ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
The reaction caught me completely off-guard. On September 6th, the USD ISM Non-Manufacturing/Services Composite for August came in at 51.3, well below “expectations” of 54.9 and the lowest reading since February, 2010. The reaction was swift in financial markets. The 30-day Fed Fund futures pushed out the next rate hike from December, 2016 (54.2%) to … 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
(T2108 measures the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages [DMAs]. It helps to identify extremes in market sentiment that are likely to reverse. To learn more about it, see my T2108 Resource Page. You can follow real-time T2108 commentary on twitter using the #T2108 hashtag. T2108-related trades and other trades are … Read more
The Bank of Canada released its latest decision on monetary policy a week ago on April 13, 2016 and left its target rate at 1/2% again. According to the Bank of Canada (BoC), the government’s fiscal policy saved the day for the Canadian economy. Global growth is slowing. The strength in the Canadian dollar (FXC) … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on April 5, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) Canada’s GDP report for January, 2016 confirmed renewed strength in the Canadian economy. {snip} Source: Statistics Canada Now that the Canadian economy has apparently stabilized, the weakening in the Canadian dollar … Read more
A bottom for the British pound just got more likely. The latest data from the CFTC shows that net speculators beat a major retreat from net short positions against the British pound: Source: Oanda’s CFTC’s Commitments of Traders The chart shows that speculators have not held such small net short positions since the surge began … Read more
(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on March 9, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) The Bank of Canada decided once again to hold its target overnight interest rate at 0.5%. The overall message from the statement on monetary policy is that economic developments are unfolding … Read more
The following data cover the latest from the CFTC’s Commitment of Traders as reported by Oanda from the week of Monday, February 15, 2016. From Oanada: “The Commitments of Traders (COT) is a report issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It aggregates the holdings of participants in the U.S. futures markets (primarily based … Read more
The following data cover the latest from the CFTC’s Commitment of Traders as reported by Oanda from the week of from Monday, February 8, 2016. From Oanada: “The Commitments of Traders (COT) is a report issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It aggregates the holdings of participants in the U.S. futures markets (primarily … Read more
Currencies are a transmission mechanism. Since the financial crisis, central banks have become increasingly adept at manipulating them as agents of monetary policy. Traders who ignore currencies may have critical blindspots as stock markets twist and turn through currency transmissions. From time-to-time, I will post “Forex Critical” to highlight currency charts that I believe are … Read more