Weekly Macro Update
Macro Update – 04/14/2025
This lesson delivers our weekly macro update for April 14, 2025, where we review one of the most volatile weeks in recent trading history and set up what to watch in the week ahead. You’ll learn how to navigate extreme market conditions, interpret key volatility indicators, and understand the interconnections between bonds, equities, and currencies during periods of uncertainty.
We recap the previous week’s extraordinary price action in ES futures, including 50-point swings within 15-30 minutes on Monday, an inside day reversal on Tuesday, and Wednesday’s nearly 10% gain following the 90-day tariff delay announcement—the third biggest intraday gain since the 2008 financial crisis. The week also featured significant selling pressure originating from Asia sessions, with long-term bond yields rising in correlation with equity market volatility. The VIX reached levels around 37 on Friday before dropping to 33 by Monday’s open, indicating sustained but slightly easing volatility.
You’ll see how bond market volatility, measured by the MOVE index climbing into the 130s, created trading opportunities even in traditionally stable assets like ZB futures, with intraday moves of 50 ticks. We explain the critical correlation observed last week: when bond yields rose during Asian trading hours, selling pressure consistently appeared in ES futures. The lesson emphasizes that this environment differs from previous volatility shocks like last August’s carry trade incident, as the current situation involves multiple factors including tariff uncertainty and bond market stress.
For the week ahead, we identify earnings season kickoff with Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Citigroup, United Health, and Netflix as key events to monitor. Important scheduled events include a Jerome Powell speech at the Economic Club of Chicago on Wednesday and an unusual OPEX schedule with expiration on April 17 instead of the typical 18th due to an exchange holiday. We analyze gamma exposure levels showing interest around the 40 strike in VIX, and examine the VIX smile curve demonstrating elevated implied volatility below 40, indicating continued demand for downside protection.
The lesson covers ongoing dollar weakness with the dollar index trading below 100 for the first time in years, increased hedging demand visible in options markets, and how tariff announcements continue driving volatility across asset classes. Pre-market data shows major tech stocks like Apple up 6%, AMD 4%, and Nvidia 3% following new tariff developments, creating potential opportunities and risks depending on your positioning.
Video Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and session overview
01:27 – Recap of last week’s volatile price action
04:18 – Wednesday’s 10% gain and bond market correlation
07:27 – Week ahead economic calendar and earnings
10:38 – Dollar weakness and OPEX schedule
12:18 – VIX analysis and gamma exposure levels
14:12 – Volatility smile curve and options demand
Key Takeaways
• Last week featured 50-point ES swings in 15-30 minutes and Wednesday’s nearly 10% gain, the third largest since 2008 [00:00:00.07] - Speaker 1 [00:00:44.29] - Speaker 2 [00:01:27.13] - Speaker 1 [00:02:55.18] - Speaker 1 [00:04:18.22] - Speaker 1 [00:05:52.17] - Speaker 1 [00:07:27.00] - Speaker 1 [00:09:04.10] - Speaker 1 [00:10:38.29] - Speaker 1 [00:12:18.02] - Speaker 1 [00:14:12.18] - Speaker 1 [00:15:59.21] - Speaker 1 [00:17:25.10] - Speaker 1 [00:19:09.29] - Speaker 1 [00:20:42.10] - Speaker 1 [00:22:19.19] - Speaker 1 [00:23:53.21] - Speaker 1 [00:25:47.05] - Speaker 1 [00:27:37.16] - Speaker 1 [00:29:19.29] - Speaker 1 [00:31:05.23] - Speaker 2 [00:31:07.16] - Speaker 1 [00:32:48.16] - Speaker 1 [00:33:10.08] - Speaker 2 [00:34:24.02] - Speaker 2 [00:34:53.09] - Speaker 1 [00:35:11.18] - Speaker 2 [00:35:14.09] - Speaker 1 [00:35:16.05] - Speaker 2 [00:35:23.24] - Speaker 1
• Rising bond yields during Asian sessions consistently correlated with ES selling pressure throughout the week
• VIX at 33 with elevated implied volatility below 40 strikes indicates continued demand for downside protection
• Video Transcription
Sa.
Happy Monday everyone. Welcome to our weekly macro update. Today we're very excited because we're going to start the week with about three sessions. We're going to start now with Tim on the macro side. Then we have a session in a couple of hours with Dan. We're gonna go over some backtesting results from last week. Last week was obviously probably one of the craziest week we are gonna witness in our lifetime. Or. Or maybe we're gonna see more but let's see. And we're gonna go over some data driven results and then for our premium members at 2pm we're gonna have some live trading. So if you are a premium member stay tuned. We're going to do some live in today as well. But for now welcome Tim. Nice to see you.
