Les Rosbifs Get A Roasting From Sarkozy Whilst Oil, Gold And Silver Plummet
Lingering tensions between Britain and France over the future of the EU will have intensified from Wednesday onwards after Nicolas Sarkozy accused David Cameron of behaving like “an obstinate kid” after Cameron stunned the EU by using the British veto at the European summit late last week. Cameron has indicated that he was prepared to confront France and Germany after Sarkozy’s critical comments.
The French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné quoted Sarkozy as saying:
It’s the first time that we have said ‘no’ to the English. Cameron behaved like an obstinate kid, with a single obsession; protecting the City, which wants to carry on behaving like an offshore centre. No country supported him. That is the mark of a political defeat. Objectively, it was a good coup. I manoeuvred well. The whole world recognised that my proposal was the only possible course. The accord will perhaps not put an end to the crisis, but it is a tool for facing up to it. The dynamism of the Franco-German axis enabled us to rally 26 countries.
German Chancellor Merkel reiterated both her and her government’s opposition to euro bonds as an overall solution to the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, while European Central Bank council member Jens Weidmann broke ranks by stating that policy makers are becoming increasingly more skeptical that the ECB’s debt purchases are actually working. Merkel said there’s now no turning back after last week’s European summit deal on stricter budget controls, with the path to fiscal union in the euro region now “irreversible.” “There are no simple and fast solutions,” Merkel told her lower-house lawmakers.
Market summary for Wednesday 14th December
European and U.S. stocks fell significantly for a third day in series, the euro finally slid below the psychologically important $1.30 level for the first time since January whilst commodities sank dramatically as growing funding stress in Europe fuelled concern the region is struggling to contain the debt crisis and growth will therefore be hampered.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed down 1.1 percent to end at 1,211.82. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index lost 2.1 percent. The euro weakened as much as 0.7 percent to $1.2946 before trimming losses to trade at $1.2981. Oil tumbled the most since September and gold slid below $1,600 an ounce to close at the lowest price in five months. Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields lost seven basis points to 1.89 percent, while 30-year German bund rates reached a euro-era record low of 2.38 percent.
Italy’s 10-year yield increased 11 basis points to 6.796 percent. The government sold 3 billion euros of five-year bonds at an average yield of 6.47 percent, up from 6.29 percent on Nov. 14 and the most since May 1997. French 10 year yields decreased seven basis points to 3.19 percent.
Oil in New York fell massively, declining by 5.2 percent to $94.95 a barrel as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to raise its production ceiling, moving the group’s supply target nearer to current output levels. Silver plunged 7.4 percent, gold lost 4.6 percent to $1,586.90 an ounce and copper sank 4.7 percent.
The Dollar Index, which tracks the U.S. currency against those of six trading partners, advanced 0.4 percent to 80.543, gaining for a third day and reaching the highest level in 11 months. Norway’s krone weakened against 12 of its 16 main counterparts after the nation’s central bank cut its benchmark rates by more than economists forecast.
Economic calendar data releases that may affect sentiment in the morning session
09:00 Eurozone – PMI Manufacturing December
09:00 Eurozone – PMI Services December
09:30 UK – Retail Sales November
10:00 Eurozone – CPI November
10:00 Eurozone – Employment Change Q3
11:00 UK – CBI Industrial Trends Survey December
A Bloomberg survey of economists showed a median forecast of -0.40%, compared with last month’s figure of +0.60% the UK retail sales figure. A similar Bloomberg survey predicts a year-on-year figure of +0.30%, compared with last month’s 0.90%. This data is for retail sales excluding auto fuel.
A Bloomberg survey of analysts shows a median prediction of 3.0% year-on-year, unchanged from the previous figure for European inflation. The ‘core’ figure predicted is 1.60%, which also remains unchanged from the previous figure. The month-on-month expectation is for a 0.10% rise, from 0.30% previously.
