EurAnalysis

maybe ppl follow your trade? In that case more motivation to hunt your position?

nice quote you have but you haven't met the wife lol. i have a major trading way which is private to me only and another way which i am trying out. this one i am showing people but it is hard to explain. i come into the room and say i've just gone short and hey presto it goes up (makes me look stoopid) lol. so i just muscle my way out by buying at higher price, the big boys do it so can i. happy trading

Wednesday, May 2nd

03:15 CHF Retail Sales

03:30 CHF SVME PMI

03:55 EUR German Unemployment Change

04:30 GBP Construction PMI; Net Lending to Individuals

05:00 EUR Unemployment Rate

08:15 USD ADP Non-Farm Employment Change

10:00 USD Factory Orders

10:30 USD Crude Oil Inventories

18:45 NZD Employment Change; Unemployment Rate

19:30 AUD AIG Services Index
Thursday, May 3rd

02:00 GBP Nationwide HPI

02:45 EUR French Industrial Production

04:30 GBP Services PMI

07:45 EUR ECB Interest Rate Announcement

08:30 EUR ECB Press Conference

08:30 USD Unemployment Claims; Prelim Nonfarm productivity; Prelim Unit Labor Costs

10:00 USD ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI

10:30 USD Natural Gas Storage

13:00 USD FOMC Member Lockhart Speaks

21:30 AUD RBA Monetary Policy Statement
Friday, May 4th 05:00 EUR Retail Sales

08:30 USD Non-Farm Employment Change; Unemployment Rate; Average Hourly Earnings


10:00 CAD Ivey PMI

hi Kno, hope your ok. i am just doing a bit of studying (at my age)gosh

Austerity Versus Growth in the Eurozone
May 1, 2012

This commentary was written by Bill Witherell, Cumberland’s Chief Global Economist. He joined Cumberland after years of experience at the OECD in Paris. His bio is found on Cumberland’s home page, www.cumber.com. He can be reached at [email protected].

The renewed flare-up in the sovereign debt crisis and accompanying political developments have brought the Eurozone back to the forefront of investor concerns in April. Strong prospects of a Socialist government taking power in France in May, the fall of the Dutch government, and heavy headwinds for the reform/austerity program in Italy have combined with spreading recession in much of the Eurozone, in particular in Spain. The European Central Bank’s massive 3-year LTRO variant of quantitative easing reduced pressures in the Eurozone’s financial system in the first quarter, lowering interbank spreads, and is still working through the system. However, it did not solve the Eurozone’s underlying economic problems, a fact reflected in the recent rises in sovereign bond spreads. On our web site, www.cumber.com , we track the credit spreads of sovereigns around the world, listing both the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. These charts, updated on a weekly basis, can be viewed at http://www.cumber.com/content/misc/EU_Contagion.pdf .

The market’s uncertainty about how Europe will address the continuing problems has increased significantly as leaders express their growing disagreements on the issues of austerity versus fiscal stimulus to promote growth, and market-friendly reforms to increase the ability to compete in a global economy versus protectionism and increased regulation.

The leading political figure questioning the fiscal pact agreed recently by the leaders of 25 European nations is Francois Hollande, whom polls indicate is significantly ahead of the current President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the run-up to the May 6 second-round French election. He is directing his attacks at the German President, Angela Merkel, and the ECB, whom he sees as pressing for austerity to the detriment of growth and forcing all of Europe to accept their prescriptions. He is demanding that a component on growth be added to the pact. He evidently sees increased government spending as the way to stimulate growth. Were Europe to follow Hollande’s lead, the fiscal pact would be a shambles and the bond market would exact a high price.

Italy’s Prime Minister, Mario Monti, is experiencing some of the same public dissatisfaction with fiscal austerity and structural reforms. Labor unions are strongly opposing Monti’s labor-market reforms and have caused him to retreat on some provisions. Monti also has criticized the push for greater austerity in the Eurozone. He has stressed that he is not calling for a renegotiation of the fiscal pact, but apparently would support suggestions by some in Brussels that tough deficit targets be delayed for the most severely affected countries, such as Spain and Portugal. He warned that without new growth measures, including public investment, the crisis could deepen. The bond market’s increased concerns about the situation in Italy are affecting the country’s borrowing costs. In the Friday, April 27th auction, the yield on Italy’s benchmark 10-year bonds rose to 5.84%, as compared with 5.24% in the March auction.

Spain has been at the center of Eurozone concerns this month. Spanish bond yields rose above 6 %, a rate not seen since early December of 2011. This week Standard & Poor’s cut its rating of Spain by two levels, to BBB+. The deterioration in Spain’s economy was reflected this week in the report on the unemployment rate for the first quarter, 24.4%. The IMF expressed in strong terms its concerns about Spanish banks that have been heavily hit by the collapse of the bubble in construction: “To preserve financial stability, it is critical that these banks, especially the largest one, take swift and decisive measures to strengthen their balance sheets and improve management and governance practices.

Nevertheless, Spain’s Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, ruled out the country seeking a bailout. “We don’t need it,” he claimed. Spain is maintaining its strict austerity policy. In Contrast to Hollande and Monti, De Guindos stressed that “I do not see that the growth pact should involve any sort of fiscal boost or stimulus.” He does call for a European growth program that “has to be much more focused on performance on the structural side.”

It is looking increasingly likely that Europe will add a growth annex to its fiscal pact. ECB President, Mario Draghi called this week for adding a “growth compact” to the budget rules. He was clearly not talking about fiscal stimulus measures but rather a focus on growth-enhancing structural reforms and a boost to competitiveness. German Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly expressed her support for this proposal, calling for “sustainable initiatives, not simply economic stimulus programs that just increase debt.” Hollande, true to form, disagreed, complaining that Draghi is proposing “adding even stronger competition, liberalization and privatization.” Hopefully, Hollande, if he does win the election, will lose this debate with France’s European partners and decide to back off from his campaign rhetoric. He will be constrained by France’s large budget deficit and the need to finance it.

