EUR/CHF reexamining January 15th, 2015 nightmare price levelDo you remember where you were on January 15th, 2015?
If you were a leveraged EURCHF trader then you certainly do -- it was on that date that the Swiss National Bank removed the 1.20 price peg from the currency pair. Unless you simply like to hit on 18 in blackjack, or you had inside information regarding the SNB's sudden decision to abandon the price control, then chances are you were probably long this pair. Every time prices fell to 1.20, the SNB would step in and bid them back up; the rising tides would lift everyone's boat, and downside risk was foregone under the promise that the central bank would keep prices artificially inflated. The problem was, however, that during this period of low volatility and synthetic price control that the real interest rate continued downward while the nominal rate remained the same, hiding any evidence of the bubble-like exchange rate differential. Once the floor fell out from beneath the pair, prices adjusted downward (and hard, I should mention) as a corrective measure.
Lackluster growth data out of the EU, as well as Mario Draghi's own comments affirming such a notion that the EU has reached "peak growth" primes the pair up for weakness on the EUR side while CHF's oversold condition across the board (supposedly as a result of Russian outflows in response to recent sanctions against the country) looks attractive to new capital flows that represent a) a return to a relatively safe fiat alternative and b) an opportunity to hedge risk by selling the euro's peak for the franc's bottom.
Now that price has climbed back up to the 1.20 handle for the first time since the crash, one can anticipate some modest resistance at such a critical level. The question I have is whether that resistance will be able to push price action back down to the 200-day moving average (TP #1), the prevailing trendline support (TP #2), or the lower-bound intermediate support (TP #3)?
Risk exposure on this trade idea is minimal, as a move above and beyond the 1.20 handle effectively negates the above hypothesis. At the very least I expect price to leap above the 1.20 handle, albeit shortly, as I can only assume there is a lattice of stop-loss orders ready to be tripped. If a pin bar forms on the daily chart at this level, it should be interpreted as a pointedly bearish signal.
