The markets illogicality the and trading anomalies

Tuesday was another recovery day in the financial markets. In general, all this is rather strange and illogical. Markets first fall on the news of coronavirus and the epidemic. Logically and explainable, we will not go into details, and once again build logical chains of consequences. We did this in previous reviews. But upon the receipt of news that the epidemic is developing and becoming the largest in the last 20 years (the number of deaths exceeded 400, and the cases of 20,000), markets begin to calm down instead of continuing to work out a fundamental negative. This can be seen from the dynamics of the stock markets (Nasdaq updated new historical highs, and Tesla shares seem to have forgotten what gravity and common sense are), gold is declining, risky assets are recovering, VIX Fear Index is falling by more than 10% in day, and the Chinese stock market is adding 1-2% per day.

The main problem in this chaos is not to lose one’s head and not to succumb to general madness. Ultimately, you need to work not with current prices and their dynamics, but with facts. And the facts are that the epidemic has already caused enormous damage and will continue to cause it. Yes, the extent of the damage is unclear and perhaps it will be partially leveled in one way or another. But it is applied and this is a fact.

So, starting from the facts, we consider current prices in the financial markets to be abnormal. Based on the concept of “regression to the average,” prices will sooner or later have to return to their moderately adequate state. Accordingly, today we will buy gold with redoubled energy and volumes (for less aggressive traders, we can recommend selling a pair of USDJPY - the points for sales are simply excellent). Stock market sales remain our No.1 trading idea.

Oil sales (WTI benchmark) from 51.20 also seem to be a balanced transaction (stops above 51.20 with profits in the region of 45 or even lower make the transaction extremely attractive). At the same time, we are acting with an eye on OPEC activity. If the cartel decides to intervene, and oil goes above 51.20, then a stop coup is quite possible.

Speaking of other news and macroeconomic statistics, we note that today will be published US employment data from ADP. Although the focus of the markets is traditionally focused on the official figures, which will be published on Friday, strong deviations in the fact from ADP from forecasts can provoke significant movements in dollar pairs.