NOTICIAS FOREX

Yesterday’s FOMC meeting provided more drama than most traders were expecting. The Federal Reserve elected to leave interest rates unchanged, to the surprise of no one, but during the subsequent press conference, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell floated the dreaded possibility of a rate hike. This would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, but the threat of inflation resulting from a prolonged conflict in the Middle East has changed the playing field. A rate hike remains unlikely in the immediate future, but the mere mention of such has sent shockwaves throughout financial markets. Precious metals were among the hardest hit. Gold plummeted all the way down to $4,500 per ounce at one point before rebounding to $4,650 by the daily close, a loss of 3.5% on the day. The price action in silver was even more extreme, with the white metal dipping to just $65 per ounce before climbing back up to $72 by the end of the session. The dollar currency index also took a decent hit, falling from 100.2 to 99.1 on Thursday, while US indices incurred only minor losses. Oil markets continue to provide entertainment. The Brent Crude index shot all the way up to $114 yesterday before settling lower, but the more interesting point of note is the widening gap between Brent and WTI. Seaborne futures are currently trading for around $105 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate futures are a mere $92 in comparison. The last time the spread was this high was over a decade ago. Brent Crude remains at the mercy of acute supply disruptions in the Middle East, which are affecting oil deliveries around the world and adding a considerable premium to prices. WTI meanwhile is relatively isolated from such concerns, with supplies remaining stable and contracts being priced accordingly. The lack of oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf has forced many countries to pursue alternative procurement options. Japanese refineries have stepped up purchases of Midland crude to cover the shortfall in regular deliveries, while other countries in Asia are also diversifying their oil suppliers. #FOMC #GOLD #OIL

With all the squabbling around surging crude prices, now is as good a time as any to talk about where our oil comes out of the ground. For a long time, the Middle East has had a reputation for being the world’s petrol pump, but how true is this today? From the 1960s onwards, the Gulf has indeed been a dominant region for oil production, with Saudi Arabia contributing the bulk of exports and Iran, Iraq, the UAE and Kuwait bringing up the rear. Except for a brief period in the mid-1980s, the Middle East produced more oil than any other region on the planet, by a sizeable margin. The United States and Russia (at the time the Soviet Union) were typically the second and third largest producers respectively, while the rest of the world combined to fill in the gaps. From the Arab perspective however, the early days presented a major problem. At the time, oil extraction in the Gulf states was in the hands of Western oil companies, often called the “Seven Sisters”, including the likes of British Petroleum, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc. Local governments in the Middle East received royalties but had little to no say over the decisions made by these companies. Despite sitting on vast reserves, the countries in question were almost powerless on the world stage. Something had to change. OPEC, or the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, was formed in 1960 and included Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The group was founded to wrestle control of its hydrocarbon resources out of the hands of foreign powers and back into the hands of its member states. The group would gradually add new members to its roster, slowly gaining prominence and quietly clawing back control over the years that followed. Oil prices remained stable throughout the 1960s at around $2.50 per barrel (roughly $25 in today’s money), but by the next decade OPEC had doubled its membership count and had gained enough autonomy to allow the organisation to control the supply, and therefore price, of oil on the world stage. Things were about to change dramatically. In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. As a result of Western support for Israel following the attack, OPEC imposed an oil embargo on the US and Western Europe, quadrupling prices within months and causing petroleum shortages. OPEC used its new-found might to launch an all-out price war, which it decisively won. The organisation proved, convincingly, that it had a stranglehold over global oil markets, which gave the United States a proverbial kick up the backside to secure its own position. OPEC’s strength would remain unchallenged over the following decades, and indeed until the modern era. But then something changed. Something changed because of a specific technological breakthrough. Something that would completely upend the international balance of crude oil production. Enter: shale. Extracting oil from shale rock is difficult, hence why it was not done at scale until recently. Fracking was first tested all the way back in the 1940s but did not