Happy Trading in 2008!

Soon the New 2008 Year will come and I just want to wish you a happy Forex/CFD/Stocks trading in the next year. Earn more than you've got in 2007, learn new strategies and open new opportunities on the Forex market! Never stop at what you've already mastered and you will find your own financial freedom!

Forecast for 2008 Forex, Oil, Interest Rates

OK, the New Year is coming close and as this year is ending it's about time to try to forecast the future of the Forex market (and some other factors that influence Forex) for the year 2008. My last forecast (for 2007) didn't get its own post on this blog, but I must admit that it was a disastrous attempt - I thought that dollar will start to grow and it lost more than 10% against euro, I also predicted for the oil to remain below $65/barrel and it got beyond $90/barrel.

By posting my forecast to this blog I can be sure that I will be able to compare actual results with my thoughts exactly as they were. And maybe it will help some long-term traders too.

So here it is, 2008 forecast:

EUR/USD - ~4% down to about 1.4100.
GBP/USD - ~4.3% down to about 1.9100.
USD/JPY - ~9.6% down to about 101.50.
EUR/JPY - ~10% down to about 148.80.

Oil - it's hard for me to predict this one, but judging from the outlook on growing dollar, it should remain in the $80-$120/barrel boundaries for the whole 2008. Yeah, that's a huge range, but oil is really volatile.

Interest rates:
Fed is more likely to lower the interest rate by 1%-1.5% next year (2.75%-3.25% by the end of the year).
ECB will most probably be lowering the rates or holding them around the same level - 5-5.5% by the end of the year.
BoE will certainly cut - 3.75%-4.0% by the end of the year.
Only Bank of Japan looks bullish on the interest rates to me - 1%-1.5% by the end of 2008.

Anyway, this is just a Forex trader's forecast, so don't rely on it much. It would be also interesting to see your forecasts. Feel free to leave one in the comments.

Forex Technical Analysis for 12/31-01/04 Week

EUR/USD trend: hold.
GBP/USD trend: hold.
USD/JPY trend: hold.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

Floor Pivot Points:
Pair	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res
EUR/USD	1.4123	1.4245	1.4484	1.4606	1.4845	1.4967	1.5206
GBP/USD	1.9532	1.9642	1.9803	1.9913	2.0074	2.0184	2.0345
USD/JPY	109.13	110.71	111.50	113.08	113.87	115.45	116.24
EUR/JPY	160.92	162.33	163.84	165.25	166.76	168.17	169.68

Woodie's Pivot Points:
Pair	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res
EUR/USD	1.4274	1.4544	1.4635	1.4905	1.4996
GBP/USD	1.9642	1.9803	1.9913	2.0074	2.0184
USD/JPY	110.71	111.50	113.08	113.87	115.45
EUR/JPY	162.33	163.84	165.25	166.76	168.17

Camarilla Pivot Points:
Pair	4th Sup	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res	4th Res
EUR/USD	1.4525	1.4625	1.4658	1.4691	1.4757	1.4790	1.4823	1.4923
GBP/USD	1.9816	1.9890	1.9915	1.9940	1.9990	2.0015	2.0040	2.0114
USD/JPY	111.00	111.65	111.87	112.08	112.52	112.73	112.95	113.60
EUR/JPY	163.74	164.55	164.81	165.08	165.62	165.89	166.15	166.96

Tom DeMark's Pivot Points:
Pair:	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
Resistance:	1.4906	2.0129	113.48	166.01
Support:	1.4545	1.9858	111.11	163.09

Fibonacci Retracement Levels:
Pairs	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
100.0%	1.4727	2.0022	114.65	166.66
61.8%	1.4589	1.9918	113.74	165.54
50.0%	1.4547	1.9887	113.47	165.20
38.2%	1.4504	1.9855	113.19	164.86
23.6%	1.4451	1.9815	112.84	164.43
0.0%	1.4366	1.9751	112.28	163.74

U.S. Dollar Continues Falling

EUR/USD continued to rally today after four unprecedented days of growth, making it the full bullish week for this currency pair with the every trading day session ending in favor of euro. Even holidays with their low financial trading volume couldn't save USD from losing 2% against EUR.

Chicago PMI (Chicago Business Barometer) rose to astonishing 56.6 in December after being only 52.9 in November. The average forecast for this indicator was around 52.0. So, it should definitely improve current dollar's stance.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released the report on November new home sales, showing a large downward gap between the October and current values - 9%. New residential sales were at 647,000, while October's value (revised down from 728,000) was 711,000. Analysts expected a lesser drop to 715,000.

