My nascent career as a Eurodollar trader came to a crashing halt when I took a look at the link to Aikin's blog and saw the Eurodollar coloured strips/packs. Ten of them, wonderful for someone colour blind like me who struggles with basic colours, tells women that orange handbags are a lovely tan colour and end up with purple slippers if left to my own devices (they look a lovely shade of blue to me ). Anyway, for the other stuff you recommend, I'll certainly take a look at it. I know correlations/reverse correlations have gone down the tubes since QE, but is there a one-stop reference for this stuff?
Mav and all the others on here, Happy Thanksgiving, and if you're travelling, a smooth and safe journey.
If everyone (hedge funds, small traders etc) & his dog is so certain JPY is going lower, who is left on the opposite side of the trade to buy JPY ? Same reasoning why market tops arise - b/c there is no one else to buy or sell to
There's a lot of macro factors in currency trades. Baht down about 15% since peak because funds moving out from Thai stocks and bonds preparing for taper and local political n economic issues. Currency trades as a consequence of those factors and weakens, though one could ask who would buy. Never heard of a bank saying sorry we can't take our local currency and sell you the dollars you want. And they do have esoteric ways to hedge, though I claim no expertise in these. Japan printing money now with all associated results. That plus speculation of course.
That's not really how it works. Currencies are not like commodities or stocks where there is a finite supply or an expiration. They move on capital flows. As long as money is flowing in and out of countries it's currency is going to move. Let me give you some perspective here. In the 1980's the USD/JPY was trading north of 250. In the span of a decade it traded south of par. Now at what point was the move over? At what point would you have thought "who is left to buy Yen"? At 240? 220? That's a huge move already. OK surely at 200, a nice big round number. Uh oh...175. 150.....125....100.....75!!!!!! See traders do this all the time. Do NOT do this. The biggest money is ALWAYS made on moves that look like they can't go any further. Better yet, DON'T analyze what you think is going to happen. Since this is an ACD thread, I use ACD to tell me when a move is over and when it's likely to continue. And believe you me, I can't tell you how many times I thought to myself a move was over and ACD said, hey a-hole, what are you doing this move has a lot more room to go. And I would sit there and watch the market keep going and going and going thinking ACD was wrong this particular time. This is precisely WHY we use a quantitative approach. Fyi, some perspective here. USD/JPY traded at 360 on the highs. That's your trivia for the day.