become economically viable until much more recently. In the early 2000s, hydraulic fracturing, combined with horizontal drilling, suddenly made extracting oil from shale an industrial possibility. This turned out to be a game changer. The US sits upon massive shale fields, the most prominent of which being the Permian Basin. If these shale fields were the vault, then fracking was the key. Not only could the US finally exploit its oil fields, but it could do so relatively efficiently. Extracting oil from shale has several major advantages. Firstly, setting up drilling operations take weeks or months, compared to multiple years for large, conventional oil fields. Secondly, initial costs are minor and incremental, unlike traditional operations, which require billions in investment upfront. Thirdly, shale exploitations are extremely flexible. Environmental and bureaucratic concerns are obviously nothing trivial when it comes to fracking, but shale is much easier to set up and start pumping compared to the colossal headache of regular oil drilling. Offshore deep-water drilling is another beast entirely, sometimes requiring a decade of groundwork before the first drop of oil is produced. The floodgates opened. In 2010, the US was pumping out 5 million barrels of oil per day. At the tail end of 2025, that figure rose to almost 14 million barrels per day. Hard to argue with such results. The increase in domestic production caused a fundamental shift in global oil markets. The surge in oil extraction meant that the US turned from a net importer to a net exporter of crude oil. Quite suddenly, the US was producing more crude oil than it needed, something that had not happened since the early twentieth century. The additional supply of crude oil from America diluted OPEC’s influence on the world stage, and the group of oil producing nations was not happy about it. In 2014, the organisation once again started throwing its weight around, but this time, instead of tightening the supply of oil, Saudi Arabia and other countries began to flood the market with massive amounts of crude, in an attempt to lower prices as much as possible. They were successful. The price of oil went from over $100 per barrel in 2014, down to $30 per barrel by January 2016. The goal was to drive US producers out of business. Given the novelty of the shale business at the time, extraction operations in the United Stated were still relatively costly compared to Gulf drilling, so the idea was to drive the price per barrel below what it would cost US companies to extract from the ground. It was similar to the strategy that Subway used back in 2008 when it launched the $5 footlong to increase the company’s foot traffic and undercut its competitors in a bid to gain market dominance. The first price war in 1973 was an undeniable success and showed the world who really wore the trousers in the global oil relationship. In contrast, the second price war failed with flying colours. The collapse in oil prices did indeed cause a degree of short-term pain in the United States, resulting in many bankruptcies and many more job losses, but ultimately the event forced the US to become more efficient, more technologically advanced, and more economically resilient. The results speak for themselves; US shale operations continued to ramp up over the following decade, finally reaching the current paradigm whereby the United States dwarfs all other nations in terms of crude oil production. OPEC no longer had the gravitas to dictate oil markets, that much was clear. The answer? Add more members. OPEC+ formed at the end of 2016 as a direct result of growing American influence in international oil markets. The 13 members of the original group welcomed 10 more countries, including Russia, Mexico, Sudan, as well as a wave of countries from across Central and South East Asia. OPEC boasts over a quarter of the globe’s oil production, but OPEC+ extends that to more than half. On the other hand, just by themselves, the US and Canada also produce a quarter of all crude oil worldwide, the vast majority of which comes from the United States. While the inner core of OPEC remains well coordinated and responsive to market fluctuations, the same cannot be said of OPEC+, which is a much more flexible group. The interests of Saudi Arabia do not necessarily line up with those of Russia for example. The lack of internal cohesion, as well as the lack of enforcement in production targets, often translates to lesser effectiveness overall. In contrast, the US is a single nation, one that now produces as much crude oil and other liquid fuels as Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. Oil markets are in a new era. Just as the formation of OPEC disrupted the status quo in the 1960s, shifting the balance of power away from Western petroleum companies and towards Middle Eastern nations, the US shale revolution has likewise tipped the scales, this time in favour of the United States. International crude markets are in unchartered waters; the old rulebook has been discarded. The Middle East remains vital for European and Asian oil markets, but not for the United States. The consequences of this simple fact are far reaching, particularly in light of current events.

