The Really Useless Thread

Well I agree we are in key levels in most markets. We are testing (or retesting) yearly highs or lows in quite a few markets (including key stocks) and that's enough to guarantee that we will have some action.

Because of QE's and etc definitively week is wide open. Turning points?, well depends on the market, Euro has completed most of the Quarterly retrace but still have 1 level open in my Quarterly outlook (within easy reach intraday) while equities across the world already fully completed the extensions to Resistances but they are still running intraday.

The key Bond, Gold and Oil markets for signaling important key turning points across the board are still running healthy and not yet close to key levels in my charts.

In simple words, I agree the week is still open intraday but the decision point (for continuation, reversal or chop till years end) will come with the Quarterly close and with all these noisy FA cards (QEs, EZ Bonds, Courts, etc) already on the table...

Let's see how it goes ...

sisse

aud at/near 0444.1.. look for weakness soon

dustbin trader for sure

100 pips to go, let's get it over with.....

USDOLLAR D1:

i know your not talkin about me cuz i use my big toes

i am out of here ... you have a good one

week s/r , swing mid - bearish H4 (candle) ... could push it back down to mid 200s ish

well , lets get bouncing and help EA down ...

hello... jon's back... sorry if this upset's anyone lol

Anything exciting on your 3 day hiatus?? Markets are nutty

Let us begin by stipulating that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't on Wednesday.
If he introduces a new bond-buying program or some other nontraditional policy to goose the economy, Republicans will accuse him of debasing the currency, creating the conditions for the next great inflation and encouraging another cycle of capital misallocation. If he doesn't introduce anything, Democrats will blame him for not doing his job to promote price stability and maximum employment, as specified by the Fed's dual mandate.


Let us further stipulate that Bernanke is a man of his word. Agree or disagree with his policies, he is a person of character. Therefore, we should expect the Fed to announce additional stimulus at the conclusion of this week's meeting.
Bernanke has been laying the groundwork for months. The minutes of the July 31-Aug. 1 policy meeting say additional measures "would likely be warranted fairly soon unless incoming information pointed to a substantial and sustainable strengthening in the pace of the economic recovery."
In his opening remarks at the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole Symposium on Aug. 31, Bernanke said he saw little evidence that persistently high unemployment was the result of structural changes to the economy, such as a skills mismatch between employers and the unemployed. He called chronic unemployment -- the unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent for 43 consecutive months, and 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks or more -- a "grave concern."
An economy bumping along at 2 percent three years after the official end of the recession doesn't meet the "substantial and sustainable" standard.
So what will the Fed do? Perhaps it will announce something akin to the European Central Bank's open-ended bond purchases without the offsetting sales.
Already in place is a second maturity-extension program of $267 billion begun in June and set to continue through the end of the year, at which point the Fed will have no more short-term securities to sell.
And a good thing it is, too, because if the Fed wants to stimulate demand, it has to increase the size of its balance sheet, not simply reshuffle its existing holdings. The obsession with long-term interest rates is misplaced. It's not the price of credit that's preventing more people from buying homes, what with 30- year fixed rate mortgages at 3.55 percent. It's access to credit.
The Fed is absorbing the bulk of the Treasury's new long-term debt, taking on additional interest-rate risk and distorting the yield curve in the process.
Not that anyone at the Fed cares about the spread between short- and long- term interest rates. Instead of being viewed as a harbinger of recession in 2006 and 2007, the inverted yield curve was dismissed as irrelevant. "This time is different," we were told.
Nor do Fed policy makers focus on money, the missing ingredient in today's monetary policy. Yes, the banks are holding $1.45 trillion in excess reserves, and bank credit has been expanding since mid-2011. But money isn't turning over fast enough to give the economy a real lift.
There are risks to doing more. The economy's problems could turn out to be structural, not cyclical, in which case the Fed's medicine will create higher prices, not more employment. If it injects too much money into the economy, the Fed could create a new inflation threat. And the economy may be on the verge of taking off, which is why some Fed officials want to wait for even more data.
The risks of doing nothing may be even greater. Inflation is a future risk; current unemployment is a "grave concern." With words like that, Bernanke's choice seems pretty clear.

na bro... actually i have not even opened a chart in like 10days ..

had some other things going on. work etc...

so i dont even know whats going on lol

High levels of public and private debt, a long running negative trade balance and current account deficit, stalling industrial production, GDP and employment along with significant banking sector exposure to the periphery all add up to a fairly risky predicament. This is certainly not a country that could take on a strict austerity regime without causing itself some significant short-to-medium term economic damage because it is obvious from the metrics that the private sector has been borrowing from both the external and government sectors for a long period of time.