EUR/USD Rallies Despite of Holidays

Despite the holidays period has already came to the U.S. and European markets, EUR/USD is rallying up fast for the second day in a row now. And if today there is plenty of fundamental news that can push euro up by almost 100 pips against U.S. dollar, yesterday's bullish candle has no such reasons.

Today, the employment market of U.S. showed that it is suffering because of the subprime lending crisis too, initial jobless claims continue to grow - 349k against 340k expected, previous week value was also revised up from 346k to 348k.

November durable goods orders hadn't met the hopes of the analysts that expected 2.2% growth, it was reported at 0.1% - though, still better than the October's decline by 0.4%.

December Consumer confidence index reported by Conference Board was the only good indicator which came out in United States today - it grew up from 87.8 to 88.6.

Crude oil inventories fell during the week ending December 21 by 3.3 million barrels. And now Department of Energy says that at 293.6 million barrels they are in lower half of the average range for this time of year.

Interview with eToro

Jeff MacKenzee, the account manager of the eToro partners team agreed to answer some of my questions regarding eToro's innovative Forex trading platform. eToro is known for brining to the on-line Forex market trading some untraditional types of Forex trading. eToro platform doesn't look like any other and can be easily understood by someone who never read about Forex or charting. More information about eToro is available here.

eToro is a relatively new Forex trading platform, what long-term goal do you set for yourself as a trading platform?

eToro's goal was to create a visually engaging interactive platform based on real-time financial information and transactions, while translating the financial information into several real-time intuitive visual representations and allowing traders to execute multiple financial transactions in an easy "one click" interface.

As the on-line Forex brokerage market looks more like oversaturated now, how do you feel about your future? Was it hard to enter this market? What were your main principles to start providing retail Forex trading services?

eToro provides its traders with the most professional tools, surrounded by a friendly interface. eToro is currently offering advanced trading options like stop loss and take profit, enabling people who have little understanding of trading methods to learn what exactly those options are, and how to take advantage of them. The platform also stands out in the market with its community feature, allowing traders to interact with other traders, share advice and even compete for prizes. In addition, eToro is offering some of the lowest spreads on the market, as low as 2 pips on EUR/JPY for example.

You have developed a custom and very original trading platform for your clients. Why did you choose this way and not offered some generic trading platform, like MetaTrader?

eToro's advantage is in its simplicity. eToro is the only forex platform that deals with the mental element of entering a new and unknown territory, that most inexperienced traders get when they first have a look at other forex platforms. The user friendly interface allows millions of people around the world to start trading and learn what Forex is, using simple graphics instead of complex charts.

Seeing as your platform doesn't offer powerful tools for market analysis and trades execution, would it be justified to say that you as a Forex platform aim on the newbie traders rather than professionals?

Professional traders might find eToro extremely useful, eToro offers some of the lowest spreads on the market and unlike other platforms it does not limit scalping. Professional traders know they can enjoy that combination and generate large profits. The newbie will certainly find eToro to be the easiest platform to start trading on and will enjoy the practice mode where he can trade with demo money with no real financial risks until he feels more experienced to try trading with as little as $50 of real money.

Currently you are offering a variety of payment methods to fund the trader's account, like wire transfer, credit card and PayPal. Do you plan adding more options to deposit/withdraw money?

eToro currently supports Wire transfer, Credit card, Paypal and Western union. Should there be a demand of any other means of payment we will gladly consider it.

Especially in the light of some types of trading offered in eToro platform, do you think that Forex trading is some sort of gambling? Or do you prefer to present Forex as a form of active investing?

Forex is the largest financial market in the world, which according to the The Bank of International Settlements carries a trade volume of $3.2 trillion per day. Yet very few people actually trade that market because they are hardly any places in which one can learn how the Forex world works. eToro presents the movements in a more appealing manner, while explaining to the traders why things happen. Moreover, eToro's news ticker lets the traders know when important announces are expected, and warns for volatility. All of those actions are intended to make people understand that Forex is far from gambling and that there is a reason why, for example, a change in interest rates in the United States will also cause changes in EUR/USD rates.

eToro brought innovative approach to the quite old-fashioned Forex trading market. Do you plan any new features for your trading platform, or do you think that it is it already overloaded with them?

eToro is constantly improving its platform and launches newer versions, The possibilities are endless. eToro is working in 2 levels in order to improve the platform: financial improvements, like the recently integrated stop loss and take profit; platform improvements, offering the traders new trading methods on top of the ones currently available.

eToro is regularly holding different traders' contests and competitions. Are they popular among your clients? Do you plan keep them as the regular events? If so, will you be increasing the prize funds?

eToro introduces social elements such as chat features and championships, the idea is to create a trading community that will allow traders to share ideas and ask questions regarding the trades. The trading championship is very popular among traders, and championship leaders often share their trading methods and tips in order to teach the other traders how to trade successfully.

