Author: FX
Brent is back near $80 and West Texas Intermediate near $77, which means the Oil market has handed back almost the entire premium it built over nearly four months of open war with Iran. The tape is treating this week’s US-Iran memorandum as a finished peace: Blockade lifted, Strait of Hormuz reopening, Iranian barrels cleared to sell, equities at a record high while the President takes a victory lap on falling pump prices. The problem is that the market ran this exact trade in April, priced the all-clear inside a single session, and got run over within hours when the…
The textbook calls the Canadian Dollar a petro-currency, which means that with a Middle East war keeping Crude Oil bid, the Loonie should be holding its own. Instead it spent this week sliding to a fresh 14-month low against the Greenback, capping a run in which the US Dollar has closed higher in six of the last seven weeks. The textbook is wrong, at least for now: the Loonie has quietly stopped trading like a Crude Oil proxy, with its weakness driven by two forces that have nothing to do with the price of a barrel.A petro-currency in name onlyFor…
The Euro did something this week that ought to be impossible: it fell in the same fortnight the European Central Bank (ECB) delivered its first interest rate hike since 2023. EUR/USD slid to a fresh multi-week low near 1.1400 before clawing back to a tentative floor around 1.1450; the lesson is that not every rate hike is a vote of confidence. The ECB tightened because an energy shock forced its hand, not because the eurozone economy is firing. That distinction is why the single currency cannot turn a hawkish central bank into a rally.A hike that smells like surrenderLook at…
The Australian Dollar spent this week as a passenger in someone else’s trade. A hawkish Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and a surging US Dollar dragged the Aussie down to the 0.7000 handle, with the pair’s sharp mid-week drop owing more to events in Washington than to anything out of Canberra. Yet the Aussie is not quite the pure risk-proxy it tends to get treated as. It carries a domestic inflation problem of its own; next week hands it a rare chance to trade on that rather than on the Greenback’s momentum.The RBA is not done being hawkishThe Reserve Bank…
Gold is supposed to be the asset you want when the world looks dangerous, which makes this week’s price action quietly remarkable. Bullion ended the week down close to 1.5%, its sixth straight week of lower or flat closes, even as a Middle East war ran into its fourth month and an unsigned ceasefire kept geopolitical risk firmly on the table. The metal that is meant to thrive on exactly this backdrop is instead grinding toward the $4,000 handle, well off the February record near $5,600. The explanation has almost nothing to do with fear and almost everything to do…
The US Dollar Index (DXY) spent the back half of this week doing something most desks had written off six months ago: rallying on the prospect of a Federal Reserve (Fed) rate hike. The index pushed to a fresh 13-month high before easing back; the move owed less to safe-haven flight than to a cold read on rate differentials. With the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) leaning hawkish at its June meeting, the Greenback has become the cleanest way to play the only major central bank still willing to tighten into an energy shock.A yield gap, not a panicUnderneath the…
A peaceful start gave way to a hawkish Fed surprise midweek, sending the dollar surging while gold, stocks, and crypto tumbled across a packed trading week. Source link
Lebanese villagers return to find homes in ruins Source link
The week ahead will bring a fresh test for major currency pairs as investors digest the first Federal Reserve (Fed) policy decision under Chair Kevin Warsh and look ahead to the United States (US) Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) data, global PMI releases, and central-bank commentary.The US Dollar Index (DXY) trades near the 100.70 price zone on Friday after reaching a 13-month high of 101.13 earlier in the day. The Greenback rose sharply this week following the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged in the 3.50%-3.75% range, and removing its previous reference to “additional rate adjustments” . A hotter-than-expected PCE…
Silver (XAG/USD) price tumbles for the third consecutive trading day, down over 3.32% on Friday, courtesy of broad US Dollar (USD) strength and rising US Treasury yields, which have aimed higher since Wednesday amid the Fed’s hawkish tilt.XAG/USD Price Forecast: Technical OutlookSilver price continued to trend lower after clearing the 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) at $69.11, which was tested three times this week, but buyers surrendered, and sellers are gaining the upper hand, pushing the white metal below $65.00.Momentum shows that bears have continued to gain traction, as indicated by the Relative Strength Index (RSI), though it’s worth noting…