We would agree that a “growth compact” along the lines proposed by Draghi is needed. The IMF is projecting the Eurozone’s GDP will decline by 0.3% this year, followed by a very weak recovery in 2013 of 0.9%. The April Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for manufacturing in the Eurozone is consistent with this negative outlook as it fell to a new trough of 46.0. The IMF points at bank deleveraging as being an important headwind for growth in the Eurozone. Very little of the LTRO money provided to banks has ended up in the economy in growth-promoting activities, that is, commercial and consumer loans, but instead has been used by the banks to buy sovereign debt or to increase their deposits with their central bank. Draghi noted with concern the declines in demand for loans to business and consumers as fiscal austerity was “starting to reverberate its contractionary effects.”

Eurozone equity markets have reflected the above developments, declining in April after significant gains in the first quarter. At the end of the week, looking at MSCI country equity indices, Spain was down -11.4% for the month-to-date, Italy was down -7.2%, France -4.7% and even Germany lost -2.9%. The corresponding year-to-date returns are Spain, -15.4%, Italy, +1.0%, France, +6.8%, and Germany, +17.0%. At Cumberland Advisors we are continuing to hold Germany as the only Eurozone position in our International and Global Multi-Asset Class Portfolios.


Bill Witherell, Chief Global Economist

At 68 I stay up 18 to 20 hours each day. I have amazing energy and love life. My memory is better now than at age 30. Age is a matter of the mind and if you do not mind it does not matter. I never date women over 30 since they can not keep up with me. I love life and I love forex and I Thank You Very Much for asking about me. We can meet at my 69TH Birthday Party in Montreal on December 31, 2012 and bring FXMindset with you. We have some hairy women here to. I am only teasing you, FXMindset. I miss you and your charts.

Good Evening and Good Trading...

This is What I’m Doing with My Own Money Right Now


With the Dow now at its highest level since December of 2007, today King World News interviewed John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of the $10 billion strong Sprott Asset Management. Embry told KWN “This is totally unrealistic and unsustainable.” Embry also discussed gold and the mining shares, and what he is doing with his own money, but first, here is what Embry had to say about what is happening in the stock market: “There is enormous interference in the stock market. The ‘Plunge Protection Team’ or ‘President’s Working Group on Financial Markets’ is in the market, virtually every day, making sure there is enough money being funneled to their primary dealers, so the stock market never has a serious hiccup.”








http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldne...peimage_22.png


http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldne...Right_Now.html




“One of the basic goals now is to hold the Dow above 13,000 because this imparts confidence to the public. This is totally unrealistic and unsustainable because there is nothing in the backdrop other than money creation that would suggest the stock market should be higher. No market in history has traded like this, particularly considering how bad the fundamentals are at this point.



They want to hold this together for another six months, until the elections take place in the US on November 6th. This is their goal. Can they do it? I’d say no....

“We’ll just have to wait and see. The conditions, financially and economically, in my mind, are deteriorating in many parts of the world.”



When asked about gold, Embry stated, “Today I took delivery of more physical gold because I think this is a great time to be adding to your position. Eight months ago it was over $1,900 and today it’s $1,650. Savvy investors will buy these dips in bull markets and that’s what I’m doing personally.



Once gold exits this range that it’s been in now for a considerable period of time, it will exit violently to the upside. I keep saying it, but the physical market is gradually overcoming the paper market, and the paper market, in a word, is preposterous.”



Embry had this to say about the mining shares: “You go through these periods where markets become extremely irrational, and it looks like they are going to fall every day, and there is no sort of reality anymore. I remember, it’s been 38 years, but I remember it as if it were yesterday, the 1973/1974 bear market in US stocks. We literally would go to work wondering why we had jobs.



Why would anybody pay us to just witness this ongoing decline (which was roughly 47%)? It was beyond depressing. When you have seen these things before, you realize that if you understand the fundamentals, it’s a great opportunity.



But, until you’ve been around for a while, you don’t look at it that way. Most novice investors don’t understand this and so they are puking up the mining stocks because they just want out.



The quality mining shares are dramatically undervalued. The value is so exceptional. I just read one piece that said ‘in the last 100 years, this is one of the 5 best buying opportunities.’ It’s amazing to have this opportunity, considering how great the fundamentals for gold and silver bullion are.



At this point because of the lackluster price action in the shares, most people are abandoning them and the sentiment is remarkably negative. This is when you want to buy, when sentiment is negative and fundamentals are astoundingly positive.”

Timeframe: 5 minute | hourly | daily | weeklyhttp://www.finviz.com/gfx/nic2x2.gifhttp://www.finviz.com/fx_image.ashx?...15135727650000

Good morning. Rising wedge support in confluence with the 61.8% fibo line, 1.32 psych level and weekly pivot line finds some light bids.

Waiting for break...

E/U M15

That 15min engulfing candle is nasty. But we have some nice hammer bottoms in the 15m as well near the 61.8 and right near the major trend line

Decision point

Wish this thread was more popular, I'd rather post here than the other threads which are too busy

Short UJ on 15m tweezer top and 5min bearish engulfing pattern

lot of volume and volatility today GBP pmi, EUR unemployment rate, USD non firm employment change, crude oil inventory.

wow .. a nasty move.

BINGO!!!!

The German unemployment number must have been leaked early.

If you start posting here instead of the "other" Euro thread, you will contribute towards its popularity and fulfill your wish

Ha.. ha .. long live Hammer!

It is broken now .. and I am fully bearish .. looking forward to see 1.30 as soon as possible.