The user support is one of the basic and most important parts of the Forex brokerage. As far as I know traders often leave different on-line brokers just because of their lack of a quality support. How do you approach the user support problem?

eToro has a large support group that is dedicated to assist our traders either via phone, email, or live chat. The support staff is qualified and trained to help with technical issues regarding the program itself, and of course any questions regarding trades, deposits and withdrawals.

What form of market analysis would you recommend to your clients? Do you offer any educational materials on Forex market to them?

The eToro forum has a dedicated section for forex education, For example - the admin posted a list of the major announcements and their effect on the markets, referring them to the calendar on www.forexfactory.com in order to help them prepare for market volatility.

What is, in your opinion, the main quality the Forex trader should possess to succeed in trading? Is the Forex trading really for everyone?

In our opinion, it is needed to break the "circle of silence" that surrounds Forex trading. Forex is indeed complicated - but as the phrase (attributed to Albert Einstein) goes - "any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan".Most traders tend to say that they can't explain how to trade Forex because it is too complicated, we at eToro think that even the Forex world can be explained using a fun and intuitive platform.

eToro is a new player on the on-line Forex market, it still has to gain traders' confidence and the loyalty of its customers. But in every business industry the leading positions always have been conquered with innovations and extraordinary approach to the traditional methods. So maybe eToro has some interesting future? If you have any comments on this interview or ideas for the future interviews you can leave a comment here, or via the contact form.

CFD Trading - My 2007 Results

OK, CFD trading is a bit offtopic for the Forex blog, but as many Forex brokers also offer CFD trading services and it is in a lot way similar to Forex trading (high leverage, MetaTrader platform, no dividends), I thought that it would be interesting to share my results for 2007.

I've decided to use standard demo account of $10,000 solely for CFD trading in January 11, 2007 with the condition to close all positions before the end of the year and see the results. I've closed the last position last Friday, before entering the low liquidity market pre-Christmas period.

Unsurprisingly, the minority of the losing positions outweighed the majority of winning ones. As I was a total newbie to CFD at that moment, my first several positions were badly thought out and planned. So here are the stats:

Total Positions: 26
Profitable Positions: 14
Losing Positions: 12
Total Profit: -$800.10
Total Profit, %: -8%
Average Profitable Position: $417.86
Average Losing Position: -$554.17

Most profitable symbols: #t (AT&T), #mcd (McDonalds), #ibm (IBM).
Most losing symbols: #aig (American International Group), #c (Citigroup), #jpm (JP Morgan Chase).

And yes, all the trades were long (I think there is no point to go into long-term short positions in the bullish stock market). No surprise here - the biggest losers are related to the financial sector, which experienced a very bad year; biggest winners are from IT and consumer's sectors that wasn't disturbed by the subprime lending slump.

When I opened positions I've used the financial ratings from the various on-line agencies as well as my own vision of the company's future (that usually proved wrong resulting in the major part of my losers). Stop-loss was usually set to some psychological support level (also wrong, technical support levels with lower loss level proved to be better), take-profit was set the recommended target level or slightly below (in most cases it worked fine).

After six months of CFD trading I started to understand my mistakes and tried to improve my strategy. So I've came up with these important "cornerstones" of leveraged CFD trading:

1. Use Alpha and Beta parameters as the indicator of the stock potential (I've used the ones from MarketEdge.com).
2. Don't buy a symbol if some major financial institution states some real reasons against it, or if it has a rating below A.
3. Stop-loss shouldn't be greater than your take-profit.
4. Close positions that are in a negative zone for more than a month - it's better to free up some margin to buy a better symbol, there are plenty of them.

I will be trading CFDs for the whole next year too and I will probably start a separate real trading account specifically for such trades. I hope my 2007 experience will help me to gain at least as much as the raw S&P 500 index in 2008.

Automated Trading Championship 2007 Came to End

The Automated Trading Championship 2007, which was started by the MetaQuotes Software Corp. (the company that made MetaTrader trading platform), ended yesterday and the winners have been announced:

Participant Better earned the first prize of $40,000 with his outstanding neural network expert advisor, which has turned $10,000 into $130,475.45 in 12 trading weeks. Too bad this has been done on demo account, not real :-). A very interesting result with almost 150% distance from the second place. Unfortunately his expert advisor won't be available to the public, as he refuses to sell or reveal it.

