U.S. Dollar Slips ahead of Bernanke Testimony- February 22-26
After another wild week and a very surprising rate hike, the last week of February also has its share of big events. Bernanke will continue to dominate the scene with two testimonies and revised GDP in the UK and the US will supply an exciting end to the week. And there are more market moving events. Here’s the weekly outlook.
Ben Bernanke stole the show with a surprising hike of the discount bank rate. This came after the close of the American stock markets but forex trading continues all the time – the dollar leaped. Some currencies took a bigger hit than others. This event will continue to dominate trading on Monday when there aren’t any major releases.
1.German Ifo Business Climate: Published on Tuesday at 9:00 GMT. This wide survey of 7,000 businesses has a strong impact on the Euro. Contrary to the ZEW report that is recently weak, this indicator has been rising steadily in the past year, edging up each time. From last month’s 95.8 score, it’s predicted to tick up to 96.3.
2.American CB Consumer Confidence: Published on Tuesday at 15:00 GMT. Consumer confidence impacts sales and the whole economy. In the past three months, this indicator rose from the low level it fell to, and also revisions to previous releases have been to the upside. This time, it’s predicted to drop from 55.9 to 55 points. This has a wide impact.
3.New Zealand Inflation Expectations: Published on Wednesday at 02:00 GMT. New Zealand has a high interest rate, but expectations for a rate hike like its neighbor Australia haven’t been met. A rate hike depends a lot on prices. This quarterly release will show the direction of inflation and a possible rate hike. Last quarter, expectations rose from 2.3% to 2.6%. Now they are predicted to edge up some more.
4.Ben Bernanke testifies: Happens during Wednesday at 15:00 GMT and Thursday at 14:00 GMT. After Bernanke’s shocking mini-rate hike that was made off the main hours, he’ll make his semi-annual report in broad daylight in front of two committees in Washington DC. Although he might use confusing language, his words will shake the markets.
5.American New Home Sales: Published on Wednesday at 15:00 GMT and overshadowed by Bernanke. New Home Sales took a big dive two months ago and showed everybody that the housing sector depends on government aid. It hasn’t returned to previous levels. From 342K, sales are predicted to edge up to 350K this time.
6.American Durable Goods Orders: Published on Thursday at 13:30 GMT. Orders have been revised to the upside in the past month, from 0.3% to 1%. Also Core orders have been revised to 1.4%. The positive trend is expected to continue, with a rise a rise of 1.6% in orders and 1.2% in core orders. This figure doesn’t touch the consumers, but has a long term impact on the economy.
7.American Unemployment Claims: Published on Thursday at 13:30 GMT and overshadowed by goods orders. The American job market is still fragile, and the number of claims refuses to leave the area it is in in the past months. Last week’s 473K is predicted to be followed by 466K this time. A number under 430K or above 480K will shake the markets.
8.British Revised GDP: Published on Friday at 9:30 GMT. Did Britain really return to growth? That’s a big question. The initial release for Q4 finally showed growth – but only 0.1%. Expectations are optimistic and a revision to 0.2% is expected. According to the unofficial NIESR GDP estimate, the economy did grow by only 0.1%. A drop to 0% growth or another quarter of contraction will be devastating for the Pound.
9.Swiss KOF Economic Barometer: Published on Friday at 10:30 GMT. This indicator, locally called Konjunkturbarometer, is an important composite index that usually reflects the situation of the Swiss economy quite well, and has a strong impact. From 1.77 points it’s predicted to rise to 1.77 points this time.
10.American Prelim GDP: Published on Friday at 13:30 GMT. The best is kept almost for last. There were many doubts about the rapid American growth that was reported in the first release. The second release is predicted to show only a small downward revision: from 5.7% to 5.6% in Q4 of 2010. The markets will surely shake with this release. A long term rise in the dollar’s value cannot happen without an improvement in jobs as well.
11.American Existing Home Sales: Published on Friday at 15:00 GMT. This release will be somewhat overshadowed by the GDP publication. Similar to new home sales, this figure, that accounts for more sales, is also volatile and is dependent on government aid. After a drop of 1 million sales last month, stability is expected this time – a tiny rise from 5.45 to 5.51 million.
This Market Weekly Outlook was brought to you by our partner ForexCrunch.com http://www.forexcrunch.com.
Best Regards,
TradeSmarter Team
Disclaimer: Binary options trading might carry potential rewards, but also potential risks. You must be aware of the risks and willing to accept them in order to trade in the financial markets. Don’t trade with money you can’t afford to lose.
