Trump attacks Fed, UBS expects pound to rise

14 Nov 2019

Unfortunate week for oil buyers. Following the news about a possible increase in supply and weak demand growth in the future, as well as Morgan Stanley's forecasts about a 25-30% reduction in market prices.

Another disappointing news. The agency’s World Energy Outlook (WEO), published that oil demand peaks within the next 10 years. Recall that this week Saudi Aramco gave the oil market 20 years. According to IEA analysts, the current growth in oil demand will last for 5 years maximum, and then we will see a significant slowdown.
We are talking about long-term forecasts, so now oil may well ignore these estimates. But in general, the future of the oil market looks rather unsightly.

As for yesterday’s oil growth, it was largely due to verbal interventions by the OPEC Secretary-General, who tried to smooth out the effect of the above-mentioned news. In particular, he said that in 2020 growth in oil demand could beat forecasts, oil supply from non-OPEC producers could decline sharply soon. Despite the growth of oil yesterday, taking into account current prices in the market, we continue to recommend selling the asset.

Also, despite the strengthening over the last couple of weeks, we recommend selling the dollar. The further fate of the Fed rates is still in limbo, but the further decline will be a strong hit to the dollar. In this light, Trump's next attack on the Fed was quite remarkable. The US President accused the Central Bank and Powell of slowing down the economic development in the States. The Fed, unlike other leading central banks, did not want to divert rates into the negative zone, which harmed the US economy.

Such information at a time of the impeachment procedure, Trump gives reasons for the sale of the dollar. Moreover, you can sell it against euro, pound or Japanese yen. Also, the Canadian dollar in the region of 1.33 seems to be a good candidate for buying USDCAD (we are talking about the sales of this pair).

The British pound is another excellent candidate for purchases against the dollar. We have already noted that in conditions of an almost complete absence of risks of a “no-deal” exit, the current prices for the pound seem to us underestimated by at least 500-1000 points. According to the updated forecasts from UBS, our estimates are still very conservative. Since bank analysts see the pound paired with the dollar in the region of 1.54 over the next three years. Since we are interested in the time horizon in months, not years, the achievement of 1.40 with GBPUSD will completely satisfy us.

Returning to the situation with the dollar, we note that yesterday's data on consumer inflation in the US as turned out to be rather neutral and did not change the existing situation in the foreign exchange market.

Today we are waiting for GDP data in the Eurozone and Germany, as well as for retail sales in the UK. Besides, the attention of the markets will be riveted to the speech of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to the US Congress.