Okay, thank you very much a question for the introduction so this talk will indeed be about the picnic signature scheme. So basically the picnic is a new signature scheme that is based on symmetric key algorithms and as such it hopefully resists attacks on quantum computers and in fact picnic is a second round candidate in this post-quantum standardization project. Okay so although it is based on symmetric key algorithms the design of picnic is kind of unique and it is completely different than the classical hash-based signature schemes. Okay and because this is kind of a new and interesting design the hope is that there is a lot of room for optimizations in the scheme and this is work that is currently going on. Okay so the picnic team has as you can see many people coming from various institutions. Okay so in this work what we do is we're going to devise a multi target attack on the initial version of picnic and the attack is a bit unusual in the sense that it is actually not evident like standard multi target attacks unlike standard multi target attacks it is not evident from the high-level overview of the scheme and in fact there most of this talk I'm going to describe to you how picnic works that they're kind of a detailed level because otherwise it's not really possible to understand the attack so we're going to really dive into the design and I think this is also would be kind of interesting because if you don't know how picnic works then like I said it's a very new and innovative design so in this sense it's quite interesting and the attack like I said it will require kind of careful analysis of the internal components of picnic and it turns out that it actually exploits a weakness that exists in additional related schemes and finally this this weakness was fixed in the latest version of picnic. Okay so as I said I will start and actually most of this talk will be just to explain to you how picnic works. Okay so basically picnic like in many signature schemes you start by selecting a secret key and the public key is just some function of the secret key some function f and obviously you don't want the public key to leak the secret key so this f must be hard to invert and in particular in picnic it is implemented by a block cipher. Okay and what is a signature in picnic and basically in a signature is a proof that the signer knows this secret key or the signing key where m the message is embedded as a nonce in the signature. So obviously this signature or proof cannot leak the secret key you don't want it to leak the secret key so it must be a zero knowledge proof. Okay so let's go into a bit more details what we're going to do is basically we're going to represent this function f okay we're going to represent it as a circuit as a Boolean circuit we're going just its implementation and we're going to denote the secret or the secret signing key or the private input to the circuit by x with bits x1 up to xn okay and we're going to denote the output public key by y with bits y1 up to ym. Okay so the only thing that's unknown here basically in this picture is the input to the circuit is the x's right okay so now what the signer wants to do is to prove in zero knowledge that they know some x such that when plugged into the circuit c evaluates to the public value of y okay so this is kind of the goal okay the main building block for doing this is going to be multi-party computation and in fact we're going to use an approach for building zero knowledge that is called MPC in the head by Isha' et al. Okay so let's go into a bit more details so at first I'm going to assume that the signing and verification process is an interactive process between a signer and a verifier okay so later we'll see how to remove the assumption but basically the prover or signer starts the the process by choosing three random input shares that xor such that their xor is this secret of secret key or secret signing key that the signer knows okay he's going to pick them at random such that their xor is equal to x okay now he's going to imagine in his head that there exist some three virtual players okay and he's going to give each one its corresponding share this w share and now he's going to internally run a multi-party computation among these three virtual players okay and the output basically of this multi-party computation is going to be the final shares this final w states and basically the property that we want these w's to fulfill is that their xor is just the output of the circuit which is the public and known value y okay and what we want of this multi-party computation we want basically to preserve the following privacy requirements such that if two of these virtual players combine their information then they learn nothing about this secret x okay so how does this have to how can we actually use this protocol to build a signature scheme so let's assume that the prover or the signer run this run this mpc protocol okay and now the prover what is going to do is going to commit to the view of each player so what does that mean in particular is going to hash the the input of this player for each player it's going to ask its input its randomness that maybe he produced its states and the messages that it sent and received all of this is going to be called the view and the prover is going to commit to the view by basically hashing all this for each player is going to hash all these values okay so we have these three commitments and we're going to send them to the verifier okay now the verifier chooses a challenge which is just a number one two or three and it's going to send it back to the prover or the or signer and now the signer is going to reveal two of the views to the verifier of the players of the players except player i okay and now the verifier can what can we do we can check that the actually that the mpc computation is going has been done correctly on these two players and you can also check that the initial commitments were computed correctly that the prover sent okay so this is basically the the main these are basically the main ideas of the protocol and what does this protocol