How to Play a Week of Earnings Reports Using Currencies
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It's time for earnings reports — and if you don't want to trade individual stocks, you can use currencies to trade general sentiment.
It's hard to know how earnings will come in this week — and harder to know how investors will react. Rebecca Patterson, chief markets strategist for J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Institutional, thinks an overall rise of around 2.3 percent is "achievable," but she's keeping an eye on the tone of the guidance that companies provide.
And with Europe still in crisis mode, "I still think there's a lot of macro risk for the U.S. almost regardless of earnings," she told CNBC's Melissa Lee.
If you want to trade that mood, rather than individual companies' prospects, Patterson suggests using a currency with heavy foreign ownership. When sentiment is bullish and investors are buying stocks in that currency's nation(s), they have to buy the currency — and vice versa — so you get a nice correlation between the stock market and the currency.
The Swedish krona , with roughly one-third foreign ownership and a couple of big tech and telecom companies, fits the bill, Patterson says. Over the last five years, she has seen an 82 percent correlation between the krona-euro pair
and the S&P 500.
Since Patterson's "bias still says there's downside risk out there, despite the valuations in equities," she recommends buying the euro against the krona at 9.07 with a target of 9.35 and a stop at 8.95.
You can watch the whole discussion in the videotape, above, starting at 8:51.
CURRENCY FUTURES
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