Forex Blog

EUR/USD spiked high almost reaching 1.3800 level as the U.S. nonfarm payrolls for the August decreased by 4,000. Nonfarm payrolls is one of the most important measures for the employment market of the United States, which in its turn serves as the indicator of the economy health. A fall by 4k is the lowest monthly value since 2003. This is certainly a bad sign for the overall U.S. economy, which will be (and already was) treated by the financial markets not in the favor of U.S. stocks or USD. Other macroeconomical data became available today too.

Average hourly earning in August grew at the same rate as in July - by 0.3%. Overall unemployment rate remained at 4.6%. All data came out without surprise - at the expected levels.

Business wholesale inventories in July increased by 0.2%, while in June they grew by 0.5% and analysts expected the same growth in July.

This is a bit confusing situation for the financial markets, since the good economical data from United States should empower USD causing EUR/USD to fall, but today good data on labor productivity and ISM services index caused EUR/USD to soar. This can be explained by the increased optimism in the U.S. economy which causes more big traders to continue carry trading, during which USD is in a downtrend.

U.S. crude oil inventories in the past week fell (again) by 3.9 billion barrels, but still remain at a high level for the current seasonal average. One of the possible reasons for this decrease can lie in a hurricane season (which is quite weak in this year so far).

Initial jobless claims in the past week dropped to 318,000 compared to 337,000 previous week, which while still a high number is better than 330,000 expected by the market. But the more important employment data - nonfarm payrolls for August, will come out tomorrow.

ISM services index (business activity) in August came out at 55.8 level - the same as the month before. This is a good level for this index, especially when analysts predicted its fall to 54.5.

Nonfarm productivity in second quarter of 2007 (revised value) increased by 2.6%. This growth exceeded both the market expectations (2.4%) and the Q1 value (1.8%). High productivity in the nonfarm area is a good sign for the U.S. economy, which by the end of 2007 can show a very strong growth.

EUR/USD regained part of its losses, received earlier this day and yesterday, after some important but not encouraging data from United States. EUR/USD is still in the flat zone (speaking in long terms), but some strong intraday volatility hints for possible breakout with the direction still unknown.

PMI index by Institute for Supply Management (ISM) was reported today and came out by 0.1 point lower than expected decrease from 53.8 to 53.0 - at 52.9 level. This can hint for a probably weak position of the U.S. manufacturing sector, which will show itself in the later months.

Construction spending in July fell by 0.4% compared to the June amounts. It was much worse than the expected 0.1% fall. So the crisis in the real estate sector continues in time and strengthens in powers without any signs of recovering with all those money interventions by Fed.

LiteForex announced about some changes for their mini Forex trading accounts. These changes became active today, on September 3rd. Decreasing the minimum trading lot size, margin requirement for hedging positions and minimum deposit amount is a step towards the more easier trading for small traders and Forex newbies:

Aspiring to provide to our clients the best trading conditions on international financial markets, the group of companies LiteForex (www.LiteForex.org) has made the following improvements of our trading conditions:

1. Decreased minimum contract size for MINIForex accounts, - starting September 03, 2007 the minimum contract size for MINIForex accounts becomes 0.01 lot with step 0.01; The maximum contract size was not changed and remains 10 lots.

2. Decreased margin requirements to keep opposite (locked) positions (AKA “hedged margin”) on MINIForex and 100KForex accounts, - starting September 03, 2007 the hedged margin for all Forex instruments (EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCHF, USDJPY, USDCAD, AUDUSD, NZDUSD, EURGBP, EURCHF, EURJPY, EURCAD, EURAUD, EURNZD, GBPCHF, GBPJPY, GBPCAD, GBPAUD, GBPNZD, CHFJPY, CADCHF, AUDCHF, NZDCHF, CADJPY, AUDJPY, NZDJPY, AUDCAD, NZDCAD, AUDNZD, including XAUUSD, XAGUSD) on MINIForex and 100KForex accounts becomes 25%. Previously hedged margin was 50%.

3. Removed the limitation on minimum initial deposit for MINIForex accounts, - starting September 03, 2007 there is no minimum deposit requirements for MINIForex accounts.

Welcome to the September 1, 2007 edition of carnival of forex trading.

Jimmy Atkinson presents The Day Trader’s Toolkit: 100 Free Online Apps for Professionals posted at Forex Blog.

Dr. Barry Burns presents Question: What is the Best Interval for Day Trading? Part 2 posted at Top Dog Trading, saying, “Using the right time interval in your charts is critical for success. Heres’ how to find the perfect time-frame for your charts.”

Laura presents Top 100 Day Trading Blogs posted at Currency Trading.net.

Vahid Chaychi presents What Is Forex and How to Make Money with It? posted at Internet and Search Engine Marketing, saying, “Forex is one of the best work at home opportunities. It is good because it doesn’t need any marketing, referring and recruiting. If you learn it properly, you can make lots of money but it can be also risky if you start trading before you learn.”

Sagar Satapathy presents 11 Reasons Poker Players Make Great Forex Traders posted at Currency Trading.net.

Adel Ayari presents Global Forex Trading posted at Dealer’s Journal.

That concludes this edition. You can submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of forex trading using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

EUR/USD trend: sell.
GBP/USD trend: sell.
USD/JPY trend: sell.
EUR/JPY trend: sell.