Dólar no longo prazo está fadado a voltar a cair ainda mais.
“Stretched positioning means even a mild disappointment to dollar bulls could prompt a sell-off in the currency.” That “consensus” that the dollar will strengthen is based on the end of the Fed’s QE, shrinking trade deficits due to rising oil production in the US and dropping oil imports. The consensus also relies on more demand for dollars as the Fed is threatening to raise interest rates in 2015, at a time when the Bank of Japan is madly printing money and pushing yields to new lows; and when the ECB is promising outright purchases of sovereign bonds on a massive scale. And true, BlackRock says, that increasing rate differential is going to create demand for dollar assets. But that “bullish dollar view is reflected in futures markets positioning. Trades against the euro look especially crowded, with short positioning almost three standard deviations from the mean.” Then there’s the “malign path” to a higher dollar: a global economic slowdown that would trigger “safe-haven buying.”
So the stronger dollar might remain elusive in 2015. There are reasons beyond the fact that the trade is too crowded. BlackRock cites the “Pavlovian tendencies” of the markets that have been “conditioned to wait for monetary policy to dictate market moves.” They might hold their fire until the Fed gives the go-ahead. In this case, “the US dollar will only take off when Fed Chair Janet Yellen fires off her first rate hike.” That might not happen. Instead, the Fed might refuse to raise rates because of “growth disappointment (it has happened before).” And then, there is “an even worse scenario for dollar bulls: US economic momentum stalls, leading to expectations for a fourth round of QE.” That might cause the dollar to return to its norm and sag once again. As the above chart shows, it’s unrewarding to be a dollar bull long-term. The dollar has been slated for destruction, but the Fed wants to accomplish this over many years, rather than all at once. And only occasionally do things get out of hand, and the dollar rallies for a few years – enough to infuse a lot of false confidence.
