The US dollar has been gaining steadily against the developed countries' currencies since the beginning of the year. By the way, the yen was an exception: it has been adding 1.8% over the past 11 days after the stock market entered the turbulence zone due to a reassessment of the monetary policy outlook.
According to historical data, the Fed often finds itself at the forefront of the monetary policy cycle. That is used to be translating into a stronger USD in the months before and after the first tightening.
So the question is in what currency pairs it is most profitable to buy the dollar now.
Among the developed and liquid currencies, three scenarios can be considered. The first way is to sell EURUSD. The euro is weaker than the dollar due to the ECB being on several steps behind the Fed. That means that the EU rates will remain lower for a longer period of time, and the balance of bond yields will be shifted towards the dollar. Given the pace the Fed intends to take in tightening monetary policy, this yield gap promises to widen further.
Another way is to bet that monetary tightening is stressing the declining markets drag the pound down. We should keep in mind that the Bank of England has already approved its first tightening policy step, and in this case it's not far behind the Fed. At the same time, it's closely correlated with falling market indices. Need to mention that GBPUSD is still far from being oversold with a wide room for further decline.
The third way is often more obvious. Traders may consider selling the currencies of developing countries, which are much more sensitive to the Fed monetary policy changes. However, EMs have been raising rates for almost a year, so selling them now is a bet on market volatility in the near term. For the longer perspective, higher interest rates promise to level out short-term gains. In this case, the dollar's down turn may be faster than in the euro.