kind of buy us what what the what are its properties so first of all it's clear that it is zero knowledge because the verifier gets to see only two out of the three views of the players okay and therefore by the properties of the mpc scheme he learns nothing about this this x right this input secret input okay um what about soundness is the proof really convincing well if the prover does not know x and tries to cheat okay and then it is easy to see that either either a player has misbehaved or two views are inconsistent in a sense that messages received and sent and received are not consistent and it is quite easy to see that the verifier can catch the cheating prover with probability one third at least one third okay of course this is a very low probability and we want to amplify it so we just repeat the process say r times and particularly if we choose r equals 2 to 219 we can get soundness probability to be one minus two to the 128 okay so we get very good soundness okay so we said that the process we described the process the signing process is an interactive process of course the signature is not an interactive process so we have to remove the interaction is and we do it actually in the standard way such that the signer generates this random challenges that the verify should have been sent by the Fiat Chameer transform so basically by hashing the commitments uh that he produced with the message okay so this is the basic uh basic idea here and it is quite standard so to sum up a signature for picnic includes for each run one two r it includes three commitments right the three commitments for the players and the views of the the full views of the two players that were opened right and of course the third player is not open because it will reveal the the secret signing key okay so this is basically a signature of picnic okay so now we actually have to look into a bit more details we're going to have to look into the actual implementation of the this mpc protocol okay so how is the mpc protocol of picnic implemented basically remember that we have this bullion circuit c okay and this bullion circuit has several wires and basically let's look at the particular wire with some value let's call it a okay basically we have three players and each player is going to have have kind of a duplicate of the circuit so it's going to hold the a wire with corresponding values a one a two a three for the players okay and what we want to do is to maintain an an additive secret sharing invariant in the sense that the xor of all these two all these three values should be equal to the original value of the circuit of the circuit a okay so how are we going to do that we kind of need to propagate this invariant through the gates of the circuit okay so if we start for example by a linear xor gates then the propagation from inputs to outputs is kind of easy because each player can just xor its inputs and then this invariant this linear additive secret sharing is propagated to the output this is not very difficult to see however for AND gates maintaining the invariant is more difficult okay and this actually requires the players to communicate and to generate random bits okay and for this picnic employ some npc in the head optimizations and particularly remember that the prover actually does not really have to run an npc protocol it's everything is virtual so actually messages don't have to be sent so what we're going to do is basically have the output value of pi depend only on the inputs on its own inputs and the inputs of pi plus one okay so this is basically kind of the dependency graph among the players and the protocol okay so let's again go a bit deeper so how in particular is the AND gate implemented okay so the players will basically generate random bits correspondingly we're going to denote them by r1 r2 and r3 okay and this is this is right we kind of have to to say how the players kind of propagate this this invariant from input to output we have to say what are the computations that they do and well the computations are just given by these formulas respectively and for example let's assume that players the views of players p1 and p2 are open so now the verifier knows the red and green values so we can actually check the consistency for the first equation so because it only contains red and and green values okay so finally i'm going to describe an additional optimization so you can see that the AND gates blow this blow up the signature size because the players generate kind of a lot of randomness and the the compute additional states so a final optimization as that player i is going to have instead of generating the random seeds every time is going to have just a short random seed and it's going to compute the random bits using a pseudo random generator a deterministic one okay so now the view of each player and the signature only needs to include a short seed instead of you know this many random bits okay so this kind of shrinks the signature size which is good okay so finally i'm going to get into the actually the multi target attack and let's see how how this works um so let's start by a very simple overview let's consider say a picnic variant with 128 bits of classical security okay so let's assume that the attacker is given a signature that contains say 219 partial mpc runs okay so each of these runs exposes remember two of the three player views these virtual players and it in particular it contains two random 128 bit seeds and in particular the third seed of the under open player is not exposed okay and it is easy kind of easy to see not from what i described but it's not very difficult to see that if this third seed is actually exposed and it is easy to compute the signing key okay so this third seed cannot be exposed okay so here's a very trivial attack attack attempt so given some run out of the 219 we're going to guess this unknown seed okay but this has complexity to the 128 because the seed is 128 bit long so this is not very efficient this is not a really a valid attack so let's try something maybe more useful we're going to try multi target attack and what