Markets have stabilised a little over the past couple of days, with the US dollar making a minor retreat from recent highs. The DXY remains above 99.5 but has halted its relentless push higher for the time being. Gold has been almost completely flat so far this week, oscillating around the $5,000 mark and content to go no further. Stock markets around the world rose cautiously during the last two sessions and Asian stocks were on the front foot again earlier today, with the Nikkei 225 being uplifted by better-than-expected balance of trade data this morning in Japan. US futures contracts edged higher last night, but market sentiment remains temperamental ahead of the FOMC meeting later today. Even oil prices have calmed down in recent days, with Brent Crude stable around $100 per barrel and the WTI index falling to $94 following reports of a surprise build-up in US crude inventories. Attentions are quickly turning to the FOMC meeting later today. The Fed is not expected to enact a rate cut on the dollar any time soon, but market participants will nevertheless be eager to know what the central bank has to say about rising oil prices and the downstream threat of inflation. The meeting will be Jerome Powell’s second-to-last at the helm of the Fed, that is unless there are delays in appointing the next Chairman. Kevin Warsh is the next in line but has yet to be officially confirmed by the US Senate, a process that is being held up because of a legal dispute involving Jerome Powell. Before the meeting, traders may want to keep an eye on US PPI figures, which will give an insight into rising production costs. The crypto sphere received a surprising dose of good news yesterday following a joint statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), asserting that most cryptocurrencies are not securities. The ruling is very straightforward, but cryptocurrency traders have been waiting for over a decade to hear it. According to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, “this interpretation will provide market participants with a clear understanding of how the Commission treats crypto assets under federal securities laws”. In many ways, the interpretation marks the end of an era of uncertainty, one that has mired the industry for a long time and slowed development to a crawl in recent years. Not much of a reaction in cryptocurrencies so far this morning, with Bitcoin keeping to $74,500 per coin and the wider crypto markets staying the course. #FOMC #SEC #CRYPTO

If forex trading is like a polite dinner party, oil trading is like a full-on bar fight between two rival biker gangs hard at it! Brent crude oil is one of the most actively traded commodities in the world, and it doesn’t just “move”, it reacts. One headline, one unexpected geopolitical escalation, or one disrupted shipping route, and suddenly the market is doing things that make absolutely no sense… until you realise, they make perfect sense. Right now, oil is being driven heavily by tensions involving Iran, the United States, and the wider Middle East. This has created the kind of environment traders both love and fear: high volatility, strong trends, and unpredictable spikes. In this guide, you’ll learn: The term Brent crude oil refers to one of the main global benchmarks used to price oil worldwide. There are two main oil benchmarks: Brent tends to be more relevant for global traders because: Brent crude is attractive because it offers: In simple terms: If EUR/USD is the “calm professional”. Brent crude is the “risk taking rookie” Oil prices are technically based on supply and demand, but in reality, they’re driven by expectations of supply and demand. Oil is one of the few markets where global conflict directly affects price. Current tensions involving Iran and the United States have created: Markets react instantly because: Less supply = higher prices This narrow shipping route is one of the most important trading routes in the world. Approximately: 20% of the oil produced in the world has to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. So, when tensions rise here: Think of it as: The world’s most important traffic jam or the current situation; the world’s emptiest motorway as hardly any ships are passing through. Supply shocks occur when oil production is suddenly reduced. Causes include: And when supply drops suddenly: Prices don’t gently rise, they spike Oil is heavily influenced by sentiment. This leads to: Overreactions Sharp reversals “What just happened?” moments To trade oil effectively, you need to know what actually moves it. Oil demand is tied to economic activity. Key data includes: Weekly inventory data is one of the most important short-term drivers. Indirect but important. Higher interest rates: Lower rates: If you’re coming from forex, oil trading will feel… different. Oil is one of the most exciting, and dangerous, markets. In simple terms: Oil gives opportunity. But demands respect Let’s get practical and put our sensible heads on for a minute. Oil reacts strongly to: But remember: The first move is emotional. The second move is tradable During geopolitical events, oil trends can last longer than expected. Approach: Identify trend → Wait for pullback → Enter with confirmation Important levels include: These act as: Support/resistance zones Best results come from: Let’s go one level deeper. Oil often breaks strongly during news events. Approach: Safer for beginners. Advanced but powerful. When markets stabilise: Oil is most active during: Oil doesn’t move alone. The Canadian Dollar for example is a commodity currency Let’s break it down like a professional oil trader. Let’s be blunt: Oil is unforgiving and downright ruthless Oil can move: Entering late = You get caught out and incur losses Oil is news-driven, always keep an eye out on the news, it is a must have survival aid when trading oil! Fast account destruction: don’t do it otherwise you will have red margin call warnings all over your screen in no time at all. Volatility amplifies emotions. Trading oil is not for the faint hearted but if you like you’re trading to be fast then trading oil will fit the bill. Yes, but carefully. Very carefully. Yes, oil trading can be profitable due to its volatility and strong trends, but it requires discipline and effective risk management. Geopolitics, supply disruptions, OPEC decisions, and global demand are the primary drivers of oil prices. Yes, beginners can trade oil, but they should start with a demo account and use proper risk management strategies. The best time is during the London and New York sessions, especially during major news events or inventory releases. Study fundamentals, follow global news, practice on a demo account, and gradually apply technical analysis strategies. Trading Brent crude oil is not for the faint-hearted. It’s fast. It’s reactive. And at times, it feels completely irrational. But that’s exactly what makes it one of the most opportunity-rich markets available. Right now, with geopolitical tensions driving volatility, oil offers: Approach it with discipline, and it can become a powerful addition to your trading strategy. Approach it recklessly… And oil will happily teach you a very expensive lesson.

