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The AUDUSD pair has reached an intraday peak of 0.72469 following the RBA decision. The buying action was spurred on by Aussie bullish investors after the RBA decided to increase the interest rate by 50 basis points to 0.85%. This increase was higher than the consensus of 25 basis points.

The RBA is on track to raise the interest rate a few more times before the end of the year. The general consensus by experts and traders is that the interest rate will reach 2.70% by year’s end. Yesterday's interest rate hike is already ahead of consensus of 0.55%, this could mean that the increase is happening faster than expected.

However, the price did not last long at the peak. It was brought back to the previous price points due to a few factors. The AUDUSD reversed its big gains within the hour could be due to investors becoming cautious ahead of the US inflation scares and wanting to transfer their funds back into USD.

Another reason could be coming from the Australian payroll data for the month of April. The Australian labour department has reported an addition of 4,000 jobs in April, which is lower than the forecast of 30,000. These figures would usually trigger recession fears within the Australian economy.

As the RBA looks to impose a policy tightening approach, companies will be forced to be critical on their investment opportunities. This can lead to a further slippage for employment changes. Meanwhile, the US dollar index (DXY) has extended its gains and has overstepped its previous two week’s high at 102.73.

Uncertainty over the release of Friday’s US Consumer Price Index (CPI) is supporting the DXY. A preliminary estimate for the annual US inflation is 8.2% against the prior print of 8.3%. A minor slippage in the US inflation is not going to exhaust the momentum of the DXY bulls but will bolster the odds of a consecutive jumbo rate hike by the Federal Reserve (Fed) next week.

If you are keeping an eye on the AUDUSD and would like to take the opportunity to trade this pair and not yet have a trading account, you can register for a GO Markets CFD account. Source: GO Markets, ASX, RBA, AFR, Fxstreet

As depicted in the AUD/USD hourly chart above, the pair has recently reached a monthly low of 0.69117 as it enters today’s European session. As it continues to decrease in value, it generates a sloping resistance line at 0.6970, this is the trendline from Friday’s prices. Although the trend might appear bearish at the moment, the MACD indicates a bullish trend and the 14 period RSI shows that it is slowly recovering from the recent oversold periods.

This shows that the pair still has some room left to rebound from this level. This in conjunction with the 0.70 psychological level and the 50-HMA level being near the 0.7015 price mark, has encouraged buyers to enter the market to potentially capitalise on the opportunity. To contrast the above information, the one week long resistance line at 0.7050 will be a good price point to watch as there are potential bullish investors waiting to strike at this level.

However, the current downward trend has found its new support line at around the 0.69 price mark. This is quite close to the yearly low of 0.6830, which was set just last month. All in all, we now have two price points to observe as these levels will be reached over the upcoming period and once it has been reached, it will be a new trend.

If you would like to take this opportunity to invest in the movement of the AUD/USD forex pair and you do not yet have a trading account, you can create a CFD trading account with GO Markets.

Continuing from my previous article on Mike Cannon-Brookes and the take over of AGL, there has been some very important breaking news from the Australian giant and the country’s biggest polluter, AGL Energy. To give you some background information; Mike Cannon-Brookes (MCB) had launched a takeover of the company as he felt he could change the company’s strategy to become more emission friendly and to stop the company from a demerger that is likely to cause more harm to the environment and its employees. If you like to have a deep dive, please read my previous article here.

The company's surprising U-turn comes after Atlassian co-founder Mr Cannon-Brookes has been the figurehead of the push to direct AGL away from producing coal-fired power, a practice the energy firm was keen to keep doing by splitting its heavy-polluting assets out into a new company. In a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange on Monday morning, AGL said it was withdrawing the plan, despite the board believing the demerger was the “best way forward”. It was clear that the proposal would not secure the necessary 75% of shareholders at a scheduled 15 th June vote to win approval, which has now been cancelled and will be revisited later in the year.

