The Weekly Strategy Session - 8th Sept 2026

Hi there, traders. Now, welcome to the weekly strategy session. And welcome, Bobby and Robert. Good to see you guys. Now, this is where we sort of just piece together, you know, give you a bit of a walkthrough, what to expect, what's happening in the market, and then where the key numbers are, right? So, just having a look where we finished off last week, the non-farm payrolls, right? The usual little splurge in the markets. It's a bit of a splatter, right? That's what you're gonna get if the numbers do not align, right? What you need is non-farms to be either good or bad and the unemployment rate to line up. But it wasn't like that. Non-farms were higher, which is a negative, and then you've got the rate which was sort of better, which was as expected. Now, let's just have a look what's going on. There's something interesting happening in the market. And if you have a look at the sort of general news, I'll just start on this, right? Japan, a lot about Japan raising interest rates and a lot of hype. I'll tell you what they're doing at the moment. It's a really solid job. Instead of talking about intervening on dollar yen, they're now sort of just talking about interest rates. That's a different pitch, right? It's a different pitch because it gets a different outcome. It's a mindset shift, and this could really start to see dollar yen really, maybe this is the move, right? This is the move we've been waiting for, and it could be a major catalyst. So just having a look at that, just keep that in the back of your mind. I mean, I find trading dollar yen, it's so unpredictable. And when it sort of goes, it looks amazing, and then it can just turn around and bite you on the butt straight away. So looking at the markets in general, we are starting to see, right? This is all I'm looking at when I look at the charts is I'm starting to see the dollar roll over a little bit, right, and we have got the ECB due to raise rates in a day or so. Everything looks pretty good. Kiwi's sort of hanging in there to the downside, but we've seen a lot of these false starts, right? But anyway, the inclination is we are starting to see a weak dollar. To me, the confirmation will be when dollar Swiss breaks down, right? That's a real sort of telltale sign what the dollar's doing. It's not going with dollar yen, so it's not like a safe haven trade. And we do have, you know, we had these moves up in the majors, Euro, and they did come back to test, well, they're testing that sort of bull bear pivot line. Now, just on that, right? I don't treat the bull bear pivot line as a support and resistance line. I treat it as a pivot point, right? So just to make sure, you know, I'm not sort of, I'm not actually trading that pivot line. It's just telling me whether it's going up or down. Now, Sterling, like Euro, has gone up, come back tested. Aussie sort of went up. Actually, if I get a bit more data in there, well, it's just going up now anyway. So basically, everything looks to me like we're getting set for a weak dollar, okay, through the winter over there, right? So, and there's a couple of things in that, right? Because, and I don't want to sort of just look down the track like some analysts do when they tell you what's going to happen. But one of the key things that actually is going around is the US midterms, right? We've got a couple of months. Trump could lose full control of the government, right? So he won't be able to just go crazy doing what he's doing in Iran and everywhere else. So that's going to be very interesting. His popularity is really diminishing. So he's got his hands full trying to sort of turn everyone around. Meanwhile, if you're looking at the major news, it's like the Iranians, they don't really care what he's doing. They're just telling him, if you do anything, we're going to like crunch your assets in the Gulf. So anyway, no change from, I hate looking into that. You've got to keep an eye on it, but it really bugs me because it's sort of so disruptive to what we're trying to do in the markets, which is make some cash, right? On nice, easy trading opportunities. So just coming to the week, right? How do we play this week? Now, first of all, I mentioned it yesterday, it's a US holiday, right? So if Monday's a US holiday, everything doesn't really start until Tuesday, North America, which is really Wednesday in Asia, right? It sort of pushes everything back a day. And once they get in on Tuesday, they'll sort of fill things out. So don't think everything's going to take off really quickly. It's not. It's going to be a slow start to the week. It's obviously, now there's one country where trade balance numbers do actually make a difference, is actually China, because their trade balance numbers are so ridiculous. If there's significant change, that can really sort of disrupt the momentum of definitely the Aussie and Kiwi. And we've got the Chinese CPI numbers coming out on Wednesday. Now, just on that, let me just tell you how we used to deal with this in the dealing room, why we used to think of it. We always suspected or thought the Chinese numbers were made up by the government, right? So anyways, what I'm trying to say is take them with a grain of salt. We'll see what happens. It's not like anyone's playing by the rules these days. Anyway, so you come into Thursday, right? The ECB, get the press conference afterwards. Now they are definitely raising by 0.25%. That's a given. It's more about what they're going to do afterwards. Now, this is once again, where you got to sort of really know what you're looking at when you look at the media, because they're, I mean, Deutsche Bank expects ECB to extend rate hikes, right? At least it's a bank saying it, not some dodgy journo. But we'll have to wait and see. That's all the speculation, because there's no speculation in the actual rate hike itself. The press conference is the speculation. Now, I don't think they want to disrupt things too much, right? The central banks never really do, unless it's urgent, and then they will say something crazy. We're not at that stage yet. Now, Thursday, North America, PPI numbers, right? Well, they are an inflation number. So it is worth having a keep an eye on those numbers. They are looking for higher numbers there, right? So just see how that plays out, because really the main numbers for me, and like for every other sort of professional trader, is the U.S. CPI numbers on Friday, right? I think this U.S. holiday, with whatever's going on with the calendar, it disrupts the general days. Like this is usually