This document serves as an annexe to the article entitled "Year of the horse", published on the 26th of February 2026. Its purpose is that of a supporting paper, providing additional figures and calculations, as well as providing a more robust defence of the methodology used and the assumptions made therein. The first step was to collect the daily close prices for the S&P 500 index, from the 20th of January 1928 to the 13th of February 2026. The data were obtained from the Yahoo Finance API, which provided the date, open price and close price. The data set only started differentiating the open and close price from 1962 onwards, but since we are only concerned with the closing price, this was not an issue. We will call this data set "SP500". The second step was to collect the start and end date for every Chinese lunar year stretching back to the same date. Such information is readily available throughout the internet and was easy to acquire. We will call this data set "CNY". With our two data sets in hand, the next step was to create a column with the daily close price of the S&P 500 at the end of every lunar year. To achieve this, we use a simple XLOOKUP function in order to return a result whenever the dates from CNY match those in SP500. Of course, the dates in CNY do not always correspond to days for which we have daily price data. For example, should the lunar year end on a Saturday, Sunday, or bank holiday, SP500 will not be able to provide a price. This was in fact the case for the latest lunar year, ending on the 16th of February 2026, which was a Monday, but happened to fall on President's Day, meaning US stock markets were closed. To account for these differences, we insert a "-1" in the fifth argument in our XLOOKUP function, in order to return the last available match. Using this function, we can populate a new column with the closing price for the end of every lunar year. From this, calculating the change from the previous year is trivial. We now have the yearly return of the S&P 500 according to the Chinese lunar calendar: The next step is to average these values across each zodiac animal using a simple AVERAGEIF function: The next step is to calculate the volatility over every lunar year. This first requires establishing a suitable metric against which we can actually quantify volatility. Finding the high and low of a given year and dividing by its mean gives us the relative spread of each period, which is somewhat useful for illustrating the size of the overall trading range, but fails to describe how much the results cluster around the mean. A more useful measure of volatility is to calculate the standard deviation across a given year, which tells us exactly how grouped together or spread out the daily close prices are. Using a STDEV.S function in combination with a FILTER function, we are able to calculate the standard deviation for each lunar year by filtering price data by date range. We now have the standard deviation for each period, but these results do not account for the huge difference in absolute values over time. A standard deviation over a 10-point range is obviously going to be smaller than the standard deviation over a 1,000-point range. To account for this, we simply divide the standard deviation by the mean, thereby normalising the results. This figure is called the coefficient of variation, also known as normalised root-mean-square deviation (NRMSD), which is often used in economic models and represents a measure of the extent of variability in relation to the mean of a given data set. We are content that this is an adequate description of volatility as we wish to model it. Full results presented below: Averaging our coefficient of variation values across each zodiac animal, we obtain the following table: We now have a quantified measure of volatility, per animal. The next step is to ascertain whether or not the spreads in average returns and average volatility are meaningful. With a low of -1.0 and a high of 15.5, the spread in average returns looks significant. Likewise, with a low of 5.06 and a high of 8.25, we have what looks like a reasonably wide spread in volatility. Alas, looks can be deceiving. We need to determine just how significant these spreads really are. One way of doing this is to perform a permutation test. The purpose of performing such a test is to see what the results would be if we attributed the yearly results to a random animal instead of to its actual animal. To achieve this, we create a column that randomly assigns a zodiac sign to each year, and then calculate results according to these random signs. We then collect the spread in average returns and coefficients of variation to see how they measure up against our original data set. As per the above table, for average returns, we have a minimum of -1.0 and a maximum of 15.5, giving us a spread of 16.4. For the coefficient of variation, we have a minimum of 5.06 and a maximum of 8.25, giving us a spread of 3.19. Running the permutation test over many cycles, we compare the obtained spreads against these results. Predictably, the randomly calculated spreads are significantly higher than our original results. Put differently, if we were to assign zodiac animals to random years, we would likely obtain a higher spread in average returns and in volatility, per animal, than what we actually got. This tells us that there is no correlation whatsoever between the performance of the S&P 500 index and the Chinese lunar calendar. This confirms what we would realistically expect. US stock markets