As I mentioned in the case Spain, once the economy begins to slow, government sector revenues fall. If deficit cutting is a priority over growth then this inevitably leads to calls for further cuts in government spending and increases in taxation which, in the absence expanding private sector credit or offsetting growth in the external sector, leads to a further deterioration in economic growth. It is far too early in the case of France to suggest such a dynamic has taken hold but growth has certainly become a problem:

The French economy will shrink in the third quarter after stagnating for nine months, the country’s central bank said Monday, indicating the slowdown of the euro zone’s second-largest economy is intensifying.
The 2 trillion euro ($2.56 trillion) economy will shrink 0.1% in the three months to September, Bank of France said.
The forecast suggests France faces its first quarter of contraction since the country pulled out of recession at the start of 2009.
This puts further pressure on President Francois Hollande, who has vowed to kickstart the economy in an effort to make necessary budget adjustments less painful. In a televised interview last night, Mr. Hollande said the government had significantly cut its economic forecasts for next year–with growth now expected to be barely above zero this year, and reaching just 0.8% in 2013, much less than the 1.2% expansion forecast previously.

And in response to the lagging economy and with deficit reduction in mind it isn’t hard to guess what comes next:

Mr. Hollande said his government would propose a budget this month packed with as much as €20 billion ($25.6 billion) in new taxes and €10 billion in spending cuts. He confirmed that the budget will include a special 75% tax for people earning more than €1 million a year that has fanned fears of an exodus of France’s wealthiest citizens.
The painful measures are necessary to fulfill pledges to lower the country’s budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product next year from 4.5% in 2012 and reassure investors, who have been more lenient with France than with other highly indebted euro-zone countries such as Italy and Spain.
Mr. Hollande was elected in May with a pledge to shift the burden of economic hardship onto the rich and to resolve the protracted euro sovereign-debt crisis by softening the German-inspired prescription of austerity. Stimulating economic growth, Mr. Hollande said, would make restoring the health of public finances easier.

With France’s major export partners being Germany, Italy, Spain , Belgium and the UK it’s very difficult to see the external sector as a source of renewed growth so it will be very interesting to watch exactly what happens to the French economy over the next 12 months. But let’s just say I am more than a little sceptical about those 2013 growth figures.
Mr Hollande, however, isn’t the only leader I think is being overly optimistic given the circumstances. Last week Italy’s Mario Monti was quoted as saying:

Italy has averted the worst case scenario of the debt crisis, and economic recovery in the eurozone’s third largest economy is within reach, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said on Wednesday.
“Although recovery is not visible in numbers yet, … it is now within our country’s reach and I think it will come soon,” Monti told local television Norba 24.

I have to say I am struggling to see what Mr Monti is referring to. Unemployment has climbed to 10.7% up 2.4% in a year, the PMIs look woeful, the current account is still over 3% of GDP, industrial production is shrinking rapidly, business and consumer confidence are trending towards GFC lows and yesterday the nation’s GDP was revised downwards again:

Italy’s economy shrank by 2.6% compared with a year earlier, compared with the previous estimate of 2.5%, the national statistics institute Istat said. Compared with the previous quarter, domestic consumption fell by 0.7%, while investment dropped by 2.3%.
“It’s worse than we expected and the size of the contraction in consumer spending is a particularly nasty surprise,” said Unicredit economist Loredana Federico.
The Italian economy – the eurozone’s third largest – has contracted for the past four quarters as the government has implemented a series of drastic spending cuts designed to cut its debt levels, which currently stand at more than the country’s annual economic output.

It must be remembered these are the 5th and 8th largest economies in the world by GDP (nominal) and together have a GDP 35% larger than Germany. Both countries are major trading partners with each other along with Spain, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands and over 25% of Spain’s exports go to one of these two countries.
Just how periphery euro nations are expected to evolve into export driven powerhouses when their major trading partners are both shrinking and attempting similar policies remains one of those unanswered European economic mysteries. Some may even call it delusional.

whateve's lol

Who wants to short with me?? Waiting for the next h4 close. Of course, 2931 could be a potential wave top as well... it's nearly close. Another 70'ish pips to go.

i appreciate the offer but im a shortahaullic...

We only have one life to live! Can't waste it on meetings and stepped programs!

like a man with 3 knees.

i know what a waste right? rehab does not work

GJ bubble burst under this area imo 515/30