Forex Blog

My last forecast (for the year 2008) missed the real world market action significantly. The financial crisis made a lot of the forecasts made by the analysts and traders useless but, nevertheless, I still wish to offer my vision for the next year. This is just my opinion and it shouldn’t be taken as a serious forecast or some guide for trading.

EUR/USD will go down in 2009 and will probably reach 1.2000-1.2400 and then jump up to about 1.3000.
GBP/USD will head down; probably, to a parity.
USD/JPY will be very volatile, falling down to about 80.00 and rising up to about 100.00.
EUR/JPY will be even more volatile ending up the year 2009 not far from 130.00.

Oil. My last forecast on this important commodity missed its real trading range by the tens of dollars. In 2009 the oil will most probably remain below $75/barrel and will probably reach its bottom near $30.

Interest rates will remain quite low in 2009 but, starting from the middle of the year, the central banks will begin to increase them gradually:
Fed’s one will be near 1% by the end of 2009.
ECB — close to 2%.
Bank of England — ~1%.
Bank of Japan — ~0.5%.

EUR/USD trend: sell.
GBP/USD trend: sell.
USD/JPY trend: hold.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

BroCo is Russian Forex broker, which is also registered and licensed in Mauritius. Founded by the people behind the three brokers — Ark World Market, Water House Capital and Golden Contract, — BroCo begins its on-line history in 2003. BroCo is a MetaTrader 4 Forex broker and it also offers CFD trading to its clients. Additional services include asset management and trading competitions, contests and bonus programs. For the funds deposit/withdrawal this broker accepts PayPal, WebMoney, credit cards and wire transfer. The trading can be performed with the leverage up to 1:200 and the lot size as low as 0.01. The spreads are at the industry-average level — 2 pips on EUR/USD.

FXCH or Foreign Exchange Clearing House is a Forex broker located in Switzerland. Unlike many other European brokers it’s not multi-market and offers only Forex trading services. It went up on-line in 2004. The most distinguishing features of FXCH, in my opinion, are the leverage of 1:500 and the low spreads (1 pip on all majors) — the extremely nice conditions for the risk-hungry Forex traders. The trading is done via MetaTrader 4 platform and there is no overnight interest on the open positions, which makes this broker Muslim-friendly. The minimum account size is quite high — $2,000; the funds can be transfered via WebMoney, AlertPay or bank wire. The residents of United States are not allowed to open the trading accounts with FXCH.

EUR/USD trend: hold.
GBP/USD trend: hold.
USD/JPY trend: hold.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

HMS Markets is the second regulated Forex broker from Luxembourg that was added to the list on my site recently. It’s a multi-market broker that offers not only Forex but also CFD, futures and stocks trading services. The platform is custom — HMS Trader 2. The spreads on the Forex currency pairs are variable — but usually higher than 2 pips. The mini-trading is available, but the commission is charged for trades with the volume below 0.5 lot (or 1 lot for some pairs). The only method of the account funding available is the wire transfer. The  U. S. citizens are not allowed to open trading accounts with HMS Markets.

PS: Today my server experienced its first DDoS attack, which is, of course, a not very nice thing because many people weren’t able to access my sites, but on the other hand that’s quite nice in my opinion — that means that the site really matters and its content is interesting to someone.

Bulbrokers is a Bulgarian broker company, which is present on-line since 2001 and offers Forex, CFD, futures and stock trading services. It’s one of those brokers where you have a single account for the different types of trading but several trading platforms. The MetaTrader 4 platform is used for the Forex and CFD trading; to trade the stocks and futures the COBOS and Trader Workstation are provided by Bulbrokers. The minimum account size to start trading is quite low — just $50 (the micro-trading is supported) and the leverage can be as high as 1:200. The things that I didn’t like about this broker are that it accepts only wire transfer and credit cards to fund the account and that the spreads are quite high — 3 pips on EUR/USD, for example.

PS: This is the 101st broker that was added to my site. So, the list is growing and more active Forex broker can now get the detailed description, user ratings and reviews.

PPS: I’d like to wish those traders that celebrate this holiday a merry Christams. It’s also a good intraweek break from the Forex trading for all of us, so enjoy it!

It looks like EUR/USD can’t really decide where to go next — the second consecutive day is marked with almost zero change with a slight advantage for the European currency. The final data on Q3 GDP along with some other macroeconomic reports didn’t surprise the traders enough to affect the Forex market today. EUR/USD is currently trading near 1.3971.

The Gross Domestic Product decline of 0.5% in the third quarter of 2008 remained unchanged in the final report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was an expected result.

Existing home sales declined by 8.6% in November to the seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.49 million — that’s significantly below the expected rate of 4.93 million.

Michigan Sentiment index rose from 55.3 in November to 60.1 in December — faster than the analysts forecast (58.6).

New home sales decreased in November — to the seasonally adjusted annual rate of 407k — down from 419k in October (revised from 433k). The median forecast value was at 420k.

Advised Trading is a swiss Forex brokerage company, which went on-line with its services in 2006. This broker offers MetaTrader 4 trading platform with 2 pips spread on EUR/USD and a leverage up to 1:100. That’s probably all the good things that can be said about Advised Trading. The bad things are that this Forex broker offers neither micro-trading nor mini-trading accounts, that the minimum account size is as high as $10,000 and this amount can be deposited only via the bank wire transfer. And registering a trading account with Advised Trading involves a lot of paperwork with the requirement to send the notarized copies of the documents via the postal mail.

EMPFX is a newly listed Forex broker on my site. It’s operated by the Swiss company E-Money Power Ltd and offers its services on-line since 2007. EMPFX has the very low spreads — 1 pip on EUR/USD and some other major currency pairs and a fixed leverage at 1:200. The trading is performed via their custom stand-alone trading platform (unfortunately it’s no MetaTrader 4). The minimum deposit to start trading with this broker is $300 and the methods of funds transfer include Moneybookers, credit card, check and wire transfer. The Muslim-friendly accounts are available for those who don’t want to pay or receive the overnight interest rates on the open positions. For those who prefer to invest rather than to trade, the managed Forex accounts are available.