From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Earlier in the week, we held our July Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
What started out as a tactical bounce in the US Dollar could be turning into a full-fledged reversal of the primary trend.
Defensive assets such as US Treasury bonds and the Japanese yen are catching a bid. On the other hand, risk assets continue to struggle at overhead supply. Many are experiencing significant selling pressure at these logical levels.
With each passing day, the choppy environment that’s been in place since early February is becoming increasingly messy.
This is a perfect environment for the US dollar to thrive as more and more investors are hiding out in safe-haven assets and waiting for the smoke to clear.
Consider all this defensive posturing within the context of the choppy year-two environment we're in, and it appears investors are really beginning to seek shelter from the storm.
And what’s one of the most popular safe-haven assets?
With the current market environment giving us many mixed messages, what better time to dive in and see what's happening underneath the surface?
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The market environment directed our focal point toward the Dollar. And now that it appears risk is coming off the table, we’re shifting our focus to the Yen.
Usually, when we talk about risk-on/risk-off behavior and the Yen, the AUD/JPY is at the center.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
We’ve been pounding the table about the broad-based strength from the US Dollar since earlier this month. Due to the momentum of its recent move, we believe this rally could have legs beyond just the near-term... But we'll address that when the time comes.
Though the Dollar gave some of this month's gains back last week, our short-term outlook remains higher. As I write this, many G-10 currencies like the Euro, Pound, Aussie, and Canadian Dollar are all rolling over relative to USD.
We’ll be revisiting this theme plenty as it plays out over the coming weeks to months.
But in the meantime let’s focus on a currency pair that’s bucking the trend, the US Dollar-Brazilian Real $USD/$BRL.
Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return 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 consider this our weekly state of the union address as we break down and reiterate both our tactical and structural outlook on various asset classes and discuss the most important themes and developments currently playing out in markets all around the world.
We've been pretty obnoxious about our position that markets are a total mess these days. But it is what it is, and we can only play the hand we're dealt.
We have been adamant about our view that we are in a rather messy environment. For this reason, we've been approaching markets with caution for months now.
Up until earlier this year when risk assets began consolidating in sideways patterns, it had been nothing but blue skies and new highs.
When the weather report is sunny, the water is calm, and the sky is clear, we know the weight of the evidence is with the bulls and we can focus our attention on finding the best opportunities in the strongest areas as ways to express our thesis.
But that's just not where we find ourselves today. The current forecast is cloudy with a chance of rain. And it's already been overcast for months!
And when the outlook is murky, as it is now, we want to take a step back and really weigh the evidence that's in front of us. We need to stay up on incoming data points and monitor how markets react with so many charts currently at key levels of interest.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
There’s no question the landscape in the currency market has dramatically changed with the US Dollar reasserting its dominance in recent weeks.
You can read more about this in our weekly currency post, but here’s an excerpt with the long and short of it:
King dollar is definitely back in the driver’s seat from a tactical viewpoint as we’ve seen a significant shift in favor of USD over the near term. But even the intermediate and long-term trends for most major FX pairs have flipped in the direction of the Dollar over the past month or so.
Considering this broad-based strength, it’s clear that bulls are back in control of the Dollar… at least from a near-term perspective.
So, earlier in the week we analyzed the US Dollar Index $DXY and outlined some critical levels to watch over the short run.