what do i mean by this so remember that we have 219 run runs available so what we're going to do is we're going to guess the seed of some unopened player in one of these 219 runs okay and this in this case we actually have 219 targets and the complexity of that that drops proportionally okay so we're kind of making progress and we this is kind of already looks like an attack however there is a kind of a problem here because how do we actually detect that we guessed right okay how do we know that we get some seed how do we know that it matches some seed of an unopened player okay in fact this should be in kind of intuitively it should be impossible because the mpc protocol should protect the privacy of the unopened player so this kind of does not seem to be possible however there is a small subtlety that kind of makes a big difference here and the subtlety is that the mpc promises to protect the inputs of the players and not the random bits that they generate okay and this kind of subtlety makes a big difference here and let's see in practice how this how we can actually compute random bits that that the unopened player generates so let's assume again that p1 and p2 are opened okay so we know all the red and green values and we want to determine the this R3 this random bit that was produced by the third player so let's focus on the two and the second equation here remember we know the red and green values okay and and initially it seems like we cannot do this because there exists some additional green values here that that get in the way however let us assume now that a2 equals b2 equals 0 and remember we know that when this occurs because we know the green values and in this case actually all these terms cancel out and we can then in this case we can just factor out R3 as a simple linear combination of c2 and R2 okay so we can actually compute with these random bits okay so now I can tell you how to actually detect this match by a guest seed and the seed of an unopened player okay we're just for each one in the signature what we're going to do is we're going to derive the prg bits that are produced by the unopened player just as I have shown you in the last slide and we derive these strings we sort them in the table and now we're going to make a guess for the seed we're going to compute the prg on this seed and we're going to search this table okay so this is already an efficient process and actually we can generalize this given some s signatures signed by one by one or by many users then the complexity ideally drops proportionally okay because we again we have many targets okay actually in practice it turns out the attack is more complicated than that I won't have time to get into details but the problem basically is that remember in order to determine this value of R3 for the end gates we can only deduce that if a2 equals b2 equals 0 but the view of each player in each run is different and this is a problem and why is this a problem because we actually can compute different prg output bits for the unopened player in each run so we don't get these nice strings we got kind of the strings with unknown values and we cannot sort these strings okay and this is a problem and we kind of have to optimize the attack in order to make this work and I'm not going I don't have time to to actually show you how this is done but basically the main idea here is that random bits are reused in the circuit and we can actually extract more randomness out of the circuit and it turns out that these optimizations that we do are relevant for maybe additional attack scenarios on related protocols again details are in the paper and if you look at the kind of the final numbers of our attacks let's say on 128 bit variant of picnic then you can see that the time is much smaller than 2 to the 128 and actually we get the improved attack when in the case all the signatures are signed with the same key again details are in the paper okay and finally similar weaknesses turn out to exist in related mpc protocols in particular protocol presented by katz et al at ccs 218 that was actually integrated into the newest version of picnic picnic 2.0 okay so it turns out that kind of this weakness this hidden weakness is not just common to picnic so how do we fix this the fix is actually quite simple I mean when you know all the details the fix is quite simple the fix is basically you have to solve the prg so when you basically what you add a salt when computing the random bits in the prg this kind of forces the attacker to choose the salt and it forces the attacker kind of to focus only on one target instead of having many targets each time the attacker evaluates this prg he has to focus only on one target and this basically this is basically the fix okay so let me conclude the stock so picnic is a new and promising post quantum signature scheme with a lot of room for improvements and we devise a multi target attack on picnic and this is quite unusual as you have seen it requires kind of a careful analysis of the internal components of picnic and an efficient attack actually requires optimization so I think that the most high level conclusion here is that picnic optimizes for practical use what is traditionally considered as theoretical cryptography however when you make these optimizations you kind of have to be careful in order to avoid these so-called real world attacks thank you very much thanks it's a so we have time for some questions yes yes please either use the microphone on the side or I can give you mine so I wonder if is it working yes is a salt affecting the performance of picnic by enlarging a signature it yes it does enlarge the signature but actually the salt I mean you embed some kind of initial salt into the signature and then from this initial salt you can actually generate the salts for all the runs and in a deterministic way so the signature is not blown up by very much so actually the performance penalty for this is not very big so I'm wondering some of those optimizations where you know like using pseudo random seeds in theory I guess you know in the npc setting it it's probably