Is The Dollar About To Break?

A couple of my favorite quotes from legendary trader Bruce Kovner are:

What I am really looking for is a consensus the market is not confirming. I like to know that there are a lot of people who are going to be wrong.

As an alternative approach, one of the traders I know does very well in the stock index markets by trying to figure out how the stock market can hurt the most traders. It seems to work for him.

If you can figure out how the majority of the market is positioned and where the most consensus trades are, you can do very well by opportunistically fading the herd. This is playing the player and trading at the second level… a skill that’s vital to long term market survival.

Fading crowded trades is a great strategy, especially recently.

For example, our oil short went against near record long speculative positioning as noted in the COT report. Our long bonds trade went against speculative positioning as well and has been very profitable.

Since markets have lacked volatility and benchmark indices have gone vertical over the last few months, money managers have been desperately chasing and recklessly crowding into trades. This has resulted in a lot of one sided positioning that traders like us can continue to take advantage of.

Looking around global markets there’s one obvious trade that would make a lot of people wrong and hurt the most traders. That trade is the ole’ greenback.

Let’s look at the evidence.

The chart below shows speculators are max long the dollar against broker dealers. This is an extreme reading. When you see COT positioning at this level of divergence, it’s almost always the dealers who win out. The market doesn’t pay a bunch of speculators so easily.

BofA’s monthly Global Fund Manager Survey was released this week. The chart below shows that a large net % of respondents are saying the dollar is overvalued. This survey has a pretty good track record of noting short-term reversal points in the dollar.

It’s been a long time since there was a large and violent forced selloff in the dollar. That means dollar longs have grown complacent and many of them are probably leveraged. When there’s been mostly one way moves in an asset for a few years, it creates a situation where positioning, leverage, and complacent beliefs are like piles of dried, kerosene-soaked kindling. They’re just waiting for a spark.

Take away talk of the border adjusted tax and combine it with other global central banks like the BOE and ECB looking to end their easing cycles, and you have the potential for a ripe and violent reversal… or a dollar bonfire if you will.

Is The Dollar About To Break

USD price action is setting up in what looks like a textbook head and shoulders pattern. We could see a break below the neckline this week.

Now we don’t think this is a major reversal in the dollar here, it’s only short-term. But it’s still very playable.

There are a number of ways to get short the dollar since it directly and indirectly affects the pricing of many other assets (ie, emerging markets, oil, gold etc).

But in order to find the optimal dollar short trade, let’s again look at market positioning — using COT data and the BofA Fund Manager Survey —  to see how other players are long dollars directly or synthetically.

The chart below via www.freecotdata.com shows the 5-year percentiles for Net Speculator positioning. The instruments in red on the right are those that speculators are net short and vice versa for those in green on the left.

ZB, the bond futures contract we’re currently long, is essentially a synthetic dollar short position.

The 10-year yield and USD have moved in lockstep fashion over the last two years. This means that the potential for a dollar selloff looks good for our long bond positioning.  

The next instrument — 6B —  is the British Pound futures contract. Looking at the graph below from the Fund Manager Survey, you can see that respondents are historically net short the euro, pound, and bonds.

Like the dollar, both the euro and the pound have been forming inverse head and shoulders and are close to closing above their necklines.

We took a crack at going long the pound (FXB is the ETF alternative for the pound and FXE is the euro ETF alternative) a few months ago but closed our position for scratch as it failed to carry through. I’m willing to take another stab at it and perhaps the euro as well should we see price break those necklines.

If you’re interested in seeing exactly how we play these coming currency moves, take a trial of the Macro Ops Hub. Hub members get alerts to our exact entries, exits, and position sizes of both our model portfolios. Membership comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee. Check it out for 2 months, and if you don’t get your money’s worth, we’ll return it right away. Click here to learn more.

 

 

Is The Dollar About To Break

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Brandon Beylo

Value Investor

Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.

Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.

AK

Investing & Personal Finance

AK is the founder of Macro Ops and the host of Fallible.

He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.

With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.

Tyler Kling

Volatility & Options Trader

Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.

He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.

Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.

Alex Barrow

Macro Trader

Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.

After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.

Macro Ops is a market research firm geared toward professional and experienced retail traders and investors. Macro Ops’ research has been featured in Forbes, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and Real Vision as well as a number of other leading publications.

You can find out more about Alex on his LinkedIn account here and also find him on Twitter where he frequently shares his market research.