a Tuesday, Wednesday event, probably Wednesday. It's pushed back a day. This is the real number that will tell us a lot more about what's going on, right, in the U.S., and what potentially the Fed may do. And if you come into the interest rate tracker, right, the Fed are at 62.5% at the moment, right? ECB, this is why we're not actually getting excited about that at all. It's 100% factored in. Really, it's the press conference, which is the real kicker here. So that's where we are with that. The next central bank to roll is actually the Fed next week. So we'll see what happens there. And that's why the U.S. CPI numbers are so important, right? Well, it's one of those things. If we get stronger inflation numbers in the U.S., this number's gonna go up and the dollar's gonna rally. Now, this is where you piece it together, because I'm looking at the dollar, it's starting to look like it wants to roll over, right? Now, the dollar Swiss hasn't gone yet, and this is just the hourly charts, but you can sort of see everything is starting to gear up towards a weaker dollar. And that's probably emanating from the weaker outlook here on the yen, which looks a bit more realistic this time around. Instead of them coming out and saying, we've just intervened, we've intervened, that doesn't scare anyone, right? Interest rate changes do. And that's what, it looks like they're forcing, you know, Japan. I mean, there's so much cash going around, and I'm talking about bribery money. Just keep raising rates and we'll give you loads of money. That's what I'm thinking is happening over there. Because nothing is really shifting in Japan. Inflation's been benign for 30-something years. So anyway, it's sort of like dumbfounding. But if we do get the beast moving, this is the key part to it, if we do get dollar yen moving, the markets, especially in Asia, will light up, because when this thing goes, it is the best trending instrument out of all of them. Because when it goes, it goes for like a year, okay? So that's what you've sort of got to be looking at. And you look at this picture here, I see a lot of risk in trying to get in, but at some stage, we will have an event where we can get in. US CPI numbers, maybe. Weaker numbers would fit that picture for sure. Okay, so that's where I'm at for the week is really, okay, it's like sort of a bit of a balancing act. I'm not going to get too involved at the start of the week, right? The, this is the old calendar, just when you want it to sort of upload. The, as I say, I don't want to get too involved too early in the week. And what I mean by that is, I want to keep my paint dry. I don't want to lose any cash in the lead up to where things really start to make sense, right? This is actually with all the low and high impacted numbers. I'll be trying to pick a few bits and pieces out of the market. The one thing that really gets me that sort of profile is if I look at the live signals page, so you can see the Nikkei kicking into gear there. The poor trading conditions is one thing, but I keep saying it, the long-term trend, we need the long-term trend to be coming into play. And this is, it's happened very quickly, right? The yen, short-term and long-term is going down. Yeah, of course it's oversold at the moment, but you know what? We will get a chance to get into that sucker at some point. Now, if you look through the rest of the, let me just type into the major currency pairs, okay? With those, so you've got the Euro, right? Mixed signals at the moment, but it is trending down long-term. And that isn't like where things look like they're going. So it's sort of like, okay, we don't really have too much. Dollar yen is worth keeping an eye on. I mean, trying to build a trade plan around that is problematic. And that's what I'll be sort of covering on Thursday is trying to build or trying to get you set up so you can stagger an entry trade plan. That's what you need to do with dollar yen, right? Small entries, position size to start with, and try and build an entry position over like 100, 150 points. But I'll cover that on Thursday. Outside of that, it's really, the week sort of sucks a little bit because of where those US CPI numbers are, which is Friday, right? Usually if it comes out Tuesday, Wednesday, we have three days of trading that bias, that fresh momentum and direction, right? At this stage, we are looking at half a day and then basically, but it's gonna give us direction for the next potential week or two weeks. That's what you gotta be thinking of. Now, there are some UK manufacturing production numbers. They're actually pretty solid numbers, too, to keep an eye on. So really, it's a short week. The back end of the week is where the action is, right? Really, realistically, I should say, Thursday, start with the ECB. Let's hear what they've got to say and that's gonna set us up for the US CPI numbers. Now, it's a bit of a no-brainer with the Euro Central Bank, right? We should have clear direction on the Euro. If they come out with some sort of bias of more hikes or that's it, we'll know because you put Euro against the dollar and we should start to see a bit of a picture there for where Euro's going. And if it goes up, it's gonna take sterling with it, Aussie and Kiwi. If it goes back down, well, we're back in the range and that sort of sucks, right? I say that aggressively because it's like, you know what, we get these moves and then a little move up and then it's straight back in the middle of the range. That really neutralizes the overall big picture trends and that's what we wanna get out of. We wanna see this thing either breaking back above 119.50 and really soaring or going back down below 113. This stuff here in between is, it's like pulling teeth and it's really annoying, okay? All right, so that's, I'm trying to do this as quick as I can because you know what? The strategy session for the week, I could have summed it up in like 30 seconds. Guys, CPI numbers Friday, have a look at that. It's a few bits and pieces in between and that's it, right? Use the signals, as I was just saying, to really work out where, if you've got good trading conditions and keep an eye on this long-term trend, right? Dollar-yen is in play, but it's a tough monkey to trade, right? That's my thinking as it is. All right, any questions, guys? Hopefully that wasn't too. No. No? No, got none. Oh, I got nothing, all right. Anyway, thanks for joining us. I'll get this up on the site and we'll go from there. All righty? All right. Quiet week, expect a quiet week until Thursday, all right? All right. Cheerio.