Are Mario Draghi's days numbered?

The credibility of Mario Draghi and the European Centran Bank is now in tatters, says John C Burford. Just looks at the markets.

Yesterday's much-anticipated announcement from the European Central Bank (ECB) was the spark that fired up the EUR/USD rocket. It gained a massive three cents plus on the day. And that sharp rally immediately following the news was surely not a total surprise to my readers.

But it certainly was a surprise to most observers who had convinced themselves that Draghi had just about given them a cast-iron guarantee that the 'stimulus' he would unleash would be a game-changer. In the event, it was more a damp squib than a big bazooka.

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(Contracts of EUR 125,000)Row 0 - Cell 1 Row 0 - Cell 2 Row 0 - Cell 3 Open interest: 557,979
Commitments
78,344244,66366,411363,374153,317508,129464,39149,85093,588
Changes from 11/17/15 (Change in open interest: 8,750)
-2,7696,97052011,9601,3479,7118,837-962-87
Percent of open in terest for each category of traders
14.043.811.965.127.591.183.28.916.8
Number of traders in each category (Total traders: 271)
62125735865164219Row 8 - Cell 7 Row 8 - Cell 8

John is is a British-born lapsed PhD physicist, who previously worked for Nasa on the Mars exploration team. He is a former commodity trading advisor with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and worked in a boutique futures house in California in the 1980s.

 

He was a partner in one of the first futures newsletter advisory services, based in Washington DC, specialising in pork bellies and currencies. John is primarily a chart-reading trader, having cut his trading teeth in the days before PCs.

 

As well as his work in the financial world, he has launched, run and sold several 'real' businesses producing 'real' products.