers of traders, analysts, portfolio managers, corporate treasurers and just plain old investors are trying to figure out whether they are experiencing "future shock," which American author Alvin Toffler, 35 years ago, defined as "the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future."