Forex rebates on every trade - win or lose!

I have it hitting 2.0003 before backing off. An easy target now.

so tell me all you whizzes, where do you see Cable topping out? ...... My guess is 2.03 but I sure would not be selling $ with rate already very close to 2.00.

At least my (company's) May position taken at 1.9450 is very nicely profitable!

Currently around 2.0020 - or another 120 pips from there, a tidge above Nicole's target (and rising).

Nicole Elliott this morning said inter alia "At-the-money implied volatility looks too low considering we are at levels where there is almost no resistance points. A test of the key $2.0000 area, where sharp intra-day swings are likely, looks imminent". This was at 07:54 this morning, but the implication is watch out for stop-busting swings.

Dear Chancellor

Dear King

Interesting letters, "not our fault, old boy, external events, didn't we do well, I'm alright, you're alright. Er, that's it."

Err ... the chimp uses a felt tip pen.

Looks like he had to take a break from his colouring in:-)

Afternoon folks, time I got back into Fx again. Anything happened over the last 3 weeks :-)

Oh, I see, the man who would be Prime Minister can't find a decent pen!

edit, our business rent at one of our sites has gone up by over 40% over the last three years. That must be the effect of 2% p.a. compounding.....

ever-escalating rents are a serious problem to high streets and the like .... don't care so much about offices, as overall they contribute little to the local economy.
However, as a landlord, it is difficult to refuse market rates when leases come up for renewal.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Labor Department is expected to report this morning that its consumer price index rose 0.6 percent in March, and the core index, which strips out energy and food costs, climbed 0.2 percent.

Last week, the core Producer Price Index came in flat, alleviating some worries about the inflation rate getting too high. A strong inflation reading at the consumer level could rekindle anxiety that the Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates to curb rising costs.

Retail sales rose in March at the fastest clip in three months, helped by warmer weather and an early Easter.

Analysts cautioned that sales were likely to slow in April, given the recent surge in gasoline prices that will leave consumers with less money to spend on other items.

For March, sales rose by 0.7 percent, the Commerce Department reported Monday. And the government revised its estimate for sales in February from a lackluster 0.1 percent to a stronger 0.5 percent gain.

The March increase, the strongest since a 1.1 percent rise in December, was helped by the fact that Easter came eight days earlier than last year, boosting shopping in March. Warmer weather during the month put consumers in a buying mood after a cold and snowy February.

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - The dollar fell further, with the pound extending its gains above the key 2 usd mark, after US inflation figures came in below expectations.

Figures released this afternoon showed US CPI inflation rose 0.6 pct in March from February, while core prices rose just 0.1 pct. Both are slightly below expectations for rises of 0.7 and 0.2 pct respectively.

At 1.38 pm BST, the pound was trading at 2.0045 usd, up from 2.0029 just before the US CPI release, while the euro rose to 1.3562 usd from 1.3541 previously.

The pound touched a high of 2.0061 usd immediately after the release, extending gains following much stronger-than-expected UK CPI data this morning which propelled the currency above 2 usd for the first time since 1992, just before it fell out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Oooh weeeee

:o)

Short Cable now - hoping for a decent fall.

i lied! ...... just checked and sold our $ for May at 1.9237 ...... lovely stuff!! ...... if brain had been connected, may have sold forward for 2/3/4 months more, but never mind

Minutes

2.0130 limit :o)

Now I can go for a bubble ;)

cmc and fxcm seem to have quite different prices for cable!

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - China's first quarter economic growth surprised on the upside, but despite investment also pouring in at a faster clip, the relatively stable increases in the consumer price index (CPI), the chief barometer of inflation, were still manageable and helping ease worries of economic overheating on a national level, said Huang Yiping, economist with Citigroup in Hong Kong.

China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth accelerated 11.1 pct year-on-year to 5.03 trln yuan in the first three months, compared with 10.4 pct in the fourth quarter and 10.7 pct in 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

'Most people were expecting something in the mid-tens, and our forecast was 10.7. It's not that significantly far from our number, but psychologically it's above 11 pct, and it could be an important surprise,' Huang told XFN-Asia.

The People's Bank of China had projected first quarter GDP growth of 10.2 pct.

The strong growth figure comes despite tightening measures taken by Beijing, but Huang doubted the central bank would take imminent actions to tighten liquidity.

'I think (monetary authorities) will act, although I doubt they will take immediate action as some are expecting at the moment, but they have already done quite a lot and I think the message is already quite clear in the market,' he said.

When asked if another upward interest rate revision was likely in the first half, he said it was a strong possibility.

'I see one more rate hike. The Chinese like 27 basis points (as a incremental hike),' Huang said.

But he said interest rates would not rise too high anytime soon as inflation was still rising at a reasonable rate.

'If inflation isn't an issue, then why worry about the 11.1 pct GDP growth? But (inflation) has been picking up pace recently. We had 2.7 pct for the first quarter, which could mean that for March it's around 3.2 pct. At that's been picking up quite quickly from 2.7 pct in February,' he said.

He said the main challenge for macroeconomic planners in fostering stable, sustainable economic growth was 'more about the need to control risks in the economy.'

'At the same time the authorities are still probably keen to maintain strong growth. So the difficulty is to find and strike a balance between the two. But you still need strong growth.'

When asked if government planners were happy with continued uneven economic growth between urban and rural regions, and between coastal and inland provinces, he said it remained a lingering concern.

'They are probably not, but at the moment there is no other choice. They always want to balance sources of growth, but in the near term I think for macroeconomic policy makers, I think the top concern should be whether or not that will lead to over-investment or overcapacity,' Huang said.

(1 usd = 7.72 yuan)