As PTI comes onto two years, I felt like making this post on account of seeing multiple people supporting PML-N for having an allegedly better economy for Pakistan, particularly with allegations present that PTI has done nothing for the economy. So here's a short list of some major achievements done by PTI in contrast to PML-N.

• Stopping Pakistan from defaulting: The move to devalue the rupee was one done despite knowing the backlash that would be faced. Under Nawaz Sharif the rupee was artificially overvalued through loans and forex reserves, this meant Pakistan had no sustainable way for repaying those massive loans. Imran Khan on the other hand had to approach the IMF due to these overlaying maturing debts, lack of growth in exports under PMLN, decline in Foreign Direct Investment and an ever higher import bill. This was done at the cost of letting the rupee massively devalue against the dollar, however paved the path for economic stability as noted by the IMF.
• Renewed focus on taxation: Easily the most controversial facet of the economic policy by PTI, but one that has shown merit and results. Overall, there has been a 40% increase in returns filers and a 17% revenue increase. This coupled with a massive austerity scheme, meant that the government has started an incline towards increasing it's revenues. While this hasn't been met with open arms, it presents a solution to the everpresent crisis that the Pakistan government has faced, in it's inability to increase it's revenues. Not only that, but the general taxation system was streamlined, making it easier for individuals to file taxes. Introductions of new apps and consolidating activities for the FBR were among the efforts as well. Moreover, businesses that were entitled to tax refunds are finally being granted them, under PMLN they were held onto so as to inflate collection numbers, however under PTI that has changed and it's not inflated. It is worth noting, that because of the covid-19 pandemic, the effect of the austerity schemes and feasibility have seriously dampened, and it's created a bigger problem for increasing revenue collection.
  • However it is one that can be solved. The government succeeded, quite commendably, in revising the tax collection revenue which had been set unrealistically high by the IMF. What can also be recognised, were the 60% cuts in the Presidential house. Alongside a 58% decrease in Presidential secretariat for allowances for officers and staff, not to forget the decision to not increase government salaries for this fiscal year nor introduce new taxes. A bold but needed decision.
• The account deficit: Arguably one of the biggest examples of progress has been in the reduction of the account deficit. Under PML-N the account deficit had carried forward, and increased to nearly $5 billion, but shrunk massively once PTI came into power. A total decrease of nearly 78% from the previous fiscal year. The lowest recorded from the previous 5 years. Even when looked at from the perspective of the account deficit in percentage of GDP; the general trend has been improving under PTI. Under PMLN the total account deficit as a % of GDP had grown to -5.4%, however under PTI it has shrunk to -1.1% of GDP in FY2020 and was -3.4% in 2019.
  • It is worth noting, that some may criticise the overall decrease in the account deficit to be a result of the decrease in imports, and the increase in worker remittances, however this was indeed a result of the overall economic impact from the covid-19 pandemic. And that general trends support the notion of exports increasing and the account deficit decreasing in the second quarter of 2019.
• Revitalisation of exports & balance of trade: The shift in policies towards increasing exports has been among the most vital, the growing negative balance of trade under PML-N finally stabilised under PTI. Although the recent spikes can be attributed to the global drop in imports because of covid-19, and the overall curtailing of imported goods. The export rates in Pakistan have shown a massive growth as well; going from negative growth to spontaneous positive growth. Nearly doubling in total export value, going from -5% growth in 2015 to +10% growth in 2019. Which are massive, and much-needed improvements. World bank data shows the rapid decline of Pakistani exports which occurred, as a % of GDP, which went from 13% in 2013 when PML-N came into power, to 8% in 2017 — a near 40% decrease in total exports from 2013-2017. To which we now once again notice the growth where the exports as % of GDP have increased to 10% in 2019 from 8% in 2017; recording an overall positive growth of 10%. These things all in all prove the export based benefits PTI has managed to bring in it's tenure, which sadly have seen a halt due to the effects of covid-19, yet the situation remains hopeful in the recovery. Especially given Pakistan is recording a trade surplus with Italy and other such examples.
• Ease of Business: One thing that cannot be sidelined is the massive improval in the ease of business. While under PMLN, Pakistan massively decreased in it's EoB Iease of business) ranking, going from 110 to 136 to so on. Once Imran Khan came into power, Pakistan climbed the Ease of Business ranking, with a massive improvement of upto 28 spots. A huge increase over PMLN, where it had fallen by a total of 36 positions. For perspective. Currently Pakistan stands at 108th, as a result of easing tax collection, reducing corporate tax, introducing online one-stop shops which made the process of starting businesses considerably easier, and the overall ease in paying taxes through online processes.
• Tourism: The reforms and measures taken to facilitate tourism in Pakistan were evidently among the most successful — Pakistan went from being sidelined to being amongst the worlds top destinations to visit. There were multiple reasons for this, the removal of the mandatory NOC, the initiative for online visas for upto 175 countries alongside visa-on-arrival for 50 countries were among the facilitating measures taken for tourism.
• Foreign Direct Investment: What can be appreciated is the general reception of Pakistan's economic outlook, where FDI climbed by upto 137% within this fiscal year, gathering upto nearly $2.1 billion. Yet, once again — the pandemic will undoubtedly cause most countries to rethink their economic policies for now, and the overall FDI might see a downward trend with regards to global decrease in FDI. Despite, the increases in FDI are welcomed, especially considering total foreign investment rose 380 percent to $2.375 billion in July-March FY2020. Yet the sustainability of this remains to be seen.
• Dealing with covid: Despite all odds, Pakistan has somehow managed to deal well with the pandemic. Coming out relatively alright, in perspective of countries such as India, Mexico, Italy, Brazil etc. The factor that plays out, is that despite being incredibly vulnerable, the country managed to pull through and has markedly reduced the impact of the virus. With regards to the economy, taking a bold risk of abating a complete lockdown, whilst met with criticism was once again a factor that showed competency. Keeping in mind that 51 million Pakistanis lived below the poverty line, and the adverse effect it would have on the economy. Pakistan managed to come through the economic contraction with only a -0.38% growth. Although the full effects are still not abated or understood, what's commendable is the fact that Pakistan under PTI has kept itself from an even worse situation. Whilst managing to keep covid under relative control. Especially given increases in exports despite the pandemic in countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Italy.

