Market sentiment analysis:
- Trader confidence has been helped by hopes that the worldwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic may be eased soon and by some strong corporate earnings reports.
- That suggests the current rally in riskier assets could continue but several bearish signals from IG client positioning data mean traders need to be cautious.
Trader confidence in riskier assets rises
Traders are becoming more confident in the outlook for riskier assets, suggesting further rises are on the way for stocks and the “risk on” currencies such as EUR, GBP, AUD and NZD. However, IG client sentiment data are sending out some bearish signals, suggesting that traders need to be cautious chasing prices higher.
One example is the FTSE 100 index of major London-listed stocks, which is trending higher but seems to be lagging Wall Street.
FTSE 100 Price Chart, One-Hour Timeframe (April 23-28, 2020)
Chart by IG (You can click on it for a larger image)
Change in | Longs | Shorts | OI |
Daily | -18% | 2% | -4% |
Weekly | 24% | 2% | 7% |
While sentiment has been helped by hopes that several countries will soon ease the coronavirus restrictions, and by some strong corporate earnings reports, sentiment is unlikely to recover fully until the crude oil market settles down.
A Brief History of Major Financial Bubbles, Crises, and Flash-crashes
In this webinar, I looked at the trends in the major currency, commodity and stock markets, at the forward-looking data on the economic calendar this week, at the IG Client Sentiment page on the DailyFX website, and at the IG Client Sentiment reports that accompany it. You might also like to check out the DailyFX Trading Global Markets Decoded podcasts.
--- Written by Martin Essex, Analyst and Editor
Feel free to contact me via the comments section below