Weekly review.

During the week starting Monday 15 July, a collection of events caused an 'unease', even though the underlying theme of 'soft landing' still remains.

The week started with the market digesting the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. And there is a new phrase being banded about: The Trump trade, meaning potential policies put in place if the republican party wins the US election are having an effect on certain instruments.

Also on Monday, some mildly disappointing data from China was reported. Although it should be noted the Chinese economy is not in contraction, it's just not growing as fast as hoped. Non the less, the data appeared to hit overall risk sentiment.

Arguably the largest factor in the currencies movements this week was the JPY. It was touted, but not confirmed, that the BOJ intervened again. Or it could simply be the threat of intervention caused traders to bail out of JPY shorts. Regardless, the yen remained strong all week which then has a knock on effect, causing the other currencies to be weaker than they fundamentally should be.

During Fridays European session, a shockingly stark reminder of how reliant we are on technology hit us, as a worldwide 'tech outage' dashed any hopes of sentiment recovering and the week ended with the VIX above 16.

All things considered, as long as US data remains in 'soft landing territory' and as long as company earnings are still on the positive side...the soft landing narrative should eventually overpower all of above and I'll start the week looking for a drop in the VIX and positive sentiment to return.

In other news, the ECB meeting passed by rather uneventfully and it's unclear if there be two, one or no further cuts this year. Data from Canada remains soft, another BOC cut is expected this coming week. And slightly soft data from the UK keeps an August rate cut on the table.

On a personal note, it was a week of patiently waiting for the currencies to behave according to my bias. Which (just about) happened on Thursday as I thought the JPY strength was waining...but as mentioned, the tech outage dashed any hopes of a positive end to the week and the trade was closed for a small loss. *I will say, when I placed the trade, I noted there wasn't any 'fresh' positivity... It was more a preemptive trade. Whereas I would now wait for some fresh positive news before attempting another 'risk on' trade.

*Please note...on Friday 26 july I'm going on holiday, I will give the exact dates I won't be trading on during the week.

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

Results for the week:

Trade 1: AUD JPY -0.6

Total= -0.6%

Total since start of blog= +27.1% (risking 1% per trade)