Thinking of switching to trade currencies?

195941 Resource 128466 128654 128654 1201680909178 1201680909178 Controlled European Mid Morning Update 30th January 2008

The countdown begins...

Releases from Europe:                                                                              Forecast   Actual January French Business Survey: Overall Demand       18.0      13.0Little out so far today – just the French demand survey which unsurprisingly marked a decline from last October of 5 points. This reflects a decline in the ratio of respondents looking for a rise in demand. Will have no impact but does confirm the trend. The following economic releases are due today: Q4 U.S. GDP Annualized          (4Q A)    +1.2% U.S. Personal Consumption (4Q A)   +2.8% U.S. Core PCE                    (4Q A)   +2.5%December U.K. M4 Money Supply (F)    (MoM)   +1.5% U.K. M4 Money Supply (F)     (YoY)   12.3% U.K. M4 Sterling Lending (F)   GBP  U.K. Net Consumer Credit       GBP     1.1bnJanuary Italian Retailer’s Confidence General  Italian Services Survey Italian Bloomberg Retail PMI French Bloomberg Retail PMI               51.0 German Bloomberg Retail PMI Euro-zone Bloomberg Retail PMI Swiss KOF Leading Indicator                1.95 U.S. ADP Employment Change              40K And of course the news of the day is the FOMC decision…However, I'm sitting here wondering why the Fed would go into last week's decision and I can only suppose that they decided that they wanted to act before the FOMC given the state of the Dow Jones. I cannot fathom why they would want to cut 75bp and still have intention to cut another 50bp... 125bp in one week? Smacks of panic.   Given that the Soc Gen squaring may have contributed (and thus doesn't reflect investor sentiment) I reckon we'll get 25bp at most and only because they will probably want to avoid the market panicking again.   Let's face it, Japan had a zero rate policy for a long time and it wasn't really that which prompted the (very) shallow recovery. That came on the back of global demand - and therefore can be attributed to globalization. Remember the domestic economy here is poor to bad...   Therefore there is only so much that can be gained by lower interest rates. The pressing need is to ensure consumers continue spending - that's 55% of GDP. That is not so much an issue of interest rates but confidence. That's what the fiscal stimulation package is for... But the FOMC decision is not the only news of the day. The U.S. also releases its preliminary Q4 GDP (annualized) expected to around +1.2%. This is going to be possibly more important than the rate decision.It will tell us exactly the strength of the U.S. economy as we move into the Presidential election year. Any figure above +1.2% will be positive as the markets will have to reappraise the likelihood of a recession and whether the fiscal stimulation package will stave off recession.Anything below doesn’t bare contemplation…While not as influential we also have the Euro-zone retail PMI numbers which will provide us with more information as to how strong the recent pullback in the economy has been. They have looked a little better but the other side of the coin is just how long this can last.I sense we’ll see the Dollar higher by the end of the day. Note important support and resistance areas:         USDJPY        EURUSD       USDCHF       GBPUSD Res:  107.88-20    1.4885-21    1.1015-55    2.0006-44 Res:  107.21-43    1.4796-32    1.0960-66    1.9927-62Spt:   106.37-51    1.4705-28    1.0882-88    1.9845-50 Spt:   105.40-76    1.4610-59    1.0806-11    1.9747-81 9 application/xml false currencies demand European Fed FOMC Forex French FX interest rates PMI Thinking of switching to trade currencies? Read more about the opportunities in the Forex market http://www.gftforex.com/land/index.asp?aid=446 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; hc; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; MS-RTC LM 8) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 ICopsey 202.216.243.97 false true false false true 128466 blog blogsite/GFTForex/web