Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Trading the FOMC rate cut...if there is a cut.

FOMC announce tomorrow at 11:15am Pacific Time. Based on Cleveland Fed probabilities I calculated the market expected value as you can see its about 45 BP. This is up from about 42 or so a few days ago, even though the likelyhood of a 75BP cut has dropped significantly.
So how do you trade the event? ...Or how am I going to trade the event.

This Fed gives the market what it wants. This means tomorrow's cut is going to be 50BP. The market will have a small rally since the EV is 44.75 BP. I believe the FED should cut 25BP, but they wont. If they do cut 25BP the DOW will drop a couple hundred, Financials will drop about 10%, and the next few weeks will test the lows set last Monday/Tuesday.

No matter what we are moving tomorrow. For this reason I put several straddles on XLF since the financials will be moved the most by the cut. Today's consolidation allowed for the perfect opportunity to put these and limit my directional risk from an overnight rally and a pull back tomorrow. If we see the 25BP cut the market is going to move big. For this reason I also purchased a few puts on XLF. This give my expected payout a bit of a bearish wait, but as long as the market moves tomorrow...I make money....A bearish straddle if you want to name it...

Ill be trading some E-minis and Ultras tomorrow as well on the swings and maybe take a directional position with a tight stop going into the meeting if the opportunity presents itself.

On the currency side I went long the AUD/JPY. Im hoping to hold this position for a few weeks and get some good interest and hopefully a short continuation of the carry trade.

Let the markets move.