Yes, good morning ladies and gentlemen. Nice to see you. And yeah if you are done for you let's jump into it. Let's go. Yeah. Where do we start? As always with a little recap of the last week. You are seeing a ES chart here on the presentation. And yeah crazy week. If you survived it. If you make money. Congratulations from my side. Nothing that easy to be done if you are day trader. Those yeah really big. Yeah. Trending not trending moves intraday as we had on Monday. I mean it looks yeah kind of small in the chart but if you compare it to the scale on the right side those are easily like 50 points. So 200 tick swings up and down in like 15 minutes half an hour. Right. That's can be terrible for you if you're not used to it and I think the majority isn't because market like this really never happened since the last five years. If you participated in the markets in or during the COVID Yep Crisis name it like that. It's not new to you but for me started in 2019 with trading was still a rough week.
Not that many hours of sleep on the day because I also waited for the futures open every day in the PM and yeah what's kinda interesting to keep track of the recent developments. So yeah last week get down on Monday all this type of stuff Asia selling. I'm pretty sure you guys watch the news and you are already heard a lot of stuff about it. Tuesday one of the biggest intraday reversals in inside day right where the index is trading basically spoken in value from the last day was like 5 or 6% down. I took this trades here on Tuesday. It was one of my only trades in ES this week because the other stuff was a little bit too Sinister. And yeah but the highlight was on Wednesday with the announcement from Donald Trump or first in the morning it's a good time to buy right. Which is kind of nuts. But later in the day we had the 90 day delay in tariffs which yeah gave us nearly a 10 gain in ES futures over 10 in NASA futures was the third biggest intraday gain for US index since the GSC in 2008.
And yeah first day two had CPI but in this environment usually no one cares about those numbers. Right. Kind of a reversal like 5,6% but we ended the week green viewed from the Monday lows with Friday's PPI but also pretty, pretty not a data set that the Wall street is looking at in the moment. It's of course all about volatility if you're watching stuff in the world market. Also long term yields are kind of correlated with ES futures or have been correlated last week so those bond yields are going up especially in the long end. People try to find out what's the driver behind goes from the usual social media yapping on X or whatever source you are using. It goes over to the more professional services like Bloomberg, Reuters, all this stuff. Some say it's China because it's kind of obvious that the selling mostly happens in the China slash Asia Japan session. But from my side always hard to figure out who does this right. You need a little bit more of insight in a chart to doing this. The only fact that matters in my opinion is a few weeks ago we have actually spoken about those developments that have been taken place this week and the week.
Yeah before this week that if bond yields are going up again and we have this kind of whipsaw environment in stocks it's a bad sign actually. Right. So I didn't expect it happened that fast. But yeah, yeah we have spoke about it like two weeks something like that I guess. And yeah in the bond market as well. I had some trades last week on Friday in set B and it's kind of nuts. Intraday trades in set B futures and you can make like 50 ticks. That's huge. The actual bond volatility measured in the move index pretty, pretty high. Of course there's a lot of selling move index nearly in the 130s pretty, pretty high for this asset class. And yeah as you can see a chart here with in red DE bond yields those threat days where they are going up hours and hours there was always some kind of selling pressure in the S. So yeah it's a correlation still wash from my side today we are Seeing some kind of relief or for the ones the long end looks a little bit more better than the short end but they are not playing the movement that the equity futures are playing in the morning because it was a kind of.
Yeah. News driven from the the weekend. The usual tariff chaos kept us busy also on Saturday on Sunday. Yeah because we can't have nice things these days but we got some relief for terrorists out of China. I'm pretty sure you guys have seen the news everywhere so I won't go into that much detail here right now because this stuff is yeah it's like soft sentiment data. It can change so much and yeah just focus of the data and focus where the trade may be in this information. So week ahead as always the economic data is yeah kind of boring. There's nothing big mentioned worth weekly unemployment as always. Sure we can watch this but it's earnings season kickoff today in the morning we had Goldman Sachs stated pretty well from what I have seen Tuesday later Johnson Johnson both are city. Then on Wednesday Jerome Powell has a little speech Economic club of Chicago. Sometimes people are watching a little bit of yeah. Side quest commentary from J. Power in those events if I remember like two or three years ago sometimes we had this where he yeah dropped a little hint about the recent developments in the markets.
