A nothingburger finish to a month that tried its best to scare us

Nothingburger

The market is closing out November with all the intensity of a flickering candle in a well-lit room, an almost comical contrast to the drama that tried—unsuccessfully—to hijack the month. It’s only fitting that we coast into the finish on what is universally considered the most forgettable trading day of the year, a day when even the screens seem to yawn. And with CME’s derivatives plumbing briefly going dark? Well, if the market were ever going to have a systems outage, this was the moment. The Street is thinly staffed, the U.S. is still digesting turkey, and most institutional desks are already running on half-power secondary feeds. A rare case where a glitch becomes a feature, ensuring no one can put on a hero trade they’ll regret by Monday.

This soft yawn into the weekend caps a month that spent its early weeks trying to convince traders that the AI supercycle had finally run out of narrative rope. The whisper campaign about an AI bubble felt almost gleeful—every dip framed as the first crack in the silicon cathedral. But as the fear crescendoed, the Federal Reserve stepped in with the softest of tones, the kind that turns terminal rates into mush and revives risk like water on dry earth. Suddenly, cut expectations went vertical. A probability that sat at 39% just a week ago has vaulted to 85%, all because a few policymakers reminded us they still remember where they put the easing toolkit.

The repricing was textbook: the dollar caught the downdraft, logging its worst week in four months, while equities floated higher—not euphoric, not giddy, but relieved. It’s the kind of late-November drift that happens when the macro tide quietly shifts, and there’s no one at the helm willing to contradict it. Markets want to believe in the December cut. They want the Fed’s language to mean what they think it means. But the whole setup has the delicacy of an options vol surface on a holiday afternoon: one hawkish speech next week and we’re right back to questioning everything. Today, though, none of that matters. There is barely enough liquidity to price conviction, let alone express it.

The FX market is ending the week in classic Thanksgiving mode: tight ranges, thin liquidity, and very little appetite to force anything ahead of proper U.S. flow returning on Monday. The dollar is essentially drifting, still carrying a mild overvaluation premium on short-term models, and the bias into next week remains for DXY to ease back toward the 99.00 area as it converges with front-end rate pricing.

The one development with enough weight to tilt the FX market beyond the rate curve is the slow build-up in expectations around Russia–Ukraine negotiations. Putin’s latest remarks—that the Geneva draft could serve as a foundation for a deal—and confirmation that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow next week have not moved oil markets yet, but traders are paying attention. The FX reaction function here is straightforward: any credible sign of progress would weaken the dollar and support the Euro and European high-beta currencies. This is one of the few catalysts with genuine asymmetry; peace risk takes a geopolitical premium out of USD and shifts momentum back toward European risk.

The euro enters this backdrop with a reasonably constructive setup amid dovish echoes from the Eccles building and the prospect of some peace in Eastern Europe.

My stance on EUR/USD into year-end remains positive, but the near-term driver isn’t European inflation or ECB rhetoric. The euro needs either confirmation of a December Fed cut from a non-dove or a geopolitical catalyst. Given the U.S. data vacuum until next week, any improvement in peace-deal expectations becomes the most immediate upside lever for EUR/USD.

For now, it’s a quiet end to the week, but the setup is clear: the dollar stays vulnerable, Europe stands to benefit from any geopolitical progress, and the first real moves will land once U.S. liquidity comes back online.So we sign off November on a whimper, not a crescendo.

All in all, it's nothingburger of a day, wrapping up a month that flirted with panic, feigned crisis, and then—almost spitefully—resolved back into a soft, dovish glow. Liquidity is a rumour, positioning is frozen, and the most tradable thing on the blotter is the knowledge that nothing of real consequence will happen until the desks fill back up on Monday. And sometimes, after the theatrics of a long month, that kind of quiet is exactly the reset the tape needs.