Fundamentals

Market review yesterday: yesterday's meeting of euro zone finance ministers failed to spread the good news. ESM officially launched and was recognized by the market. The assistance for Greece and Spain continues to delay. The market risk aversion has been heating up. Stock markets: the European stock markets fell, a decline in U.S. stocks, S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Index Average. For commodities, gold, silver, crude oil fell in varying degrees; for currencies, the dollar led hedge currencies uptrend; European currencies fell overall.

Posted By: 

Chen Jingquan

Chen is a popular Forex Analyst in China. He setup his own financial consulting firm back in 2005 and started writing financial reports and analytical papers for various Chinese financial websites in 2007. He became a famous forex analyst in 2008 and a frequent guest in various forex seminars and interviews, including exclusive interviews held by CCTV finance channel, Hexun.com, Sina Finance, Sohui Finance and EastMoney.com

Good Morning,

I previewed the fundamentals in my last article, so we will skip them and get right to the technicals. It is a fairly light week data wise. You should be preparing for earnings season - mark your "earnings calendar" with the dates for the stocks you own/trade.

Technically, equities first as they continue to drive other financial markets. SPX is getting very close to the trendline that has been resistance and now could provide support:

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Recall that the U.S. employment data on Friday turned out excellently. Non-Farm payrolls remained above 110,000, in line with expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 7.8% for a four-year low. This excellent data supported the hedge currencies to go up within a short time, but the market is taking into account for the impact of QE3. The weakness of the commodity currencies remained until closing. Gold, after the release of this data, dived directly from the 1790 high to 1772.

Posted By: 

Chen Jingquan

Chen is a popular Forex Analyst in China. He setup his own financial consulting firm back in 2005 and started writing financial reports and analytical papers for various Chinese financial websites in 2007. He became a famous forex analyst in 2008 and a frequent guest in various forex seminars and interviews, including exclusive interviews held by CCTV finance channel, Hexun.com, Sina Finance, Sohui Finance and EastMoney.com

Good Afternoon,

As promised, a NFP wrap-up. And how do you like that for "low volatility"? Analysts expected 114k and we got 114k. Funny how that happens - when markets aren't volatile, you don't get any breaks. So anyone who thought there would be surprises, there weren't.
And technically, the markets rally big off the news of 114k jobs created - are you serious? As I said yesterday, I feel bad for the job seekers.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Good Afternoon,

Pretty "large" trading ranges today. Fundamentally, claims were flat, so we will have to see what happens tomorrow with NFP. Usually, if we go up in anticipation of a good number and then it comes in soft, boom, we crash. But equities have just a good chance to go up on bad news as they do on good news.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Past performance is not indicative of future results

Forex trading is one of the riskiest forms of investment available in the financial markets and suitable for sophisticated individuals and institutions. The possibility exists that you could sustain a substantial loss of funds and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Past performance is not indicative of future results

Forex trading is one of the riskiest forms of investment available in the financial markets and suitable for sophisticated individuals and institutions. The possibility exists that you could sustain a substantial loss of funds and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Past performance is not indicative of future results

Forex trading is one of the riskiest forms of investment available in the financial markets and suitable for sophisticated individuals and institutions. The possibility exists that you could sustain a substantial loss of funds and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Good Afternoon,

Fundamentals first. ISM came in just above expectations, but the employment component came in below expectations. New orders were flat. Remember wny I am am focusing on the employment component - only 4 days away to another dismal jobs report.

Bernanke also spoke today. He defended the Fed's "no inflation anywhere" campaign. Go ahead and tell someone living off of fixed income that there isn't any inflation.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.

Good Afternoon,

Before previewing the week ahead, let's wrap up Friday's data. We saw the CHIPM headline number contract to 49.7. Sub-components such as new orders and employment were dismal. In fact, the employment component was at a two and a half year low. See my previous article titled "Stink, Stank, Stunk" for further commentary on last week's brutally soft economic data.

This upcoming week will be a whopper:

**Monday: ISM Manufacturing - watch the sub-components. Bernanke is also on the docket.

Posted By: 

Brian Kahn

Brian provides regular commentary focusing on the relationships between various financial markets. An experienced trader and portfolio manager with over 15 years in the markets, Brian relies on fundamental and technical analysis to create trading plans for each and every market entry.