This is by no means a highly comprehensive list, just my opinion on some of the bigger achievements; saving the economy from defaulting, adopting tax reforms, tourism reforms, export reforms among them whilst managing covid and economic stability with relative success.
There are of course a multitude of other factors, successfully avoiding a blacklist from the FATF, macroeconomic reforms, attempts to strengthen the working class; ehsaas programs, Naya Pakistan housing schemes alongside other relief efforts. These are measures in accordance with curtailing the effect of increasing taxation and attempts to abate the economic slowdown that came as a result of forcing an increase in government revenue. Alongside the focus on multiple new hydroelectric dams, industrial cities, reduction of the PM office staff from 552 to 298, 10 billion tree project and an overall renewed interest in renewable energy and green Pakistan. The list is comprehensive.
Pakistan remains on a rocky path, it is not out of the woods yet. Covid-19 has seriously hampered the overall projections, and caused a worldwide economic contraction. Not only that, but there are criticisms that can be attributed to the government as well, as they are not without fault. However, the overall achievements of the government with regards to the economy do present hope for the long-term fiscal policy and development of Pakistan.

When I first started trading, I used to add all indicators on my chart. MACD, RSI, super trend, ATR, ichimoku cloud, Bollinger Bands, everything!
My chart was pretty messy. I understood nothing and my analysis was pretty much just a gamble.
Nothing worked.
DISCLOSURE- I've written this article on another sub reddit, if you've already read it, you make skip this one and come back tomorrow.
Then I learned price action trading. And things started to change. It seemed difficult and unreliable at first.
There's a saying in my country. "Bhav Bhagwan Che" it means "Price Is GOD".
That holds true in the market.
Amos Every indicator you see is based on price. RSI uses open/close price and so does moving average. MACD uses price.
Price is what matters the most.
Everything depends on the price, and then the indicators send a signal.
Price Action trading is trading based on Candlestick patterns and support and resistance. You don't use any indicators (SMA sometimes), use plot trend lines and support and resistance zones, maybe Fibs or Pivot points.
It is not 100% successful, but the win rate is quite high if you know how to analyse it correctly.
How To Learn Price Action Trading?
YouTube channels- 1. Trading with Rayner Teo. 2. Adam Khoo. 3. The Chart Guys. 4. The Trading Channel (and some other channels including regional ones).
Books- 1. Technical Analysis Explained. 2. The trader's book of volume. 3. Trading price action trends. 4. Trading price action reversals. 5. Trading price actions ranges. 6. Naked forex. 7. Technical analysis of the financial markets.
I think this is enough information to help you get started.
Price Action trading includes a few parts.

1. Candlestick patterns You'll have to be able to spot a bullish engulfing or a bearish engulfing pattern. Or a doji or a morning star.
   
2. Chart Patterns. The flag, wedge, channels or triangles. These are often quite helpful in chart analysis without using indicators.
   
3. Support or Resistance. I've seen people draw 15 lines of support and resistance, this just makes your chart messy and you don't know where the price will take a support.
   

You can also you the demand and supply zone concept if you're more comfortable with that.

1. Volume. There's a quote "Boule precedes price". Volume analysis is a bit hard, but it's totally worth learning. Divergence is also a great concept.
   
2. Multiple time frames. To confirm a trend or find the long term support or resistance, you can use a higher time frame. Plus, it is more reliable and divergence is way stronger on it.
   

You can conclude everything to make a powerful system. Like if there's a divergence (price up volume down) and there's a major resistance on some upper level and a double top is formed,
That's a very reliable strategy to go short. Combinations of various systems work very good imo.
Does this mean that indicators are useless?
No, I use moving averages and RSI quite frequently. Using price action and confirming it through indicators gives me a higher win rate.
"Bhav Bhagwan Che".
-Vikrant C.

