Speculative dollar sentiment worsens

September 2, 2009 — Mitul Kotecha

Data releases continue to fail to inspire markets despite the continuing run of better than expected numbers. In the US the Chicago PMI reached the critical boom/bust level of 50.0 in August whilst the less closely followed Milwaukee PMI surged into expansion territory at 56.0.  This revealed some upside risk to the ISM manufacturing index which duly beat consensus coming at 52.9 in August.  The fact that positive data is failing to lift markets is a sign of fatigue and stock markets appear to be running out of fuel.

From an FX perspective these developments will not be sufficient to provoke a break out of well worn ranges. Risk trades remain in favour but the momentum is limited. The prognosis does not look as positive for the dollar as the generally improving environment for risk will play negatively. Speculative sentiment (CFTC Commitment of Traders IMM data) has indeed worsened for the dollar; IMM data revealed net dollar short positions increasing sharply in the latest week, with market positioning worse than the 3-month average.

Much will depend on the US jobs report on Friday but until then the dollar is likely to cling to the weaker end of ranges. I believe that the dollar index will avoid dropping below its August 5th low of 77.428. The main exception to dollar weakness appears to be sterling where sentiment has become more bearish recently. This was reflected in the IMM report in which aside from the dollar, the pound has also been a loser and the only other currency for which speculative appetite worsened.

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What goes up…

September 1, 2009 — Mitul Kotecha

…must come down. It was a soft end to August overall. Despite a 6.7% fall in Chinese stocks on the last day of the month, global equity markets for the most part registered gains over August. For example the S&P 500 registered a healthy 3.4% increase in August compared to close to a 15% drop in Chinese (Shanghai B) equities. The phrase, “the higher it goes, the harder it falls” looks appropriate in the case of Chinese stocks; at the time of writing, year-to-date the S&P 500 is up around 13% compared to a 68% gain for the Chinese stocks.

Looked at from another angle the S&P 500 is up an impressive 51% from its low in March 2009, whilst the Shanghai index is up a whopping 113% from its low in October 2008. Much of the selling in Chinese stocks as usual appears to be rumour based with talk of more lending curbs in China and a report that China’s state owned enterprises may terminate commodity contracts with foreign banks spurring the initial selling. The law of gravity suggests that Chinese stock may have further to fall.

The fact that the sharp sell off in Chinese stocks is having only a limited impact on other markets is an interesting development in itself. It suggests that investors in other markets and products are not getting too carried away with China stock watching. In particular, currencies appear calm despite the volatility in Chinese stocks and generally correlations between equity markets and currencies remain low according to my calculations (happy to provide correlation coefficients to anyone who is interested).

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