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Sunday, May 23, 2010

US Dollar Forecast


Fundamental Outlook for US Dollar: Bullish

- US Dollar surges as financial market confidence erodes
- Yet Greenback sinks despite further risk aversion
- Forex sentiment nonetheless points to further US Dollar, Japanese Yen gains

The US Dollar finished the week considerably higher against all except the Euro and Japanese Yen, fueled by a 4+ percent decline in the S&P 500 and broader financial market risk aversion. US stocks briefly saw themselves below last week’s “flash crash” lows as major indices saw their biggest single-day decline since April, 2009. A sharp rebound into Friday’s close suggests that bulls still have some fight left in them, but the S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) remains at impressive heights and emphasizes fear surrounding major financial markets.
Whether or not the US Dollar can continue higher against major counterparts will almost certainly depend on the trajectory of the S&P 500 and other financial market risk barometers. An effectively empty week of US economic event risk tells us that the Greenback will almost exclusively take its cues from other markets. To that effect, it may be especially important to watch whether Sunday-to-Monday’s sessions and whether they set the tone for the subsequent days of price action.

The S&P and Dow Jones Industrials Average started the past week sharply lower but recovered noticeably into Monday’s session close. Yet even at this early stage we saw key indicators such as the VIX and the Treasury-Eurodollar (TED) interest rate spread climb to fresh multi-month highs, emphasizing growing tensions below the surface. The steady climb in risk premiums show that credit markets are once again growing risk averse and greatly favoring the security of Government debt.

Three-month LIBOR rates now stand 35bp above the equivalent Treasury security—the largest difference since June, 2009. It serves to note that the credit crisis of 2008 saw the TED spread balloon to a massive 480bps and the more recent premium pales in comparison. Yet recent trends show a steady deterioration in market confidence, and we cannot rule out further flare-ups in market tensions.

Traders should watch market reactions to the coming week’s Conference Board Consumer Confidence results, Durable Goods Orders data, and revisions to US Gross Domestic Product figures. It is difficult to handicap the notoriously volatile Consumer Confidence and Durable Goods Orders releases, while GDP revisions are widely expected to show that the US economy grew slightly more than previously reported through the first quarter of the year. Positive surprises in said releases could arguably improve fundamental outlook for the US economy and calm financial market nerves. Yet it is difficult to imagine that financial markets will suddenly embrace risk and conditions will dramatically improve on a string of economic releases. In the absence of a substantive improvement in key risk barometers, the US Dollar may continue to gain against the highly risk-sensitive commodity currency bloc and other key counterparts. - DR

How far do you think the dollar will rally? Discuss the dollar’s future in the DailyFX Forum.

For more timely FX market analysis, take advantage of the DailyFX Real Time News service.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Forex Glossary

ADX (Average Directional Index) — standard technical indicator that measures the strength of a trend.

Ask (Offer) — price of the offer, the price you buy for.

Aussie — a Forex slang name for the Australian dollar.

Bank Rate — the percentage rate at which central bank of a country lends money to the country's commercial banks.

Bid — price of the demand, the price you sell for.

Broker — the market participating body which serves as the middleman between retail traders and larger commercial institutions.

Cable — a Forex traders slang word GBP/USD currency pair.

Carry Trade — in Forex, holding a position with a positive overnight interest return in hope of gaining profits, without closing the position, just for the central banks interest rates difference.

CCI (Commodity Channel Index) — a cyclical technical indicator that is often used to detect overbought/oversold states of the market.

CFD — a Contract for Difference — special trading instrument that allows financial speculation on stocks, commodities and other instruments without actually buying.

Commission — broker commissions for operation handling.

CPI — consumer price index the statistical measure of inflation based upon changes of prices of a specified set of goods.

EA (Expert Advisor) — an automated script which is used by the trading platform software to manage positions and orders automatically without (or with little) manual control.

ECN Broker — a type of Forex brokerage firm that provide its clients direct access to other Forex market participants. ECN brokers don't discourage scalping, don't trade against the client, don't charge spread (low spread is defined by current market prices) but charge commissions for every order.

ECB (European Central Bank) — the main regulatory body of the European Union financial system.

