The Turkish lira was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the renewed weakness of the U.S. dollar (DXY0) in the wake of Jackson Hole on Friday. USD/TRY closed at a new low for 2017. In fact, USD/TRY has not traded this low since early December, 2016.
The daily chart above shows how USD/TRY has trended downward slowly but surely since the twin peaks in January of this year. From May to early this month, the downward momentum slowed down to a crawl. The downward pull was so weak that the spike in early July fooled me into backing down on my bearish trading call on USD/TRY. I was grateful to cover my short position at the time for a small profit on the very next swoon downward.
While I was dismayed that I had no position in place to profit form last week’s plunge, I put USD/TRY back on my active radar. I will look to fade up to the now downward trending 20-day moving average.
For comparison, here is a chart of the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR). TUR gained 2.1% on Friday and closed at a fresh 2-year high. Turkey is resurgent once more.
Source for charts: FreeStockCharts.com
The performance in TUR takes me back to the beginning of the year when I speculated alongside El-Erian that Turkey’s currency would be a major performer of the year. USD/TRY just went negative year-to-date so perhaps it is just getting started…
Be careful out there!
Full disclosure: no position