okay to use pseudo random seeds as long as I don't reveal my randomness so some of those weaknesses were they predicted by theory and namely if you would say okay here is a random oracle model here is a bound and the random oracle model I can model perg is a random oracle so there is an actually and there was an actually a security proof for the initial version of picnic and the security proof kind of missed this attack because you kind of have to again look into the details and know that this attack is possible and add kind of you know there is an additional bound on the adversary's advantage so there was kind of this term missing in one of the equations and I mean I mean so it is easy kind of to correct this proof but again you kind of have to to know that this is actually possible in order to to to embed this term correctly but at least in theory I just want to make sure if it's a theory yeah yeah yeah there is a proof there is an actual proof of a picnic security and a random oracle model so but I'm saying if you're saying there was a mistake in the proof yeah there was a mistake but you're saying if the proof was done correctly and you would do the translation it would account for this kind of attack exactly yes right so this in this case it's not like a hacky optimization just a mistake no no it's a just a mistake in any more questions if not let's thank it again thank you


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards, and I'm ripping 10 silver packs 2022 Panini national silver packs for Noah B. So good luck Noah. Here we go Only if I go man off talk to Lane then I want to go to some shows eventually. I'd love to With like and help just help Lane by and stuff I think that'd be a lot of fun crystal lava base rookie and red Devin Booker To 99 I'm just I don't know I mean Obviously don't know as much as Lane Lane is like an encyclopedia with cards And when I'm buying cards, they're not usually as big as the cards that Lane Lane's buying for the shop and for himself So it's a little uh, I Wouldn't really have the expertise there, but it would definitely be a lot of fun Josh Allen base and red the bonte at our red orange to bonte Adams 177 of 199. I'd love to go to Vegas. I think that'd be fun base Got Kristen Polisic. How about a gold patrick my homes to 10? That is five out of 10 on the my homes. Congrats. Noah Nice hit for you, man. That's awesome Let's go Got anthony edwards and orange garret wilson Also, I was reading youtube comments and someone was like is there ever going to be a video where this guy doesn't say let's go And I was like like do you sorry, man? I'll stop being enthusiastic about it Got Jabari Smith base and red ben Simmons to 99 Uh 87 out of 99 full of greens. I haven't pulled a green today I got Sasuke rookie and orange jaylen diran So 199 35 out of 199 got ja marant base Got blue cd lamb Uh nine out of 50 nice one there. Uh, let's hope so let's hope so anthony Got riley green lakesboy and orange cooper cup to 199 That is 62 out of 199 nice one there Got glad guerrero junior base and purple justin herbert 23 out of 25 nice one nice herbie And last one for you here. Uh, noa got step curry base And orange tom brady to 199 That is 174 out of 199 that'll do it for your break there Noa congrats on all the hits man. We'll get them right out to you. Thanks again


Hi, my name's Liam Rowe currency trader and trading coach at trading 180 comm and welcome to this week's supply and demand Forex and gold fundamental and technical analysis if you're new or warm welcome to you And if you're returning a legally warm welcome to you and don't forget to like subscribe and share liking helps the YouTube algorithm and there's really a free way to support the channel, right and Get the hopefully get the quality content out to the traders that need it and Trading 180 our trade process is really to apply Fundamental analysis to establish our directional buyers for the medium to long-term not necessarily short-term day trading And then apply our technical analysis strategy. So supply and demand strategies the time trade entries established profit targets and risk management. So getting into the week ahead and Going to trading economics on the week ahead We have earning seasons, which isn't necessarily Concerns us in currency world, but central banks in the euro area Japan Canada and Brazil will be deciding on monetary policy, which is always important So we've got definitely some potential market moving News or price moving news if there are any surprises, right because generally the market has Priced in what they think the ECB are going to say Same thing with the Bank of Japan and Canada. We don't trade the Brazilian currency So important data to follow include the third quarter GDP data from the US. That's always important Eurozone and That's pretty much it. We've got Australia inflation rate Japan industrial production and Elsewhere, we've got the UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak will be revealing his autumn budget, which is interesting for the For the guys that live in the UK that would definitely be keenly watched unless every just for You know for the fundamentals, but understanding what is going to go on in, you know Just every day lives and taxes and stuff like that and what's getting what's public services are being cut, etc But getting now into a bit of the nitty-gritty and we start off as we generally do on the dollar index So zooming out We can see the dollar index is a measure of just a measure of dollar strength against the Major currencies like the pound the euro and the yen but zooming out on a price chart We can see that, you know over the past couple of weeks. We did come to this supply zone which was a bit of a major high definitely watched by institutions and overall again, the power for these resistances to the upside when you think about what's happening fundamentally the the dollar should want to strengthen and part of the reason why that is is because Going back to trading economics the Fed is on track to begin tapering which is a reduction in the bond purchases although it would be premature to Raise