Hello, dummies
It's your old pal, Fuzzy.
As I'm sure you've all noticed, a lot of the stuff that gets posted here is - to put it delicately - fucking ridiculous. More backwards-ass shit gets posted to wallstreetbets than you'd see on a Westboro Baptist community message board. I mean, I had a look at the daily thread yesterday and..... yeesh. I know, I know. We all make like the divine Laura Dern circa 1992 on the daily and stick our hands deep into this steaming heap of shit to find the nuggets of valuable and/or hilarious information within (thanks for reading, BTW). I agree. I love it just the way it is too. That's what makes WSB great.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of the stuff that gets posted here - notwithstanding it being funny or interesting - is just... wrong. Like, fucking your cousin wrong. And to be clear, I mean the fucking your *first* cousin kinda wrong, before my Southerners in the back get all het up (simmer down, Billy Ray - I know Mabel's twice removed on your grand-sister's side). Truly, I try to let it slide. I do my bit to try and put you on the right path. Most of the time, I sleep easy no matter how badly I've seen someone explain what a bank liquidity crisis is. But out of all of those tens of thousands of misguided, autistic attempts at understanding the world of high finance, one thing gets so consistently - so *emphatically* - fucked up and misunderstood by you retards that last night I felt obligated at the end of a long work day to pull together this edition of Finance with Fuzzy just for you. It's so serious I'm not even going to make a u/pokimane gag. Have you guessed what it is yet? Here's a clue. It's in the title of the post.
That's right, friends. Today in the neighborhood we're going to talk all about hedging in financial markets - spots, swaps, collars, forwards, CDS, synthetic CDOs, all that fun shit. Don't worry; I'm going to explain what all the scary words mean and how they impact your OTM RH positions along the way.
We're going to break it down like this. (1) "What's a hedge, Fuzzy?" (2) Common Hedging Strategies and (3) All About ISDAs and Credit Default Swaps.
Before we begin. For the nerds and JV traders in the back (and anyone else who needs to hear this up front) - I am simplifying these descriptions for the purposes of this post. I am also obviously not going to try and cover every exotic form of hedge under the sun or give a detailed summation of what caused the financial crisis. If you are interested in something specific ask a question, but don't try and impress me with your Investopedia skills or technical points I didn't cover; I will just be forced to flex my years of IRL experience on you in the comments and you'll look like a big dummy.
TL;DR? Fuck you. There is no TL;DR. You've come this far already. What's a few more paragraphs? Put down the Cheetos and try to concentrate for the next 5-7 minutes. You'll learn something, and I promise I'll be gentle.
Ready? Let's get started.
1. The Tao of Risk: Hedging as a Way of Life
The simplest way to characterize what a hedge 'is' is to imagine every action having a binary outcome. One is bad, one is good. Red lines, green lines; uppie, downie. With me so far? Good. A 'hedge' is simply the employment of a strategy to mitigate the effect of your action having the wrong binary outcome. You wanted X, but you got Z! Frowny face. A hedge strategy introduces a third outcome. If you hedged against the possibility of Z happening, then you can wind up with Y instead. Not as good as X, but not as bad as Z. The technical definition I like to give my idiot juniors is as follows:
Utilization of a defensive strategy to mitigate risk, at a fraction of the cost to capital of the risk itself.
Congratulations. You just finished Hedging 101. "But Fuzzy, that's easy! I just sold a naked call against my 95% OTM put! I'm adequately hedged!". Spoiler alert: you're not (although good work on executing a collar, which I describe below). What I'm talking about here is what would be referred to as a 'perfect hedge'; a binary outcome where downside is totally mitigated by a risk management strategy. That's not how it works IRL. Pay attention; this is the tricky part.
You can't take a single position and conclude that you're adequately hedged because risks are fluid, not static. So you need to constantly adjust your position in order to maximize the value of the hedge and insure your position. You also need to consider exposure to more than one category of risk. There are micro (specific exposure) risks, and macro (trend exposure) risks, and both need to factor into the hedge calculus.
That's why, in the real world, the value of hedging depends entirely on the design of the hedging strategy itself. Here, when we say "value" of the hedge, we're not talking about cash money - we're talking about the intrinsic value of the hedge relative to the the risk profile of your underlying exposure. To achieve this, people hedge dynamically. In wallstreetbets terms, this means that as the value of your position changes, you need to change your hedges too. The idea is to efficiently and continuously distribute and rebalance risk across different states and periods, taking value from states in which the marginal cost of the hedge is low and putting it back into states where marginal cost of the hedge is high, until the shadow value of your underlying exposure is equalized across your positions. The punchline, I guess, is that one static position is a hedge in the same way that the finger paintings you make for your wife's boyfriend are art - it's technically correct, but you're only playing yourself by believing it.
Anyway. Obviously doing this as a small potatoes trader is hard but it's worth taking into account. Enough basic shit. So how does this work in markets?
2. A Hedging Taxonomy
The best place to start here is a practical question. What does a business need to hedge against? Think about the specific risk that an individual business faces. These are legion, so I'm just going to list a few of the key ones that apply to most corporates. (1) You have commodity risk for the shit you buy or the shit you use. (2) You have currency risk for the money you borrow. (3) You have rate risk on the debt you carry. (4) You have offtake risk for the shit you sell. Complicated, right? To help address the many and varied ways that shit can go wrong in a sophisticated market, smart operators like yours truly have devised a whole bundle of different instruments which can help you manage the risk. I might write about some of the more complicated ones in a later post if people are interested (CDO/CLOs, strip/stack hedges and bond swaps with option toggles come to mind) but let's stick to the basics for now.
