News background and trading ideas for 15/11/2018

15 Nov 2018

Yesterday was remembered by another tachycardia of the pound, the fixation of gains on oil, sell-offs of cryptocurrencies as well as inflation statistics for the UK and the US.

Let’s start with statistics. A consumer inflation in the USA and the UK came out slightly worse than analytics ‘ forecasts, but not so weak as to concern the markets seriously, so nothing radically changing the current fundamental picture has happened. Eurozone GDP came out within a framework of predictions and still demonstrates extremely weak growth rates.

Talking about our core mid-term trading idea - buying the pound, we have to admit that even the draft of the agreement between EU and the UK is already on the table - it is just a beginning of the long journey: the further approval of Cabinet, the UK Parliament, etc., so the resolution will not come about. However, the main thing is - the process is going. The pound will catch up it then. So we continue to recommend purchases of British currency, while our tactics, voiced earlier, seems to work very well. It is about a floating part of the position when we fix a part of the position in the plus of 100-150 points and then reopen it below. Yesterday we pulled off such a maneuver several times, buying a pound against the dollar around 1.29 and taking a gain of about 1.30.

The oil market obviously has begun the profit-taking. We continue to observe the developments and look for points to recover medium-term short positions. Recall, on Tuesday OPEC published its monthly report, where were announced rather unpleasant forecasts on the growth rates of oil demand, while the International Energy Agency predicts the US the role of the world hegemon in the oil market by 2025 and notes that over the next six years America will produce almost 75% of world oil volumes. The supply of shale oil by the mid-2020s. expected at 9.2 million barrels per day. The IEA also noted that OPEC is producing too much oil. The latest data on oil reserves in the United States confirm this (increased for the eighth week in a row by 8.8 million barrels).

Regarding the cryptocurrency market, analysts link sales with hardcock of Bitcoin Cash, as well as technical issues - the breakdown of the lower boundaries of the ranges. However, what is happening on the cryptocurrency market is for us only of academic interest, since with this bubble we have been more or less clear for quite some time.

Meanwhile, in Russia, there is a small round of optimism amid talks that in November the US will not implement new sanctions against the Russian Federation. We do not share this optimism and consider that the ruble is doomed to decline, especially in light of recent developments in the oil market and its general, in our view, prospects. So we continue to recommend sales of the ruble.


Gold sharply increased yesterday, fully justified that advances we have been given to it. Since there is some space for further growth, we continue to look for points for the gold purchases.