But yeah just at a side note or if you are a day trader and have trades on Wednesday open in this environment where or liquidity is pretty sluggish and just to have a wicks in the 30s or maybe put your trade off or yeah just watch it a little bit how the markets are moving earnings on Thursday United Health, Netflix, that stuff I watch. I usually watch the stocks they are yeah. Most important for the index they are in right like into Jones United Health. Yeah quick check what's going on over there but I'm not a big stock guy. I'm not doing earning trades or something like that but yeah sometimes there's some good information in this as well. The next one, the next topic for this week is the ongoing dollar weakness. We talk later about it a little bit but just for this this slide here also as a reminder for me that I'm not forgetting this topic to mention it next few slides. Hedging demand is going up in the dollar that stayed out of the options market as of now. I'm not sure what index Bloomberg is tracking here but it should be the dollar index which is trading below 100 this week.
Usually of course a big psy up number. Right. Because it's 100 and we have not seen the dollar index since they have few years down this that much. Most of the drop down to 100 was initiated on the Tariff Liberation Day where Donald Trump put out his tariff news in front of the White House. And yeah other thing to mention on Friday we usually yeah have OPEX 18th of April but it's the exchange holiday so it's on first 80 17. So we have on Wednesday the usual expiration and on first 8017 OpEx expiration. Right. And what's always important in a market like this? Whatever comes out of your news file or the stuff you are watching. Yeah. With tariffs, announcements from Donald Trump also our well beloved friend Mr. Lutnick. So yeah there can always be some kind of surprise volatility one of the main drivers in this market. Of course just think about it. If stuff is uncertain and no one really knows what happens next and people are start selling whatever the reason is or whatever the reason was of course volatility goes up. Right. So most important asset class you should watch over the week to gain a better view into this.
And a few charts over here the left one on the upper pane just shows some gamma exposure on different levels. We can still see 40 as some sort of interest. As of now Vix is trading 33. 3308. Yeah those are lows for Wednesday. I always watch Vix not with technical analysis. Right. It doesn't make sense. So if I say we are trading at lows from Wednesday it's some sort of time stamp what happens in the market over there. And this was actually the low from Wednesday and if we remember Wednesday was also the day where we had those big big pump because of the news that have come into the market from Donald Trump. Right. So it's some sort of timestamp or if we are going below 33 in Vix doing the open today. Yeah. Can tells you a little bit more of the direction we may be heading into the yeah current session right now 1 month skew for VIX of course pretty call bias. It makes sense right. People still not dropping their volatility or downside hedges in the market. And yeah now you have new developments, new stuff for the market like they just 20% tariff stuff for all the tech things that US is importing and didn't have checked some stocks.
But if you are looking pre market yeah. Apple is up 6% AMD 4 Nvidia 3% Tesla 1.8 meta. Right. So of course that's something new. Right. But if you have still short trades open on this stuff also short Trades open in the index. It causes pain for you and yeah maybe a little bit of world crushes incoming but if we all remember that on Friday DVX close was 37 and it's 33 right now it's just four points, not that much. So yeah, don't be that comfortable in this market. Right. You can easily see a big higher today. It's also due to the reason if we look at the smile curve on the right side, the green line is actually the Friday and it shows you the implied volatility per strike below 40. It's still pretty high. Doesn't like volatility. And long story short, there is still demand and supply for those options. Right. So volatility should be staying kind of active. If we compare those shocks to other shocks like last year in August where yeah the infamous carry trade was a little bit in trouble due to the bank of Japan. We have seen those massive, massive bulk crushing trades.
It should not happen in this environment. Right. Also a little bit more damage has been done before the tariff stuff and all the bond selling and the yields are going up and the stock market is down. And long story short here, it's not like you have a big only they down like yeah 20 handles. Right. I'm not in the camp that this will happen that much and that any soon of course if the uncertainty and the markets will vanish, this stuff will go faster. But also keep in mind our earnings session is ahead and usually people want to say that the companies are still beating expectations later like two or three weeks. Especially for the big tech ones. Right. It's kind of important. So there should be some decent opportunities in volatility from my side. Speaking of volatility, most of the time you're speaking about equity, volatility sometimes also commodities. But the FX market can also give you here some opportunities these days. Why is it like that? Because all the stuff is going on with the trade war of course affects FX pockets as well. Right. Keep in mind a currency of country is always a little bit of the mirror how the country is doing.
