Forex rebates on every trade - win or lose!

Been watching late-night (early-morning)news and it seems likely the dollar will firm soon when Bush's victory is finally confirmed. But for how long?

Hope it firms soon! I seem to be going in the wrong direction at the moment!

Sue,

The Dollar broke support this morning. You should now be long Cable (ie short USD) above circa 18350 imo.

CHICAGO (AFX) -- The dollar remained higher against the Japanese yen in U.S. trading Wednesday, with preliminary returns from the presidential election tipped toward incumbent President George Bush, although the final outcome may still be a week or so away.

U.S. stocks were expected to move higher as Bush emerged the probable winner, boosting demand from foreigners for the dollars needed to place U.S. equity investments.

The dollar had been higher against the euro, but had since given ground to Europe's shared currency. The buck also halved its gain against the yen.

'The pre-election bearish sentiment seems to have reasserted itself on the dollar amid deficit concerns and expectations that the reelected Bush administration will let the dollar soften,' said Ronald Simpson, currency analyst with Action Economics.

The dollar was quoted at 106.48 yen, up 0.4 percent from late U.S. trading. A holiday in Japan kept volume light in Asian trading.

The euro was up 0.1 percent at $1.2757. The British pound rose 0.1 percent to $.18436.

Against its Swiss counterpart, the dollar edged down 0.1 percent to 1.2013 francs.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said Wednesday morning that President Bush has secured the Electoral College votes needed. Democratic challenger John Kerry's campaign has said it will await the counting of provisional ballots in the crucial swing state of Ohio.

The dollar was supported overnight as global financial markets grew more confident this year's election, despite its closeness, would be resolved more quickly than in 2000. Worries about a repeat of the prolonged recounting process in the last election have weighed on the dollar in recent sessions.

The key words were 'slight' and 'might,' said James D. Malcolm, foreign exchange strategist at Deutsche Bank in Singapore.

'We might -- might -- get a resolution sooner rather than later, which is giving the dollar a slight -- slight -- lift,' Malcolm said earlier in the trading day. 'In the meantime, everybody is watching the polls, and there's very little appetite to take risk. Volume is fairly low, with not much in the way of directional bets.'

For the euro, '$1.2630 is going to be an important test level,' said Malcolm, as the European currency's recent low was $1.2628. 'If we can trade below that, it will take out some support in the market.'

Bear Stearns currency strategist Steve Barrow said the election outcome is not really important for the dollar's long-term outlook, and therefore declines will likely resume shortly.

'One other issue to bear in mind is that the prospect of a Bush victory has already lifted oil prices sharply, and this could be reflected in some other commodities as well, helping commodity currencies and so limiting any dollar rally,' Barrow said.

J.P. Morgan currency strategist Yen Ping Ho said in a research note Wednesday, said that once the election outcome is decided, focus will switch to the upside risks of non-farm payroll data on Friday.

The latest report is expected to show the U.S. economy added 176,000 jobs last month, according to a survey conducted by CBS MarketWatch.

hilary - thanks.

No fxcm???????????????????

are all the strategies for the day before? they all seem to be dated 3erd Nov???

They don't normally appear until mid-morning, Sue. John Hardy at Saxo probably gives the best precis imo shortly after 9am.

thanks hilary.

well that was fun,Hilary hope you did well.

Hilary. Could I ask you where you are getting your streaming news from - you posted the non-farm payroll figure so quickly. Thanks.
Was long with very tight stops, but made up my losses and a little bit more on the spike down and the first bounce up. Should have done what I was going to do - a long with cmc with tight stop, and a short with IG with a tight stop!

Maggot,

They started buying the $ at 13:27, so I suspected that they'd beaten the street. I got the news from Bloomberg. Digital TV though, not the internet which seems to lag.

I had a limit long @1.8390 with a stop at 1.8370 on cmc. both went at same time. fastest 200 I have lost to date. Also set my next long limit to low to profit from bounce. Another day another dollar.

Thanks, Hilary. Bloomberg seem to be pretty good - pity I can't hear them. And as you say there seems to be a two-minute lag before it comes online.