Forex Trading Article by FXCC - The False Promise Of Forex Education Courses
As somehow who actively encourages forex speculation and experimentation (in all it’s forms) it pains me to criticise certain elements that have grown unchecked within our industry. For example I’m deeply suspicious of the benefits of trading rooms, we’ve discussed the issues of lag before; the time taken for the trading room operator to take the trade to the time you take the trade could be enough of a lag to render the service redundant. If the trader is employing an intraday strategy, trading off low time frames such as 3-10 minutes, the entry opportunity could be gone before the trading room operator communicates ” buy” or “sell”.
The plethora of black box ‘out of the box’ solutions advertised across the web are equally redundant, as previously mentioned the proprietary techniques claimed by the creator are generally nothing of the sort. The author will have taken perhaps four indicators and morphed them into one solid line and given it a funky name, “the turbo fx generator” or some such brand. However, none will excel in both trending and ranging markets and as a consequence all have an incredibly short shelf life.
Despite my concerns and doubts both trading rooms and box systems are relatively harmless, the cost of a trading room membership for a month can be as low as €100 per month, similarly the black box systems can be as little as €100 as a one off fee. In short you get what you pay for and it hardly breaks the bank. You can try the trading room for a month or two and it won’t dent your trading balance too much. The black box system is a waste, but again it’s a one off cost that you can put down to experience and many amongst us know the experience of buying a download or disc and expecting it to immediately work, to hoover up pips effortlessly from day one. We then quickly realise that there’s no short cuts in this industry, you have to put in the hours in order it to get out the pips. But by far the most ‘dangerous’ of all the ‘sales pitches to riches’ made in our industry are made by the vendors marketing trading education courses…
Courses with names such as “university” or “academy” proliferate on the web and in choosing their brand names these vendors are being very clever. Many of us are conditioned into believing we have to pay for extra curricular courses and education and the vendors pray on that core belief. Their packages comprise university style seminars and coursework as an approach. Many courses are residential and highlight the length of time required to reach the grade in order to justify the cost. There’ll be many milestones along the path of learning proposed by the course provider and you’ll be given shiny brochures and branded files in which to keep your copious and dubious notes. The overall feel is that the course will have been worth the money, after all if you’re entering into a new career, considering investing maybe in the region of €100,000 in a market and new venture, wouldn’t it be wise to spend perhaps 10% of that commitment on a course equipping you for the trials of trading?
Trading courses vary in price, however, there’s one overall consistency when you review what’s on offer, none of them are in the ‘throw-away’ territory were discs and trading room (month on month) membership is concerned. Looking around the market the prices appear to range from circa €5,000 to upwards of €20,000. Having had inside knowledge of one of the most revered and ‘respected’ trading ‘universities’ I can categorically state any money spent, whilst it may give short term comfort that the trader is on the first rung of the ladder, is money wasted. What’s provided can be obtained on the web free of charge through simple Google searches which would then take no longer than a day to absorb and put into practice.
It might surprise readers to learn that one file folder I’ve been in receipt of, that constituted the core of the trading course and education on offer, only amounted to two or three trading strategies with the recommendation that the trader risk 5% per trade on an account balance as low as €10,000..that was it. And one of the strategies, recommended for trading forex, was a simple moving average crossover. The 8 EMA crossing the 21 MA off a one hour chart is their “Holy Grail” and forms the main constituent of the FX element of the course. For that comprehensive education the price is circa €8,000, but you can bargain them down. That’s €8,000 for a trading method that’s taken seconds to describe and could be found with a simple Google search.
There is no university style course for FX retail traders that will adequately train the trader for the trails of life they’ll encounter, the experiences are so unique no shared experience can help. It’s important that any traders contemplating a spend on a course keep their hands in their pockets and spend only a small proportion of their funds on gaining education. And that education is best provided by market participation. Instead of committing circa €8,000 on a course why not spend €3000 by funding a mini or micro account? You’ll get a lot more value than a trading academy/university course and if you need an badge of honour for self validation buy yourself a trophy and put it on your cabinet, you could call it the “I’m nobody’s sucker award”..
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