rates Fed chair Powell said during a panel discussion at the virtual bank for international settlements in South Africa Reserve Bank Centenary conference so power also mentioned that supply bottlenecks are still weighing and have gotten worse in some Cases recently at the same time high inflation and pressure pressures on wages will likely last into next year But will abate. Yeah, so one of the also again a bit of a quote was that Fed the chair added if we see serious risk on inflation Expectations persistently rising we will use our tools the tools being basically to high crates so they do expect the To taper which is generally positive for a currency but Raising rates might not be Imminent so raising rates right now. So Overall generally, I would say probably daughter is should be more positive than negative Especially when you compare it to other currencies, which is what you're supposed to be doing as a fundamental trader anyway So looking at the US dollar, I Expected, you know a bit of a pullback in fact pretty expect a bit more of a pullback into that zone To look for any kind of long trades not on the dollar index, but just as some sort of confluence So if you do get prices pullback into a demand zone, for example when the dollar yen Dollar Swiss and you've also got a demand zone on the dollar currency index You can use that as current as a confluence and then obviously you want to see Pricist, you know a bit of a reversal candle Whatever your entry is and there's some bullish price action And then that's pretty much the direction that I would or I am trading in of course not financial advice the If you are looking to potentially short the dollar because ultimately nobody knows exactly where prices will turn right? This is reason why we manage risk So price may continue to come down a bit more But that was owed only be seen as probably a bit more of a bargain area to buy the dollar So if this level doesn't work, then I'll be looking for obviously Long trades long trade confluence within this area But if you can if you do want to get short you're looking at this area up at the 94s above that 94 31 Area for a potential short trade although again Understanding why you'd want to get short there is really probably saying that the other dollar is actually quite expensive up there, but the Fed again Fed Chair Jerome Powell is talking about Tapering so that's generally positive and just quickly as well In case any of you don't understand what supply chain disruption is It's really a demand issue. So I'll read a couple of you know sentences and maybe a paragraph or so Explaining this so the stress is on the global economy or caused mainly by an increase in demand, especially in the US So the first step towards understanding the great supply chain disruption of 2021 is to recognize that the phrase itself is not quite accurate Supply chains are not disrupted so much as overloaded. Yeah, and the effects are more national than global so Think about it like this right? So they've got a more of a Supply can't keep up with demand. There's a lot of demand, but The supply chain what's what's delivering, you know goods and services and commodities that the transportation etc. It's it's There's a lot of demand right which is the reason why they say things like bottlenecks, right? So Container shipping rates is this is a an example, right? So container shipping rates for example for instance were more than five times higher in September than they were in September Sorry, September 2021 then they were in September 2020 All right, so you've got again more demand five times higher now than they were a year ago making matters worse overall congestion rates congestion Especially at US ports was as high as 80% so you've got loads of Shipping containers and boats etc But you haven't got enough ports meaning that there were four times as many ships waiting For a berth as were docked at any one time. So this is what's causing the problem. It's just the the supply chain it's not a It's I guess a bit of a problem a massive problem in fact But it's something that can be resolved and hopefully will be resolved but For now and this is the reason why Jerome Powell is saying that the inflation is potentially Transitory because of the inflation is being kind of driven up by the fact that there's a there's a scarcity in In commodities, right? So if they're scarcity in commodities and not enough commodities then prices generally will go Higher inflation will go higher. So That's really where the problem is so one supply chain starts to get sorted out then inflation should come down hence the reason why he's saying it's And and central banks around the world believe that it could be a bit more transitory because once this ends then they should come down, right? That's really the the The theory anyways getting back to the to the technicals and other currency pairs to analyze and moving on to the The Japanese yet Dollar yen and again, we've seen this massive run-up Again due to fundamental analysis when we think about how, you know, potentially strong the US dollar is in comparison They haven't got the same issues as Japan and we're more in the risk-on environment. You can see that the The stock market is making new highs But we you know should have a pullback which we do have a bit of a pullback into this demand zone now Will prices turn around here? We understand that this was definitely a higher high higher load It was this was seen as a bargain price Last week or the week before 13th of October into the 40th of October So the question is will this be a bargain now personally? I'd prefer prices to really, you know come down to these areas here But this is going to be the first area to look for any kind of a Buy trades if you're looking to buy the dollar if you're looking to sell the dollar meaning or buy the Japanese yen Then that is a bit of a supply zone right there So you're really looking for prices to come back into the zone before looking at getting short But in getting short, you know, you're what you're ultimately saying is that the the The Japanese yen isn't is a bargain because ultimately