ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Since the year 2000, delivering a different narrative for students and fans of financial markets: stocks, options, currencies, Bitcoin, and more…
Stock Market Commentary The Federal Reserve’s latest pronouncement on monetary policy was supposed to provide the drama of the week. However, the stock market yawned and resumed the buying of the summer of love at the open of trading the next day. Enter the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to provide the real drama. The fireworks … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Sellers followed through with yesterday’s post-Fed selling. With losses across the board, market breadth dropped into oversold trading conditions. Yet, as I explained could be the case, the stock market looks uninteresting. Because the major indices are fresh off important breakdowns, substantial downside risk remains. Because the volatility index actually closed down … Read more
In an earlier post on Sunday, I provided reasons to believe that the market was finally drawing a line in the sand for a sustainable bottom. With anticipation, I pronounced I would go on a shopping spreed down to S&P 500 (SPY) 2600. At the time of writing, it looks like I may have to … Read more
I wrote little about the Japanese yen (FXY) over the past year or more. It’s time to pay closer attention. As every forex trader knows by now, on Tuesday, January 9th the Bank of Japan (BoJ) slowed down its purchase of bonds with more than 10 years maturity. The yields of these bonds ticked up … Read more
Last week was full of important news for forex trading. As a dollar bull, euro bear, and yen bear, the week presented particular challenges that hedging could only soothe a little bit. I had a good run with these positions in recent weeks. As forex goes, a setback was due – just too bad the … Read more
The U.S. Federal Reserve failed to hike rates in its June policy meeting just as expected. More importantly, the Fed left alone its projection of the appropriate policy path for 2016 at 0.9%. The Fed trimmed its expectation for 2017 from 1.9% to 1.6% and slashed 2018 from 3.0% to 2.4%. The “long run” dropped … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 25, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) Currency speculators are at “maximum bullishness”: bullish bets on the Japanese yen (FXY) have reached levels unseen since at least 2009. Source: Oanda’s CFTC’s Commitments of Traders Facing off against this … Read more
In the previous week, forex traders extended existing positioning trends. This consistency reveals an on-going confidence in the given trends. Where these changes are consistent with currency moves, traders seem indeed justified in the confidence. However, there are some cases where these positions are starting to run counter to potential shifts in currencies. I expect … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 11, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) The Japanese yen (FXY) rang in the new year with loud alarm bells. At the time, I wrote about the implications for the surge of strength in “The Japanese Yen Flashes … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on February 1, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) On Wednesday, January 27th, the U.S. Federal Reserve stared down volatile conditions in financial markets and decided to avoid addressing them directly. {snip} When the Bank of Japan (BoJ) came up … Read more