Forex

U.S. Dollar Holds Firm Despite Sharp Pullback in Fed Rate Hike Odds

A little over two weeks ago, I was just starting to concede that the likelihood of four Fed rate hikes in 2018 was trending in favor of the hawks. Last week, the rate on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell back sharply and ended the week below the magic tripwire of 3.0% (starting Thursday). In parallel, … Read more

Bitcoin Has Become As Boring As the Beyoncé Baseline

GDPR, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, rolls into effect starting May 25th. Expectedly, there is a flurry of media attention on this topic. One meme spreading quickly compares Google Trend searches for GDPR to pop music icon and diva Beyoncé. It turns out that GDPR is now so popular that it surpassed Beyoncé … Read more

British Pound Hits A Post-Brexit Support In the Wake of Monetary Swirl

When U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin helped send the dollar careening with commentary welcoming a weak dollar, the British pound (FXB) surged enough against the then hapless U.S. dollar to make me speculate on GBP/USD reaching a blow-off top. GBP/USD did indeed pull back from that point, albeit in very choppy fashion, for almost a … Read more

Above the 40 (May 22, 2018) – An Overbought Threshold Rejects A Stock Market With Crossed Signals

AT40 = 65.8% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (hit a high at 69.7%) AT200 = 51.5% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs VIX = 13.4 Short-term Trading Call: neutral Commentary The stock market keeps crossing up as headlines and macro events push the market one way and … Read more

Four Fed Rate Hikes This Year? Hmm….Maybe.

To-date, I have been extremely skeptical of the meme of four rate hikes in 2018. I thought that Thursday’s “weaker than expected” increase in the April consumer price index (CPI) would further confirm my skepticism. Instead, I discovered that the 30-day Fed Fund Futures are pricing in a 47.4% chance of a fourth rate hike … Read more