Something can be expensive for ages and something could be cheap for ages right a bargain for ages But it's best to look at the market As in looking for bargains. That's what we naturally want to do buying a you know wholesale We don't generally go out to the shops and look to see if something is Expensive, you know, I mean, so we have to look at the market in that in that in those terms. So Yeah, I think this zone is is a decent zone technically from a from a value perspective I'm not necessarily the most keen on it, but again It's a decent area to get to get long Moving on to the dollar Swiss and the dollar Swiss has come down Pulled back a bit more and that demand zone didn't hold too much But now we're down into the 91 50s, which I think is decent and we consider I guess The yearly highs and the yearly lows We are probably more coming towards the the Fair value right. Yes, we're coming towards that fair value area and So with that being said in the context of that, I think anywhere probably starting to buy around now Is decent again? It's not financial advice And you really have to understand that when we're in a risk-off environment If we are in a risk-off environment, it's a risk-off sentiment that comes into market next week. The Swiss Frank would generally Benefit from that but in a risk-on environment the US dollar should win hands down not saying it's gonna win every single week And it's not really, you know smart to kind of think of it as winning and losing but It's more it's more looking at it from a perspective of where should the par for these resistance be right? We should, you know be trending higher right overall We don't know where the market is going to turn around but again the par for these resistance should be to the upside So looking at you know buy trades in and around these areas I think for me anyway is is is decent and I'll look for that Looking for sell trades that I think you're at your first area is going to be at this 90 0.9 to 40 area and nice technically, but I think overall I think the 93 40s to 93 60s is probably the better area and I'm gonna just drag that down as well Encompasses all of that supply So anywhere within that zone I think is going to the higher end of that zone is going to be really nice for a potential for a sell moving on to the dollar CAD and Canadian dollar Is one that I'm looking to buy If there's any kind of pullback not necessarily for against the dollar, but any other currency pairs But I do think that In a in a straight fight you should the Canadian dollar I think is just you know edges the US dollar especially when you consider commodity currencies But I mean commodities going higher anyway, you know, I always predicted to go to $100 a barrel And that should also support the Canadian dollar So if you are looking for any kind of short trades Waiting for pullbacks. That's going to be the first area that 125 1.25 area to look for potential shorts if you're looking for any Long trades and buying the US dollar against the Canadian dollar. I think now is probably a decent area to look for some long trades So Not really much to kind of say about this this pair. I'm not really interested in it myself But technically you're at some decent some decent areas some nice areas as from a technical analysis perspective Looking at the New Zealand dollar US dollar and the New Zealand dollar is again way ahead of Of most currencies when it comes to monetary policy and this is why you're seeing You know this type of price action, right? You get that kind of parabolic move You have to kind of expect a bit of profit-taking bit of pullback But if you want to get long on this currency pair at the moment It's a bit of a difficult one. You'd have to really expect prices to either pull all the way back down here Or to create some sort of higher highs higher lows and then you're looking for a pullback into a demand zone Or it could happen something like this where you get that pullback and then you get that so ultimately Right now there's nothing really setting up if you want to get long on the New Zealand dollar US dollar If you want to get short of course, there's always a technical reason It's always going to be a technical reason why you should look for any kind of trade In the direction when you're just looking at the technicals doesn't mean it's the smartest thing to do But there is a short trade here And if you're looking at probably where the range is the overall range probably up top From this high To this low is is is decent although that level has been touched several times So it's not the most reliable level to look for any kind of short trades around there because you're pretty liable To get stop hunted in that area So yeah, not really much. I don't think at the moment on the New Zealand dollar But those are the options so far Looking at the pound dollar and the pound Yeah, this was a decent area to look for potential shorts, but just price didn't work out I didn't take this trade. I'm not really interested too much in this currency pair And unless it comes to like the one three nine area The guys in the in the discord group will know exactly why we're looking at that one three nine area, but um Ultimately, we don't know whether it will get up there, right? Not too sure how we're going to be patient and it gets the trade that he believes without us And in which case that's fine But um, but if it does come out to one three nine area, that's probably where I wouldn't look We'll look for any kind of short trades, but if you are getting short now There is um, you know, you should be in some decent profit depending on where you managed to get involved in this trade With the pound fundamentally Britain's economy finds out what it means to live with covid so you've got a bit of a cocktail of of stagflation potentially going on stagflation meaning where you've got Economic an economic slowdown, but you've got rising inflation. So Households face rate hikes. Yeah, so that's basically more money out of their pocket If you're if you if you have a mortgage, for example, um, you know that interest rate hikes will affect your