(i) Swaps
A swap is one of the most common forms of hedge instrument, and they're used by pretty much everyone that can afford them. The language is complicated but the concept isn't, so pay attention and you'll be fine. This is the most important part of this section so it'll be the longest one.
Swaps are derivative contracts with two counterparties (before you ask, you can't trade 'em on an exchange - they're OTC instruments only). They're used to exchange one cash flow for another cash flow of equal expected value; doing this allows you to take speculative positions on certain financial prices or to alter the cash flows of existing assets or liabilities within a business. "Wait, Fuzz; slow down! What do you mean sets of cash flows?". Fear not, little autist. Ol' Fuzz has you covered.
The cash flows I'm talking about are referred to in swap-land as 'legs'. One leg is fixed - a set payment that's the same every time it gets paid - and the other is variable - it fluctuates (typically indexed off the price of the underlying risk that you are speculating on / protecting against). You set it up at the start so that they're notionally equal and the two legs net off; so at open, the swap is a zero NPV instrument. Here's where the fun starts. If the price that you based the variable leg of the swap on changes, the value of the swap will shift; the party on the wrong side of the move ponies up via the variable payment. It's a zero sum game.
I'll give you an example using the most vanilla swap around; an interest rate trade. Here's how it works. You borrow money from a bank, and they charge you a rate of interest. You lock the rate up front, because you're smart like that. But then - quelle surprise! - the rate gets better after you borrow. Now you're bagholding to the tune of, I don't know, 5 bps. Doesn't sound like much but on a billion dollar loan that's a lot of money (a classic example of the kind of 'small, deep hole' that's terrible for profits). Now, if you had a swap contract on the rate before you entered the trade, you're set; if the rate goes down, you get a payment under the swap. If it goes up, whatever payment you're making to the bank is netted off by the fact that you're borrowing at a sub-market rate. Win-win! Or, at least, Lose Less / Lose Less. That's the name of the game in hedging.
There are many different kinds of swaps, some of which are pretty exotic; but they're all different variations on the same theme. If your business has exposure to something which fluctuates in price, you trade swaps to hedge against the fluctuation. The valuation of swaps is also super interesting but I guarantee you that 99% of you won't understand it so I'm not going to try and explain it here although I encourage you to google it if you're interested.
Because they're OTC, none of them are filed publicly. Someeeeeetimes you see an ISDA (dsicussed below) but the confirms themselves (the individual swaps) are not filed. You can usually read about the hedging strategy in a 10-K, though. For what it's worth, most modern credit agreements ban speculative hedging. Top tip: This is occasionally something worth checking in credit agreements when you invest in businesses that are debt issuers - being able to do this increases the risk profile significantly and is particularly important in times of economic volatility (ctrl+f "non-speculative" in the credit agreement to be sure).
(ii) Forwards
A forward is a contract made today for the future delivery of an asset at a pre-agreed price. That's it. "But Fuzzy! That sounds just like a futures contract!". I know. Confusing, right? Just like a futures trade, forwards are generally used in commodity or forex land to protect against price fluctuations. The differences between forwards and futures are small but significant. I'm not going to go into super boring detail because I don't think many of you are commodities traders but it is still an important thing to understand even if you're just an RH jockey, so stick with me.
Just like swaps, forwards are OTC contracts - they're not publicly traded. This is distinct from futures, which are traded on exchanges (see The Ballad Of Big Dick Vick for some more color on this). In a forward, no money changes hands until the maturity date of the contract when delivery and receipt are carried out; price and quantity are locked in from day 1. As you now know having read about BDV, futures are marked to market daily, and normally people close them out with synthetic settlement using an inverse position. They're also liquid, and that makes them easier to unwind or close out in case shit goes sideways.
People use forwards when they absolutely have to get rid of the thing they made (or take delivery of the thing they need). If you're a miner, or a farmer, you use this shit to make sure that at the end of the production cycle, you can get rid of the shit you made (and you won't get fucked by someone taking cash settlement over delivery). If you're a buyer, you use them to guarantee that you'll get whatever the shit is that you'll need at a price agreed in advance. Because they're OTC, you can also exactly tailor them to the requirements of your particular circumstances.
These contracts are incredibly byzantine (and there are even crazier synthetic forwards you can see in money markets for the true degenerate fund managers). In my experience, only Texan oilfield magnates, commodities traders, and the weirdo forex crowd fuck with them. I (i) do not own a 10 gallon hat or a novelty size belt buckle (ii) do not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out about the price of pork fat and (iii) love greenbacks too much to care about other countries' monopoly money, so I don't fuck with them.
(iii) Collars
No, not the kind your wife is encouraging you to wear try out to 'spice things up' in the bedroom during quarantine. Collars are actually the hedging strategy most applicable to WSB. Collars deal with options! Hooray!
