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Swissy Signals Dollar Momentum
The prior week of trading was quite interesting in the global markets, after a period of approximately 2 and a half months in which almost nothing happened, especially in the currency market.
The business cycle recovery theme continued in the global economy and had positive effect in most markets. Crude oil and the developed equity markets had a strong week, setting new highs for the current year. Despite this, emerging markets lost 0.8% during the same period, being the global asset class with the worst performance.
This was caused by the uncertainty surrounding the Chinese economy, as analysts have doubts that it can keep its pace of growth. This makes investors reduce their expose to emerging equities (risk), and increase their bond holdings (safety), which explains the 0.8% positive performance that the emerging market bond values posted over the last week of trading.
Despite the strong gains in the S&P (2.2%) and in the crude oil market (6.2%) last week, the major currencies had a relatively steady flow, with almost every pair tying to break the channel developed over the prior eleven weeks of trading. The most notable attempt came from the swissy (USD/CHF), which set a new low for the current year in Friday’s intra-day session.
The swissy had been a very good gauge of U.S. dollar overall strength in the last few months of trading, most of the time it being among the first pairs to move, or conversely signaling that a major pair break would not hold, by the pair holding steady ground while others tried to move. Without swissy moving hard, it seems that most major pair moves are muted.
With the swissy at the low of the year and with crude oil and S&P at the high of the year, signs emerge that the dollar’s outlook is shifting further to the downside, and that this may actually be a leg in a move lower, rather than a reversal point to get back into long-dollar mode.
The next crucial point for the currency market would be to break and hold below the 78.00 area on the dollar index, the main support area since early June. Such a test might come during the upcoming week of trading, as the major currencies are holding close to very important swing point areas, which once broken, will clear the way for a test of this year’s highs. However, this will be possible only if the equity and commodity markets continue their run, or at least hold near the current values.