The utility aims to report to shareholders in September and will provide an update on progress with its earnings results, it said. In the wake of the decision, AGL said its chairman, Peter Botten, would resign from the company’s board upon the appointment of an independent replacement. Graeme Hunt will also exit as Chief Executive and Managing Director once a replacement has been appointed.

Two other board members, Jacqueline Hey and Diane Smith-Gander, will depart, with Hey leaving on Monday and Smith-Gander to resign in August. This shows the company feels that for them to move ahead with a new vision, they must first rid themselves of the influence that has driven them to this point thus far and implement, new people in management that are happy and driven to help the company to a good level of decarbonisation. As it is, AGL supplies about a third of Victoria’s power, and its gas and coal power stations are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the country, accounting for about 8 per cent of Australia’s carbon footprint.

Below you can see the effect of the firm in Australia and an insight into why this is so important to MCB. The move has been praised by various groups, starting with MCB Grok Ventures who said, “the sensible decision by AGL to abandon its value destructive demerger plan and renew its board”. Mike Cannon-Brookes followed by Tweeting below: Environmental groups such as Greenpeace Australia cheered Monday’s news and said the failure of AGL’s demerger represented the failure of its old leadership team. “AGL’s humiliating demerger backflip has to go down as one of the most bungled and misguided attempts at a corporate restructure in Australian history,” Greenpeace senior campaigner Glenn Walker said.

The company’s share price fell at the release of the news to as low as $8.42 per share but it has rebounded since, to end higher than the end of last month’s figure at $8.72, showing that there is still faith in the company’s new direction from investors. Source: Australia's Clean Energy Regulator. Chart shows latest data, from 28 th Februry 2022, Bloomberg, news.com.au, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian

November 2021, cryptos are regularly making all-time highs amid a mania like euphoria that increased institutional uptake and a newly launched ETF that crypto traders believed would drive prices even higher towards some of the uber bulls loftier 2021 targets. Two months is a long time in the crypto world and they have lived up to their volatile reputation with the two largest tokens (BTC and ETH) having lost almost half of their value since then. The broader crypto sector has also suffered with more than $1 trillion in losses amid an accelerating panic that the expected Federal reserve tightening cycle will lead to another deep crypto correction.

The question crypto traders are asking is “where to from here?”, is this the start of a deep correction, or an opportunity to Buy the dip? Source: Tradingview While the selling has been relentless since November, it picked up pace after the Federal reserve released their latest minutes in early January. The hawkish tone of the Fed, where it outlined its intention to not only hike rates but to accelerate the tapering of its asset purchase program, saw a broad sell-off of the riskier “bubble” assets, with bitcoin getting hit especially hard amid the rout.

This rapid decline has pushed Bitcoin’s RSI indicator to an extreme oversold level, a level not seen since the pandemic crash of March of 2020. Source: Tradingview Also bringing the price down to within touching distance of the all important, major support level of around 30k USD per token, a support that held previous sell offs in 2021. Source: GO MT4 While these technical may give confidence to the bulls that a bounce is due, there is one interesting fact that has become apparent in the last 12 months.

Cryptos have increasingly transformed from relatively uncorrelated assets providing diversification during market turbulence, into what is effectively a high beta stock. The increasing BTC correlation with high growth tech stocks means that not only do traders need to take Bitcoin fundamentals and technicals into account, but also the fundamentals/technicals of the high growth tech sector as well, the chart below shows this BTC correlation with the FAANG basket (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) Source: Tradingview One of the main reasons for this correlation is the increase in institutional adoption of cryptos, the same institutions that are now facing margin calls on their tech holdings, are also dumping cryptos to provide much needed liquidity. Antoni Trenchev,, co-founder of Nexo, cites Bitcoin’s correlation to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which right now is near the highest in a decade. “Bitcoin is being battered by a wave of risk-off sentiment.