Repayments on your mortgage and if you're already struggling to pay your mortgage or your, you know, household bills That's one thing that you don't really need. So you we've got tax rises on on on the uh on the rise That's going to be another thing to to really kind of Stop consumers or people in general from really going out and spending in the economy, right? Because ultimately that's what we want to happen. That's what boosts Economic growth is spending not saving Inflation so devaluation of a currency and an energy crunch, right? And we've got the petrol crisis still and and and and the like so On top of that the economy is faltering just as covid cases and deaths are rising. So You know after 19 months spent attempting to ward off covid 19 while safeguarding jobs and businesses The uk is heading into winter with a growing problem. The corona virus is spreading rapidly Just as the economy starts to get going In the opposite direction. So there's problems massive massive problems. The uk cases are accelerating faster than in other western european countries Or nations while deaths have jumped to their highest since march government ministers Have are having to deny they are planning for a new lockdown. So and at the same time Yeah, economic growth is slowing inflation is running high. The bank of england is expecting to hike rates Soon and households are facing a cost of living crisis. So it's just it's an absolute potential mess not necessarily a mess at the moment, but Very very mixed messages. So I've been saying is for maybe the past month or so that I'm looking for short trades on the pound not necessarily against the dollar is my number one trade, but pound Um, I'm looking for more short trades against the pound against stronger currencies So, um for me the direction of travel should be to the downside Not saying it's going to be this week, but overall, I think again if you look at where you know, the trend is Over the past, you know, maybe four or five months. We've definitely seen Prices are trending to the downside and that's not an indication as to why you should want to potentially look for A a trade to the downside. It's just letting you know Where the weakness is in a currency which is driven by risk sentiment and fundamental analysis. So For me this area is nice if prices can come up to that 139 area. I think that for me is going to be A bit of a trade but other than that, I'm not really interested in where it is right now Um, ultimately, uh, we could I say we but the uk economy could get resolved and You know things get back on track and if it does, I think this is going to be a really nice level Or any buyers in these demand zones potentially should be decent buyers, but ultimately you're um, you're really kind of, uh, betting on I think A bit of a I would say a losing cause but there's there's a lot of there's a lot of confusion in the market and also as well uh financial times, uh Saying that investors worry over potential Bank of England rates mistake. So traders fear policy makers will move too aggressively in their attempts to tame inflation so investors Investor concern is rising that the bank of England is moving too swiftly to tighten monetary policy as it gives up to become one of the first Central banks to raise rates following the coronavirus crisis Generally a hiking rates is positive for a currency Um, unless um, it could a rate hike could obviously do damage, right? And that's what we just spoke about um in the in the Bloomberg article, right? So we've got um, uh, Rate hike potentially could cause damage to a recovering economy So it might not be necessarily the most positive thing in the world. Um In fact, it's probably going to be a bit negative. So with all that being said for me, um, I'm looking at potential shorts on the On on the pound You know definitely in in in the near future And I'm just waiting for the technicals to really kind of set up if they do then for me The pound is a short moving on to the Euro dollar Euro dollar again, I'm overall short on this currency pair I think a really nice zone to get short out would be, uh, this one one seven Area just underneath that's the one one six to start looking for potential shorts Uh price obviously reacted here on this supply zone, but when you think about where we are from a An expensive or cheap area Selling at shorting at lows isn't the best thing to do, right? It's not the smartest thing to do You really want to pull back before looking at getting short Anywhere getting short would be buying the u.s. Dollar So with that being said, um You know, it's it's a case of uh Just waiting for if we can get some sort of pullback if not if prices continue to do something like this Then again, just to pull back to that area would be where the supply zone would be so So again, we've got options But ultimately until these this this price action starts to play out I think for me looking at getting short around this 117 between 117 117 55 area for me is probably going to be The best type of trade Europe not doing too well So Europe's recovery stumbles over supply squeeze driving inflation as I was talking about earlier I mean the world is it's got problems with You know supply chain problems and uh euro area businesses are reporting a sharp slowdown in activity caused by an aggravating global supply squeeze that's also Producing record inflation so word as um There's a quote here that says the ongoing Pandemic means supply chain delays remain a major concern constraining production and driving prices even higher both in manufacturing and in Services sector says chris williamson chief business economist at iHS market Which compiles the survey after strong second and third quarter expansions GDP growth is looking much weaker by comparison in the fourth quarter so um fourth quarter um doesn't look great for the for the euro so um I think the us is probably going to be ahead of them So that being said, I think again the path leads resistance is to the downside if the data still supports that narrative If you do want to be a buyer of the euro, then I think the earliest place to really buy the