The Secrets to Forex & Seasons GreedingsThis section is on seasonality and follows the prior section on carry trading conditions. I strongly recommend reading the prior parts for full value. This is (pt. 5) in chronological order.
And yes, this will be on the test.
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You probably have someone in the immediate or extended family that considers herself (let's be honest) an expert shopper. The coupons, the early trips, the economy size containers, the 2 for 1 dealerinos, etc. Gets the seasonal produce or vegetables because they're cheap. Skips Black Friday, shops Cyber Monday. Didn't run out of toilet paper during the pandemic, etc. Gets all the Christmas gifts shortly after Thanksgiving, or in early December. And this expert shopper will repeat many of these decisions each year around similar times or with similar products. Doesn't matter what holiday, culture, or country involved, the behavior is parallel. I'll cut the music and get to the important stuff: Shopping is where the average normie experiences the pricing influences of seasonality.
Not everything is 'worth' the same price all year round, not everything can be produced on any given day of the year, and not everything is consumed on any given day of the year. There are private and public laws and behavioral standards tied in as well. Everyone knows this as they experience it in their general robotic lives. But retail traders tend to forget this when it comes to trading and investing.
So what's the difference between seasonality and similar-sounding concepts like cyclical trading or using historical models?
Part 1: Solar Calendars
Seasonality is a kind of factor (like in factor investing), it's a more rigid concept derived from historical data. It tends to be cyclical, but the timing is not arbitrary, it's formatted into the gregorian calendar . This calendar is based on solar timings and their effects. Solar timings were once one of the great wisdoms coveted by our ancient ancestors, building incredible structures to predict these seasonal events. They didn't do this for fun. In our current era of surplus, we can tik tok our way to prosperity, but in earlier eras, maximizing food and shelter was a life or death strategy.
The solar calendar predicts these events with relatively decent scientific accuracy. It offers certain outcomes. Think about trading and its challenges. Uncertainty is the norm, so anything certain is inherently valuable. Now, how does that fit into currency exchange?
Businesses, major exchanges, and governments all rely on this calendar for their standard operating procedures and for risk management. What do those three things have in common? They involve people, and they involve lots and lots of money. They all share the same green destiny.
Part 2: Are These Titles Useful?
I said this a million different ways in the first 2 parts. Look, there are certain psychological biases that greedy people at the top share, due to their upbringing, income bracket, and nationality, among things. Those biases help make seasonality matter, largely due to vacation timing, consumption season, and tax events these wealthy people will into relevance out of thin air, like a magician. This is why seasonality can still generate an edge for you, the pitiful retail trader. Now, as mentioned in pt. 3, we are still focused on long-term trades, traders that hold for many days, weeks, or months.
Does seasonality have big changes for intra-day traders (who play on nightmare difficulty)? I'm not going to write a book here and detail every answer, you need to do your own research. Or you can just wait for me to write the section on intra-day trading. Or you could spend your whole life serving coffee.
Please remember to follow me so I don't have to see your awful latte art.
Part 3: Dead Presidents
Okay, here are some secrets from the money magicians:
There are seasons for all securities.
It's important to understand that seasons for stocks and commodities affect currencies.
I had to check google to make sure this is up to date but it appears you still need cash to buy or own things. And we're in the cash game. Ever wonder why dead presidents or national heros are always on the faces of fiat currency? As described in the last part, they are country-level assets, created for tax and liquidity purposes. Those faces are reminders of your most sacred civic duty: paying taxes. Did you know that all people have to pay taxes? Including wealthy people? The most powerful person on earth (probably) pays taxes. And, based on nationality, have to pay taxes at the same time each year? That is a rare form of certainty related to markets.
Part 4: The Spice Must Flow
Tax season, especially the US tax season, is big because lots of cash (usually over 80%) flows through forex as USD. Most of the wealthiest people in the world hold a lot of USD. And a majority of them live in the US, as tax residents or as citizens. As a result, it has an effect on USD rates towards the end of the year, when investment portfolios are rebalanced to try and take advantage of the tax system with whatever strategy is legally available. Indeed, it can be complicated, and I recommend doing your own research, something you will have to be competent at if you want to make a living for decades into the future. The net assessment is that if you are trading towards the end of the year, you need to be mindful of how the US tax season will affect your potential positions, and fit that into your risk management evaluation.
Variables like earnings seasons, and other business or industry dependent factors serve as strong influences. After all, they are the ones using most of the money... currency isn't just there to collect for rent and spend on groceries, it's to create and capture value, the mission of all corpos. The money must flow.
JUST THE TIP: When looking at seasonality, or any other global macro like news or fundamentals, it's important to think in terms of DEMAND. Does xyz increase demand for a currency (relative to the pair)? The supply does matter, but where many retail traders (and especially cryptocoinies) tend to get pink in the face, is when they focus almost entirely on supply in the evaluation of a currency. Demand is principally important to currency, and is the primary reason why consensual pegging agreements and the gold standard failed last century. Instead of reading a book on it, just read this: the demand for the currency of a few key nations is consistently strong due to loosening international finance standards that allow the newly minted wealth of developing world investors to gravitate towards developed country assets to hedge against local economic turbulence. Oh yeah and the petrodollar.
Part 5: Commodifying Seasons
Looking at commodities as futures contracts, because they deserve special attention. Especially useful in recent months.
A lot of bag holders suffered big time in the oil contract bogmarket. The Bogdanoff's made a call, and prices on a few different oil contracts fell below zero. The behavior is so significant it is having effects on USD and global economic sentiment. Thank god we smart kids trade forex right? No zeros in forex, just infinities.
