News background and trading ideas for 02/01/2019

On the last day of the year, optimism never returned to the financial markets, which were engaged with a wrap-up the outcomes of the outgoing year. The results are generally unhappy. In particular, the capitalization of the world stock market fell by almost $12 trillion. This is the worst year since 2008 and the second unsatisfactory in history. And although the Fear Index continued to decline, sentiment among investors is still decadent. That continues to push the demand for safe-haven assets up. So let’s remind about our recommendations: to buy safe-haven assets within the day and in the mid-term (we are talking about the Japanese yen in the foreign exchange market and gold in the commodity market).

The dollar continues to experience problems in the currency exchange market. There is no surprise amid the government shutdown in the USA and Trump’s ultimatums. Among the analysts and experts have been restarted talks that Trump will get deserved impeachment sooner or later. We remind about our recommendations with selling the dollar on every front of the foreign exchange market.

In this regard, a breakdown of the resistance level of 1.2700 by GBPUSD pair is seen as pretty exciting and encouraging. This breakdown gives good possibilities for income (the minimum goal of this breakdown is 1.30, the optimal one is 1.33). But in this case, we are talking more about local things - positions for the next few days. We want to remind you of our global top idea - buying the pound in the prospect of the prosperous outcome of the Brexit negotiations. Although the idea had has already been worked out (recall, we have been voicing it since September 2018), it remains relevant. Despite all the difficulties the negotiation process is not eternal, and January should be the month of a dot. So, it will not be a boring month for the GBPUSD pair, and if everything is, as we expect, the gains from the purchases of the pound will be count in the hundreds of points.

The oil market is also the depressive state. The media got data on oil production in Russia in 2018. The average for the year amounted to 11.16 million b/d, and at the end of the year, the Russian Federation produced almost 11.5 million b/d. That corresponds to the peak from the time of the USSR (the maximum values were recorded in 1987). Actually, such data is one of the answers to the question of why oil collapsed in autumn 2018, and why it is unlikely to increase in 2019. Recall, we recommend sales of oil when it cost $80 per barrel for Brent oil.