week ahead previews: what to actually look for, not just what to list.

every financial media outlet publishes a "key events this week" list on monday morning. this is not week-ahead analysis. it is a calendar.

actual week-ahead analysis:

— what is the current market pricing for each key release? not just the consensus estimate, but where the options market or rate market is positioned.
— what would a surprise in either direction mean for the dominant theme? if the market is pricing 2 rate cuts this year and CPI beats significantly, what repricing happens?
— where are the entry points if your thesis plays out? identify the levels before the event, not during.
— what is the correlation between this week's events? if NFP is thursday and CPI is wednesday, the second print is interpreted in the context of the first.

the traders who profit from data releases have already done their analysis before the number prints. the traders who react to the number as it happens are generally providing liquidity to the former group.

option expiries and how they affect spot price.

large option strikes at NY cut (10:00 NY) create a gravitational pull on spot. dealers hedge dynamically as price approaches. publicly available data — widely ignored by retail.

the losing streak is not a problem to fix.

a trading strategy with a 60% win rate will, over a sample of 50 trades, produce sequences of 5 or more consecutive losses with a probability of approximately 12%. over 200 trades, at least one such sequence is statistically near-certain.

the losing streak itself is not evidence that the strategy is broken. it is evidence that you are trading in real conditions.

what matters: how large is the losing streak relative to the historical maximum for your strategy? if you have never seen more than 6 consecutive losses in 2000 historical trades and you are now on loss 8, that is worth examining. if you are on loss 5 and your historical max is 8, that is expected variance.

the destructive response to a losing streak: changing the strategy. this is the pattern that prevents traders from ever building a track record. the strategy changes at the worst point in the loss curve, just as it is statistically most likely to recover.

the correct response: verify that the market conditions still match your strategy's operating environment. if yes, continue. if no, reduce size or stop until conditions realign.

the VIX as a currency signal.

VIX above 20 and rising: JPY and CHF strengthen, AUD/NZD/EM weaken. VIX above 30: USD also bids as funding demand spikes. monitor VIX as part of daily risk management for any carry position.

the research process: how to form a macro view on a currency pair.

step one: identify the primary driver. what is the dominant force on this pair in the current regime? rate differential? risk sentiment? commodity prices? country-specific factors?

step two: evaluate the current positioning and consensus. is the obvious view already fully priced? if every bank is already bearish EUR, and the data has been weak for months, the trade may have less room. contrarian thinking is not about being contrarian — it is about not paying for a consensus position.

step three: find the catalyst. a macro view is not a trade until there is an expected catalyst that might cause the market to reprice. an event (central bank meeting, data release), a policy shift, or a positioning unwind.

step four: define the trade. if the thesis is right, where does price go? what is the path? where is it wrong? where do you exit?

step five: size appropriately. high-confidence setups with clear catalysts and good risk/reward warrant more size. views with uncertain catalysts warrant less.

this process takes longer than looking at a chart. that is the point.

booking profits: the mistake direction most people ignore.

taking 20 pips on a setup with a 100-pip target, consistently, converts a profitable strategy into a losing one. define your target before entry. use it. scale out partially if you need to reduce anxiety — don't abandon the target.

the SNB floor removal: january 15, 2015 — the most violent FX move in G10 history.

background: in september 2011, the SNB set a floor on EURCHF at 1.2000. they committed to buying unlimited euros to prevent CHF from strengthening beyond this level. the stated reason: CHF was dangerously strong, threatening swiss export competitiveness and risking deflation.

the floor held for 3 years and 4 months. markets priced it as essentially permanent — brokers reduced margins on EURCHF, traders built carry strategies around it, and the pair barely moved.

january 15, 2015, 09:30 CET: the SNB announced, without warning, that it was abandoning the floor. EURCHF dropped from 1.2000 to a low of approximately 0.8500 within minutes — a 30% move in one of the most liquid G10 currency crosses.

the impact: several retail FX brokers became insolvent because client losses exceeded account equity — the broker absorbed the difference. many professional traders lost multiples of their intended maximum loss.

the permanent lesson: no peg, floor, or ceiling in FX is permanent. when central banks remove them, they remove them without warning. sizing for tail risk in any pegged or managed pair must account for this, regardless of how long the structure has held.

how to think about currency reserves and central bank intervention.

a sharp decline in reserves signals active currency defense. below 3 months of import cover is a risk zone. reserve depletion precedes forced devaluation — the anticipation is often the trade.

the difference between being wrong and being early.

these two things feel identical when you're in the position. they are not the same.

being wrong: the thesis was incorrect. the driver you identified did not move price because it was not the primary driver, or it was already fully priced, or a counter-driver was stronger.

being early: the thesis is correct but the catalyst has not yet arrived. price hasn't moved yet because the information hasn't fully disseminated or the positioning adjustment hasn't happened.

how to tell them apart — this is genuinely difficult in real time. but:
— if new information has emerged that contradicts your thesis, you are probably wrong.
— if the thesis is intact but timing was off, you may be early.
— if the market is moving against you in the absence of new information, consider that you may have identified the right theme but at the wrong magnitude.

the response to being early: hold, but size appropriately so that being early for longer than expected doesn't become a capital event. the response to being wrong: exit, review, and update your model.

