Forex Blog

U.S. dollar gained against other currencies today, showing a significant change in GBP/USD, along with a little less strong appreciation in EUR/USD. As no important positive data was released for USD, this growth may be accounted to the inertial buying of dollar and position closing on the previous good news and the loss of interest to carry trade.

Final numbers for GDP growth and GDP deflator in Q3 2007 were released today, but they didn’t change anything at all as they were known long before today. GDP growth remained the same - at 4.9%, a very high number for U.S. economy, GDP deflator was revised from 0.9% to 1.0% - an insignificant change.

Weekly report from the U.S. Department of Labor showed that initial jobless claims reached 346k - above the expected 335k and 12k above the previous 334k amount.

Leading indicators continued their decline in November - they fell by 0.4% - a slightly better then 0.5% dropdown in October, but worse than -0.3% that was expected by market analysts. On the bright side, leading indicators is not an important market parameter for Forex.

Philadelphia Fed November index disappointed dollar bulls with a -5.7 value, whereas October value was at 8.2 and a slight drop to 6.0 was expected by the market participants.

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.

Today after CPI report came out to be higher than expected (Consumers Price Index in March (YoY) reached 3.1% against expected 2.8%), GBP/USD broke through the historical $2 level and is floating now in 2.0030-2.0070 range - the highest since 1981. Looks like bad times for USD have came. On the other hand it’s nearly a perfect time to enter long on USD, because the correction will certainly follow. Though, Forex market can’t be treated that simple.