You can ignore company earnings if you only trade currencies. You cannot ignore central banks in any market. Rates set the discount rate for every future cash flow, the cost of leverage, and the relative appeal of every currency.
Why rates dominate everything
- 1Rates set the risk-free return
If government debt pays 5%, every riskier asset must offer more than 5% to justify the risk — so their prices adjust downward until they do.
- 2Rates change the discount rate
Higher rates make distant future profits worth less today. Growth stocks, whose value sits far in the future, fall hardest.
- 3Rates set the cost of leverage
Expensive borrowing means less speculative capital, less buyback activity and less risk-taking across the system.
- 4Rate differentials drive currencies
Capital flows toward higher real yields. Most major currency trends are, at heart, a story about the gap between two countries' rate paths.
What central banks are actually doing
The Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank each target price stability — usually around 2% inflation — with varying degrees of concern for employment. Their lever is the short-term policy rate.
- Inflation too high → raise rates → slow borrowing and demand → cool prices, at the cost of growth and jobs.
- Growth too weak → cut rates → cheaper credit → stimulate activity, at the risk of inflation.
The releases that matter
| Release | What it measures | Typical impact |
|---|---|---|
| Interest rate decision | The policy rate and forward guidance | Very high — the main event |
| CPI (inflation) | Change in consumer prices | Very high — drives rate expectations directly |
| Non-farm payrolls (US) | Monthly US job creation | High — first Friday, moves everything |
| Employment / unemployment | Labour market slack | High |
| GDP | Total economic output | Moderate — backward-looking, often pre-empted |
| PMI surveys | Business activity, forward-looking | Moderate — early read on the cycle |
| Retail sales | Consumer spending | Moderate |
Inflation and employment data outrank almost everything else, because they are the two inputs central banks explicitly respond to. Reading them is really reading the probability of the next rate move.
Real yields — the number most retail traders miss
The real yield is the nominal interest rate minus expected inflation. It is what an investor actually earns in purchasing power, and it matters more than the headline rate.
This is the cleanest explanation of gold. Gold pays no income, so its main competitor is the real yield on government bonds. When real yields are high, holding gold has a significant opportunity cost and it tends to struggle. When real yields fall or turn negative, that cost disappears and gold typically performs well — regardless of what any chart pattern suggests.
Risk-on and risk-off
| Regime | Typically rises | Typically falls |
|---|---|---|
| Risk-on | Equities, high-beta currencies (AUD, NZD), industrial commodities, crypto | Safe havens — JPY, CHF, government bonds, often gold |
| Risk-off | USD, JPY, CHF, government bonds, gold | Equities, commodity currencies, crypto, credit |
These regimes cut across asset classes and explain a great deal of otherwise puzzling correlation. When a single macro fear dominates, correlations converge — the diversification you thought you had can vanish exactly when you need it.
Trading around releases
For most traders, the honest advice is: do not.
- Spreads widen dramatically in the seconds around a release.
- Slippage is severe — your stop may fill far from its level.
- The initial move is often reversed within minutes as the detail is digested.
- Direction is genuinely unpredictable, because it depends on the deviation from expectations plus interpretation of the wording.
The professional habit is to know the calendar precisely and either reduce size before major releases or stand aside entirely, then trade the structure that forms afterwards, once liquidity has normalised.