Tag Archives: FX Trends

Swiss Franc Speculators were net short CHF in January 2015, shortly before the end of the peg, with 26.4K contracts. Then again in December 2015, when they expected a Fed rate hike, with 25.5K contracts. The biggest short CHF, however, happened in June 2007, when speculators were net short 80K contracts. Shortly after, the U.S. subprime crisis started. The carry trade against CHF collapsed. The...

Summary: Trump has moderated in several areas, he is being checked in others, and less impactful in others. This will underscore the focus on Yellen’s testimony this week. At same time, many will be reluctant to short the dollar ahead of the tax reform plans that may be unveiled in Trump’s upcoming speech to Congress. There is a lull in the maelstrom launched by the Trump Administration.  His ban on...

  Swiss Franc Currency Index The major information about the Swiss economy since the beginning of the year were: New record in exports and in the trade surplus, albeit mostly driven by a few sectors: pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Considerable improvement of the consumer sentiment Improvement of the UBS consumption indicator. While in 2015, the trade surplus still expanded, we see clear tendencies that in 2017 the...

For the last several weeks, we have been looking for the dollar correction that began around the Fed’s rate hike in the middle of December to be completed and for the uptrend to resume. The precise timing of the turn is difficult to get right, but our view is anchored by our macroeconomic assessment and is understanding of the key drivers. Our technical work suggests the dollar indeed has been carving out a bottom, and...

Dear FX traders: forget the dot plot, and prepare to learn a new – or to some forgotten – skill: how to read trade flows. As Bloomberg’s Vincent Cignarella and Andrea Wong point out, currency traders accustomed to analyzing the Fed’s dot plot and monthly U.S. jobs figures to predict the direction of the world’s reserve currency are having to learn, or in some cases re-learn, a largely forgotten ability: how to...

Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, February 10(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge Sterling vs the Swiss Franc has been climbing recently as the Brexit talks appear to be going the right way at the moment. The talks are progressing and it has been confirmed that the government will be allowed to vote on the final agreement prior to the triggering of Article 50. The Pound is still under huge...

Still in London as this part of the business trip is winding down.  I had the privilege of going over to the Bloomberg office today and spoke with Vonnie Quinn and Mark Burton about the euro’s outlook and whether the US should have a strong or weak dollar.I sketch out my idea that the (upside) correction in the euro began in mid-December around following the Fed’s hike.  Over the last couple weeks, I have been...

Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, February 09(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge Currency manipulation is becoming a hot topic now that Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the US President. Followers of his social media accounts will be aware of his criticism’s of a number of countries for artificially weakening their currency’s in order to remain competitive on a global scale, and recently...

Summary: Dollar movement helps some economic interest and hurts others. From a strategic point of view, the best thing for the US is the market-generated rate. It was an important achievement that the forex market was de-weaponized. Many observers have been crying wolf about a currency war for many years, which may have de-sensitized investors to the threat of a real one. Reports suggest that recently President...

Katie Martin and Marc Chandler I am in London as part of a larger business trip. I had the chance today to talk to Katie Martin, who runs Fast FT and is often writing about foreign exchange. They show was live on Facebook. It is about a 22 minute interview and although foreign exchange is the key issue, to get to it we end up talking about many things, including US interest rates, Trump, and even cooking frogs. Often I...