It’s fair to say it’s not the most exciting start to a week I’ve ever seen. 12 hours into the trading day and BTC has barely had a $100 range and EURUSD has managed a whopping 16 point range.

If it carries on like this, we could be looking at a very short commentary! Thankfully, that doesn’t quite end up being the case as crypto starts to drift lower.

BTC slips back towards $10,100 and ETH to $214.

More rumblings of India wanting to ban BTC from their financial system seems to be the catalyst. However, there was no follow through and that was about the extent of the price action.

For FX, there was little to make this session sound exciting.

GBPUSD was the biggest mover dropping down to 1.2456 as the race for a Prime Minister continues. Chancellor Philip Hammond said he would resign if Boris Johnson won the leadership battle.

UK Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan has already resigned in protest against a possible Boris Johnson victory. Deep divides remain within the UK conservative party all with a looming Brexit deadline on the horizon.

None of it bodes well for GBP.

The rest of the FX market had a lackluster session drifting sideways in directionless trading. Even Gold and bonds refused to budge although US equities did manage to seek out some gains with the DJ up 17 points and Nasdaq up 57 points. PS – This has been the 3rd tightest trading range for EURUSD since its inception 20 years ago!

Quiet days are not always the best for coming up with good technical pictures. So today I wanted to look at 2 US equity indices – the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000.

For those not so familiar with the latter, the Russell 2000 is an index of 2000 small-cap companies. Many top macro traders I have worked with over the years have always preferred to look at the Russell over say the S+P 500 or the DJ 30 as it focuses more on the heart and soul of the US economy and is widely believed to give a better indicator of overall economic health.

Just recently, as you can see from the chart attached, the Russell (red and green) has started to underperform the S+P (orange). In fact, while the latter has recently made a historical high (as has the DJ), the Russell has turned lower.

Is it trying to tell us something? Worth keeping an eye on for those of you more akin to watching the DJ, S&P, and Nasdaq. Even today with the three major indices higher, the Russell is lower.