Fed (Federal Reserve) — the main regulatory body of the United States of America financial system, which division — FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) — regulates, among other things, federal interest rates.

Fibonacci Retracements — the levels with a high probability of trend break or bounce, calculated as the 23.6%, 32.8%, 50% and 61.8% of the trend range.

Flat (Square) — neutral state when all your positions are closed.

Fundamental Analysis — the analysis based only on news, economic indicators and global events.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) — is a measure of the national income and output for the country's economy; it's one of the most important Forex indicators.

GTC (Good Till Canceled) — order to buy or sell of a currency with a fixed price or worse. The order is alive (good) until execution or cancellation.

Hedging — maintaining a market position which secures the existing open positions in the opposite direction.

Jobber — a slang word for a trader which is aimed toward fast but small and short-term profit from an intra-day trading. Jobber rarely leaves open positions overnight.

Kiwi — a Forex slang name for the New Zealand currency — New Zealand dollar.

Leading Indicators — a composite index (year 1992 = 100%) of ten most important macroeconomic indicators that predicts future (6-9 months) economic activity.

Limit Order — order for a broker to buy the lot for fixed or lesser price or sell the lot for fixed or better price. Such price is called limit price.

Liquidity — the measure of markets which describes relationship between the trading volume and the price change.

Long — the position which is in a Buy direction. In Forex, the primary currency when bought is long and another is short.

Loss — the loss from closing long position at lower rate than opening or short position with higher rate than opening, or if the profit from a position closing was lower than broker commission on it.

Lot — definite amount of units or amount of money accepted for operations handling (usually it is a multiple of 100).

Margin — money, the investor needs to keep at broker account to execute trades. It supplies the possible losses which may occur in margin trading.

Margin Account — account which is used to hold investor's deposited money for FOREX trading.

Margin Call — demand of a broker to deposit more margin money to the margin account when the amount in it falls below certain minimum.

Market Order — order to buy or sell a lot for a current market price.

Market Price — the current price for which the currency is traded for on the market.

Momentum — the measure of the currency's ability to move in the given direction.

Moving Average (MA) — one of the most basic technical indicators. It shows the average rate calculated over a series of time periods. Exponential Moving Average (EMA), Weighted Moving Average (WMA) etc. are just the ways of weighing the rates and the periods.

Offer (Ask) — price of the offer, the price you buy for.

Open Position (Trade) — position on buying (long) or selling (short) for a currency pair.

Order — order for a broker to buy or sell the currency with a certain rate.

Pivot Point — the primary support/resistance point calculated basing on the previous trend's High, Low and Close prices.

Pip (Point) — the last digit in the rate (e.g. for EUR/USD 1 point = 0.0001).

Profit (Gain) — positive amount of money gained for closing the position.

Principal Value — the initial amount of money of the invested.

Realized Profit/Loss — gain/loss for already closed positions.

Resistance — price level for which the intensive selling can lead to price increasing (up-trend).

RSI (Relative Strength Index) — indicator that measures of the power of direction price movement by comparing the bullish and bearish portions of the trend.

Scalping — a style of trading notable by many positions that are opened for extremely small and short-term profits.

Settled (Closed) Position — closed positions for which all needed transactions has been made.

Slippage — execution of order for a price different than expected (ordered), main reasons for slippage are — "fast" market, low liquidity and low broker's ability to execute orders.

Spread — difference between ask and bid prices for a currency pair.

Standard Lot — 100,000 units of the base currency of the currency pair, which you are buying or selling.

Stop-Limit Order — order to sell or buy a lot for a certain price or worse.

Stop-Loss Order — order to sell or buy a lot when the market reaches certain price. It is used to avoid extra losses when market moves in the opposite direction. Usually is a combination of stop-order and limit-order.

STP (Straight Through Processing) — an order processing that doesn't require any manual intervention and is fully automatic. In fact, 99.9% of all on-line Forex brokers support order handling with STP.

Support — price level for which intensive buying can lead to the price decreasing (down-trend).

Swap — overnight payment for holding your position. Since you are not physically receiving the currency you buy, your broker should pay you the interest rate difference between the two currencies of the pair. It can be negative or positive.

Technical Analysis — the analysis based only on the technical market data (quotes) with the help of various technical indicators.

