Forex Blog

CPI release for January along with some moderate data on housing lifted traders’ expectations and spurred some good growth of the U.S. dollar with both EUR/USD and GBP/USD losing about a half percent for the day. It may be a good sign for the dollar bulls eventually as it is almost definite now that the recession is either ending or is not going to happen at all.

January CPI grew at the same pace as in December — 0.4% up above the expected by the markets 0.3% growth.

Housing starts during the same month increased from 1,004k to 1,012k, but were slightly below the expected 1,015k level, while building permits decreased from 1,080k to 1,048k and were slightly above the expectations (1,040k).

Currency trading can be approached using a number of different methods. Many mathematical purists will tell you that technical analysis is the only way to go, swearing that they can see the future by poring over chart after chart after chart. Others glance at the trends, ruminate for a minute or two, then go with a hunch and ride a pair wherever it wants to go. Some forex traders, however, attempt to accumulate as much information as they possibly can before investing in a currency pair. These thorough individuals stay apprised of politics, trade and investment, interest rates, consumer trends, the housing market, inflation, capital markets, industry indicators, and the latest economic theory. But even these studious individuals can overlook a resource that offers great insight into developments in the forex markets. This important font of knowledge is, of course, your local weatherman.

While this comment is made at least partially tongue-in-cheek, the idea that the weather could affect the forex markets is not at all far-fetched. Weather conditions have a profound effect on local economies, on energy consumption, and on the all-important agricultural industry. A change in the weather can have a tremendous impact on the economy, causing currency values to fluctuate. This article will examine the affects of North American weather on the Dollar, though the observations herein can easily be applied to most developed countries and their currencies.

So without further ado, here are four ways that the weather affects the dollar: a must-read list for the truly obsessive forexer.

1. Tornados, hurricanes, floods and the like: Hurricane Katrina is a prime example of how natural disasters can affect the Dollar, but these incidents don’t need to be on the scale of Katrina to have an influence on the forex markets. Any weather event that damages property or impacts citizens to the point that they require assistance from local or federal government agencies can put a strain on the Dollar. Sizeable disasters can also affect national morale, causing unease or even panic, neither of which is ever good for the Dollar.
2. Droughts and deluges: Anyone who has ever watched the local news in Iowa knows where the agricultural industry’s priorities lie. By the sixth appearance of the weatherman in the first fifteen minutes of the broadcast, it is evident that the weather is a major economic concern. Any conditions that cause crop failure or harm livestock not only hurt farmers, but they drive up prices and force food retailers to look abroad for substitute products. When this occurs, the trade deficit increases and the Dollar takes a hit.
3. Cold cold winters: An extraordinarily cold winter results in unexpected increases in energy costs for both industries and consumers. As the bulk of the gas and oil used in the US is imported, the Dollar suffers as Americans try to stay warm.
4. Hot hot summers: An abnormally hot summer also leads to higher energy costs for consumers. The summer months are normally spending months, when Americans travel and shop for big-ticket items. If Americans have less disposable income because of increased electricity bills, then everyone is more likely to stay home and enjoy the AC rather than venture out into the heat to buy a new car and start that cross-country trip. In this way, a hot summer can slow the economy and have a deflating effect on the Dollar.

By-line:
Heather Johnson is a freelance finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor for CurrencyTrading.net, a site for currency trading and forex trading information. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

I’ve added a new calculator to the Forex tools section of the site — it’s a Position Size Calculator. It’s largely inspired by the Forex Position Size Calculator created by Rich Paredes from ForexProject.com. I’ve tried to improve it with own vision of the position size calculation and now you can check it out. It calculates position size in units and lots, it also returns the amount of risked money or the risk ratio for your position. Account currency and leverage are stored in the cookies.

Pip Value Calculator has been also upgraded so that you can now select account currency different from USD, it will also remember your selection for your next visit.