have historically followed cyclical patterns that are shorter than the 12-year zodiac cycle, blurring the results over the lunar calendar. More broadly speaking, there is little reason to expect an American stock market index to correlate to the Chinese lunar calendar, and it indeed does not. This is where things get a little more interesting. We repeat the exact same steps for the Japanese Nikkei 225 index as we did for the S&P 500. Firstly, the return of the Ni225 according to the lunar calendar: The next step is to average these values across each zodiac animal using a simple AVERAGEIF function: As noted in the main article, the spread in average returns is significantly greater than those found in the S&P 500. Using the same methodology as for the S&P 500 data set, averaging our coefficients of variation across each zodiac animal, we obtain the following table: As per the above table, for average returns, we have a minimum of 0.3 and a maximum of 23, giving us a spread of 22.7. For the coefficient of variation, we have a minimum of 5.30 and a maximum of 12.22, giving us a spread of 6.92. We run the same permutation test as above, randomising zodiac animals per year. This time, we notice a difference. For the average returns, the randomly calculated spreads are typically higher than our spread of 22.7, suggesting that just as with the S&P 500, the average return of the Nikkei 225 does not correlate with the lunar calendar. However, when calculating spreads in volatility, we quickly notice that the randomised spreads are lower than our original spread of 6.92. Put differently, if we were to assign zodiac animals to random years, we would likely obtain a lower difference in volatility than what we actually got. This tells us that there is in fact a correlation between the volatility in the Nikkei 225 and the Chinese lunar calendar. As stated in the main article, a possible explanation to this lies in the longer economic cycles that dominated the Japanese financial sphere after the second world war, but if that is the case, it is odd that the same correlation does not appear in the average return of the index. Whether or not the Chinese lunar calendar actively influenced sentiment on the trading floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange over the decades would be almost impossible to prove. It is nevertheless interesting that volatility in the Nikkei index does appear to correlate with the Chinese Zodiac, even when the performance of said index does not. ← Back to article: Year of the horse

The situation is much the same as it was at the start of last week. The conflict in Iran continues, disrupting crude oil deliveries out of the region, lifting oil prices to the hundred-dollar mark. The Brent Crude benchmark is currently sitting at $104 per barrel, while WTI is trailing behind at $98. The biggest surprise for many is just how resilient the US dollar has proven to be. The DXY rose to a weekly close of 100.5 last Friday, a level not seen since May of last year. The Euro, which makes up the bulk of the dollar currency index, fell to $1.14 last week, while the Pound Sterling sank to $1.32. On the other hand, the yen is demonstrating a degree of tenacity, refusing to be pushed above 160, at least for the time being. The strength of the dollar is the dominant force in financial markets at the moment, to the detriment of almost everything else. Stock markets around the world continue to be rattled by current affairs, weighing particularly heavily on US and Asian indices. The Nikkei 225 plummeted a further 3.2% last week, while the Korean Kospi index shed 1.8%. Over in the US, the Dow Jones had lost 2% by Friday, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had fallen 1.6% and 1.3% respectively over the course of the week. Precious metals were hit just as hard, if not harder, with gold losing the better part of 3% and closing just above $5,000 per ounce by the weekly close. Likewise, silver, platinum and palladium all lost 5% or more. In an increasingly strange twist of fate, cryptocurrencies are finally showing signs of life after months of continuous bleeding. Bitcoin gained 10% last week, rising to $72,000 per coin and dragging the rest of the crypto markets along for the ride. JPMorgan chimed in with an interesting take last month, stating that Bitcoin’s volatility relative to gold has dropped to a record low, making BTC “even more attractive compared to gold”. Bitcoin has indeed been a more profitable investment since the comments were made in early February, and indeed since the initial strikes against Iranian targets. Big week for central banks. The Reserve Bank of Australia will meet tomorrow and is expected to increase rates on the Aussie dollar for the second consecutive time, in large part because of a troubling resurgence in inflation. All eyes will quickly turn to the Fed the following day, as the Federal Open Market Committee convenes on Wednesday to vote on the next course of action for the dollar. The odds of a rate cut are essentially zero; in fact, interest rate traders are not predicting a rate cut until December at the earliest. The Bank of Canada will also meet on Wednesday and will likely hold rates steady on the Canadian dollar. On Thursday, it is the turn of the Bank of England, Bank of Japan and European Central Bank, all of which are expected to enact a rate hold on their respective currencies. Very little is going on with regard to the earnings calendar, with the exception of Micron (MU), which will report after the bell on Wednesday. #USD #BTC #OIL