ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Stock Market Commentary: A month ago, a CPI Shocker brought a bear market rally to an abrupt end and created an historically bad September. Today’s CPI Shocker, another inflation reading that came in hotter than expected (imagine that), generated a completely different, and bullish, response. The stock market gapped down at the open and buyers … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Pricing pressures are apparently NOT easing just yet. The August CPI report turned “peak Fed” into “fear the Fed” all over again. Instead of falling, core inflation (CPI excluding food and energy) increased a whopping 0.6% month-over-month. This surge pushed the 12-month core inflation rate up from July’s 5.9% to August’s 6.3%. … Read more
The landscape of inflation and monetary policy continues to change fast. The June inflation numbers disappointed expectations once again for peak inflation. A surprise 1% point rate hike by the Bank of Canada combined with this hot inflation accelerated the timeline for peak interest rates from the Federal Reserve. Instead of a 75 basis point … Read more
Stock Market Commentary And just like that, the bullish expansion of market breadth hit a wall…a wall of inflation. The October Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all urban consumers apparently surprised financial markets by soaring 0.9% from September and 6.2% over October, 2020. The chart below shows that both surges are at the high end … Read more
North American: The United States “What we’re seeing now is an economy that seems to be at an inflection point….we feel like we are at a point where the economy is about to start growing much more quickly, and job creation coming in much more quickly…we see strong growth and strong job creation starting right … Read more
The Turkish lira suffered another run of sustained weakness this month. Weakness in the Turkish lira drove USD/TRY to new all-time highs. On Thursday, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) tried yet again to stop the bleeding. The Turkish Central Bank hiked its policy rate an entire 200 basis points from 8.25% … Read more
Stock Market Statistics AT40 = 19.6% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (oversold)AT200 = 36.2% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAsVIX = 28.6Short-term Trading Call: cautiously bullish Stock Market Commentary On Monday I switched to a neutral short-term trading call to get mentally ready for a major change … Read more
Trees do not grow to the sky – even cryptocurrency trees with Bitcoin leaves. The old adage describes a core rule of the physics of price momentum. Whether buying or selling, traders and investors eventually exhaust themselves – whether existing resources are too low to maintain buying pressure or motivated sellers finally run out of … Read more
The U.S. Dollar Index Breaks Down The U.S. dollar broke down last week. The weekly chart below shows the U.S. dollar index (DXY) closed last week at a near 2-year low. Numerous anti-dollar bets are gaining fast thanks to the U.S. dollar’s breakdown. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC/USD) is joining the party. Bitcoin joins the anti-dollar … Read more
The Bank of Canada (BoC) released its latest Monetary Policy Report on July 15, 2020. Neither the report nor the press conference contained any surprises. The BoC did not change interest rates, kept the crank turning on its Quantitative Easing (QE) program, and promised to “hold the policy interest rate at the effective lower bound … Read more