Some countries have a deficit in exports or imports. This is yeah pretty important for the underlying country for the currency that you are watching. Right. And if we are looking and I have to open my chart as well because it's too. So. So this chart, the right one shows you the major FX pairs with the future. So the 6s 6e 6j yada yada what Also on the low performers like yeah emerging market FX like the Brazilian real anti South African rent. Our recent outperformer since the beginning of April and it's a good time step actually because the major announcement was in this week from Donald Trump during the White House conference. It was on the 2nd of April so I choose yeah this time frame from the beginning of April and the big out performer was the 6s which is the Swiss Frank. Usually it's. Yeah first of all the currency from Switzerland. Switzerland isn't a country producing anything yet meaningful or export commodities as well. It's not like that. Maybe chocolate they are doing pretty good in chocolate but that's not the case here, not the point. Usually it's get bit to this extent that we have seen since the month when equity markets are not doing this well and you have the so called.
Yeah flat to quality and you are seeing risk on so people are hiding in more stable currencies. So dispose for the Swiss franc but also goes for the Japanese yen. It's a little bit weaker on the Japanese yen because we have also new stuff since months or like what year in Japan that is kind of important. Keep in mind the Japanese central bankers are also talking about rate hikes. They also did rate hikes, right. It's a little bit more dodgy but this was frank the 6s is is or has spoken or a pretty clear risk off sign in this last week. So what's the trade here? Always compare your weakest against the strongest pair. If you are outside of US and if you can trade those pairs like Canadian dollar, Aussie dollar right Then you can do it more granularity than we can do or that I can do because all I always trade the futures and they are always paired against the dollar but it's actually not that bad because we have pretty significant dollar weakness. Right. We have spoken about this a little bit earlier dollar index sub 100 and what I then always do I look a little bit on the other side.
Right. So if I look at this chart here and from the G7 currencies the Australian dollar is the weakest right. Do we see some relief here? It may favors along in the 6A future also when equities are going a little bit more risk on over the week it should be a benefit this trade as well. On the other hand there's the six chain the Japanese yen. Last week we have some news from Japan that a rate hike will maybe not happened because the tariffs are actually could have that much impact for Japan that they can't rate high grades sorry high grades for the country over there. So that's a little bit of Problem I usually trade then 6J if we have that much of a dollar weakness. But it's also cool for a currency trade that you have on if central bank is more hawkish. Right. So next one is 10D6A. I just looked a little bit into it with all the gamma for the next expirations which is till it to the upside. The scale on the right chart is a little bit cropped down. Does not show you all the prices between 63 and 64.
But that's the reason why I added the hourly chart of the 6A over here. And what's pretty cool is actually if you are trading forex or fx, keep it like that. You should always watch rate differentials. Right. So the little line over there just compares the rates of the two year Aussie government bond versus the US two year government bond. Right. And if those differentials are going into a direction of. Also the currency that you are trading should be going the same direction but with this strong yields because of the bot sellic that we are seeing in the US it can give a little bit. Yeah. Misleading signals. D6A in the morning was already up like 0.6% already tagged one day max which is the first standard deviation of the day. Usually I would say okay, let's fade it up there but with the elevated volatility in FX markets, a one standard deviation of the day is more of a thing that should happen. Right. Because the volatility is so high and if your trade is on sites and goes into in the right direction, those levels. Yeah. Tend to get traded again and you might see higher prices actually.
Okay. So keep in mind if volatility is normal, relatively spoken normal to the realized volatility, one day standard deviation is always okay to trade but you need more volatility if you want to trade outside of those levels. So and for today in 6A just watching levels like 630 which is a core resistance out of options data. I always set the load standard chart, just watching price action a little bit and yeah. Plan to make entries. If this not happens, then I usually go lower or. Yeah. But my takeaway is always I just work with the levels over here in the chart. There are actually a little bit too much levels. I just trend to keep in mind two or three and then just wait patiently of this trade. So on the downside there's also option matrix for all the options and all the expirations for 6A and into the 15. 15, 16. 15. Yeah. Next two days trading in positive gamma which also lead to Positive delta should support our thesis here a little bit. Volatility should also come down a little bit and yeah that's the first thing in FX I watch for this week but in my view we also need equity risk on a little bit because usually the clearest risk on risk of FX pair is the Aussie dollar versus the yen.
And make the transitions into futures trading here the 6J has to perform worse than the 6A. We don't see this since like three or four hours but it can maybe materialize over the week. Over to oil also pretty interesting because the correlation was kind of high with the stock market. If you pull out a chart ES or comparative the actual CI contract they kind of moved in lockstep. Oil did also the Giga pump on the wetness day right. Which hit the tape like 1pm Oil was up 57 to the close 62. Right. That's $5 in oil that's pretty much if there's not some sort of COVID crisis or wars breaking out. $5 is yeah pretty pretty strong in this morning the actual CL 6239. Do I have a chart over here? Yes I have. So we do this afterwards going over some other stuff. Yeah. Last week we also had OPEC news no further production cuts. What's a little bit obviously that if we are seeing reliefs in tariff news or stuff related to that oil should perform a little bit better. As of now oil is still in backportation. People that are not new to this format here they already know this means higher volatility in the oil contract that you are trading.
