ActivTrades’ Market Analysts prepared their daily commentary on traditional markets for March 24, 2020. This is not a trading advice. See details below:
FOREX
The euro has gained more than 1.5% against the US dollar since the start of Monday’s session, with most of those gains coming after yesterday’s announcement from the Fed of an unprecedented rescue package. The American central bank promised to buy unlimited quantities of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, as well as providing finance programs for households and small businesses. While other central banks promised to do what it takes, the Fed pretty much promised to do everything! This titanic move is primarily designed to help the real economy, at a time of extreme hardship, but is also supportive of the markets. This is reflected in a change in the prevailing sentiment from the extreme risk-off of the last two weeks to a somewhat more positive outlook, as illustrated by the across-the-board gains on risk related assets. The dollar’s losses are due to the extreme burden the American central bank has just taken on; once things start returning to normal the greenback will surely depreciate even more significantly.
The gold price finds itself the perfect environment with first the Federal Reserve unleashing its potentially unlimited stimulus package, followed by the closure of some Swiss gold refineries due to coronavirus. Therefore, it is little surprise that the price is jumping, despite the temporary return of risk on sentiment to markets. Moreover, the huge QE promised by the Fed is lifting up stocks and we are seeing a positive correlation between gold and as a result with them both rallying. Investors are not only betting that coronavirus can now be defeated in a reasonable timeframe, but also that central banks will still be able to stop the economic crisis that would typically follow with their hyper-expansive monetary policies. This splurge of cash is another positive element for bullion, as gold, unlike greenbacks, cannot be printed.
Carlo Alberto De Casa – Chief analyst, ActivTrades
EUROPEAN SHARES
Stocks jumped in Europe, continuing the trend from Asian benchmarks, while US futures are also pointing to a firmer open on Tuesday. This sudden revival of an appetite for risk assets came amid signs of improvement in some of the hardest hit regions. Mainland China has made really good progress recently and is now said to be lifting the Wuhan lockdown, the location of the very first virus outbreak, on the 8th of April. Meanwhile in Europe, the new epicentre of the Covid-19 disease, Italy and Germany are registering fewer and fewer new daily cases, which shows the draconian measures taken by governments are working. The likelihood of a peak to come is the key piece of information to investors right now as most of them still struggle with the question of whether the market can go lower or not. Many investors will be tempted to buy the dip but most of them would like to enter the market with more certainty than there is now.
So far energy shares and miners are the most powerful sectors in Europe and are the main contributors driving benchmarks higher today. The best performance is coming from both the DAX-30 Index of Frankfurt and the Italian FTSE-MIB with companies like Siemens, Total and ASML trading much higher than yesterday.
The technical configuration of the DAX-30 Index is really interesting as the market may be on the verge of validating an inverted “Head and Shoulders” reversal pattern (see attached chart) that has been built with significant volumes and could see the current bullish momentum push the price to 10,215pts, 10,900pts and ultimately 11,600pts on a short term-basis. However, the resistance level at 9,360pts will need to be cleared first.
