ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
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While the volatility index (VIX) is only reluctantly responding to the latest turmoil in financial markets, other safety trades are moving in full steam. The “safety trade” I left out of my last post covering the stock market was the Swiss franc (FXF). At the time of writing the Swiss franc fell to a near … Read more
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) released its latest decision on monetary policy on Thursday, March 21. Apparently the warnings from the SNB were drowned out by the rallies in financial markets that day. The SNB dropped its growth forecast, its inflation forecast, and reiterated that economic risks are biased to the downside. I took particular … Read more
Gold, and by extension the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), has had a rough year. However, based on a historic flip in speculative positioning in gold futures, a bottom is likely in for GLD. According to the tweet and chart below, the net speculative positioning in gold recently went net negative for the first time in … Read more
In mid-April I wrote expecting EUR/CHF to finally return to the old 1.20 currency floor set by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) years ago. Two days later, EUR/CHF did indeed hit 1.20….for all of a few hot minutes. For almost the past three weeks, EUR/CHF has plunged all over again as political turmoil in Italy … Read more
It was utter chaos in January, 2015: the Swiss National Bank (SNB) capitulated on its self-made 1.20 floor against the euro on EUR/CHF. The bottom completely fell out the currency pair and caused ripple effects around the world of forex. I barely traded the Swiss franc since then specifically because of what I perceived as … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on June 26, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) The British pound (FXB) suffered a historic plunge in the wake of Brexit’s victory, the beginning of the UK’s divorce from the European Union (EU). While headlines have been full of … Read more
Over the past two weeks or so, I have focused my currency trading on fading the British pound (FXB) and the Australian dollar (FXA). In “The Currency Market Is Lagging A Dramatic Shift in Brexit Sentiment,” I compared market sentiment versus the trading action and made the following claim (emphasis newly made): “If my interpretation … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on June 1, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) After London’s former mayor Boris Johnson first announced his support for Great Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU), aka “Brexit,” the British pound (FXB) sold off for the rest of … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on November 9, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) On November 3, 2015, Thomas Jordan, the Chair of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) spoke in front of the Investment Strategists Association of Geneva on the topic “The SNB’s monetary policy … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on March 16, 2014. Click here to read the entire piece.) {snip} Central bankers continue to warn financial markets to properly price in risk. On March 13th, Chris Salmon, the Executive Director of Markets at the Bank of England (BoE) continued the … Read more