TradeSmarter.com Market Weekly Outlook – February 8-12
After one of the wildest weeks that we’ve seen in quite a while, the upcoming week seems more quiet, at least at the beginning. The echoes of the Non-Farm Payrolls will be heard during this time. Later on, some major market moving events are due. Here’s the outlook for the second week of February.
Finance ministers of the G7 nations are meeting in the remote Canadian town of Iqaluit and may release important comments that might impact the opening of the markets. The final remarks by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are of high importance. He’ll speak more than 24 hours before the markets open, so there will be enough time to digest his words. Let’s review the week’s events:
- Swiss Retail Sales: Published on Monday at 8:15 GMT. Switzerland enjoys good fundamentals but the central bank doesn’t like it at all. The SNB intervenes in the markets, but usually this doesn’t have a long lasting effect. This important figure is expected to rise by an annual rate of 1.6%, double of last month’s number. There will action in USD/CHF around this release.
- British Inflation Report: Published on Wednesday at 10:30 GMT. This important quarterly event will address the rising inflation in Britain and the central bank’s measures against it. This report, accompanied by a press conference by Mervyn King goes beyond inflation and will deal with the whole economy, which is shaky.
- US and Canadian Trade Balance: Published together on Wednesday at 13:30 GMT. This double-feature event always shakes USD/CAD. The American deficit is predicted to squeeze from 36.4 billion to 35.5 billion, while the Canadian trade balance is almost balanced. It’s predicted to stand at 0.1 billion, and could also turn into a surplus.
- British NIESR GDP Estimate: Published on Wednesday at 15:00 GMT. After the disappointing official Q4 GDP, we’ll get an initial unofficial glimpse at the British economy in 2010. Last month’s release related to the whole of Q4, and showed a higher number than the official release, but lower than economists’ estimates. The Pound will need a more serious growth to rise.
- Ben Bernanke testifies: On Wednesday. Exact time currently unknown. The head of the Federal Reserve will lay out the plans for exiting the crisis, and the emergency measures. During this testimony, he’ll probably provide an updated overview of the American economy.
- Australian employment figures: Published on Thursday at 00:30 GMT. Australia enjoys a healthy job market, and it’s predicted to remain rather steady. Australian unemployment rate is predicted to edge up to 5.6% from 5.5% but the employment change is expected o be positive again, showing a rise of 15,000 jobs. This is less than last month’s nice 35,000 job gain.
- American Retail Sales: Published on Thursday at 13:30 GMT. Both retail sales and core retails sales disappointed last month with drop of 0.3% and 0.2%. These important consumer-related figures are expected to rise this time by 0.3% each. This release, together with jobless claims, will shake the markets.
- American Unemployment Claims: Published on Thursday at 13:30 GMT. This important weekly figure disappoints every week with a number that is higher than expectations. After reaching 480K, economists expect a drop to 455K. This will be the first job figure after the Non-Farm Payrolls.
- New Zealand Retail Sales: Published on Thursday at 21:45 GMT. Although more people are unemployed in New Zealand, the consumers continue buying. Both retail and core retail sales have risen by 0.8% last month, and this trend is expected to continue, helping the beaten kiwi dollar.
- German GDP: Published on Friday at 7:00 GMT. Europe’s largest economy is the first to release GDP data for Q4. This initial release is expected to show a modest growth rate of 0.3%, much less than 0.7% that was reported in Q3. Germany led the continent with nice growth already in Q2. Now it might lag behind.
- European Flash GDP: Published on Friday at 10:00 GMT. 3 hours after the German release, the figure for the whole continent is due. This is expected to be better than the German one, and show a growth rate of 0.4%. This European morning will be very volatile for EUR/USD. Note that French and Italian numbers are also released during this time, something that might add confusion.
- American Consumer Sentiment: Published on Friday at 14:55 GMT. The week ends with a strong note – the University of Michigan provides its preliminary consumer sentiment figure, which is doing quite well. After reaching 74.4, it’s predicted to edge up to 75.2 points. This will shake the markets before the weekly close.
This Market Weekly Outlook was brought to you by our partner ForexCrunch.com.
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Best Regards,
TradeSmarter.com
Disclaimer: Binary options trading might carry potential rewards, but also potential risks. You must be aware of the risks and willing to accept them in order to trade in the financial markets. Don’t trade with money you can’t afford to lose.
20 sentences of advice about online trading and binary options trading in particular
1. Have trust in yourself – Do not rely one on brokers for trading advices. Same goes for analysts recommendations and tips from friends, gurus, newsletters etc.
