Does currency trading interest?

199316 Resource 128466 128654 128654 1205302278804 1205302278804 Controlled European Morning Update 12th March 2008

Dolalr edges back lower over the Asian session

Releases from Australia:                                                                        Prior      Current Australian March Westpac Consumer Confidence   - 5.5%    - 9.1% While Australians have been busy buying bigger houses they don’t appear to be too confident about it. Consumer sentiment declined fro the 3rd consecutive month on the back of a lower stock market and higher interest rates bringing the index to 14 year lows. And Australians won’t be happy with the fact that Australian banks are hiking mortgage rates by 35bp which is more than the RBA’s 25bp hike last week. There seems little doubt that Australia’s economy has peaked but the slowdown has been limited with employments at 32 year highs. Rather than see a dramatic fallout the economy should continue to slow gradually over the coming months. Releases from Japan:                                       Forecast    Actual Q4 GDP (F)          (QoQ)     +0.6%     +0.9% Q4 GDP (F)           (YoY)     +2.3%     +3.5%January Trade Balance BOP  JPY      73.1bn    85.8bnFebruary Domestic CGPI     (MoM)     +0.3%     +0.4% Domestic CGPI      (YoY)     +3.3%     +3.4% Bankruptcies         (YoY)                    +5.3% Consumer Confidence            37.5        36.1Quite a few releases from Japan today have seen a mixed result. Q4’s GDP was revised lower by a much smaller margin than expected while January’s trade balance was marginally above forecasts. However, we are seeing price rises filtering through into Japan, today’s domestic CGPI seeing a slightly larger rise that anticipated and will pass through to retail prices over this month and next as companies announce price rises – in some case up to 5%-10%. The 3.4% YoY increase is the strongest pace in 27 years. No wonder the Japanese consumer is becoming more morose with February consumer confidence dipping for to the lowest level in almost 5 years at 36.1. Households are watching the deterioration in economic conditions while inflation begins to take a stronger hold. Elsewhere the MOF has reported declining corporate profits which saw a -4.5% drop in  last year. It does show that with rising prices and lower retail sales that Japanese businesses are finding life difficult following the fallout from the subprime. The following economic releases are due today:January U.K. Visible Trade Deficit              GBP    -7.50bn U.K. Total Trade Deficit                GBP    -4.60bn Euro-zone Industrial Production   (MoM)    +0.4% Euro-zone Industrial Production   (YoY)     +2.6%February French CPI                               (MoM)    +0.4% French CPI                                (YoY)    +3.0%March Swiss ZEW Survey: Expectations Bloomberg Global Confidence At last we have seen a pullback in the Dollar. It has been firm but probably not quite enough and this then begs the question of how this will all play out. I do admit there are several ways this can happen but if I’m to put any greater weight on one of them then it’ll be for a choppy and erratic affair that will see the Dollar weaken again today but then see grudging gains once again. The second favored alternative would be for further direct gains but then followed by sideways consolidation. What both these imply is time. I don’t think this correction will be a brief affair and therefore I am more inclined to more complex corrections.Overall I see approximate Dollar caps around 1.5072-1.5144 Euro, 1.0480-09 Swissie, 1.9864-1.9916 Pound and 104.63-80 Yen. So the first thing we need to do is watch the support levels which separate the two favored scenarios so that if the supports break then the messy and choppy correction becomes favored. Of course given the circumstances we may find some divergence between currency pairs and this may complicate the short term picture.Overall I still see this as a correction within the larger Dollar decline and this should still imply new lows by April and possibly into May. Note important support and resistance areas:         USDJPY        EURUSD       USDCHF       GBPUSD Res:  104.00-22    1.5460-94    1.0480-09    2.0209-18 Res:  103.20-57    1.5388-13    1.0330-52    2.0149-65Spt:   102.48-70    1.5281-06    1.0242-82    2.0050-80 Spt:   101.93-23    1.5144-88    1.0147-83    1.9949-68 9 application/xml false Australia CGPI consumer confidence corporate service prices currencies Forex FX GDP inflation Japan Trade Balance Does currency trading interest? Read more about 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