There's always information in the Currency markets, even if trading currencies isn't something you do.

There is wisdom in some of the world's largest markets like forex and fixed income. To ignore it would be irresponsible.

One thing that's been hard to ignore is the strength in the US Dollar Index throughout the first quarter of 2021. This could be a potential wrecking ball to the global growth, rotation into cyclical and commodity supercycle themes.

But is it?

When we look at several G-10 Currencies relative to the Dollar, the Commodity-centric currencies have held up the best, which is interesting, isn't it?

This is the video recording of our April 1, 2021 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

The Indian Rupee has been strengthening against its counterparts and that has been an interesting change in trend from what we were seeing in early February.

With that in mind. let's take a look at some important levels to track as this trend continues to play out.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

We continue to reiterate the same themes and pillars that support our bullish macro thesis. This would include an abundance of evidence pointing to risk appetite, rising developed market yields, strength from commodities, and of course the ongoing rotation toward cyclicals, value, and international stocks, among others...

Just about anywhere we look, we're seeing investors gravitate further and further out on the risk spectrum.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley.

We recently held March’s Monthly Conference Call which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts/topics we covered along with commentary on each.

Let’s dive into it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

The market continues to fire on all cylinders right now. Last week's gains were nothing but a continuation of the same resiliency and momentum we've come to expect from risk assets over the last year.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

One lesson you learn pretty quickly as a market analyst is that not all assets are created equal.

Each and every financial instrument carries its own unique bundle of nuances... from a stocks' beta or systematic volatility as well as its residual risk, to the fee structure and rebalancing methodology of an exchange-traded fund or note, to the settlement and delivery procedures governing futures contracts.

All of these things impact the behavior and performance of these various markets.

Today, we're going to focus specifically on the inner workings of International Country ETFs and the way they are impacted by the currency component inherent in these vehicles.

Let's dive right into it, starting with last week's Mystery Chart reveal.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

Rotation into value is dominating the narrative right now as money continues to pour out of the former leaders and into long-term secular laggards like Financials and Energy.

In line with this trend, we continue to focus less on US Large-Caps and Growth, and instead look for opportunities in SMIDs, Cyclicals, and International stocks.

We are in the midst of a bull-run and the events over the last ten days or so have sprung up some doubts over the current move with regards to the repercussions of the rise in bond yield and the US dollar.

We included the US Dollar(DXY) chart in the Three Charts for the Week ahead post since DXY moved past its resistance in the week gone by. Let's take a look at how this had panned out in the past and what are the signals that we can identify in the present.

The chart below tracks DXY and Nifty 50 over the past 20 years. Note that we are looking at the subsequent move in Nifty 50, following the bottoming out of DXY. The dashed lines mark the reversals in DXY, which is what we're tracking here. Of the seven instances where we've seen the bottoming out of DXY, Nifty 50 has continued to rally on four such occasions.

On three occasions the negative correlation plays out as can be seen in the years 2000, 2008 & 2015.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley.

The US Dollar is one of the most important pieces of the intermarket puzzle.

It affects all the major asset classes, and a rising dollar could impact the current market environment by creating a headwind for stocks and suppressing commodity-centric and cyclical areas of the market.

This could put pressure on our current market thesis as US Dollar strength has the potential to put a damper on the recent rally in risk assets.

In this post, we'll take a look at what's going on underneath the surface in the US Dollar Index by running through some of it's largest components.

We'll then weigh the evidence in front of us in an effort to determine a directional bias for King Dollar.

Over the past few days, the narration around Bonds has really caught on. With bond yields across the globe recovering sharply from lows, there are a lot of questions about the current stock market rally, the impact of bonds on the bull-run, whether we should prepare for a sell-off etc.

Let's try and address some concerns through this post where we talk about the impact of bonds and the US dollar on the ongoing stock market rally.

Let's assume we know nothing about the correlations in the market and are basing our view on the simple activity of observing the historical price action and its subsequent impact.

Here we have India's 10-year Government Bond. When we look at the extremes of the movement, which comprises of the high and low clocked in the 2008 crash, the range lies between 9.30-5.25. Since then for 12 years, the range hasn't been breached and if this was any other chart with the name stricken out, one would say it's going sideways.

In the chart below, we have highlighted three instances where the bond yield has bottomed out and rallied. This has happened in 2009 and 2017 in the past. Can we expect the same in 2021?

Whenever I want to talk about bonds, I always know just who to call. Larry McDonald is a former bond trader at Lehman Brothers and author of the book, Colossal Failure of Common Sense. I highly encourage you to give it a read, especially if you're looking for some perspective on what really happened back in 2007-2008.

It's no coincidence that I reached out to him to come on the podcast. Larry and I had a very timely conversation in February of last year. So with the bond market recently losing 5-6 Trillion dollars in such a short period of time, who better to talk to than by favorite bond trader.