2. Patience – Successful trading is a skill which being acquired over time. Surveys among profitable traders reveal that patience is a common role.
3. Have the right tools for the job- Decent internet connection, comfortable chair, sharp screen etc. This may sound obvious but feeling comfortable while trading is a must.
4. Set goals and find motives for trading – First question any trader should ask himself is “What do I want from the market?” The obvious answer may be “Money”. However, from my own trading experience I can assure you that a more appropriate answer would be “I want to figure out how the game works” / “I want to retire with more money” and so on.
Note: subconsciously, many people trade solely to lose money as a form of punishing themselves for things greater than they understand.
5. Focus on the ‘Now’ – Focus your effort in understanding market conditions as they are now rather than understanding the past or predicting the future.
6. Avoid hunches – The successful trader is in the market solely during market conditions he understands, rather than trading on theories and wishful thinking.
7. Record, Analyze, Improve – Keeping constant records of your trading activity in order to analyze what works and what doesn’t. By keeping a track record, you will optimize your trading strategies, and eventually your results.
8. Give trading the time it deserves – The game of trading is not suitable for the ‘get rich quick’ or lazy sort of mentality. It takes devotion and time to become a successful trader.
9. Scan the market for opportunities- Analyze as many charts as possible and filter them amongst those who interest you the most. Sometimes you’ll need to watch as many as few hundred charts before finding a suitable trade which may answer your criteria for order entry.
10. Manage expectations – Trading is a game, not war or love affair. Learn how to play rather than how to fight. Do not fall in love with the markets; develop an objective view towards it instead; e.g. – one that will increase your overall income. As a game, trading is the most rewarding game on the planet, but in order to master this game, a trader needs to stay realistic and know what to expect.
11. Have the right trading strategy – the ‘right strategy’ may vary from one trader to another based on personality and characteristics. The ‘right strategy’ is one that can be tailored based on one’s strengths while avoiding his weaknesses. The ‘right strategy’ is an individual thing.
12. Work on your mental abilities- While trading you must be in your Zen mode. If a trader is tired, unhappy or simply bored, he will be led towards irrational trading behavior. Unbalanced people rarely ever make money in the market; therefore self improvement should go hand-in-hand with strategy improvement.
13. Better short-term than long-term(?) – Based on my own experience and view of the markets, I understand that no individual can ever speculate on the long term direction of the markets. Speculating on large timeframes is a privilege given to large-pocket players such as banks and big funds. As for us, the individual traders, we receive the privilege of momentarily timeframes and quicker gains.
14. Once you have a trading technique, stick to it – Many traders fail over and over as they constantly create new trading rules along their way. This is not likely to work for simple a reason; you won’t be able to follow which trading strategy to good and which isn’t.
15. Start with a virtual account – It’s better to start trading with binary options practice account to test drive your binary options trading strategies. TradeSmarter platform offers virtual money trading for free:
Open a virtual account now
16. Start your trading journey with enough initial capital- Small portfolios don’t give you the leverage to learn, lose some and improve. If you’ll open a binary options trading account with small amounts, a small losing streak will have a substantial impact on your account and your trading psychology. Ideally, you should start will at least $5000, and then trade for $100-$300 per trade.
17. Identify in what you are good at- If you’ll find that you are good in trading the US market, then stay with the US market, until you’ll have enough capital to try new things. Trading multiple markets will get you out of focus, stick to the market that works for you best.
18. Master technical analysis- Understanding the graph behavior will expose you to many investments patterns that you will learn to recognize and base your trades on.
19. The trend is NOT your friend; perhaps only your ‘fair weather’ friend – Regardless of what they all tell you (analysts, books, gurus etc.) As you can clearly see for yourself, markets move sideways for approximately 70-80% of any given time-period. Once you accept this as a fact, you may actually have an edge in the market. Learn to apply sideway techniques (which are far easier and more profitable) and utilize them in your favor. Read the graph as it is and do not project your theories on him. Listen to his story instead of telling him yours.
20. Don’t be loyal to a specific underlying asset- Save it to your football team.
I hope that sharing my thoughts will help you avoid some of the common failures and evolve as a successful trader. The reasons I advocate for binary options are
- Having control of your position (due to shorter timeframes)
- Efficiency in terms of risk/reward
- Certainty of win/loss ratio
- Advantages during sideway markets
- Transparency of the trade
- Most importantly, the fault tolerance for bad human and trading behavior (eliminating greed, fear, inability to act etc.).
Binary trading, for unknown reasons, is currently the markets best kept secret and I encourage you to take a look.