So oil is way way more reactive to this news as well. So I always keep it in mind for the trend that may emerge. And yeah volatility in general is pretty high. Ovx is around 50. That's also they have pretty rarely to be honest. And what's a little bit more important prompt spreads on the right side there are three charts. The upper chart is obviously the CL and yeah below the teal line is the so called prompt spread which compares the actual with the next in delivery contract. And if you compare the red lines they actually trading above the levels we have seen in the front contract before the tariff announcement. Yeah one week ago and GCLK contract was about $72 back then this stuff also in combination with the gamma charts over here makes me lean a little bit more bullish to oil. What I'm not doing in oil if we have already a good pump pre market like today 1.3% up trading 62.50. I would not buy those highs. Always wait for yeah some little bit of retracement like 6150. But we will do it in the next chart. So yeah, what we have else here.
Yeah, the gamma chart over here. The left one is the one that expires today. There should be stuff in the money. 6,250. That's the level that we're actually trading right now. Also 6325 could be some of a level today that we are seeing where the price might is stalling out. Let's see Hive on Wednesday actually. Yeah it is. And the one day max is 63 81. So give or take 64 on the day. This would be the high from Monday. Yeah, Monday morning. There was also a pretty, pretty big spike on Monday morning. 10am 64 for CL. So this would be my upside target if I get something below as an entry. And I already made some drawings over here just to show you guys a little bit how I think about this stuff. Those orange line here, the Little Arrow is 6150. That's the closing from Friday. Settlement is also the POC from first day. So you're seeing I combined a little bit of stuff here. Right. Not just the option levels and plane. Also a little bit technical stuff like the volume profiles usually gives me a better. Yeah inside if yeah the level that I want to trade is still valid for upside or downside.
Right.
Never ever buy or sell those blindly. And yeah, that's stuff I want to see. 6150 just setting alerts over there. And what would be some kind of present with 60 in oil. This would be a cool target to catch a little bit more upside. But to be honest kinda looks unlikely at least for this week to get it right. I mean good 2.30 down there. If volatility and oil stairs. We maybe see those tests of these accumulation stuff from Thursday and Friday down the 60s again. But yeah, in between. Yeah, no trades for me. Doesn't look that tempting. But yeah, still looking for upside in oil here as well. And yeah, just want to see if the correlation with these stock futures, equity futures, sorry is still intact. And yeah, that was it for oil. Do we have something else Talked about this. We talked about this. I feel I forgot something. No, I haven't. Oh, red card expectations, ladies and gentlemen. Red expectations are up again. We have seen this movement last week as well. It was also kind of correlated with the down movement. Stocks where it got expectations have been going up.
So for futures Always a market I watch and trade and this move is still ongoing. Right. So we are again battling the Fed with the rate cuts that we have seen for 25 and 26 but overall that's it.
Awesome. Let's see. Thank you Tim, this was amazing and thank you for preparing all the slide for us was was great. So guys, if you have any question let us know, post it in the comment from my side. I just want to give you an update. So this week we are gonna be live quite a bit because we want to support you guys and we want to provide as much value and content as we can. So we're going to be live later today with Dan. Don't miss this session. We're going to show you some data driven results from one of our model from last week. Then of course we're going to be back with doc on Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday we're going to be live again with Tim and a special guest to talk about tariff and the impact on US and China. On Thursday we're going to have Ryan. So Ryan is an ex market maker going to talk about volatility. So for those who are interested in that topic please come by, share a question with us and we'll be able to answer those throughout the session. And then of course for today we are going to have our live trading session at 2pm so if you are a premium member you'll be able to access this.
The links are here. This is our share calendar. I will also put this in the comment and share with you guys. And basically yes, we're gonna have a lot of stuff so we want to make sure that we provide as much value for you guys as possible. So for those who want to learn more please let us know, send us an email at info Mentor Q. And then of course Tim, I'm gonna see you back on Wednesday and we're gonna be back live on Discord as well later.
Yeah, just drop the link because I want to ask it where the economic calendar and the earnings calendars from. It's just trading economics. Great guys, leave us up over there, join them. And yes we will see on Wednesday again. That's right, Wednesday pm.
Yeah, absolutely.
Great, great.
Thank you guys. Have a good day and good luck everyone. Happy Monday and it's going to be a very, very a big week this week as well.
All right guys, let's have it and have a good one.