Trend — direction of market which has been established with influence of different factors.

Unrealized (Floating) Profit/Loss — a profit/loss for your non-closed positions.

Useable Margin — amount of money in the account that can be used for trading.

Used Margin — amount of money in the account already used to hold open positions open.

Volatility — a statistical measure of the number of price changes for a given currency pair in a given period of time.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) — virtual environment hosted on the dedicated server, which can be used to run the programs independent on the user's PC. Forex traders use VPS to host trading platforms and run expert advisors without unexpected interruptions.

The USD dollar against the EURO - Watch this market

The USD dollar against the EURO - Watch this market

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Forex FAQ

What is Forex?

You can read the detailed answer in the separate section of the site — "What is Forex?".

How can I start trading Forex?

You'll need to register a trading account with a Forex broker, such as Marketiva. Then you can begin using their Forex client program to buy and sell currencies. This will take less than 5 minutes of your time!

Who owns Forex and where is it located?

It's not owned by anyone in particular. Forex is an Interbank market, meaning that its transactions are conducted only between two participants - seller and the buyer. So as long as the current banking system will exist, Forex will be here. It's not connected to any specific country or government organization.

What are the working hours of Forex market?

Forex market is open from 22:00 GMT Sunday (opening of Australia trading session) till 22:00 GMT Friday (closing of USA trading session).

What is margin?

Margin is money you need to have in your broker account to secure your open position. Different brokers require different amount of margin money to keep your positions open.

What are the "long" and "short" positions?

Long position is a "buy" position, meaning that this position will be in profit if price goes up. Short position is a "sell" position, meaning that this position will be in profit if price goes down.

What is the best Forex trading strategy?

There is none. You should constantly develop your own strategies for every possible market situation, if you want to be in profit. Specific strategies can only be good for a certain period of time and for certain currency pairs.

How much money do I need to start trading Forex?

With some Forex brokers you can start trading Forex with as little as $1. Usually, the minimum amount varies from $100 to $10,000 ($100,000 and more for Interbank trading).

I can't (or don't want to) install any Forex trading software on my computer. Can I still trade Forex?

If you don't want (or it is not possible) to install new software to start trading Forex then a good option for you would be using web based trading platform. You can browse our Forex brokers list to find those which support such platform. Here is a short list of those brokers which have web based trading options:

* eToro
* Aurora Global Markets
* Easy Forex
* Forex Capital Trading
* Oanda
* Interactive Brokers


I've downloaded the expert advisor for MetaTrader platform but I don't know how to install it. What should I do?

You can read the MetaTrader Expert Advisors User's Tutorial to find out how to intstall those expert advisors.

I've downloaded a custom indicator for MetaTrader platform but I don't know how to install it. What should I do?

You can read the MetaTrader Indicators User's Tutorial to find out how to intstall those indicators.

Can I lose more than I invest in Forex?

No. The broker won't allow you to lose more than the available funds on your trading account. It will simply close your losing position when the resulting account balance becomes too close to zero. The loss that is bigger than the trader's deposit is a direct loss of the Forex broker. It's in the brokers' interest to prevent such losses. To secure themselves brokers implement a Stop-Out level (usually about 20%), which means that the most losing position will be closed once (free margin / used margin) * 100% becomes equal or less than this level.

Your question was not answered here?

You can try to find an answer on the Forex forum or you can contact me if the question isn't answered anywhere.

Manual or Automated Forex Trading

Manual or Automated Forex Trading?

There are two main methods of trading in Forex (and in any other financial market too) — manual and automated. When you trade manually you open and close market orders yourself. Of course, you can still use the pending orders, stop-loss, take-profit and trailing stop orders, but the main trading decisions are always yours. In automated trading you delegate all your trading decisions to some trading robot or expert advisor. Of course, you can control it via some input parameters or by attaching it to different currency pairs and timeframes, but it’s still an automated Forex trading because all market orders are carried out by an automated system.

Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages. For me, it’s just not comfortable enough to trust my real money account to some expert advisor. That doesn’t mean that I don’t use automated trading at all, but I still use expert advisors only on demo, trying to develop the one, which I would be able to trust my real trading. And how do you feel about automated and manual Forex trading?