Forex Blog

EUR/USD remains mostly unchanged today as the markets await the Federal Reserve decision on the interest rate. Even some important indicators that were released in U.S. today failed to move the currency pair significantly on Forex.

Advance data for the first quarter GDP in U.S. were releasd today, showing 0.6% growth (the same as in Q4 2007), above the estimate of 0.5%.

Chicago PMI index in April rose from 48.2 to 48.3, exceeding the pessimistic expectations, according to which it should have fallen to 47.5 this month.

Crude oil inventories rose 3.8 million barrels last week — more than 2.4 million previous week, but are still in the lower half of the average range for this time of the year.

There are many similarities between the money management strategies in the gambling and the Forex trading. In fact there are too little differences between money management in any risk-based money making. Of course, that fact doesn’t mean that Forex market is a casino and traders are gamblers, there are many other properties that define Forex from the gambling industry but that’s another story. I’ve uploaded a new ebook to the site today — Money Management in Gambling. Actually it’s just a section of one book written by Dr. Edward O. Thorp (The Mathematics of Gambling), who was one of the first to introduce high mathematical theories into the professional gambling. His take on money management can be used no only in gambling but also in any financial trading. With the abundance of tables, formulas and examples Thorp explains the most basic and the most useful aspects of money management and risk-wise bet positioning.

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

I’ve upgraded the Forex broker rating system to make it more cheat-proof and to make it show more relevant rating score for each broker. With previous system I had to deal with hundreds of fraudulent votes (both in favor of some brokers and to lower some brokers’ rating). Current system should be much better than the old one and I hope the rating will be more accurate now. Unfortunately, all previous votes have been lost due to the systems’ incompatibility, so you’ll have a chance to rate your favorite/hated brokers again.

Sorting by name (I don’t know why I haven’t added it before) has been also added to general broker list, so now you can sort it by four different properties.

The same functionality has been added to the Russian language part of the site, which has also received its broker review system.

EUR/USD slid to its minimum value since April 14 today on Forex — 1.5675, as the investors started to consider the U.S. currency to be oversold and the further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve — unlikely. Fundamental data that was released today in U.S. was mostly disappointing, but that didn’t help the euro to grow against the dollar.

Initial jobless claims dropped 33k last week — from 375k (revised up from 372k) to 342k, which is below the expected 375k.

Durable goods orders decreased 0.3% in March, while February’s change was revised from -1.5% to -0.9%. The market analysts expected the orders amount not to change in March.

New home sales in United States dropped to 526k in March (annual rate) from 575k in February (revised down from 590k) — below 580k forecast.

I’ve added a very new Forex broker to the site today — Forex-Metal. Its website is still very raw and there is not very much information about this broker on the internet. But I thought that it should be listed because it has one rare feature — it supports both MetaTrader 4 platform for trading and PayPal payment system for deposits and withdrawals. It also supports WebMoney and wire transfers for billing and also offers CFD trading (as almost every MT4 broker). Of course, this broker is still very new, it’s not regulated and it has no reputation, but it may be an interesting opportunity to start trading Forex. Anyway I don’t recommend depositing too much funds in Forex-Metal before it becomes more reputable.

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

U.S. fundamental statistics, that were released today in abundance, appeared to be worse than the market analysts expected. It helped the EUR/USD currency pair to reach its new absolute maximum value at 1.5968 and kept dollar bearish also against the other major currencies.

CPI (Consumer Price Index) rose 0.3% in March — at the same pace as expected. In February this indicator was at 0%.

Housing starts and building permits declined rapidly in March — they were at 947k and 927k respectively, while the forecast values were at 1,010k and 970k respectively. In February housing starts were at 1,075k and building permits were at 984k. All numbers are presented at a seasonally adjusted annual rate.

Industrial production showed a surprise growth at 0.3%, while a fall by 0.1% was expected and it fell 0.7% in February. Capacity utilization remained at the same level in March as in February and as expected — 80.3%.

Crude oil inventories dropped 2.3 million and are in the lower half of the average range for this time of year, as the Energy Information Administration reported.

Due to some new code processing rules in the fresh versions of the MetaTrader 4 platform (I don’t know exactly from which build they’ve changed it) some of the indicators on my site stopped working right or just started to show errors in the platform’s log. Thanks to some conscious visitor, who notices the error and contacted me about it, I’ve corrected this issue with all three indicators that had such problem: Aroon Up & Down, Beginner, Float. I guess you’ll have to download those indicators again if you want them to be working smoothly. Other indicators and expert advisors weren’t affected and should be fine for now.

By the way, if you open .mq4 file from my site you might get some older version of it, because it’s stored in your web browser’s cache, so don’t forget to Ctrl+refresh it if you want a new version (or download a zipped version).

The EUR/USD currency pair post some small drop today on Forex as the fundamental situation in U.S. economy looked better in April for the manufacturing sector. All of the reports that were released today in U.S. showed a positive dynamics for the dollar, helping it to go up against euro, pound and yen. EUR/USD is currently trading at 1.5784.

Producer Price Index in March grew at an unexpected pace — 1.1% compared to 0.3% in February and 0.6% consensus forecast for March.

NY Empire State Index report showed a sharp improvement in the manufacturing sector survey. The index went up from -22.2 to 0.6. It was expected to go up to -17.0 today.

Net foreign purchases of the long-term U.S. securities in February 2008 were also significantly higher than both expected and the previous month values — $72.5 billion. In January they were $57.1 billion (revised down from $62.0 billion) and in this month they were expected to fall to $60.0 billion.