Talking Points:
- The reactions across asset classes to US Presidential election developments has been consistent since September; price action after news the FBI has ended its probe of Clinton suggests markets are upping their bets on a Clinton victory tomorrow.
- What reaction? It's the exact opposite of what happened at the start of last week.
- See the DailyFX Weekly Trading Forecasts for the major FX pairs ahead of the US elections.
We're in a black-hole for the next 48-hours as everyone on Earth - no exaggeration - awaits the outcome of the US Presidential elections. Yet after developments over the weekend regarding the FBI's probe into Clinton's use of a private email server, in which the FBI announced it would not pursue an indictment after the October 28 afternoon surprise, it seems that markets have placed their bets on the outcome tomorrow. Call it the November Surprise.
Empirically, after observing markets around the debates, the October 28 announcement, and subsequent market open at the start of this week, we can see that the US Dollar is by-and-large tracking Clinton electoral odds. Whereas Gold and the Japanese Yen rallied, the US Dollar and US equity futures declined on October 28 when the FBI probe was announced, the exact happened today once markets reopened after the news over the weekend.
We know that these moves are related to the US election (receding political risk premium) given the big picture for the US Dollar: when will the Federal Reserve hike rates next. Fed funds futures priced in a 78% chance of a 25-bps rate hike in December by the end of last week, and they're unchanged today.
The bets are in: USD/JPY has gapped open higher and could challenge ¥105.60 tomorrow; EUR/USD has gapped open lower and may soon revist the low-$1.0800s; and USD/MXN, perhaps the most sensitive pair due to some of the rhetoric coming out of the campaign, has moved swiftly to the downside to test the trendline from the April, August, and October 2016 lows.
See the above video for a technical review of the DXY Index, EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, USD/JPY, and Crude Oil.
Read more: Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise: Only One Thing Matters for EUR/USD This Week
--- Written by Christopher Vecchio, Currency Strategist
To contact Christopher Vecchio, e-mail cvecchio@dailyfx.com
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