Archive for September, 2010

Equity markets have struggled to maintain their positive bias from yesterday in the face of European sovereign debt concerns with the banking sector bearing the brunt of the selling pressure, closely followed by pharmaceuticals. Ireland remains the market’s main concern after ratings agency Standard and Poors said the price of bailing out Anglo Irish Bank...
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Equity markets have been on the slide today led lower by banks and commodity stocks after Standard and Poor’s said it may cut Ireland’s credit rating again due to the cost of bailing out Anglo Irish Bank, sending the cost of Ireland’s borrowing costs soaring ever higher. There is a concern that the cost...
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Sterling’s one-cent setback last Monday was quickly overcome on Tuesday and the following three days took it two and a half cents above its starting point. Friday was not a good day but the Far East took sterling higher again this morning to leave sterling’s holders with a two-cent profit on the week. In the...
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A couple of one-cent rallies were unable to prevent sterling losing a cent on the week. It was looking nervous again when London opened this week. House price data had almost more effect on sterling than all the other statistics combined. Early in the week it was the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)...
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After struggling earlier in the week the pound shot five yen higher and held onto a net four yen of that gain through to Monday morning’s London opening. Japanese condominium sales rose by 18.5% in the year to August. Industrial production was up by 14.2%. Prime minister Kan was re-elected as leader of his...
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Better than expected US trade and employment data fail to help the dollar. A two and a half cent range saw three major reversals of direction during the week. By the time London opened on Monday sterling was back where it had started last Monday. The irrelevance of the Bank of England’s Bank Rate...
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Bank holds UK interest rates steady for a 19th month. Euroland data fail to inspire. Looking at the Euro market last week, a half-cent drop as the market opened last Monday quickly gave way to a two-and-a-half day rally that added three cents. Until Friday the pound looked reasonably robust but a sell-off on...
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Canadian Dollar Trading – Risk sentiment drives the Loonie higher, helped by the prospect of a rate increase this week. A generally uncomfortable four-day week for sterling saw it lose three and a half Canadian cents in the day trading markets. A low-key set of Canadian data brought a tiny increase in the industrial products price...
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AUD Update Australian construction work up, new home sales down. Australian ecostats were even fewer and farther between. Construction work in the second quarter of the year was up by 3.5% compared with Q1 and that first quarter figure was itself revised upwards from 1.9% to 4.2%. Analysts had been suspicious about the originally low Q1...
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ZAR Forex Trading Over the last week, South African data pave the way for lower rand interest rates. The two South African figures that mattered were Tuesday’s GDP numbers and Wednesday’s consumer price index (CPI) data. Both were interesting. GDP grew by 3.2% in the second quarter, a touch lower than the analysts’ consensus. (Germany was...
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