To execute a basic collar (also called a wrapper by tea-drinking Brits and people from the Antipodes), you buy an out of the money put while simultaneously writing a covered call on the same equity. The put protects your position against price drops and writing the call produces income that offsets the put premium. Doing this limits your tendies (you can only profit up to the strike price of the call) but also writes down your risk. If you screen large volume trades with a VOL/OI of more than 3 or 4x (and they're not bullshit biotech stocks), you can sometimes see these being constructed in real time as hedge funds protect themselves on their shorts.
(3) All About ISDAs, CDS and Synthetic CDOs
You may have heard about the mythical ISDA. Much like an indenture (discussed in my post on $F), it's a magic legal machine that lets you build swaps via trade confirms with a willing counterparty. They are very complicated legal documents and you need to be a true expert to fuck with them. Fortunately, I am, so I do. They're made of two parts; a Master (which is a form agreement that's always the same) and a Schedule (which amends the Master to include your specific terms). They are also the engine behind just about every major credit crunch of the last 10+ years.
First - a brief explainer. An ISDA is a not in and of itself a hedge - it's an umbrella contract that governs the terms of your swaps, which you use to construct your hedge position. You can trade commodities, forex, rates, whatever, all under the same ISDA.
Let me explain. Remember when we talked about swaps? Right. So. You can trade swaps on just about anything. In the late 90s and early 2000s, people had the smart idea of using other people's debt and or credit ratings as the variable leg of swap documentation. These are called credit default swaps. I was actually starting out at a bank during this time and, I gotta tell you, the only thing I can compare people's enthusiasm for this shit to was that moment in your early teens when you discover jerking off. Except, unlike your bathroom bound shame sessions to Mom's Sears catalogue, every single person you know felt that way too; and they're all doing it at once. It was a fiscal circlejerk of epic proportions, and the financial crisis was the inevitable bukkake finish. WSB autism is absolutely no comparison for the enthusiasm people had during this time for lighting each other's money on fire.
Here's how it works. You pick a company. Any company. Maybe even your own! And then you write a swap. In the swap, you define "Credit Event" with respect to that company's debt as the variable leg . And you write in... whatever you want. A ratings downgrade, default under the docs, failure to meet a leverage ratio or FCCR for a certain testing period... whatever. Now, this started out as a hedge position, just like we discussed above. The purest of intentions, of course. But then people realized - if bad shit happens, you make money. And banks... don't like calling in loans or forcing bankruptcies. Can you smell what the moral hazard is cooking?
Enter synthetic CDOs. CDOs are basically pools of asset backed securities that invest in debt (loans or bonds). They've been around for a minute but they got famous in the 2000s because a shitload of them containing subprime mortgage debt went belly up in 2008. This got a lot of publicity because a lot of sad looking rednecks got foreclosed on and were interviewed on CNBC. "OH!", the people cried. "Look at those big bad bankers buying up subprime loans! They caused this!". Wrong answer, America. The debt wasn't the problem. What a lot of people don't realize is that the real meat of the problem was not in regular way CDOs investing in bundles of shit mortgage debts in synthetic CDOs investing in CDS predicated on that debt. They're synthetic because they don't have a stake in the actual underlying debt; just the instruments riding on the coattails. The reason these are so popular (and remain so) is that smart structured attorneys and bankers like your faithful correspondent realized that an even more profitable and efficient way of building high yield products with limited downside was investing in instruments that profit from failure of debt and in instruments that rely on that debt and then hedging that exposure with other CDS instruments in paired trades, and on and on up the chain. The problem with doing this was that everyone wound up exposed to everybody else's books as a result, and when one went tits up, everybody did. Hence, recession, Basel III, etc. Thanks, Obama.
Heavy investment in CDS can also have a warping effect on the price of debt (something else that happened during the pre-financial crisis years and is starting to happen again now). This happens in three different ways. (1) Investors who previously were long on the debt hedge their position by selling CDS protection on the underlying, putting downward pressure on the debt price. (2) Investors who previously shorted the debt switch to buying CDS protection because the relatively illiquid debt (partic. when its a bond) trades at a discount below par compared to the CDS. The resulting reduction in short selling puts upward pressure on the bond price. (3) The delta in price and actual value of the debt tempts some investors to become NBTs (neg basis traders) who long the debt and purchase CDS protection. If traders can't take leverage, nothing happens to the price of the debt. If basis traders can take leverage (which is nearly always the case because they're holding a hedged position), they can push up or depress the debt price, goosing swap premiums etc. Anyway. Enough technical details.
I could keep going. This is a fascinating topic that is very poorly understood and explained, mainly because the people that caused it all still work on the street and use the same tactics today (it's also terribly taught at business schools because none of the teachers were actually around to see how this played out live). But it relates to the topic of today's lesson, so I thought I'd include it here.
Work depending, I'll be back next week with a covenant breakdown. Most upvoted ticker gets the post.
*EDIT 1\* In a total blowout, $PLAY won. So it's D&B time next week. Post will drop Monday at market open.

