ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
I greatly under-estimated the confidence of the Bank of Canada (BoC) when I mapped out the possibilities for a currency market that highly anticipated a rate hike from the Bank. In its latest statement on monetary policy, the BoC increased its target for the overnight rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 0.75%. The Bank … Read more
Going into last week’s report on Canadian employment, currency speculators retreated further from what was a record net short position against the Canadian dollar (FXC) less than two months prior. Source: Oanda’s CFTC’s Commitments of Traders This retreat is occurring in conjunction with a consistent strengthening in the Canadian dollar. For example, USD/CAD peaked in … Read more
It was a holiday shortened trading day in the U.S., but it was enough time to deliver a bit of relief for the U.S. dollar index (DXY0). The most significant move for the U.S. dollar was against the ever-weakening Japanese yen (FXY). USD/JPY broke out and stayed above resistance at its uptrending 200-day moving average … Read more
{updated to include commentary on The Guggenheim Canadian Energy Income ETF (ENY)} On Monday, June 12, 2017, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada Carolyn A. Wilkins delivered a speech at the Asper School of Business in Winnipeg, Manitoba that was firmly bullish on the Canadian economy. The market’s reaction was swift and equally … Read more
The latest CFTC data on the Commitments of Traders (CoT) shows some important moves in the positioning of speculators. Australian dollar (FXA) While the price of iron ore plunged, bullishness on the Australian dollar (FXA) remained surprisingly strong. I am almost equally surprised to see this bullishness now in full scale retreat as iron ore … Read more
I may have flipped outright bearish on the U.S. dollar index (DXY0) just in time. My change in sentiment started with my increasing bullishness on the euro (FXE). With the euro constituting about 51% of the U.S. dollar index, I realized that it would be hard to remain bullish on the dollar overall while adopting … Read more
Canada and the U.S. reported jobs numbers for April at the same time last Friday (8:30am Eastern). From the surface, it looks like traders thought MUCH more highly of the Canadian report. The U.S. dollar plunged against the Canadian dollar (FXC) and erased the entire week’s gain for USD/CAD. Source: FreeStockCharts.com Interestingly, traders took a … Read more
AT40 = 68.1% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) AT200 = 65.4% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs VIX = 10.9 (volatility index) Short-term Trading Call: bullish Commentary AT40 (T2108), the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs), pushed into overbought territory today with … Read more
In my last posts on the euro (FXE), the Canadian dollar (FXC), and the British pound (FXB), I noted significant trading moves by speculators in foreign exchange as reported by the CFTC’s Commitments of Traders (CoT). The latest CFTC CoT report shows more of the same for these currencies but the backdrops may be shifting … Read more
Just three weeks ago, speculators sent their bullishness on the Canadian dollar to a 4-year high. I followed along with the speculators and accumulated a short USD/CAD position. Two weeks passed before the payoff. It arrived in the form of an anti-dollar reaction to a rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Source: FreeStockCharts.com With … Read more