Technical achievements alone are not enough to prompt the market to action. For charts traders – myself included – this has led to significant frustration in assessing market moves over these past months. The most recent break would come from the S&P 500 to start this week. The benchmark US index Monday picked up where...Read More

Global market sentiment was a mixed bag last week. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones plummeted 2.38% as the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 soared 1.27%. Things looked worse across the Atlantic Ocean, the DAX 40 and FTSE 100 fell -0.35% and -0.94%, respectively. Markets were rosier in the Asia-Pacific region. The Nikkei 225 and Hang Seng...Read More

Asia-Pacific Market Briefing – Australian Dollar Vulnerable to Risk Aversion The sentiment-linked Australian Dollar underperformed against its major counterparts over the past 24 hours. It began with a disappointing employment report, where Australia unexpectedly lost jobs in December as unemployment ticked slightly higher. While this may induce less-hawkish Reserve Bank of Australia policy expectations, the...Read More

The Australian Dollar had a look lower after the unemployment rate came in at 3.5% for December against 3.4% previously and forecast. There were -14.6k fewer jobs which were below the 25k forecast to be added and 58k prior. Although a small miss, the unemployment rate continues to linger near multi-generational lows. Today’s numbers show...Read More

The Japanese Yen weakened over 2 percent in the aftermath of January’s Bank of Japan monetary policy announcement. If losses are sustained, this will end up being the best single-day performance for USD/JPY since March 2020. Let us take a closer look at what happened here. Well as it turns out, nothing much at all....Read More

The Australian Dollar leapt toward yesterday’s six-month peak against the US Dollar with China’s GDP much better than forecast. Chinese GDP printed at 2.9% year-on-year for the fourth quarter against expectations of 1.6% and 3.9% previously. Other Chinese data was released at the same time, with industrial production for the year to the end of...Read More

high against the US Dollar with USD/JPY trading as low as 127.46 on Friday. Inflationary data released today might provide a headache for the Bank of Japan at their monetary policy meeting this Wednesday. Year-on-year PPI to the end of December came in at 10.2%, above forecasts of 9.5% and 9.7% previously. The month-on-month figure...Read More

We are forming a nasty 2023 habit of closing out trading weeks on cliffhangers with tentative technical moves that fall critically short of fostering a genuine sense of conviction for directional traders. Given that we are coming out of the year-end holiday trading period, there is an abundance of technical levels carrying over from the...Read More

The US consumer price index (CPI) release this past session did not disappoint in its ability to generate volatility. However, its contribution to clear trend development was certainly uneven. On the one hand, the Dollar absorbed a clear hit that would extend the productivity of its bearish slide these past months. Alternatively, the supposed benefits...Read More

Gold Eyes New Highs Ahead of US CPI as Fed Preps for Hikes. Where to for XAU/USD?Gold made an eight-month high overnight despite the US Dollar gaining against most currencies. The US 10-year real yield dipped under 1.35% today as it continues to slide from the late December peak above 1.6%. The real yield is...Read More