To The Moon

0658 GMT - AUD/USD faces growing risks of rising toward the December high of 0.6871, based on the weekly chart, says Quek Ser Leang, markets strategist of UOB's Global Economics & Markets Research, in a research report. Last week, the currency pair broke above resistance at the top of the weekly Ichimoku cloud and the trendline connecting the highs of January 2023 and December 2023, the strategist notes. This breach suggests a growing probability of AUD/USD rising toward the December high, and the positive outlook is backed by the notion that the 21-week exponential moving average is on the verge of crossing above the 55-week EMA, the strategist adds. AUD/USD is steady at 0.6742.

Earnings, schmearnings. Is what really matters just liquidity?This incredible chart, from Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok, shows the close relationship between S&P 500 performance and net Federal Reserve quantitative easing since the pandemic began.Here, Fed QE is defined as the Fed's total assets minus the balance of the Treasury General Account as well as the temporary cash added or drained through overnight reverse repos."Since SVB collapsed, the Fed has been adding liquidity, and the S&P 500 is up more than 10%. The high correlation between Fed net QE and the S&P 500 seen in the chart below suggests that Fed liquidity is a crucial driver of the stock market," said Slok.The Fed would dispute that the emergency lending programs put in place are a form of quantitative easing, but nonetheless, its balance sheet has expanded.Slok also warned, however, that what the Fed gives, the Fed can take away.U.S. markets are closed Monday in observance of the Juneteenth hol