Forex rebates on every trade - win or lose!

Long Cable, short Yen overnight; nothing much happened, but closed the Cable long this morning for +15, Yen short still open. Wondering what effect our retail sales will have at 0930. Assuming they will be down.

That answered that question then. Shorted from 767 prior to the spike to 780 and subsequently stuck a sell order in at 765, unfortunately the sell order didn't trigger until 35! Bit of a shame :(

pth

Errr, what just happened to the Yen?
Not that I'm complaining :) Short closed

Calendar updated, techie bit done by our Hil, easy bit done by some bloke.

Ooooooooerrrrr. We seem to have some new FX Powercharts.

Hi Hilary - where do you see cable going please. My friend has been long of it from 1.98 and is convinced it will rally on the basis of higher interest rates ...despite two spikes he is finding out about forex the hard way! Any other advice I can pass on to him?

The answer to my question re the Yen; from Friday:

Yen Rises on Pressure for Action by Japan

The revaluation announcement by China has led to overall strength in the Yen crosses. With currencies expected to be on the discussion table at the latest G8 meeting, the finger pointing may now shift from China to Japan. The three step move by China will give foreign ministers little to criticize. Japan on the other hand has done nothing despite the significant weakness of their currency. The pressure is on now for the Japanese to take initiatives to strengthen their currency as well. The most logical way to do this would be through an interest rate hike. Unfortunately this puts the central bank in a very tough situation since economic growth has been weak. Last night, we had disappointments in both the tertiary industry index and in leading economic indicators. Despite the weakness of the Yen, aside from selected corporate profitability, the rest of the country has not really benefited. The key data releases next week are trade and inflation.

sm, again from Friday:

British Pound: Sharp Fall in Retail Sales Leads to Sharp Fall in Rate Hike Expectations



The British pound staged an incredibly impressive intraday recovery. Having sold off to a fresh one month low after the disappointing retail sales report, the pound rebounded to end the day unchanged as the US dollar began slipping after the Chinese announcement. This should not underestimate the fact that UK consumer spending was very weak in the month of April however. Originally expected to rise by 0.6 percent, retail sales fell for the first time in 3 months by 0.1 percent. There was an upward revision to the March data, but not enough to offset the decline that drove the annualized pace of spending from 5.0 percent down to 4.2 percent. This number does serious damage to the expectations for future rate hikes and goes a long way to explaining why the Bank of England may have chosen not notch up their degree of hawkishness after the last rate decision. With inflation and spending slowing, the central bank is in no rush to tighten monetary policy. Some traders may be waiting for this bias to be confirmed in next weeks release of the BoE minutes before taking the GBP/USD much lower. Aside from the minutes, the UK will also be releasing the CBI industrial trends survey, housing and lending data.

SM,

I think it will fall over the next 2 or 3 months before recovering again for another assault at $2, but I don't know what time frame your friend is looking at or how long he or she has been long.

Oh only a few days from 1.98. Thanks for the info.

I would've thought that your friend will probably be back in the money over the next day or two before it turns back down again.

The apparent inability to change the time zone of those charts from GMT to BST really frustrates the *&^% out of me.

Can't you send your friend Kathy a snotty email, MM?

Hil, Well I could, but it seems to me that it's better to stick with GMT because it's universal and unambiguous. And with all the messing about with Daylight Saving Time over there, they'd be bound to get BST wrong too.

MM,

I just find it incredible that you can adjust the settings for different time zones across the world including GMT + 6:00 hours for Novosibirisk, Astana, Dhaka and Sri Jayawardenapura (which is reknowned for being populated by currency traders), yet you can't adjust it for the 6 months of the year when the majority of the planet enjoys daylight saving time.

Rant over.

Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte

"Kotte, pronounced court-tay, is a new city. The name has been changed to Sri Jayawardenapura to perpetuate the name of the first President of Sri Lanka Mr. Jayawardena. It is located about 8 km from the border of Colombo 8. The parliament of Sri Lanka has been moved here from its historical site on the water front in downtown Colombo. This was done as an effort on the part of the Government to ease the congestion and overcrowding in the city of Colombo. The Overseas Childrens school is located in this area. As a result many expatriates choose to live in this suburb to avoid the daily commute from the city to the school which can take between 45 minutes to one hour at peak traffic time."

Probably more currency traders there than you think ;-)

Closed a couple of shorts at sub 1.9700 yesterday and now have a small long with a tightish stop

I'd lost all of my Powercharts settings this morning. Anyone else? I'm not sure if it's because of the recent change or if it's something to do with my interwebby viral security wotsit possibly deleting my chocolate chip cookie thingies.

Now long cable myself, looking for the break above 1.9730

Like watching paint dry this morning............yawn.
Sitting on the wrong side of a Yen short from Friday, slowly trading out, but hard work :(

My new power charts been fine so far....so might be the latter Hilary