For all intents and purposes 2020 has already been the most contentious and violent U.S. election season in living memory. With a nation in a state of a cold civil war one would assume that the financial markets would take note. And under the hood they did indeed respond by keeping implied volatility elevated throughout the year. However, with the exception of a much overdue correction earlier this month we currently seem to be in a pre-election holding pattern. What should we make of that and where are we heading next?
As if we hadn’t already suffered enough lately, today’s event roster includes this month’s FOMC minutes being delivered around 2:00pm Eastern (18:00 GMT) plus ECB board member Peter Praet delivering a speech shortly after. Which means markets across the board will most likely be stuck in nail-biting hibernation mode until then. To keep my rowdy rabble entertained I’ll do a quick and dirty momo update as I’m seeing some interesting developments.
I don’t want to sound overly dramatic but the fate of the Dollar for the remainder of this year and most likely well into 2018 will be decided tomorrow when chairwoman Janet Yellen will announce whether or not the Federal Reserve is finally ready to kick start a reduction in the $4.4 Trillion balance sheet it accumulated over the past decade.
I have always discouraged political discussions on Evil Speculator for many reasons. One, the news are 80% composed of lies and subjective opinions. Two, the remaining 20% are mainly composed of ideologically driven misinformation, which leaves us with an extremely low signal to noise ratio. Three, the human mind can only process and absorb a finite amount of daily information, and excess of input can result into mental overload. Four, all information will to some extent affect you subconsciously, even the one you have consciously dismissed as worthless. Chew on that for a moment.