Asianmacro has many close friends in the ”real world” i.e. people who are engaged in real productive businesses or employment like doctors, engineers, businessmen, lawyers (OK maybe not lawyers) …. where FOMC. ECB, QE & other financial lingo don’t mean much to them! However, what you do not know nor care in your regular life in going for work in the morning at 9 a.m., punching out at 5 p.m. (if there is even regular hours anymore like days of old!) does not mean that you will not be affected by events & developments which only financial market practitioners care about to monitor with a hawk eye.
In fact since the 2008 global financial crisis, everything that has happened especially in the real world & economy affecting many lives can be traced back to financial markets development & actions taken by governments & central banks since.
The most important event coming up with reverberating effects globally with be this upcoming European Central Bank (ECB) meeting on Thursday 5 May. All expectations are on Draghi, the ECB President to cut Eurozone refinance rate and unleash their version of QE as well. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/02/us-markets-forex-idUSKBN0EA11M20140602 . From the chart above, we can see that EUR/USD has plunged from 1.40 to 1.36 currently in the past one over week end May as short positions (*best captured by the IMM CFTC net non-commercial positions) reached the highest level of shorts in 2014. Risk reversals volatility prices (where price of calls over puts) have fallen as well with options market pricing more demand for EUR puts over calls.
In the chart below, in fact, Citigroup Pain Index is at an extreme negative level. This is a FX Positioning Alert Indicator that infer positioning of active currency traders from relationships between exchange rates and currency managers’ returns. A positive reading suggests that currency traders have been net long the currency and a negative reading suggests that currency traders have been net short the currency, and in this case, the market is extremely short EUR.
We can also see that the yield spread between 2-year EUR rates & USD rates have gone to an extreme level since EUR rates fell a lot more & quicker in the recent weeks vis-a-vis USD rates.
When the entire sell-side screams for lower EUR & for further short EUR recommendations into ECB meeting, this is when Asianmacro gets worried over the imbalance of sentiments. Sometimes, the markets have no logic beyond street positioning & will go to the maximum pain to squeeze out the weak hands. As such, I have close out my short EUR/USD position & in fact turned long via 3-day EUR 1.3600 strike call options NY cut expiry (NYC 10 a.m. expiry which is right after ECB meeting decision & when the ECB press conference is underway). From illustration below, it cost my only 33 b.p. (or an equivalent of 40 pips in FX terms) with breakeven at 1.3640. If Draghi underwhelms in delivering an ECB cut & tone in his press conference, EUR/USD might just fly up to 1.3750-1.3800 level and I will be a happy man via my options & allow me to re-sell EUR/USD to take profit & establish new EUR shorts if it make sense again. If ECB overwhelms with aggressive cut & dovish undertones & EUR/USD plunge further, I don’t lose much beyond my small option premium for the call option that will expire worthless.
AsianMacro 