Topic: Foreign Exchange

Monday saw major sell-offs in popular trades, with sharp declines in the Nasdaq and USD/JPY. Dovish comments from the Bank of Japan and strong U.S. data later stabilized markets. Uncertainty remains as investors await the Federal Reserve’s next moves.

Central banks are diverging in policy: the Fed left rates unchanged, the Bank of England began easing. Despite this, lower yields driven by weaker growth persist, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield below 4%. Major stock indices declined amid rising recession fears and geopolitical tensions, while the yen strengthened against the dollar.

The dichotomy between politics and monetary policy remains the central theme in FX – the so-called Trump trade versus Fed trade. The dollar has rebounded with safe haven demand amid rising geopolitical and trade tensions, despite weaker macro and Fed factors of late.

US disinflation is in full swing and led to the first back-to-back weekly loss of the US dollar since the end of April. Sterling jumped to its highest in a year, boosted by the UK macro backdrop. Another interesting week beckons – on net, we think it could be a dollar negative macro flow.