Sifting through the smiles, bad news still concerns me ...

There's a steady stream of analysts now taking their chance at calling a bottom for stock markets. I mean, why not jump on the taste of optimism that the market is serving up? If soothing-sayers are proven wrong on their upbeat expectations, and stocks break to new multi-decade lows, more than likely their predictions will be tossed down the memory hole (as Jack likes to say.)

Of course, there's a fair share of pessimistic forecasters still issuing warnings; but they're not getting quite as much press of late because a lot of people are growing somewhat tired of all the dour predictions.

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Published: 09 April 2009
Written by Editor
Forex  

FX Trading – The dollar’s Achilles Heel?

If you have been reading our daily missives you probably know that we’ve dubbed the problems in central and eastern Europe as the Achilles Heel for the euro as these problems can easily be transmitted into big trouble for European banking. But we haven’t spiked out an Achilles Heel for the US dollar (silver bullet so to speak), though we know it’s there. Maybe the growing woes facing US state and local pensions represent it. Here is a scenario, we’re not sure how plausible any of it really is, but thinking about this stuff we think helps no matter your position.

The potential ticking time bomb is the massive US state and local pension funding problem highlighted on the front page of the Financial Times this morning. Why this the Achilles Heel for the dollar? Because it could eat away at the domestic pool of US savings we expected to materialize.

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Published: 08 April 2009
Written by Editor
Forex  

FX Trading – Bad News: In or Not-Yet-In?

What’s the story? Is bad news priced into the markets? More specifically, is the crummy potential for first quarter US earnings season priced into markets?

Alcoa kicks things off today and clearly the expectations for the season are dismal. About somewhere just south of a 40% contraction in overall earnings is expected in companies’ first-quarter showing.

Considering the labor situation (among other things) it’s clear that corporate health is still on the skids. Stocks, however, have rallied strongly over the last month, recovering from big-time lows.

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Published: 07 April 2009
Written by Editor

Gold below a key level—dollar chasing or leading…

Now that gold has slipped below seeming near-term chart support at $893; is the next level at 858 in the cards?

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Published: 06 April 2009
Written by Editor
Forex  

Declare victory and party hard!

A new world order has emerged. Well, Mr. Gordon Brown said so!

This was our favorite line in a story from the Financial Times this morning summarizing yet another gathering of world leaders long on smiles and commitments, but short on details of how to get there:

"Mr. Brown claimed that China had agreed a $40bn contribution to IMF funds. Chinese authorities could not confirm that last night. The IMF declined to comment."

That's Fresh!

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Published: 03 April 2009
Written by Editor
Forex  
  1. Currency Currents - 04/02/2009
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  3. Currency Currents - 03/31/2009
  4. Currency Currents - 03/30/2009
  5. Currency Currents - 03/27/2009