Early Look around the World
Asian equities are bouncing overnight; +2.5% in the Shanghai Index to -28% from January, +1.0% in the Nikkei 225. China reported their usual faux GDP figure overnight, reporting 6.5% which was down from 6.7% y/y. It’ll likely take more stimulus efforts from the Chinese to boost their economy moving forward. The US will be keying on the existing home sales figures due out at 9am CST/10 EST.
Intermediate-term view on Currencies
The USD remains king of the currency space and if previous weeks highs are breached (95.84 Dec Futures), more near-term upside traction could be gained in the dollar with another possible test of the Aug highs of 96.45. Despite it’s strong technical action, the long USD is a very crowded trade and we still hold the view that there’s more downside risk than upside from here on an intermediate term basis. On the other side of the USD, the Euro, continues to slump on negative reported data out of the Eurozone. Lets not forget about gold, which I largely view as a currency. Gold has held it’s near-term bullish posture vs the USD’s recent strength which tells me that institutional investors are viewing gold in a positive light on forward looking basis vs the USD as well as other foreign currencies. We still continue to think that gold will outperform into year-end and well into next year vs outside world currencies, especially if the U.S. economy begins to feel the residual side effects of a slowing world economy – which will be a net negative for the USD. Sure, you’ll see some inflows into other world currencies if the dollar takes a stumble into year-end/ early next year, and I’m of the belief that the ECB will still attempt to tighten head on into a slowdown, which could help the Euro gain some traction, but with a projected slowdown in the U.S. economy and World economy for that matter, I expect gold to far out perform the World’s currency basket.
I don’t claim to be the best chartist on the street, but here’s a look at a developing H&S Top on a Weekly Chart in the USD which could suggest a larger down turn to come.
Dollar Index Weekly Chart