euro is going to be really at the bottom of this range so Around this 115 60 115 20 area Moving on to the euro yen yen and uh euro was an absolute tear against the end look at that parabolic um And we did manage to just touch this uh the top end of that supply zone So again from a technical analysis perspective the question is why would you want to get short here? If the Japanese yen is the weaker out of the two right and which obviously it is but uh right now There was a bit of profit taking going on at this moment here So uh, I think again similar to that the euro um the uh, New Zealand or the u.s. Dollar I think from a short trade perspective you've got plenty of reasons to go short technically but Fundamentally do you really want to be a buyer of the Japanese yen? I mean you wouldn't again in the risk-off environment, right? So risk off um The Japanese yen tends to act as a safe haven currency and you should see prices want to fall But until the safe haven is still that risk off, you know environment starts to happen I think the power for these resistance should be again to the upside But the nearest uh demand zone again is going to be way down these winning 12928 area and less prices do make higher highs And then a pull back into that should be demand zone around here before getting uh long Moving on to the dollar Aussie dollar and Aussie dollar the Australian dollar isn't necessarily doing fantastic, but it's really being driven by Um commodity prices. So commodity prices go in higher um and with the um the Australian dollar being a commodity currency um, you've really had uh the It benefit the Australian dollar has benefited although um, I think now they are starting to turn a corner The Australian economy is starting to turn a corner. Um, so I do think I'm looking potentially I've got all my radar to be a buyer of the Australian dollar at some point from a monetary policy perspective They're not they're literally looking to hold rates or not do anything with rates at the moment So it wouldn't be anything to do with monetary policy more to do with just the economic recovery. So um against the the us dollar is a bit of a harder trade because you've got the uh US dollar who are ahead from monetary policy perspective So for me, uh, it's not necessarily a pair I look at but if you are interested in this currency pair then Really a short from now or if it pulls back up into this higher 75 76 area might be a decent short And if you're looking for any kind of long trades, I think that area That demand zone around here the seven zero point seven four two to zero point seven three eighty Is a decent area to look for potential long trades Moving on to the Aussie Yen and the Aussie yen again, uh, we came up to the yearly highs yearly highs broke through the yearly highs And we've come back down. So I think removing that supply zone is a bit of supply here Not necessarily the strongest area of supply. Um, but again with uh, with a bit of a recovery in for the for the Australian dollar You're seeing That massive demand for the currency Um, again buying at these highs. I'm really not keen on buying at those highs, but um Buying at these those would be a whole a bit of that 90 sorry that 81 area But um, whether we get down there or not is another problem. So again, if you're you know, trying to plot Really these paths and understand what potentially could happen We could see, you know prices obviously bounce around here If you want to get long here, we could see maybe some lower lows lower highs price Move up then pull back to that zone Or prices may start to go all the way down to the zone and then look for any kind of buy trades in and around here But um, for me, I I'm not keen on that on that area There's obviously going to be a trade there at some point But is it the best trade in the world to take that's the question For me, I don't like it because it is, you know in a quite expensive area when you consider This was a bargain and this was obviously a bit of expensive and uh, yeah, we're definitely uh In that area, but I do think there's potential upside and finally looking at Gold and gold again a bit of a tricky one fundamentally simply because Um, you've got some pros and cons going for and against gold inflation is a is a pro against Gold but a strengthening dollar isn't right. So um, if the dollar does look to strengthen then Gold should literally go to the downside But uh, ultimately if inflation is seen as getting out of hand Then gold should go to the upside as as gold is a hedge against inflation, right? So it just depends on on which view you take For me location-wise, it's not great. It's not great I think for me the path of these resistance is still to the downside if you're looking at a strong or stronger dollar um And I think as long as the economy US economy continues to grow I think, you know prices pretty much should start to do this um But ultimately, um until you know that the US economy does start to falter Like I said, I think I think the uh, I think really it's kind of short trades I'm not interested in in trading gold at any point. I think if I was really interested in trading gold It'd be at you know, the extremes, right? So the extreme lows extreme highs would be something I might be interested in again, fundamentally Things would have to kind of be aligned with price, but um Anywhere I think around here if you're looking at short trades is decent But just again be aware that there is potential for a bit of a stock hunt above that 1834 area as that is a very obvious Level and obvious high so there's going to be a lot of stops above that area So be Be careful. You are getting short. Maybe have a bit of a wider stop loss, but um Overall, I think you're looking at the bed But the recent levels are basically down into this 1760 area But again, I think ultimately if I'm looking to take any trades If I was anyway, it'd probably be either at this 1730 area or really down at the absolute lows The 1680 zone Anyways, that brings us to the end of this week's fundamental analysis. Thanks for watching Hope you have a great trading week and uh, take care