Chuck Butler (The Daily Reckoning): What a ride yesterday for the currencies! Gold? Well, at one point gold had shot up $24 on the day! It topped out at $1,142… The shiny metal then gave some back on profit taking, but gold holders have got to love it! Those who keep waiting for a pullback. Well, they might still be waiting when the cows come home.

Yesterday, we had a couple of Fed Heads talking, but the Big Kahuna stood out and moved the markets with his statements… Here’s the skinny…

Big Ben was giving a speech, and said, “The Fed will monitor closely the currencies, and the Fed’s policies will ensure that the dollar is strong.” Now, when he first uttered those words, the dollar got bought and the non-dollar currencies were sold… But then, a few of us had this feeling… It was a feeling that we

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Previously in these articles, I've written on how a lot of people typically like to look for low beta stocks or lower volatility stocks.

< ?DART(15);?> But this week I want to focus on higher beta stocks.

What is Beta?

First and foremost, 'beta' is a measure of an asset's risk relative to the 'market' (usually the S&P 500). (It's typically calculated as the 'performance a stock has experienced in the last 5 years as the S&P has moved up and down'.)

A beta of 1 means the stock's relative volatility is equal to that of the market. Therefore, a beta that's greater than 1 is more volatile than the market and a beta of less than 1 is less volatile. (It can also be explained as its excess movement or 'return'.)

For instance, a beta of 1.5 will have 1 1/2 times the market's movement

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At last, the uncertainty regarding Sanofi-Aventis' (SNY) Lantus (generic name insulin glargine) seems to be over. Today, the company released a statement by a board of experts regarding the potential link of Lantus with increased cancer risk. They have come to the conclusion that all the four cases had significant methodological limitations and shortcomings, thus making the results inconclusive.

As a reminder, in the month of June, a study by the European Association for the Study of Diabetes observed that Lantus (generic name insulin glargine) increases the risk of cancer in diabetics taking the drug. The study, carried out on 127,000 patients in four European countries found that out of every 100 patients using Lantus for about 1 1/2 years, one additional person developed cancer.

But the FDA was not convinced with the study as patients were not studied long enough to substantiate the risk. Accordingly, it planned to review the

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World stocks fell today, Friday, after a disappointing U.S. jobs report and a sluggish euro zone services sector survey reinforced expectations that the process of recovery in the global economy would be long and slow.

U.S. employers cut far more jobs than expected last month and the unemployment rate hit 9.5 percent, the highest in nearly 26 years.

While analysts caution that jobs data is a lagging indicator and unemployment can still rise when the economy is turning around, it was enough to prompt investors to reduce their risk assets especially before a long weekend in the United States.

Furthermore, signs of a recovery in the euro zone’s dominant service sector took a backwards step in June with the final services purchasing manager index coming in at 44.7 in June, down from May’s seven-month high of 44.8.

This marks the thirteenth consecutive month the index has been below the 50.0 mark that divides growth

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