For further cues, keep an eye on traditional markets,” he said. “Fear and unease among investors is palpable.” The evidence is growing that Bitcoin and altcoins should be classed as risk assets rather than safe havens. Along with fears of central bank tightening and an increasing liquidation of correlated risk assets, crypto also has had to deal with a relentlessly pessimistic news cycle. Recently regulators from Spain, the U.K., Russia and Singapore all announced regulations and interventions that could undermine crypto uptake and growth in those regions.

Out of the US as well, cryptos are under scrutiny with federal agencies tasked with assessing the risks and opportunities that cryptos pose in a report due as early as February. It's not all doom and gloom with cryptos though, crypto bulls and many analysts point out that on all previous occasions of crypto carnage, they eventually rebounded to new all time highs. “At some point, sellers will become exhausted and the market could see some capitulation soon”, said Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co. “When that happens, the institutions will come back in in a meaningful way,” he said. “ Once the asset class becomes more washed-out, they’ll have a lot more confidence to come back in and buy them. They know that cryptos are not going away, so they’ll have to move back into them before long.” Ironically, the real support could come from the Federal reserve as they realise that hawkish tone they have set may be to much for an economy that is slowing and could pivot to the dovish side in this week's FOMC meeting, a pivot which would be expected to send risk assets sharply higher, cryptos with it. “If we see a bigger selloff in equities, expect the Fed to verbally intervene to calm nerves and that’s when Bitcoin and other cryptos will bounce.” Said Nexo's Trenchev.

This effect could be seen in Mondays (24/01) huge turn around in equities and Bitcoin, bitcoin soared $3000 from its low to finish positive for the session, this was on the back of rate hike expectations dropping dramatically during the day as the market started to price in a backed into a corner Fed striking a more dovish tone than previously expected in Thursdays FOMC meeting as the below chart shows. Source: Tradingview Thursday's Fed meeting will be pivotal for the near term direction of Bitcoin and Cryptos in general, and any serious crypto trader should be tuning in. 2022 will be an exciting year for cryptos, with strong forces on both sides of the bull / bear argument. The bears have a seemingly endless negative news cycle, with regulatory and market risk weighing heavily on crypto prices.

The bulls have the Fed, a Fed that has shown in the past that the faster markets crash, the faster they panic and move to stabilise the stock market, this will also benefit other risk assets, Bitcoin and other cryptos among them. Whichever side a trader picks, they will have to be nimble and be across the fundamentals and technicals of the broader market, not just the crypto chart they are looking at.

Overview Qantas is Australia’s national carrier and the largest and oldest airline in the country. With the Qantas group comprising of Jetstar, Qantas, QantasLink, its frequent flyer service and a freight service, the airline is the sector leader domestically and a global competitor in the international aviation industry. It is also the third oldest airline still operating and has seen many evolutions over the years to be the giant that it is today.

With recent threats of inflation, recessions, and the pandemic, the airline has been dealt some challenging blows but has managed to work its way through due to some astute leadership by its Board and its CEO, Allan Joyce. Recent Events Short Term Troubles In the short term the airline has struggled to service its flights and ground crew. With Covid 19 and the flu still rampant the company has had to deal with cancelations and a reduction in its workforce as it has faced difficult logistical challenges.

In June 2022, 8.1% of Qantas flights were cancelled according to the Australian, Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. The company also lead the sector for delays in domestic flights. As a premium airline and the national carrier, the effect on the company’s reputation and goodwill, may prove to be costly.

Furthermore, building a long-term reputation of being unreliable may lead to a lowering of its market share as customer look to others. Bid for FIFO competitor hits a roadblock Qantas has a bid in place to acquire the airline that services much of the FIFO industry. Qantas had proposed a bid of $4.75 per share to buy the remaining 80% of the company of which it already own a 20% stake.

If the takeover were able to pass though regulatory approval it would provide the airline with a dominant share of the resources and industry. However, regulators at the ACCC expressed its concerns about the merger with the body outlining that the transaction may substantially weaken competition. Upcoming annual report The company is expected to release its annual report that will give further details on the company’s financial performance for the previous financial year.