The ECB has brought together central bank governors in Sintra — yet there’s hardly any mention of it on the news channels

The ECB Forum in Sintra (Portugal) is a closed-door annual event, taking place this year from 29 June to 1 July.
This year’s theme is ‘innovation, growth and stability’. I’ll be highlighting the key points as they emerge and sharing them here.

What I’m specifically keeping an eye on:
Today (Mon):
✔️ Opening ceremony and dinner, with an opening address by Lagarde. This is largely a ceremonial event and is unlikely to have much impact on the markets.

Tomorrow (Tue) – AI day:
✔️ 11:40, ‘AI and Financial Stability’ panel: Tobias Adrian (IMF), Sarah Briden (Bank of England) + academics and Apollo’s chief economist.
✔️ 14:30, a separate discussion on AI — Aaron Chatterjee, Chief Economist at OpenAI, and Philip Lane from the ECB.
This is what I’ll be listening to first and foremost: I’m curious to hear what someone from OpenAI has to say about AI in the context of the economy and regulation.

Wednesday:
✔️9.45, a session on tokenisation. Hyun-Seong Shin (Bank of Korea) will be presenting on the Hangang unified registry project. Tokenisation is currently one of the key issues for the entire financial system.
✔️ A context that cannot be ignored: Binance recently withdrew its application for a MiCA licence in Greece. From 1 July, it will be impossible to operate in the EU without a licence — the exchange has already halted the registration of new users in Europe and is scaling back some of its services (whilst stating that clients will retain access to their funds). It plans to apply for a licence in France next. Against this backdrop, the issue of crypto regulation takes on particular urgency.
✔️ 14:00, political panel and forum closing session: Bailey (Bank of England), Lagarde (ECB), Macklem (Bank of Canada) and Warsh (US Federal Reserve).
I’m keeping a close eye on Warsh in particular — the new head of the Fed; his speech here is of particular interest.

I’ll keep you updated on any important news over the next few days.

G20 and its FX implications.

communiqué language about 'market-determined' exchange rates shifts when major economies are concerned about a specific country's policy. stronger language = diplomatic pressure. monitor G20 timing and context.

what "the trend is your friend" actually means — and when it stops being true.

the expression is correct in a specific context: in a trending market, trading in the direction of the established trend has a higher base rate of success than trading against it. this is a statistical statement about base rates, not a guarantee.

when it is true:
— the trend has been in place long enough to reflect a genuine shift in the underlying driver (rate differential, growth differential, capital flow)
— the trend is visible on at least two timeframes
— momentum confirms: price makes higher highs and higher lows (or lower lows/lower highs) consistently

when it stops being true:
— the trend has been in place long enough that the original driver is already fully priced
— positioning has become extreme (everyone is already in the trade)
— a reversal catalyst is approaching (central bank meeting that may change the rate path)
— volatility compresses and the pair stops making new highs despite attempts

trend-following works over large samples. the difficulty is that individual trends end at unpredictable times, and the exit signal on a trend is rarely as clear as the entry signal was at the start.

the concept of mean reversion in FX.

extreme exchange rates affect real economic flows and create self-correcting forces. extreme PPP deviations (30-40%) provide a background lean toward eventual reversion over months or years — not for short-term trading.

the only question that matters after a trade closes.

not: did I make money?
not: was I right about direction?
not: should I have held longer?

the question: did I execute the process correctly?

if the answer is yes, and you lost money, that is information. your process, correctly applied, produced a loss. this happens. it is expected. it does not mean the process is wrong.

if the answer is no, and you made money, that is also information — and it is not good news. a profitable trade taken with a flawed process does not validate the process. it is a random outcome that may not repeat.

the traders who improve are those who evaluate their process rigorously and are willing to accept profitable trades as failures if the execution was undisciplined, and losing trades as successes if the execution was correct.

this is psychologically difficult because the market gives you P&L feedback, not process feedback. building the habit of evaluating process independently of outcome is the work that separates traders who learn from those who just accumulate experience without improving.

🤖 Today at the forum was AI day

Out of the whole AI session, two speakers actually stood out — Aaron Chatterji and Torsten Slok. They prepared independently, yet their points ended up complementing each other.