Recently I’ve been contacted by the manager of Forex Trading Edge. It’s quite a new Forex broker that started to operate near the end of 2007. Forex Trading Edge is the introducing broker for Forex.com broker. Usually I don’t like to list the introducing brokers as the separate entities, but this one got my attention, because it offers a MetaTrader 4 platform, something that Forex.com is missing. Besides MT4, it also offers original trading platform of Forex.com and the NinjaTrader platform. Payments methods are limited — only wire transfer, checks and credit cards — no e-currencies. Another disadvantage that Forex Trading Edge has is that it’s not accepting citizens of the United Kingdom. But for other Forex traders that wanted to join Forex.com, but prefer MetaTrader 4 over other platforms, this is definitely a good choice.

Soon the New 2008 Year will come and I just want to wish you a happy Forex/CFD/Stocks trading in the next year. Earn more than you’ve got in 2007, learn new strategies and open new opportunities on the Forex market! Never stop at what you’ve already mastered and you will find your own financial freedom!

Dollar continued to strengthen against major currency pairs (except the Swiss franc) even after the very pessimistic release of the December NY Empire State Manufacturing Index report, which fell down by 17 points to 10.3. Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that the new orders and shipments declined significantly in December according to their survey.

Among the good news was the Treasury International Capital report for October - net foreign purchases of the long-term securities was at the pretty high number (compared to $15.4B revised for September) - $114 billion, showing some elevated confidence in the U.S. economy.

I’ve added a new Forex e-book to my site - The Forex Trader’s Cheat Sheet. It’s not just a book, but a real cheat sheet which can be used every time you consider opening a new position on Forex market. It has several pages of explanations on how to apply its statistical data and a printable version of cheat sheet for 5 currency pairs: GBP/USD, GBP/JPY, EUR/USD, USD/CHF and USD/JPY. As the authors say - it doesn’t tell you HOW to trade, it tells you WHEN to do it. But it also has recommendations on position target sizing. Forex Trader’s Cheat Sheet is based on the statistical data for H4 timeframe - you can consult it to determine if the trend which you are seeing now is going to last or is it at its end.

I’ve checked the performance of this cheat sheet combined with a simple moving averages cross system and it was quite good. I used GBP/USD on H4 timeframe on the last two months period. Near 80% of all generated trades were profitable with an average profit/loss rate of more than 2.5. Use it wisely :-).

EUR/USD stopped its fall today and jumped back up to 1.4670 levels on Forex after today’s Federal Reserve release on industrial production. In this October industrial production fell by 0.5% after 0.2% growth in September and median expectation at 0.1% for this month. That means that FOMC will probably need to adjust U.S. interest rates once again to stimulate economy growth.

With the decrease of industrial production, economy of the Unites States showed a decrease in industrial capacity utilization (which, of course, could be a cause for production drop). It fell from September’s 82.2% to 81.7%, while an insignificant difference was expected (82.0%).

While Henry Paulson of U.S. Treasury spoke that Government will conduct a “strong dollar” policy. Its hardly can be done with such economical indicators reports. “Currency will represent the U.S. economical growth” - that was the main idea of Paulson’s speech. But if economy is taking damage? Dollar will continue its demise.

Net foreign purchases of the long-term U.S. securities in September were at $55.4 billion. This is better than the August’s negative -$33.6 billion, but worse than expected number ($66.0 billion) and average 2006 monthly net foreign purchases ($97.2 billion).

Currency Trader is one of my favorite monthly read. It is published every month by http://www.currencytradermag.com/ website and contains many articles by professional authors. Articles vary from covering recent news topics to technical analysis matters, to fundamental macroeconomic factors. From every issue I learn a lot of important information on global economics and some interesting connections between various financial markets and Forex. For those who don’t have economic education this magazine is a good way to get some, at least to improve trading experience. The best thing about Currency Trader is that it is completely free - you can subscribe for it here: http://www.currencytradermag.com/subscribe_acrobat.htm. The worst thing — it has a lot of advertising. There is so much of it that content is almost lost in ads.

For some reason guys from Active Trader Magazine Group, which publishes Currency Trader Magazine, doesn’t want it to be freely downloaded from anywhere. So, I had to remove it all from my site. If you still want to read this magazine, you can subscribe to the new issues for free, or you can always find past issues somewhere else (P2P networks, for example).

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.