Friday, 2 July 2010

EUR/USD Rallies with U.S. Wholesale Inventories

EUR/USD went up significantly today on the background of the rising wholesale inventories in United States, but the main reason for the rally was probably in the Greece’s bailout expectation. The currency pair reached its highest level since Tuesday and is now trading near 1.3470.

Wholesale inventories continued to grow in February and increased by 0.6% during that month after a growth of 0.1% during January. The estimate of the wholesale inventories growth was at 0.4%.

Initial jobless claims were reported yesterday. They rose from 442k to 460k last week, while the forecasts were for a decline to 435k.

Dollar Consolidates on Trade Balance Deficit Growth

EUR/USD consolidated today with a previous movement both up and down, as the traders are unsure about the further direction for the pair. The dollar’s dynamics against the euro is affected strongly by the events in Europe and less of the market participants look seriously at the U.S. statistics nowadays. EUR/USD is now trading near 1.3599.

U.S. trade balance deficit rose from $37.0 billion to $39.7 billion in February as the imports rose 10 times faster than the exports during the month. The median forecast value for the deficit was at $39.0 billion.

Both import and export prices rose by 0.7% in February in United States. This growth followed 0.2% drop for the import prices and 0.4% drop for the export prices reported for January.

Yesterday, a report on the U.S. Treasury budget for March was released. It showed a deficit of $65.4 billion, which significantly below the $191.6 billion deficit reported for March 2009, but is worse than $62.0 billion deficit predicted by the analysts.

New Resource About Forex Bonuses

A new Forex resource went on-line today. It was created to present the available Forex bonuses to the traders, allowing them to get the detailed information about the bonuses, read other traders’ reviews and participate by reviewing and rating the brokers’ bonus programs.

ForexBonus.com is currently listing 32 active bonuses from 13 different Forex brokers. The bonuses are divided into 7 major categories:

* Deposit Bonuses — the ones that require some real account deposit to get a bonus.
* No Deposit Bonuses — the ones that don’t require any deposit to receive a bonus.
* Trading Bonuses — the premiums for trading a certain amount of currency units.
* Demo Contests — trading competitions among the Forex demo accounts.
* Real Contests — trading competitions among the real trading accounts.
* Drawings — random prize drawings among the Forex traders.
* Special Bonuses — other bonuses.

After going through a very simple registration process (takes less than a minute), you can rate the bonuses and post your reviews if you’ve some experience with any of the listed bonus offer. The site is still quite fresh, so you can direct your suggestions and bug notifications to me.

Euro Fails to Appreciate Against Dollar

EUR/USD failed to go up significantly today and retreated even before reaching the Monday’s high level, as the fundamental indicators hinted a soon rate hike in the United States. The pair is currently trading near 1.3629 and it looks like the traders aren’t quite sure where to go now.

Retail sales unexpectedly rose by 1.6% in March after 0.5% increase in February. The forecasts pointed only at 1.2% growth. Such a fast improvement of the U.S. retail sector may become a very positive signal for the Fed and for the dollar.

Consumer price index (CPI) went up by 0.1% in March, following a zero change in February. It wen up in accordance with the median forecast.

Business inventories rose by 0.5% in February — faster than 0.2% growth in January and the expected 0.4% gain for February.

Crude oil inventories decreased by 2.2 million barrels last week. Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 1.1 million barrels during the same period in U.S.

EUR/USD Falls Before Macroeconomics Released

EUR/USD went down today before the a group of important macroeconomic reports were released. After release, the currency pair corrected up slightly. It’s now trading near 1.3564.

Initial jobless claims went up by 24k to 484k last week. They were expected to decline to 440k instead.

Net foreign purchases of the U.S. long-term securities were at $47.1 billion in February — up from $15 billion in January. The forecasts were near $29.7 billion.

NY Empire State index showed a growth from 22.9 to 31.9 in April, while the traders expected only a slight gain to 24.0.

Industrial production rose by 0.1% in February, while capacity utilization increased from 73.0% to 73.2% during the month. Both parameters were expected to increase faster.

Philadelphia Fed index increased from 18.9 to 20.2 in April — landing only little above the forecast value of 20.0.

EUR/USD Falls on European Problem and Improved U.S. Housing

The dollar continued to rise versus the euro today as the European problems with Greece prove to be rather unresolvable in the near-term period. Meanwhile, some positive reports about the real estate market in United States spurred some confidence in the U.S. dollar. EUR/USD is now trading near 1.3514.

Housing starts rose from the annual seasonally-adjusted rate of 616k to 626k in March, better than the 610k forecast value. Building permits increased from 637k to 685k during the same month, exceeding the forecast of 625k.

University of Michigan consumer sentiment index decreased from 73.6 to 69.5 in April according to the preliminary report released today. It was expected to go up to 75.0.

Forex Account Hacking — a Real Problem?

A few days ago a trader from a popular Forex forum asked a question concerning the safety of the Forex trading accounts from hacking and other security-related issues, specifically about the safety of the MetaTrader 4 accounts. While there is a dependence between the security policy of the trading platform and the security of the funds in the trading account, the more important is the security policy of the specific Forex broker. There are four major types of the potential important problems in the brokers’ security:

1. Login/password policy can allow unsafe combination of login and password.
2. Login/password policy can allow unlimited number incorrect entries without CAPTCHA testing.
3. The servers of the broker can be insecure.
4. The personal of the broker can disclose traders’ account data out of some illegal reasons.

It’s always good to choose a Forex broker with a strict security policy, but no trader should forget about his own password security policy. Most of the password are illegally retrieved through phishing e-mails, trojan viruses and other fraudulent actions. It’s always good to have a good anti-virus software installed (I recommend Avira — it’s free, fast and can detect all the viruses). Remember, that the security of your money always depends on you too.