Forex Analysis & Reviews: 02.03.2022 - For US traders, sale of...

02.03.2022 07:20 AM

For US traders, sale of ruble has been mirage

Twenty-four-hour liquidity is normally a gift to traders trying to manage through a world rife with threats. However, getting too convinced by the direction of prices when American investors are asleep recently has been a recipe for pain.

Now you see it, now you don't, has been the experience of anyone watching US stock futures the last three sessions, when the S&P 500 contract has rallied 4.5%, 3.7% and 3.2% from lows touched in Asian hours.

The difference between daytime and nighttime returns over the past three sessions was as wide as almost any time since 2008, according to data compiled by Bespoke Investment Group.

A lot of factors can explain this phenomenon.

Firstly, trader populations are awake at different times. Secondly, liquidity ebbs and flows as the session rolls on, and news on geopolitics dominates the overnight before US economic data arrives in the mornings.

By contrast, small shifts in sentiment are also being amplified by investors with very little conviction about where the market will end up, said Chris Harvey, head of equity strategy at Wells Fargo.

"An increasingly prevalent investor mentality is 'playing not to lose,'" Harvey said. "Many funds do not have a ton of risk appetite or risk budget to swing around. As a result, they're being very reactive. When the market begins to rally, we're seeing investors pile on and vice versa," he added, referring to bullish traders in the first case and bearish traders in the second.

However, the last three years have shown us that no trend is proving durable.

Over the three sessions through Monday, the biggest ETF tracking the S&P 500 saw its intraday performance surge ahead of overnight futures by 11 percentage points.

It is the second-biggest gap since the financial crisis, behind a three-day stretch in March 2020, data show.

Futures fell nearly 3% when they opened Sunday evening before paring the loss to 0.2% as of 4:15 p.m. in New York.

In fact, we should have accepted this by now. Vicious reversals have been a regular feature of markets in 2022.

Market volatility kicked up in January, when the Federal Reserve signaled growing resolve to fight inflation.

The situation worsened following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week, setting a bearish trend for many sectors of the global market.

Data on the behavior of both institutional and amateur traders last Thursday illustrates how quickly the backdrop can shift.

That day, hedge funds, which make both bullish and bearish wagers on stocks, raised long positions and covered short sales, scooping up shares at the fastest pace since November 2020, data compiled by Morgan Stanley's prime broker show. According to an estimate from the firm's trading desk, institutional buying of S&P 500 futures reached a record.

While demand from retail investors has been less robust this month than in January, their purchases totaled $2.7 billion last week, with more than half coming on Thursday, Morgan Stanley data show.

One thing at work is that turmoil in Europe is boosting the allure of American assets, says George Pearkes, a strategist at Bespoke.

The "geopolitical news flow and all the worse implications for markets are happening outside of US hours, when things tend to calm down," he said. "Treasuries are the safety trade as long as the dollar is the lynchpin of the global economic system. US equities are also least-exposed to Russia when you look at composition by sector, direct economic links. The US being the flight to safety bid is very real."

你今天已经点赞上这篇文章了

*这里的市场分析是为了增加您对市场的了解，而不是给出交易的指示。

If you have any content questions, please contact editorial-board@instaforex.com

News

该作者的更多文章

EURUSD

Euro vs US Dollar

选择时间框架

分钟

小时

天

周

开始交易

通过InstaForex赚取加密货币汇率变动的收益。

下载MetaTrader 4并开启您的第一笔交易。

推荐文章

5月14日美國市場新聞摘要

歐洲股市上揚，美聯儲承壓：交易員相信利率會下調

5月13日美國市場新聞摘要

NRG Energy價值上升至120億美元的協議後劇增 —— 能源領域的新玩家？

5月12日美國市場新聞摘要

貿易和平的希望：美中談判如何震撼歐洲證券交易所

2025年5月8日美國市場新聞摘要。由於貿易協議樂觀情緒，美國股市指數收高

黃金下滑，股票下跌：印度、德國和美聯儲的共同點

5月7日美國市場新聞摘要

黃金下跌，股票暴跌：印度、德國和美聯儲的共同點是什麼？

Top analytics