Hi There,
I have a small business that requires me to make moderately large annual purchases from my US supplier in USD. In the past, I've been paying for consignments in USD by converting at the spot rate at the time of purchase.
I would like to hedge against some from the crazy forex swings in as cheaply a way as possible.
Can anyone point me towards good value USD accounts in Australia? Alternatively, ways to hedge forex transactions that don't cost an arm and a leg?

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WTF is going on with Bitshares in 2020? It used to have accurate prices and decent trading volume.
Not anymore...
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Currently BTS/bitUSD is 0.034935 on Bitshares.
BTS/USD Price on other exchanges is 0.02275, 35% lower price.
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Currrent BTS/bitBTC 0.00000868 on Bitshares
BTS/BTC price on other exchanges is 0.00000254 , 70% lower price.
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bitEUbitUSD quote is 2.0 (but almost no trading volume),
actual spot forex exchange rate is 1.124
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bitCNY/bitUSD 0.1557, 8% higher than actual spot exchange rate of .1415

Hi there,
My base currency is Canadian and I hold some USD exposure right now due to investments. I am new to using Interactive Brokers and futures trading.
To my understanding it is possible to mantain a hedge using the cash-settled large and mini Currency Futures Contract and occasionally adjust depending on your USD exposure.
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/canadian-dollar.html
Per https://www.retailinvestor.org/hedge.html#risk
"It is too expensive to hedge." The cost to buy a $100,000 futures contract good for a year, is about $5. Pittance. Yes you must provide collateral but that is not a cost. You will also find that buried somewhere in whatever method you chose, is a cost/benefit equal to the difference in interest rates between the countries. Since Canada and US rates are so close you can cancel out any cost by using limit orders that let normal market volatility make up the difference.
The fund managers who say hedging is expensive are referring to using options. This method IS expensive. Options are a one-sided bet on the direction of FX, expiring within a specific time span. They are not hedges.
The cash funding of open futures contracts come from the daily settlements. If your position gains $1,000 in value one day, there will be $1,000 put into your account. More importantly, if your position loses $1,000, it will be taken from your account. If there is not sufficient cash your broker will consider it borrowed and charge you interest. You must realize that because this is a hedge, you are not 'losing' that cash. For every dollar you might lose in the futures account, the offsetting investment in the foreign security will have gained the same amount. Agreed, you cannot liquidate that cash daily, but the value is there."
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1) Anybody have any experience in this in how to consider which month of futures contract to purchase, (near month or 1 year from now if I want one year of) I believe futures contract automatically roll-forward to the next month.
The Price Curve seems to curve down, and is in some sort of backwardation? So farther away in time cost more due to priced in uncertainty - and also more thinly traded?
2) Collateral is required so I assume is some sort of Margin that is required to maintain the contract,
3) What are the calculations to determine how much to hedge out. Say I have $100k USD?
Is it just Looking at say $100k USD x the Future Price Rate (of CAD/USD) or the current Spot Forex Exchange Rate?
I.e. $100k USD / 0.74500s (Aug '20) = $134k CAD ~
So 1 $100k CAD Contract and 3-4 $10k CAD mini contracts?
4) Any resources to learn about this?
​
Thanks in advance

The majority of this sub is focused on technical analysis. I regularly ridicule such "tea leaf readers" and advocate for trading based on fundamentals and economic news instead, so I figured I should take the time to write up something on how exactly you can trade economic news releases.
This post is long as balls so I won't be upset if you get bored and go back to your drooping dick patterns or whatever.

How economic news is released

First, it helps to know how economic news is compiled and released. Let's take Initial Jobless Claims, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits around the United States from Sunday through Saturday. Initial in this context means the first claim for benefits made by an individual during a particular stretch of unemployment. The Initial Jobless Claims figure appears in the Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report, which compiles information from all of the per-state departments that report to the DOL during the week. A typical number is between 100k and 250k and it can vary quite significantly week-to-week.
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report contains data that lags 5 days behind. For example, the Report issued on Thursday March 26th 2020 contained data about the week ending on Saturday March 21st 2020.
In the days leading up to the Report, financial companies will survey economists and run complicated mathematical models to forecast the upcoming Initial Jobless Claims figure. The results of surveyed experts is called the "consensus"; specific companies, experts, and websites will also provide their own forecasts. Different companies will release different consensuses. Usually they are pretty close (within 2-3k), but for last week's record-high Initial Jobless Claims the reported consensuses varied by up to 1M! In other words, there was essentially no consensus.
The Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is released each Thursday morning at exactly 8:30 AM ET. (On Thanksgiving the Report is released on Wednesday instead.) Media representatives gather at the Frances Perkins Building in Washington DC and are admitted to the "lockup" at 8:00 AM ET. In order to be admitted to the lockup you have to be a credentialed member of a media organization that has signed the DOL lockup agreement. The lockup room is small so there is a limited number of spots.
No phones are allowed. Reporters bring their laptops and connect to a local network; there is a master switch on the wall that prevents/enables Internet connectivity on this network. Once the doors are closed the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report is distributed, with a heading that announces it is "embargoed" (not to be released) prior to 8:30 AM. Reporters type up their analyses of the report, including extracting key figures like Initial Jobless Claims. They load their write-ups into their companies' software, which prepares to send it out as soon as Internet is enabled. At 8:30 AM the DOL representative in the room flips the wall switch and all of the laptops are connected to the Internet, releasing their write-ups to their companies and on to their companies' partners.
Many of those media companies have externally accessible APIs for distributing news. Media aggregators and squawk services (like RanSquawk and TradeTheNews) subscribe to all of these different APIs and then redistribute the key economic figures from the Report to their own subscribers within one second after Internet is enabled in the DOL lockup.
Some squawk services are text-based while others are audio-based. FinancialJuice.com provides a free audio squawk service; internally they have a paid subscription to a professional squawk service and they simply read out the latest headlines to their own listeners, subsidized by ads on the site. I've been using it for 4 months now and have been pretty happy. It usually lags behind the official release times by 1-2 seconds and occasionally they verbally flub the numbers or stutter and have to repeat, but you can't beat the price!
Important - I’m not affiliated with FinancialJuice and I’m not advocating that you use them over any other squawk. If you use them and they misspeak a number and you lose all your money don’t blame me. If anybody has any other free alternatives please share them!

