ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
The dollar’s recent relief rally stalled out December 23 (see chart below), and December’s disappointing jobs report may have officially ended it. The apparent working thesis supporting the dollar’s relief rally has been an expectation that an imminent recovery in the labor market would motivate the Fed to raise interest rates sometime soon. December’s disappointing … Read more
(Repost from January 7, 2010) Naoto Kan, Japan’s new Finance Minister, took office today and promptly requested that currency traders sell the yen. This stance further supports September’s backtracking from an implicit stronger yen policy earlier suggested by out-going Finance Minister, Hirohisa Fujii. Japan has now officially returned to the de facto competitive devaluation that … Read more
As the U.S. dollar index has steadily advanced this month, the relative strength of the Canadian dollar has perplexed me. The Canadian dollar has long seemed overplayed to me as a commodity-positive play given the country’s heavy dependence on the health of the U.S. economy – which I continue to assume will perform weakly in … Read more
By now, everyone has noticed that the inverse relationship between the stock market and the U.S. dollar has broken. For December, the U.S. dollar index is up a healthy 4.7% while the S&P 500 is up 2.1%. I created two charts to demonstrate the dramatic nature of the change relative to trading before December. The … Read more
The Bank of England (BoE) released its “Inflation Report” on November 11, 2009. This was my first time ever reviewing the report and watching BoE Governor Mervyn King in action as he coolly parried with reporters during the press conference covering the report. The latest Inflation Report frequently references the benefits of the depreciation of … Read more
Yesterday, the Bank of England left its interest rate at 0.50% and increased its program of quantitative easing by £25 billion to a total of £200 billion. The British pound immediately rallied on the news against all major currencies – apparently, analysts already expected the increase and were afraid the BoE might actually increase quantitative … Read more
The Wall Street Journal printed a trifecta of articles to day that seem to cry out for the dollar to lift its head out of the sludge. Coincidentally (or not), the dollar rallied for its biggest one-day gain in almost three weeks. In “Uncertainty May Help Dollar“, analysts remind us that the economic recovery remains … Read more
The British pound has taken some sharp twists and turns since first hitting 4-month lows against the U.S. dollar on September 28. I have been steadfast in my bearishness against the pound since mid-September, but I have found it necessary to dance in and out of positions given the persistent decline in the dollar against … Read more
Moments like these remind me how swiftly the tides can change in foreign exchange. The minutes from the Bank of England’s meeting in October showed that all members now support leaving quantitative easing at its current level of 175 billion pounds. This unified support marks a change in particular for Governor Mervyn King who earlier … Read more
Yesterday, the Bank of Canada decided to maintain its exceptionally low interest rate of 0.25% and reiterated its commitment to hold rates this low until the end of the second quarter of 2010. This move stands in stark contrast to the rate increase implemented by Canada’s similarly resource-rich “G20 cousin” Australia just two weeks ago. … Read more