Chatterji — on the labour market:
• AI won't cause mass unemployment and won't displace workers — but it will reshape the labour market.
• The parallel with the internet and electricity: PCs caused a brief dip in the 1990s, then a hiring boom followed. AI will play out the same way.
• Employment data does not support mass AI-driven layoffs. The wave of layoffs late last year had a different cause (more on that below).
• The forecasts he leans on: Goldman Sachs — +7% to global GDP over 10 years; McKinsey — up to +3.4 percentage points to annual productivity growth.
• For now, AI only replaces narrowly scripted, rules-based tasks. The job for businesses is not to fear it, but to build it into their processes.

Slok — and here's what should actually worry us:
He agrees that AI's direct impact on the labour market is limited. But the real risk isn't jobs — it's debt. And it's mainly people who actually trade the markets who pick up on this; most others miss it entirely.

• AI companies (OpenAI, Oracle, Meta, Google and others) are issuing bonds in amounts larger than they can realistically cover.
• The hyperscalers (Oracle, Meta, Google, Amazon) have already issued ~US$250 billion in bonds so far in 2026 — roughly 60% of their combined market cap.
• Almost half of all new corporate bond issuance is now tied to AI. The money goes into infrastructure — data centres, power, cooling — but AI revenue can't yet cover those obligations.
• If spreads widen → volatility in the debt market → default risk → a credit crunch → and the "AI bubble" everyone talks about could burst.
• From there → a macro shock and recession. And that's when unemployment truly surges.

Bottom line: the thing to fear isn't robots — it's the debt overhang building up under the AI boom. The main risk to the market is bonds, not automation.

I'll save a couple of the most interesting details for next time 👀

AUDNZD: the pair that tells you about the oceanic economy.

Australia exports iron ore/coal to china. NZ exports dairy. a shift in china's growth composition (construction vs consumer) can move the pair. lower vol, more range-bound — useful for specific relative views.

sizing to volatility: why a fixed pip stop is the wrong approach.

traders who set a fixed 30-pip stop on every trade are implicitly taking different dollar risk on every trade, because pairs have different volatility profiles and current volatility changes over time.

the better framework: size your position so that your dollar risk is consistent, and let the pip stop vary based on the current ATR.

example:
— you want to risk $200 on every trade
— EURUSD daily ATR: 80 pips → stop at 1× ATR = 80 pips → position size: $200 / (80 × $10) = 0.25 lots
— GBPUSD daily ATR: 120 pips → stop at 1× ATR = 120 pips → position size: $200 / (120 × $10) = 0.167 lots

the result: consistent dollar risk per trade regardless of which pair you trade or how volatile the market is.

the secondary benefit: when volatility rises (ATR increases), your position size automatically decreases. you naturally take smaller positions in more volatile environments — which is the correct behavior — without needing to consciously decide to reduce size.

reading rate futures: how bond markets signal FX direction.

rate markets often move before FX adjusts fully. fed funds futures at 95.50 = 4.50% expected rate. when futures rally (rate priced down), USD tends to weaken. check daily as part of your pre-session routine.

the hardest moment in any trade.

it is not the entry. entries are relatively simple — you see a setup, you take it or you don't.

the hardest moment is after a strong initial move in your favor, when price pulls back toward your entry.

the behavioral response: the gain is at risk of disappearing. the fear of losing the unrealized profit can be stronger than the original fear of losing capital. many traders close here — taking a small profit rather than the intended target — and then watch the trade continue in their direction.

why the pullback is not the signal to exit:
— pullbacks within a trend are normal. a move from entry to 50% of target, followed by a 30% retracement, is normal price action in most trends.
— your exit criteria should be defined before entry. a pullback to entry is only a problem if your exit criteria include "price retreats to entry."

the solution: define, before the trade, the specific condition under which you will exit. a close below a specific level. a specific time horizon. not "when I'm scared."

process before entry eliminates most decisions during the trade.

USDCAD: the pair most directly driven by a single commodity.

WTI and USDCAD have one of the strongest inverse correlations in FX. CAD is also 75% export-dependent on the US. USDCAD can be a cleaner vehicle for an oil macro view than trading crude directly.

what experienced traders actually do differently: ten observations.

one: they have a specific reason for every trade. not a feeling — a specific, articulable thesis.

two: they know their stop before they know their target.

three: they check their position size against their risk budget before entry, not after.

four: they don't check their positions every ten minutes. they set alerts and check at defined times.

five: they distinguish between their thesis being wrong and the timing being off.

six: they take days off. not because they can't trade, but because they recognize when conditions aren't right for their approach.

seven: they review their trades monthly with the same seriousness they prepared them.

eight: they don't add to losing positions without a specific revised thesis. averaging down as a default is not a strategy.

nine: they are skeptical of their winning periods. a run of wins can mask a strategy that is working for luck-related reasons in a specific environment.

ten: they are not impressed by other people's wins. they know that a single trade result, or even a month of results, means almost nothing about underlying edge.