The company is expecting to achieve EBITDA of between $450 million to 550 million dollars for the second half of the financial year. The impact of the oil crisis and the delta variant may heavily on the results. In addition, assuming operations can return to some normality in the next year, it is possible that the company will be able to return to profitability next year.

Strategy Long term strategy Qantas is transitioning its domestic, freight and international fleet to Airbus aircraft with longer ranges and an increased capacity over the currently used Boeing 737s. The shift towards Airbus’s called ‘Project Winton’ will improve fuel efficiency, range, and flexibility. The change may elevate Qantas’s ability to improve its bottom line as it allows for higher capacity and further range.

The flexibility of the aircraft enables Qantas’s fleet to remain more dynamic and for the company to meet the needs of both the international and domestic schedules. Specifically, the project will improve units’ costs vs the current fleet set up. Project Sunrise Qantas aims to be the first airline to connect the East Coast of Australia to key cities in Europe and the USA with direct flights.

Specifically, Sydney and Melbourne will be able to reach London, Paris, NYC, and Chicago with just one flight. Beginning in 2025 the program will utilise modified Airbus A350’s to make the journey. This strategy may provide the airline with an important point of difference as the first airline to partake in this route strategy.

The ‘project’ has two potential major advantages. Firstly, it allows for a reduction in costs. By removing layovers, the airline can save on costs associated to the airport and refueling and staff constraints.

Secondly, it allows Qantas to develop more route paths into Europe without the need to rely on code sharing agreements. Forecasting future cash flows and revenues The company is expected to return to profitability next year as it comes out the other side of the pandemic. The model used has predicted a revenue growth rate inline with the previous years of profitability.

Furthermore, considering the project sunrise the projecting is that the company can return to the revenue levels of 2017 – 2019 by the year 2024/2025. Whilst a conservative approach has been used, it is not unreasonable to have revenue get to this level earlier. The forecast revenues below are for the next 5/6 years.

In addition, it is assumed that during the year 2025 the company may see increased costs as it looks to establish its Project Sunrise and it goes through retraining of staff, crew, and maintenance staff. It is possible that in those initial years, Net profit may decrease due to this implementation. Forecast Revenue, in Million $ 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 5,930 8,685 11,000 14,000 17,000 17,792 18,621 Last financial year, the airline was able to improve its Net Profit margin by from 5% to 14% by heavily reducing its capital expenditure.

The pandemic caused the company to reduce its maintenance and purchasing costs. As of the last annual report Qantas was in a strong short- term position with a current ratio of 1.5. with the new report imminent, the ability meets its short-term liabilities, specifically relating to the price of fuel will be an important metric to analyse. With a Debt/Asset ratio of 0.33 the company has a solid balance sheet and is not at an overleveraged position.

After assessing all the opportunities and risks and understanding a price target of $5.50 in the next 12 months is not an unreasonable target, with a return to profitability and the airline hopefully seeing the end of Covid 19 restrictions. Threats Inflation With record high levels of inflation, the cost of inputs across the supply chain for Qantas. With the increases in costs of most inputs the airline will have to be careful in its pricing to ensure it can survive the increase in costs.

With the increase in fuel being an obvious problem, other input costs will also negatively affect the airline. In Australia, inflation is currently hovering around 6%. However, with the airline being multinational, and operating globally it is exposed to the inflation risk of the country it operates in.

Recession With much of the work expecting a recession, the pressure on the travel industry may increase again. Whilst it may be a soft landing for Australia’s economy, exposure to the world markets places Qantas at a level of risk. Demand for travel may be reduced.

Coming out of the pandemic, this is something that Qantas may find tough to deal with. With the company already implementing various strategies to reduce costs, the question remains, how can costs be cut further. Oil Prices As inflation reared its ugly head across the much of the developed world, Qantas has suffered at the hands of peaking oil prices.