Second prize is going to user wackena, who made $55,042.10 out of $10,000 - a lot less than Better's EA, but still a very convincing result - 450% in over 3 months. The prize for wackena is $25,000.

Third position belongs to user with the nickname Pegasmaster. His expert advisor earned him $15,000 prize, making $39,945.81 balance during the competition.

My own attempt at this championship made it to the 179th place with $6,684.44 balance left - making it a big loser expert advisor. I had no time not only to forward testing it before championship start, but also to backtest it on some accurate data. Anyway I've tried and probably in the next championship I will end up with at least a bit better result :-).

Congratulations to the winners and better luck to all who will participate in the next year's contest!

Forex Technical Analysis for 12/24-12/28 Week

EUR/USD trend: hold.
GBP/USD trend: hold.
USD/JPY trend: hold.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

Floor Pivot Points:
Pair	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res
EUR/USD	1.4166	1.4238	1.4308	1.4380	1.4450	1.4522	1.4592
GBP/USD	1.9269	1.9539	1.9687	1.9957	2.0105	2.0375	2.0523
USD/JPY	111.62	112.18	113.09	113.65	114.56	115.12	116.03
EUR/JPY	160.10	160.92	162.41	163.23	164.72	165.54	167.03

Woodie's Pivot Points:
Pair	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res
EUR/USD	1.4238	1.4307	1.4380	1.4449	1.4522
GBP/USD	1.9539	1.9687	1.9957	2.0105	2.0375
USD/JPY	112.18	113.09	113.65	114.56	115.12
EUR/JPY	160.92	162.41	163.23	164.72	165.54

Camarilla Pivot Points:
Pair	4th Sup	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res	4th Res
EUR/USD	1.4300	1.4339	1.4352	1.4365	1.4391	1.4404	1.4417	1.4456
GBP/USD	1.9604	1.9719	1.9757	1.9796	1.9872	1.9911	1.9949	2.0064
USD/JPY	113.20	113.61	113.74	113.88	114.14	114.28	114.41	114.82
EUR/JPY	162.63	163.26	163.48	163.69	164.11	164.32	164.54	165.17

Tom DeMark's Pivot Points:
Pair:	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
Resistance:	1.4486	2.0240	114.84	165.13
Support:	1.4344	1.9822	113.37	162.82

Fibonacci Retracement Levels:
Pairs	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
100.0%	1.4452	2.0228	114.20	164.05
61.8%	1.4398	2.0068	113.64	163.17
50.0%	1.4381	2.0019	113.47	162.90
38.2%	1.4364	1.9970	113.29	162.62
23.6%	1.4344	1.9909	113.08	162.29
0.0%	1.4310	1.9810	112.73	161.74

EUR/USD Corrects Up Before Holidays

EUR/USD played back fully the yesterday's decline, but still ended the last week before the holiday period with a small loss. Forex market will be open despite of any holidays, but the price volatility will be low and no major movements can be expected.

November personal income and spendings report turned out to be better than it was for October and not the least reason for it lies in the pre-holiday sales period. Personal income growth of 0.4% failed to meet the 0.5% expectation, but personal spendings grew up 1.1% which is a lot better than 0.7% forecast. Core PCE inflation, as forecast showed, remained at the same level as in October - 0.2%.

Michigan sentiment index for December was revised from 74.5 to 75.5, which is still below the previous the October's 76.1 value. The consensus among the analysts was that the value be left at 74.5.

Overall, these news are positive for dollar, that might make FOMC think twice before lowering the interest rates further.

Dollar Steady Against Pound, Euro

U.S. dollar gained against other currencies today, showing a significant change in GBP/USD, along with a little less strong appreciation in EUR/USD. As no important positive data was released for USD, this growth may be accounted to the inertial buying of dollar and position closing on the previous good news and the loss of interest to carry trade.

Final numbers for GDP growth and GDP deflator in Q3 2007 were released today, but they didn't change anything at all as they were known long before today. GDP growth remained the same - at 4.9%, a very high number for U.S. economy, GDP deflator was revised from 0.9% to 1.0% - an insignificant change.

Weekly report from the U.S. Department of Labor showed that initial jobless claims reached 346k - above the expected 335k and 12k above the previous 334k amount.

Leading indicators continued their decline in November - they fell by 0.4% - a slightly better then 0.5% dropdown in October, but worse than -0.3% that was expected by market analysts. On the bright side, leading indicators is not an important market parameter for Forex.

