The Federal Reserve cut rates by 50 basis points in an emergency move to counter coronavirus fallout, but the analyst warns the cut was premature without coordinated action from other central banks. Gold rose and the dollar dipped, though the S&P 500 rally may not hold if the ECB, BOE, and BOJ don't follow.
Chapters
OK, so we just had a big piece of breaking unscheduled news in that the Fed have done an emergency rate cut of 50 basis points. Totally unscheduled. We obviously know that there was a G7 call, a teleconference call earlier this morning, and there were finance ministers, officials present. There were heads of central banks. However, the timing of this was completely unexpected. There was no tip-off that it was coming today. Markets, as we had discussed in pricing, were definitely priced for this on the 18th of March, which is the next scheduled event. But the Fed here looks like they've taken preemptive measures in order to counteract the COVID-19 kind of implications that that is going to have on both the US and the global economy. Let's not forget the expectation will be is that numbers have started to pick up in the US, but the likelihood given how the virus generally has behaved in other geographic regions, numbers are going to go north in North America. And so to get ahead of that, to try and counteract any loss of confidence as well as manage market expectations, the Fed had decided to go early. Now, the initial reaction is one of which you would imagine. Equity markets initially blipped up, gold higher, the dollar got hit on the back of it. But what I wanted to have a look at and quickly jump on the mic and cover was looking at the S&P now, because, you know, just through the benefit of experience I was covering the mic last time there was a global synchronized coordinated rate cut, which was March 2011. And I remember that quite clearly in my mind. And this is very different. And the biggest difference is there's no ECB, there's no Bank of England, there's no SNB, there's no BOJ. It's the Fed going alone. And I think that's a disappointment. Now, a couple of things here I just want to stress. The Fed are in a very different situation. If you think about interest rates and where they are at the moment, interest rates in the US are, or were prior to the move, a 1.5 to 1.75 federal funds range. That is way higher than the likes of basically zero in the case of Japan and Europe, just above that in the case of the UK. And so those other countries, those other central banks don't have flexibility. Basically. So you can almost imagine the call that would have happened earlier today. I would imagine the Fed were quite wanting to take this preemptive strike to get ahead of the curve, but the others, through fear of exhausting their monetary options— and if you think about the eurozone politically, very hard for fiscal measures to really come through in Europe because Germany, France, Spain. It's all very fragmented. There is no centralized one fiscal policy to rule them all, so to speak, like that they can do in America, for example. So interestingly, if you look at the S&P on a minute, you have that initial blast. Now, this is such dangerous territory if you're a new trader. I can only imagine the amount of people that would have got burnt on that initial trying to jump onto the move, being too late to it, getting long at the top of the move, and getting completely ironed out on that following few minutes trying to get long, thinking that this is the solution, the market's going to power higher. You know, one of the things here is the S&P being up, say, 4 or 5% yesterday, still is down heavily over the course of the last week or so, about 7-8%. The point being I'm trying to make is I think that the Fed— I'm going to say the Fed have made a mistake here. I think that they've gone too early. I think responding to the market in this way, I think the market movement is quite telling of what's happening at the moment. And perhaps I'm going to be wrong, but what I think the market might do here is that it would be unsurprising if the market sold off for the rest of the day because if I was a market speculator, I'd want to force the Fed now to really test their might. Because now that they fired 50 basis points, which is twice as deep as the previous cuts that they did 3 of in 2019, going 25 clips at a time, now what are you going to do? They've, you know, the problem you have from a central bank point of view is you're putting yourself with your back against the wall. Once you start delivering, now you've got to continue to deliver. And maybe the strategy is the Fed feel they've got a little bit more wiggle room before they get to zero lower bound again and then restarting QE. The point is, I think if you wanted to see the S&P and global equities just go higher and higher and higher on the back of that headline, the other central banks needed to deploy a same cut at the same time. And they haven't done so. So for me, this is a disappointment. Once you get over the initial headline blast, I think markets will— could well come to that conclusion. But let's see how it plays out. The dollar has stabilized, albeit still remains lower. Euro-dollar still higher for the moment. Equity is really not buying it too much. And if you look at the US 10-year, that's a pretty tame move. But don't forget, markets were already fully priced for a 50 basis point cut in 15 days. So with that being said, you know, a cut— yes, it's come early, yes, it's a surprise, but the markets were somewhat already positioned for that material outcome in the first place. One asset that is continuing to see some upside, gold prices, just having another little push here on the upside. So let's have a look at things here. We're reversing a lot of that big unwind that we had right on the end of last week when gold fell through the floor. So we're coming back up to the bottom end of that range that we were trading through the best part of last week. So as we come up here, we've got the first test at around these levels. So if I just put an ellipse around what I'm talking about, this area here, this was on that day on the 28th before the eventual push down came. So upside from there. This is just around that R2 as well at the moment. And then I would say the next kind of areas of interest would be just above there where you've got 1634.5. That starts to bring in some of those low points from that range low that we were trading through the majority of last week that was holding up some of the price. So some two areas of bigger now upside obstacles to the price appreciation that we've had in the gold future. As obviously the dollar's taken a bit of a hit on the back of that impromptu move out of the Federal Reserve. But that's going to be quite key. Does it hold? If so, you've probably seen the top end of this move now. If we were going to try to get long at that again, I'd probably want to see a break and then a more of a consolidation for a print and then a push back up higher. But we've already gone a decent $25 already on the back of the initial headline. So again, the key here for any new traders is if you, you know, it's this kind of fear of missing out, fear that, you know, you've missed an opportunity. But quite frankly, I was with a different group of traders giving a lecture at the time, and I heard the news come out, and when I looked immediately at the charts, there's no way you could have got on that move in terms of initiating a fresh position quickly enough. The market movement was pretty much instantaneous. The key now is remaining disciplined and picking your moments thereafter. And I think then you're going to have to wait now. And it's about how does the rest of this session play out? And importantly now, do other central banks follow suit with more firm, concrete commitments that are in fact pre-advanced ahead of their set scheduled central bank meetings and either cut rates or ramp up QE or something of that nature to supplement this Fed move. So with gold now testing that upper bound, it's about does it break and then does it use that as a platform to then move higher as a potential entry? I think for the equity move, much less unsure, and I think that reflects this somewhat mixed opinion about whether this is an appropriate move for the Fed to take at this point in time. All right, that's it, just a quick update. But I'll remain on the mic for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks, guys.
