Today, we look at the drivers of the stronger US dollar as it pulls to new highs for the year and what may be holding back USDJPY from participating in the greenback rally as those forty-year highs from 2024 approach. Elsewhere, yesterday&#x27;s US equity market session was so far mostly only a one-off meltdown in high momentum stocks, with the median stock positive on the day. Massive interest and potential implications in how the market reacts to Micron earnings after the US equity market close today. This and more on today&#x27;s pod, which is hosted by Saxo Global Head of Macro Strategy John J. Hardy. Link WSJ looks at China&#x27;s attempt to &quot;lure the world to the yuan&quot; - and it&#x27;s not just Iran and Russia that is taking the bait. About twice per week (in normal times, hopefully soon to resume), you will find links discussed on the podcast and a chart-of-the-day over at the John J. Hardy substack. Read daily in-depth market updates from the Saxo Market Call and the Saxo Strategy Team here. Please reach out to us at marketcall@saxobank.com for feedback and questions. Click here to open an account with Saxo. Intro music by AShamaluevMusic DISCLAIMER This content is marketing material. Trading financial instruments carries risks. Always ensure that you understand these risks before trading. This material does not contain investment advice or an encouragement to invest in a particular manner. Historic performance is not a guarantee of future results. The instrument(s) referenced in this content may be issued by a partner, from whom Saxo Bank A/S receives promotional fees, payment or retrocessions. While Saxo may receive compensation from these partnerships, all content is created with the aim of providing clients with valuable information and options.

The US dollar is having its cake and eating it too...for now.

Saxo Market Call

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Saxo Market Call

## Participants

- **John J. Hardy** (Saxo Global)

## Transcript

Welcome to the Saxo Market Call. Before we get started, it's important we emphasize that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Hey, everyone. It is Wednesday, 24th of June, 2026. Very late start to the podcast recording session here. Apologies for that was detained and unable to get in here earlier to record this. But here we are. And things are going on. We're seeing a much stronger dollar. We'll be looking into that as one of the big movers of note here. Of course, yesterday, a big mover was very much the US equity index.

A lot of the damage being done ahead of the open and on the back of that meltdown in the Korean memory names. And some of that, but finding those maybe the proximate cause here of that meltdown, specifically in the Korean memory makers and the equity index writ large there, was talk demands from at least one source, but talk that the government there should consider taxing unrealized gains on equities.

And those would be massive in the case of especially the memory makers in Korea. But still, it just goes to show you some of the fragility there when the players in the market are so leveraged and so touchy and the market can move by these percentages we're seeing day to day. And I do think, regardless of whether we wipe this right on away and go back to that at or near all-time highs here, still, this distribution top that I've discussed before.

So what is a distribution top? It's when you're seeing the market changing hands at the highs. You're seeing pretty chunky sell-offs, maybe two-way action, takes it back towards the highs, maybe back a bit beyond the highs. But this choppy back and forth could be one of these classic medium to longer term and protracted topping formations. So let's see if that's where we're at. It could also just mean we're at a massive top and we're going to go straight down.

I doubt that, but that could be determined by Micron's earnings call after the close. Regardless, the internals were quite interesting yesterday in the U.S. market. We have the overall NASDAQ 100 was down over 3%, 3.3%, in fact, and the big names there in tech and et cetera, dragging the S&P 500 down as well, minus 1.4%. The Russell was down less than 1%, and the equal weight was down minus 0.36%.

And maybe more interesting than that still is that there were only 215 outright decliners on the S&P 500, so more gainers than decliners by a decent margin on a very, very negative day for the market. It was not monolithic. This is still a very big concentration in the big names and the big tech names specifically. Sox index down almost 8%. You know, the biggest gainers on the year down almost the most to a large extent. Sandisk down 13.6...

The US dollar is having its cake and eating it too...for now.

Transcript

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Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
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The US dollar is having its cake and eating it too...for now.

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.