Weekly Review

Overall market sentiment was, at best, 'choppy' during the week starting Monday 17 November.

A continuation of recent themes (AI overvaluation concerns / hawkish FED repricing) ensured an underlying tentativiity throughout the week and any positivity was short lived (NVIDEA earnings / GOOGLE positivity). Even the return of NFP, with a headline beat, ultimately proved negative as a December FED rate cut diminished to 30%.

All in all, it's a difficult environment, correlations have broken down, particularly the JPY, which struggled throughout the week thanks to the government stimulus. And It currently appears the BOJ don't have rate hike plans until spring 2026. Which brings intervention chatter to the fore. It's likely the BOJ will synchronise intervention with 'soft' US data. And once the BOJ do intervene, it will ultimately be a 'short JPY opportunity'. In the meantime 'verbal intervention threats' (jawboning) will be a 'risk' to any short JPY trades.

The AUD continues to under perform its fundamentals, weighed down by the tepid environment. And the run of soft UK date continues, the GBP remains remarkably resilient. All eyes are on the upcoming UK budget.

On Friday, we did get a FED twist, against the grain, New York FED president WILLIAMS mooted a near term rate cut. There is a theory this was a coordinated speech, lining up a December cut, appeasing the market and swinging the FED RATE MONITOR back towards a December cut. Whether it will prove to be a short lived 'relief bounce', only time will tell. The sooner we get a run of 'real time' US data, the better.

I begin the new week without a clear bias, I'll be reading headlines and watching the VIX in an attempt to guage how serious the market is one way or the other.

On a personal note, it was a week I found difficult to form a solid conviction, only one trade. And it was a particularly speculative AUD CHF short, when I felt the chart was going to roll over. The trade stopped out quite quickly during one of those brief periods of positivity. I'm currently envisioning a continuation of only one or two trades per week and I'm content to slightly up my risk percentage in an attempt to make up the numbers.

Please feel free to email any thoughts or questions: johnelfedforexblog@gmail.com

Results:

Trade 1: AUD CHF -1

Total = -1%

Total since start of blog = +46.4% (risking 1% per trade).