What has hapened to saxo bank market call,can`t get it at the mo,or is it me.

It's been unavailable all week, Cloggs. Don't know why.

Thank`s for that Hilary,long cable but not doing to well at the mo.

Bit of uncertainty and position squaring ahead of the FOMC, I'd say. It's had a good run up these last few weeks.

LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge funds may have triggered it, but the dollar's sharp slide over the past few weeks is more than just speculation -- it is a reflection of mainstream investors scrambling to dump the currency.

Whether the sell-off is warranted remains a matter of contention. But at least for now, momentum is propelling the dollar to record lows against the euro and unnerving some investors and companies who had bet differently.

"At the moment, the market has got the bit between its teeth," said Paul Duncombe, head of currency management at State Street Global Advisors. "(The dollar) can certainly go a lot further."

The dollar was testing $1.30 to the euro on Monday, having fallen in value from around $1.24 in mid-October when currency strategists said it broke definitively out of a 7-1/2 month trading range.

Given that a Reuters poll in mid-September showed leading investors expecting an end-year rate of around $1.20, the fall must have caught many by surprise.

Strategists said that the original mid-October break came courtesy of hedge funds who were testing the levels. After that, others -- medium-term investors, Middle East accounts and some corporates -- got into the act, buying euros before the price rose too high.

Increasingly, the pressure is also on those European companies which have not yet moved to protect their dollar-based earnings from the currency's downturn.

Thanos Papasavvas, currency strategist at Credit Suisse Asset Management, said his fund firm shorted the dollar when it broke out of the range at $1.2450 in mid-October.

"We hear that European corporates have not been doing that, so they have been caught on the wrong foot," he said.

THE BUCK STOPS WHERE?

One gauge of how strong the current momentum is came on Friday after the U.S. Labour Department reported that non-farm payrolls rose twice as much as economists had expected.

Implying strength in the U.S. economy and further scope for interest rate increases from the U.S. Federal Reserve, the surprise data should have lifted the dollar. In the event, it did so only briefly before the decline resumed and the euro hit an all-time high.

"I think this is a pretty good guide (to) just how entrenched negative sentiment is toward the dollar," Richard Franulovich, senior currency strategist with Westpac Banking, said at the time.

A second gauge came on Monday when European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said that recent moves were "unwelcome" -- the kind of comment that in the past has bolstered the dollar. The dollar did firm, but only briefly and the move was muted.

So where does the dollar go from here?

As for much of the year, the answer depends on what side of the great dollar divide you are on -- whether the large and growing U.S. current account deficit spells continuing weakness, or whether the U.S. economic landscape means dollar strength.

Mark Farrington, head of currency at Principal Global Investors, belongs to the latter camp.

He said the dollar is driven primarily by interest rate expectations and Friday's jobs data gave scope for the Fed to tighten more than earlier softness had implied -- a factor that will eventually lift the dollar.

"We are nowhere near the end with the Fed," he said, describing the current dollar sell-off as "a classic deviation from fundamentals driven by emotions".

PERHAPS NOT HERE

Ranged against that view are those who see little to stop the dollar from falling to offset the current account deficit.

The re-elected administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, it is argued on the one hand, will allow the dollar to decline, boosting U.S. exporters.

"Bush's non-interventionist or laissez-faire ethos means there will be no standing in the way of a dollar in need of further depreciation against all currencies," Mike Lenhoff, chief strategist at wealth manager Brewin Dolphin Securities, wrote last week.

Trichet's ECB, meanwhile, is seen as benefiting from a higher euro as it eases inflationary pressures, particularly energy prices.

Its biggest fear is that the dollar decline will be faster than it has been to date.

Sentiment -- as judged by market moves -- clearly appears to be leaning heavily to the weak dollar side at the moment.

It could be driven even further if Europe's corporates truly have not hedged enough and are still long on dollars.

Credit Suisse's Papasavvas said both corporates and investment houses would take any slight strengthening of the dollar as an opportunity to sell. "We would expect some correction to take place, but not by more than a point or two, before fresh selling comes back in," he said.