There are plenty of articles online explaining how that happened, but let me tie in FNDs and explain the intersect with currency. The First Notice Day on futures products usually represents the peak of a trend if a trend was recently present. For example, the trend would occur over the prior 2 weeks or more to the FND date. You would want to look for positive open interest changes to support that trend. The FND could represent a definitive exhaustion point and signal a reversal or retracement. For risk management, these can be useful to look at if you trade a safe haven currency against a commodity or emerging currency. That means JPY & CHF (and now USD & EUR) against AUD, CAD, and sometimes NZD. Overall, most non-safe havens will have commodity performance attached to their currency performance. A quantitative or qualitative (ya eyeball it) composite of the performance of these commodities can help identify your center of price gravity (and its shift, is it being pulled up or down). I will come back to commodity futures and how they affect commodity currencies in the next part, so don't panic. In sum, I suggest googling the first notice days for commodity contracts (and you should also make note of currency contracts as well), taking a look at their chart development, and being mindful of a likely reversal occurring on those dates. This is an excellent way of finding extremes on the related pairs and can serve as 'risk mindful' price levels for entering into a long term trade.
For example, not to get too far ahead of my risk management articles here, but let me briefly spoil with a more intermediate level trade: Relevant commodity futures contracts are rising in confluence with seasonal data and your currency (AUD/JPY) is rising in tandem. Your center of price gravity is accurately reflected as the current price of AUD/JPY at market, and you bought at the start of the month based on prior research, so you are in profit. Shortly before FND, interest rates on AUD are cut and the AUD/JPY trend flatlines. However, at the FND, the contracts make an extreme bullish move, and price action on AUD/JPY jumps as well (but in a smaller %). You have found an extreme, and can now close your long position or open a reversal position and wait for PA to retrace.
Now, I could write a Chinese novel on all the specific things that should also happen with that trade, but that example is a framework you should familiarize yourself with.
Part 6: That Time of the Month
Your eyes are probably glazing over at this point. That's alright, everyone has a limit to what they can read and learn. Just like everyone has a limit to their net worth. Wonder if there is a relationship between the two.
Let me make this a little easier by explaining just how complicated seasonality can be.
As mentioned earlier, seasonality tends to work simply because there is an underlying calendar structure within highly regulated wealthy markets. These structures are created by the rules and standard practices of individuals and institutions, and more. These are effectively factors (factor investing) that shape price mechanics. Money moves in and out based on these regulations or standards (controlled timing), IE: tax obligations (end of year), holiday spending (consumer nations benefit), commodity contracts (exchange rules), and vacation months (volatility dynamics), and more. Global weather patterns influence shipping and availability of ports, temperatures and Ninos influence the price of agribusiness commodities normally tied to season... But it doesn't have to be that complicated for you, my small headed friend. I wanted to highlight the harder route first if you so choose to follow it, but the easy route is also available.
Most of the forex market is USD, the remaining minority is EUR and JPY, and the rest is just a twinkle in some greedy fatcats eye. Why not just look at the seasonal or monthly performance of those currencies? Review the conditions from the peak, instead of the ground floor?
Part 7: Started at the Top
Firstly, if you prefer averages, you can average past 3 years, past 5 years, past 25 years, etc. You can find these indicators on TV by searching 'seasonality.' You can find them as free or paid indicators on the mt4 marketplace. You can also find them in various forms on other sites, some of them premium. Now, it gets even easier. Some pairs tend to close higher on some months versus others, this can be a useful unit of analysis when you attempt to fit seasonality into any overall model. If a pair like the USDJPY has 65% of closing higher in October but a sub 35% of closing higher in August, then you can evaluate risk by aligning yourself with history. You will know based on the MoM shift of probabilities. If you don't know this, then you need to return to the zoo, they are probably looking for you. Likewise, anything between 45-55% is likely noise, and not subject to the psychological intersect present in seasonality that I find significant. Again, we're still operating under a long-term trade frame of reference; intra-day traders will have their own sections in the future. To stay on target, long term traders with limited time to do additional research will want to focus on monthly seasonality performance at minimum.
You don't necessarily need to be going through futures contracts, seasonal consumer spending, tax season dynamics, or weather patterns for perfect market timing opportunities; but know that the institutions do, and they have the money, they make the markets, and they intimately follow (or create) business and client trends. As I explained in part 1, what they think is the only thing that matters, even if it seems overly complicated or stupidly simple. Spending a little less time with your gann wave analysis and more time mimicking their research efforts will improve your survivability and your probability of accurately finding that center of price gravity.
What about carry conditions?
So let's return to the carry condition question. How can you use seasonality to find the center of price gravity, the resilient value, for long term positions? Alone, it is not sufficient, but it necessary to consider, especially in months where seasonality dictates a 65% or higher chance of a positive or negative month. For instance, you decide to plan a 3-month trade on the USDJPY, from August through October. You will know based on seasonal monthly performance, that the center of price gravity is moving from a lower to a higher price point. UJ has a 32% of closing HIGHER than it opened in August, a coinflip 53% in September, and 68% of closing higher than it opened in October. This instructs your risk management approach. You take additional risk holding a 3 month short in that period. And adding carry conditions, you pay a daily fee to make that trade as well. Personally, I feel sick just thinking about that trade. I had coronavirus last month, but that trade is worse. Now, that doesn't give you much guidance on when to open your position, which further sections will help elucidate.
If you got this far, congratulations. Your mom and I are very impressed.
More on fundamentals, commodities, and global macro in general next time. If you're someone that obsesses over the medieval metals or boomer rocks, then you will really enjoy the next section. Still lost and confused? Don't worry, it's already priced in.
