Forex Blog

Today is a very important day for the financial traders from all over the world - Fed is to decide its interest rate policy until the next meeting (if not further). While almost 92% of all traders expected rate cut by 25 basis points - to 4.50% - the main intrigue was concealed in Fed’s formulation and reasons for the cut (or its absence in case they would decide to leave things as they were). With one member voting against rate cut and words like “economic growth was solid in the third quarter” and that “some inflation risks remain”, it is now almost certain that this was the last rate decrease until the end of 2007.

To much surprise of the majority of Forex traders, U.S. macroeconomics data came out very optimistically tuned today. Starting from GDP (advance) at 3.9% in third quarter, which appeared greater than 3.1% expected; ending with September construction spendings which increased by 0.3% (against -0.2% fall in August and and -0.4% expected for that month).

On the bad side of the reports are Chicago PMI with a decrease from 54.2 to 49.7 and a big surprise present for oil bulls - another major drawdown in U.S. commerce crude oil inventories by almost 3.9 million barrels.

Making something new in world of the retail on-line Forex services is a great job, hardly accomplished by Forex brokers today. eToro is a new kind of broker that brings innovative ideas to Forex trading via Internet. Aiming on the novice traders (like some other brokers - Pip Forex and Marketiva) it offers a very simple, yet interesting approach to buy and sell currencies. eToro developed its unique platform with 3 different types of trading - Dollar Trend, Globe Trader and Forex Match; none of them being like they are on Metatrader or any other platform:

• Dollar Trend - trader chooses a trend direction and watches the dollar rise or fall against a set of currencies. Almost the same as buying and selling the DXY.
• Globe Trader - two different currencies (countries) a chosen on the map and the currency pair behavior is literally seen on that map. More like a common Forex trading.
• Forex Match - more traditional currency pair selling and buying with all the stop-losses and take profits.

They offer visualization and easy-to-understand scheme that even a 10 year old child can understand, making Forex accessible for the vast majority of the Internet audience. The only problem with this extremely newbie-friendly platform is that it hardly can satisfy professionals’ demand; adding Metatrader 4 choice would certainly benefit eToro.

Another great e-book was added to my site today - it is “Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom” by Van K. Tharp. Too bad it is a rather poor quality scan. Nonetheless it is a very important book for all financial traders. And, in my opinion, it is especially important to Forex traders. Because it has so wonderful section about position sizing and money management which is usually Forex trader’s biggest problems (at least it was and somewhat still is for me). It is a big book with a lot of useful information. But if you don’t have enough time to read it all, read chapters about position sizing and R-multiples. This will probably change your way of thinking about successful trading strategy.

Long time since I’ve updated my Forex brokers section, so today is a good day to do it, IMHO. HY Markets is a rather new broker on the on-line Forex market, but they have a good and long off-line history with offices in both United Kingdom (London) and United Arab Emirates (Dubai). For their customers HY Markets offer custom web trading platform which makes trading possible from virtually any computer in the world, without downloads and installations. Mini Forex accounts available for $50 minimum deposit and 1:200 leverage. Funds can be deposited and withdrawn via wire transfer, credit cards and PayPal. My overall suggestions on HY Markets - good to start with if you don’t want to download anything and good for professionals with a lot of money for it is a reliable broker and offer better conditions for the bigger accounts.

EUR/USD trend: buy.
GBP/USD trend: buy.
USD/JPY trend: buy.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

The closer it is to the October 31st when the FOMC’s meeting on interest rates policy will be held the stronger the dollar bears feel themselves on the Forex market. With almost each day bringing new reasons for the Fed to decrease interest rate again this time the decision became clear now.

Initial jobless claims for the last week decreased compared to the previous week report, but still came out worse than expected - 331k compared to 339k previous week and 320k expected.

Durable goods orders by the manufacturers, according to U.S. Census Bureau, in September decreased by $3.8 billion or 1.7%, while previous value was revised from 4.9% (also decrease) to 5.3%. Now, considering that the markets were expecting increase by 1.5%, it is possible to say that manufacturing sector is suffering or at least is going to suffer something close to a crisis.

September new home sales increased a little from August number - 770k against 735k (but August value was revised from 795k) and they were still lower than expectations. But real estate sector is already known to be in downfall. So, at least for me nothing surprising here.

This day was very volatile on Forex EUR/USD pair, but it was without a distinct leader among those two. With dollar falling and rising during the day it ended almost at the same point it started. But trend for the rest of the week could have been probably founded today by two important fundamental reports on U.S. economics.

First, the crude oil inventories for the last week fell by whopping 5.29 million barrels. Department of Energy even changed the phrase in its report from “well above the upper end of the average range for this time of year” to “near the upper end of the average range”. With low oil inventories, the price for this vital commodity can continue its fast growth seen during the last days. And expensive oil will almost certainly mean cheap dollar.

Second, existing home sales for September showed decreased by almost 0.46 millions to 5.04M (total annual rate). That is more than 19% lower than the September 2006 figure and also significantly lower than National Association of Realtors expected for this September. Weak real estate reports adds another reason for FOMC to lower interest rates next meeting (31st of October). And that can’t be good for dollar too.

EUR/USD trend: buy.
GBP/USD trend: buy.
USD/JPY trend: hold.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

Today U.S. dollar continued its way down the Forex market to historical bottoms of its rate against Euro currency. With EUR/USD hitting its new historical maximum at 1.4309, there is a little doubt now that dollar will stop euro reaching and breaking 1.4500 level. This is mainly caused by bad U.S. data coming out last weeks, which might mean another Fed rate cut by the end of the month.

First strike on dollar bulls was delivered today by the initial jobless claims report for the past week with 29k increase from the previous week - to 337k. Then the leading indicators by the Conference Board Inc. came out showing a 0.3% growth, which appeared as expected. But it is a very weak indicator that doesn’t mean a lot to Forex traders usually.

Second strike was Philladelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey showed a very strong decrease in the diffusion index of current activity from 10.9 in September to 6.8 in October, whereas even pessimistic market analysts were expecting to see 7.0 value.

To sum it up - it is a bad time to be long on dollar, but good to be long on EUR/USD.

EUR/USD retraced back to 1.4200 level today after some very disappointing housing data came out in U.S. Overall situation continues to remain uncertain with the EUR/USD ranging between 1.4050 and 1.4250. It now formed a clear plateau pattern on the daily chart marking some major break in the Euro vs. Dollar struggle.

Housing report for September showed a further downfall in this economics sector with the decrease in both housing starts and building permits numbers exceeding pessimistic market forecasts. There were 1,191k housing starts (against 1,285k expected) and 1,226k new building permits (against 1,300k expected) this September.

Contrary to real estate sector bad news September CPI report showed a better than expected value - 0.3% against 0.2% expected, and that’s from the -0.1% in August.

Crude oil inventories report for the October 8-12 week showed a major increase in commercial oil inventories - 1.8 million barrels, which can easily compensate for the previous decrease by 1.67 million barrels.