Start trading Forex ( FX) binary digital options
When an investor would like to place a forex binary option trading he would take under consideration the following factors:
- Trade time
- Spot price
- Strike price
- Forex (FX) binary option price valuation time
- Expiration time
Comparison of binary options premium pricing among binary options firms
It’s highly recommendable that the binary options trader will choose the firm he’s working with according to several parameters, one of them is the option premium collected by the binary options brokerage. Usually there are great variation in the premiums paid as this investment product is relatively new and not liquid as more mature investment products such as CFD’s and Spread Betting.
The difference between: In the Money, At the Money, and Out of the Money
While placing an option trading, the main focus of the forex trader is on the current price of the underlying asset, in our case the real-time spot price.
The spot price that also can be referred as the currency price is called at the money strike price.
The forex trader can purchase a binary option; the strike price will be one of the following:
In The Money (ITM)
As you already know, anything in the online trading reward is based on a gauge of risk and reward.
The trader has to choice a variety of strategies and risk and reward factors in order to match the best options strategy that will match his investment style and the risk level he’s willing to take.
Risk haters usually stick to in-the-money option positions while risk lovers are more attracted to out-of-the-money option positions. In case the trader purchased in-the-money option, the option will move in correlation with the underlying asset price (in our example the forex spot price). The main advantage of trading forex options in contrast to taking a fx spot position is that investor will pay only the premimum without any other risk, on the other hand the premium of in-the-money option is much higher
At The Money (ATM)
Describe when the options strike price is equal to the spot price, This will allow the investor to take a position which is really close to the market real price without paying the high premiums of In the money position.
Out the Money (OTM)
Trading out of the money options is extremely popular, the forex investor speculates on a scenario which is far from the real market price. The investor wishes for a sharp move that will cause his position will advance according to his prediction, to his strike price or hopefully will exceed his strike price and will become an in the money position.
Option Value vs. Time factor
By taking a forex option trade, the investor always see in his mind several dimensions that related to his predicted profitability and risk. The most important factors are:
1)The time factor-how much time is lest the option to expire
2)Volatility-which implicate the risk within the option position
The option is prices according to many factors which are reflected in the premium price.
The idea behind pricing options is so find cases in which an underlying asset is underpriced or overpriced because of factors that aren’t related to the market and can be used by the investor to take advantage to use this price arbitrage to make money as the market correlation is not systematic.
TradeSmarter.com Launches a Binary Options Wiki
TradeSmarter.com launches today a comperhansive knowledge base that covers the binary options trading market.
Tradesmarter’s binary options wiki includes all the relveant information a trader should know in order to trade binary options sucessfully.
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Hedging a Breakout of the GBP/USD Using Binary Options Trading
Today as expected, the GBPUSD ended its fantastic five day up swing (see image below, left side). The end of the swing was marked by a reversal during European market hours, shortly after 8AM GMT. The reversal was marked by a breakout at the 1.65150 resistance line. As usual the breakout was tested less than an hour later. At that point, the GBPUSD rose just above the breakout point, reaching 1.65185. This slight failure of the breakout point was enough to shake out those of us Forex traders that place a tight stop-loss just below (above in this case of a short) the breakout point.
We all know how much it stings when a very minor breakout failure denies us a huge payday. Indeed, those of you who placed a wider stop-loss raked in huge profits all the way down to 1.63555. So the question that always returns to our mind is, ‘What to do- set tight stops and get shaken out or set wide stops with greater risks?’
In my last article I explained how to resolve this risk conflict using binary options hedging (the link is provided below). Today would have been a great opportunity to use this strategy. At the same time that I shorted the GBPUSD at 1.65150, I placed a CALL binary option trade on the GBPUSD. Since the payout model at tradesmarter’s binary option trading website returns a 70% payout, this meant that my $100 CALL binary option effectively hedged my GBPUSD short trade and kept me profitable even when the breakout failed. In fact, I was hedged all the way up to 1.65250 without placing any stop-losses. As expected, the breakout failed only slightly and then brokeout again with much more momentum. My hedge cost me $85 because the success of the breakout caused my CALL binary option to fail. However it did its job since the profit on the GBPUSD was much greater, as you can see in the chart attached.
The conclusion, as you can see, is that binary option hedging can usually offer us a more successful alternative than placing traditional stop-losses. Thanks to moderate breakout tests, followed by trader momentum, we can shift our risk from below (in this case above, because its a short) the breakout point to above it (in this case below it). For a quick explanation of how this works see see http://tradesmarter.com/2009/06/trading-binary-options-as-a-hedging-strategy-for-forex-trading/ .
