The market had been holding its breath for a large part of the Asian and the London session today in anticipation of the first press conference from Trump since last July. The market was expecting him to touch a lot of things ranging from the wall on the Mexican border to Russian intervention in the elections to the trade war against China. Trump is an unknown entity as far as the markets and the establishment are concerned and it was no surprise that his press conference was looked forward to with so much of anticipation in the hope that it would give some hints of what is going on in his mind and that of his administrative team.
In summary, the market was expecting a speech from a statesman. But what the market got was the speech from a businessman who seemed to be more worried about his image, his opponents and his own business than that of the country which he is going to lead. He seemed to be more concerned about the accusations against Russia and how he was clean, how he would rather take his business forward and rule the country but didnt want to, how the car companies had cooperated with his plans but the pharma industries did not etc. There was absolutely no mention of anything about the fiscal or economic policy, the foreign policy or how he and his team is going to go about fulfilling the dream of making America greater during the first part of his speech.
With the lack of support from its President and with the lack of vision and maturity of a statesman, the dollar floundered and was pounded against all the other pairs in the first round. The dollar had gained in anticipation before the press conference but post the meeting, the dollar fell hard and the pairs retraced their losses. But little did they know that there was to be a round 2 as well as Trump took the mic again during the press conference and made it clear that he was pushing through certain campaign promises like the wall on the Mexico border and that there was nothing to go back on that. Ultimately, all this resolved as dollar negative and the dollar fell hard and continues to fall hard as we write this.