With the price of Crude oil peaking at over $130 US a barrel during the height of the Ukraine and Russian war the cost was passed on to the airline industry. In response to the increases in prices the company had to increase the price of air fares proportionally to offset the price. In addition, 90% of the fuel costs for Qantas were hedged through till June meaning they were likely spared the worst of the spike in fuel price.

The figures from the annual report will provide some guidance to how well the company was able to manage the supply shock. Pandemic The pandemic has seen lots of blood appear, especially in the travel industry. Whilst the worst of the pandemic seems to be over, the potential for a resurgence or another major outbreak of a virus is still very much real, and the travel industry has not forgotten.

Ultimately, the Airline remains in a strong financial position. However, it has shown that it is prone to unsystematic risks that have the potential to throw the company into chaos.

Trading FOREX, equities, commodities, and any other asset can be an emotional rollercoaster. With so many different emotions and external factors difficulties impacting a trade, it is crucial that before any trade is executed a trading plan is produced to minimise the impact of the ‘noise’. Generating the Idea The first step to any plan is to generate a trading idea.

Trade ideas, come from one of three sources. A fundamental source, a technical source, or a mix of both. What does this mean exactly?

Well, when generating ideas from a fundamental perspective, a trader can generate idea based on economic events, monetary policy from a Central bank or company relevant information just to name a few. From a technical perspective, a trader may find that an asset is trading near a potential support or resistance level or developing into a breakout pattern. Alternatively, the price may have touched an important moving average which indicates it may be ready to trade.

Traders can also put these ideas together to come up with even more robust trading ideas. Background economic factors and sector analysis Before entering a trade, a good trader should have at the very least a rudimentary understanding of the relevant sector or economic factors that may influence the trade. For example, a trader decides to trade the AUDUSD currency pair.

The trader has seen that the price is approaching a short-term support point and decides to buy the pair expecting the price to bounce of the level. However, the trader is not aware that the Federal Reserve has just increased interest rates which has increased the value of the USD. Consequently, the price goes against the trader.

Technical breakdown Prior to entering any trade, the trader should analyse the price chart and set up relevant support and resistance levels. This allows the trader to have a clear idea of key supply and demand zones for the asset before the emotions of the actual trade become prevalent. To effectively go about this step, support and resistance levels can be analysed on multiple time frames to gain an even greater edge. [caption id="attachment_272243" align="alignnone" width="2560"] Business Team Investment Entrepreneur Trading discussing and analysis graph stock market trading,stock chart concept[/caption] Entry condition Having a trade idea is one aspect however having a clear entry criterion will help reduce the impact of emotion when watching the trade unfold.

Some examples of potential entries conditions can be related to a break and retest of a certain level for an entry or waiting for a specific candlestick pattern. Furthermore, an entry may also be defined by a disproportionate increase in volume supporting a breakout. Exit Conditions Like determining entry conditions having pre planned exit points can improve the management of emotions during also trade whilst also enhancing risk management.

Setting take profit targets/stop loss areas will help ensure that a trade is well structured even before initiating the trade. Having pre-determined exit points can also help determine if a trade is worth entering in the first place as it allows for a determination of the potential risk reward before execution. Risk management No matter whether the trade is a scalp, swing trade or longer-term investment, each should have clear risk management guidelines.

Good risk management involves the use of stop losses and correct sizing of a trade. One method that can be effective is to have a maximum amount of the total account that you are willing to lose per trade. This could be a percentage figure or a fixed amount.

For example, if the total account size is $10,000 and you decide that the maximum loss per trade is 1%. This means that the maximum loss per trade would be $100. The next step is to then set stop loss.

The stop loss in many cases should be independent of the actual maximum risk amount. The stop loss level should be calculated before the sizing. Once the stop loss is set the size of the trade can be determined.

Risk management is perhaps the most crucial element of the trading plan because minimising losses is crucial to any long-term success in trading. Whilst having a clear trading plan will not guarantee success it will help remove many behavioral biases that can impact on a trade.