How the news affects forex markets

Institutional forex traders subscribe to these squawk services and use custom software to consume the emerging data programmatically and then automatically initiate trades based on the perceived change to the fundamentals that the figures represent.
It's important to note that every institution will have "priced in" their own forecasted figures well in advance of an actual news release. Forecasts and consensuses all come out at different times in the days leading up to a news release, so by the time the news drops everybody is really only looking for an unexpected result. You can't really know what any given institution expects the value to be, but unless someone has inside information you can pretty much assume that the market has collectively priced in the experts' consensus. When the news comes out, institutions will trade based on the difference between the actual and their forecast.
Sometimes the news reflects a real change to the fundamentals with an economic effect that will change the demand for a currency, like an interest rate decision. However, in the case of the Initial Jobless Claims figure, which is a backwards-looking metric, trading is really just self-fulfilling speculation that market participants will buy dollars when unemployment is low and sell dollars when unemployment is high. Generally speaking, news that reflects a real economic shift has a bigger effect than news that only matters to speculators.
Massive and extremely fast news-based trades happen within tenths of a second on the ECNs on which institutional traders are participants. Over the next few seconds the resulting price changes trickle down to retail traders. Some economic news, like Non Farm Payroll Employment, has an effect that can last minutes to hours as "slow money" follows behind on the trend created by the "fast money". Other news, like Initial Jobless Claims, has a short impact that trails off within a couple minutes and is subsequently dwarfed by the usual pseudorandom movements in the market.
The bigger the difference between actual and consensus, the bigger the effect on any given currency pair. Since economic news releases generally relate to a single currency, the biggest and most easily predicted effects are seen on pairs where one currency is directly effected and the other is not affected at all. Personally I trade USD/JPY because the time difference between the US and Japan ensures that no news will be coming out of Japan at the same time that economic news is being released in the US.
Before deciding to trade any particular news release you should measure the historical correlation between the release (specifically, the difference between actual and consensus) and the resulting short-term change in the currency pair. Historical data for various news releases (along with historical consensus data) is readily available. You can pay to get it exported into Excel or whatever, or you can scroll through it for free on websites like TradingEconomics.com.
Let's look at two examples: Initial Jobless Claims and Non Farm Payroll Employment (NFP). I collected historical consensuses and actuals for these releases from January 2018 through the present, measured the "surprise" difference for each, and then correlated that to short-term changes in USD/JPY at the time of release using 5 second candles.
I omitted any releases that occurred simultaneously as another major release. For example, occasionally the monthly Initial Jobless Claims comes out at the exact same time as the monthly Balance of Trade figure, which is a more significant economic indicator and can be expected to dwarf the effect of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report.
USD/JPY correlation with Initial Jobless Claims (2018 - present)
USD/JPY correlation with Non Farm Payrolls (2018 - present)
The horizontal axes on these charts is the duration (in seconds) after the news release over which correlation was calculated. The vertical axis is the Pearson correlation coefficient: +1 means that the change in USD/JPY over that duration was perfectly linearly correlated to the "surprise" in the releases; -1 means that the change in USD/JPY was perfectly linearly correlated but in the opposite direction, and 0 means that there is no correlation at all.
For Initial Jobless Claims you can see that for the first 30 seconds USD/JPY is strongly negatively correlated with the difference between consensus and actual jobless claims. That is, fewer-than-forecast jobless claims (fewer newly unemployed people than expected) strengthens the dollar and greater-than-forecast jobless claims (more newly unemployed people than expected) weakens the dollar. Correlation then trails off and changes to a moderate/weak positive correlation. I interpret this as algorithms "buying the dip" and vice versa, but I don't know for sure. From this chart it appears that you could profit by opening a trade for 15 seconds (duration with strongest correlation) that is long USD/JPY when Initial Jobless Claims is lower than the consensus and short USD/JPY when Initial Jobless Claims is higher than expected.
The chart for Non Farm Payroll looks very different. Correlation is positive (higher-than-expected payrolls strengthen the dollar and lower-than-expected payrolls weaken the dollar) and peaks at around 45 seconds, then slowly decreases as time goes on. This implies that price changes due to NFP are quite significant relative to background noise and "stick" even as normal fluctuations pick back up.
I wanted to show an example of what the USD/JPY S5 chart looks like when an "uncontested" (no other major simultaneously news release) Initial Jobless Claims and NFP drops, but unfortunately my broker's charts only go back a week. (I can pull historical data going back years through the API but to make it into a pretty chart would be a bit of work.) If anybody can get a 5-second chart of USD/JPY at March 19, 2020, UTC 12:30 and/or at February 7, 2020, UTC 13:30 let me know and I'll add it here.

