Wednesday, being the “big event” from the FOMC, is all about the dollar. The USD has been beaten down relentlessly ever since 2017 began. This is going to be a “make or break” day for the buck, since a strengthening dollar will torpedo gold (and probably help stocks) whereas a new leg in the dollar bear market will probably have just the opposite effect.

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One thing is for sure… over the past eight years, the very breath of life has been squeezed out of volatility. On an intraday basis, we’re actually making 9-handles again. Amazing.

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For the curious, I laid down a trio of exponential moving averages on top of the VIX data, and I removed the price itself so you could focus on these three averages (50, 100, and 200). As you can see, we’re pushing depths not even seen in the heady days of early 2007.

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