Backtesting

So without too much effort we determined that (1) USD/JPY is strongly negatively correlated with the Initial Jobless Claims figure for the first 15 seconds after the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (when no other major news is being released) and also that (2) USD/JPY is strongly positively correlated with the Non Farms Payroll figure for the first 45 seconds after the release of the Employment Situation report.
Before you can assume you can profit off the news you have to backtest and consider three important parameters.
Entry speed: How quickly can you realistically enter the trade? The correlation performed above was measured from the exact moment the news was released, but realistically if you've got your finger on the trigger and your ear to the squawk it will take a few seconds to hit "Buy" or "Sell" and confirm. If 90% of the price move happens in the first second you're SOL. For back-testing purposes I assume a 5 second delay. In practice I use custom software that opens a trade with one click, and I can reliably enter a trade within 2-3 seconds after the news drops, using the FinancialJuice free squawk.
Minimum surprise: Should you trade every release or can you do better by only trading those with a big enough "surprise" factor? Backtesting will tell you whether being more selective is better long-term or not.
Hold time: The optimal time to hold the trade is not necessarily the same as the time of maximum correlation. That's a good starting point but it's not necessarily the best number. Backtesting each possible hold time will let you find the best one.
The spread: When you're only holding a position open for 30 seconds, the spread will kill you. The correlations performed above used the midpoint price, but in reality you have to buy at the ask and sell at the bid. Brokers aren't stupid and the moment volume on the ECN jumps they will widen the spread for their retail customers. The only way to determine if the news-driven price movements reliably overcome the spread is to backtest.
Stops: Personally I don't use stops, neither take-profit nor stop-loss, since I'm automatically closing the trade after a fixed (and very short) amount of time. Additionally, brokers have a minimum stop distance; the profits from scalping the news are so slim that even the nearest stops they allow will generally not get triggered.
I backtested trading these two news releases (since 2018), using a 5 second entry delay, real historical spreads, and no stops, cycling through different "surprise" thresholds and hold times to find the combination that returns the highest net profit. It's important to maximize net profit, not expected value per trade, so you don't over-optimize and reduce the total number of trades taken to one single profitable trade. If you want to get fancy you can set up a custom metric that combines number of trades, expected value, and drawdown into a single score to be maximized.
For the Initial Jobless Claims figure I found that the best combination is to hold trades open for 25 seconds (that is, open at 5 seconds elapsed and hold until 30 seconds elapsed) and only trade when the difference between consensus and actual is 7k or higher. That leads to 30 trades taken since 2018 and an expected return of... drumroll please... -0.0093 yen per unit per trade.
Yep, that's a loss of approx. $8.63 per lot.
Disappointing right? That's the spread and that's why you have to backtest. Even though the release of the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report has a strong correlation with movement in USD/JPY, it's simply not something that a retail trader can profit from.
Let's turn to the NFP. There I found that the best combination is to hold trades open for 75 seconds (that is, open at 5 seconds elapsed and hold until 80 seconds elapsed) and trade every single NFP (no minimum "surprise" threshold). That leads to 20 trades taken since 2018 and an expected return of... drumroll please... +0.1306 yen per unit per trade.
That's a profit of approx. $121.25 per lot. Not bad for 75 seconds of work! That's a +6% ROI at 50x leverage.

Make it real

If you want to do this for realsies, you need to run these numbers for all of the major economic news releases. Markit Manufacturing PMI, Factory Orders MoM, Trade Balance, PPI MoM, Export and Import Prices, Michigan Consumer Sentiment, Retail Sales MoM, Industrial Production MoM, you get the idea. You keep a list of all of the releases you want to trade, when they are released, and the ideal hold time and "surprise" threshold. A few minutes before the prescribed release time you open up your broker's software, turn on your squawk, maybe jot a few notes about consensuses and model forecasts, and get your finger on the button. At the moment you hear the release you open the trade in the correct direction, hold it (without looking at the chart!) for the required amount of time, then close it and go on with your day.
Some benefits of trading this way: * Most major economic releases come out at either 8:30 AM ET or 10:00 AM ET, and then you're done for the day. * It's easily backtestable. You can look back at the numbers and see exactly what to expect your return to be. * It's fun! Packing your trading into 30 seconds and knowing that institutions are moving billions of dollars around as fast as they can based on the exact same news you just read is thrilling. * You can wow your friends by saying things like "The St. Louis Fed had some interesting remarks on consumer spending in the latest Beige Book." * No crayons involved.
Some downsides: * It's tricky to be fast enough without writing custom software. Some broker software is very slow and requires multiple dialog boxes before a position is opened, which won't cut it. * The profits are very slim, you're not going to impress your instagram followers to join your expensive trade copying service with your 30-second twice-weekly trades. * Any friends you might wow with your boring-ass economic talking points are themselves the most boring people in the world.
I hope you enjoyed this long as fuck post and you give trading economic news a try!