Philadelphia Fed November index disappointed dollar bulls with a -5.7 value, whereas October value was at 8.2 and a slight drop to 6.0 was expected by the market participants.

Dollar Unchanged After Housing Data

Dollar remains almost unchanged against euro even after the release of the U.S. housing data. EUR/USD grew up by about 16 pips only for the whole day with the main movement direction changing constantly. Supported by the yesterday data on the net foreign purchases, dollar doesn't want to give up positions even after the not so good data in the real estate sector.

U.S. Census Bureau released the New Residential Construction report for November. The new building permits in November was at 1,152k annualized. That's compared to 1,170k in October and to 1,150k expected for this month. New housing starts annualized rate in November was at 1.187k - well below 1.232k in October, but slightly above the expected 1.175k.

NY Empire State Manufacturing Index

Dollar continued to strengthen against major currency pairs (except the Swiss franc) even after the very pessimistic release of the December NY Empire State Manufacturing Index report, which fell down by 17 points to 10.3. Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that the new orders and shipments declined significantly in December according to their survey.

Among the good news was the Treasury International Capital report for October - net foreign purchases of the long-term securities was at the pretty high number (compared to $15.4B revised for September) - $114 billion, showing some elevated confidence in the U.S. economy.

New Broker and Good News from LiteForex

I've updated the brokers section adding another Muslim-friendly Forex broker that doesn't charge or give any overnight interest over the open positions. While being crucial to Muslim traders this quality can be useful to other traders that prefer positions with negative overnight interest. GCI Financial is not a new Forex broker, it operates since 2002, which is rather old for the on-line brokers. GCI Financial also supports PyaPal as an account funding method with the minimum Forex trading account size starting from $500.

Some good news from LiteForex broker came on Friday - the cost of CFD trading has been lowered twice. Now the commission on opening a CFD (NYSE stocks contracts for difference) position is 0.05% only, which is below the average level of other CFD Forex brokers:

Dealing centre LiteForex has always tried to provide the best trading conditions for our customers and today we have just made a big step forward to it. Since today Liteforex is a first MetaTrader broker who can provide 2 times lower comission! Now it will be 0.05% only!

Forex Technical Analysis for 12/17-12/21 Week

EUR/USD trend: sell.
GBP/USD trend: sell.
USD/JPY trend: buy.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

Floor Pivot Points:
Pair	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res
EUR/USD	1.3970	1.4191	1.4309	1.4530	1.4648	1.4869	1.4987
GBP/USD	1.9594	1.9872	2.0023	2.0301	2.0452	2.0730	2.0881
USD/JPY	108.19	109.34	111.30	112.45	114.41	115.56	117.52
EUR/JPY	158.39	160.14	161.79	163.54	165.19	166.94	168.59

Woodie's Pivot Points:
Pair	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res
EUR/USD	1.4165	1.4259	1.4504	1.4598	1.4843
GBP/USD	1.9872	2.0023	2.0301	2.0452	2.0730
USD/JPY	109.34	111.30	112.45	114.41	115.56
EUR/JPY	160.14	161.79	163.54	165.19	166.94

Camarilla Pivot Points:
Pair	4th Sup	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res	4th Res
EUR/USD	1.4242	1.4335	1.4366	1.4397	1.4459	1.4490	1.4521	1.4614
GBP/USD	1.9938	2.0056	2.0095	2.0135	2.0213	2.0253	2.0292	2.0410
USD/JPY	111.56	112.41	112.70	112.98	113.56	113.84	114.13	114.98
EUR/JPY	161.56	162.50	162.81	163.12	163.74	164.05	164.37	165.30

Tom DeMark's Pivot Points:
Pair:	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
Resistance:	1.4759	2.0591	113.43	166.07
Support:	1.4420	2.0162	110.32	162.67

Fibonacci Retracement Levels:
Pairs	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
100.0%	1.4750	2.0579	113.59	165.30
61.8%	1.4621	2.0415	112.40	164.00
50.0%	1.4581	2.0365	112.04	163.60
38.2%	1.4540	2.0314	111.67	163.20
23.6%	1.4491	2.0251	111.21	162.70
0.0%	1.4411	2.0150	110.48	161.90

EUR/USD Falls on Before and After CPI

EUR/USD fell down to its monthly minimum value today as the traders expected for the CPI release for November to come out. It touched 1.4468 - the lowest value since November 6 minutes after the data was released.

Consumer Price Index in November rose at 0.6% annualized rate, as it was already expected by the majority of analysts, while Core CPI showed a 0.3% growth that month.

Industrial production and productivity numbers gave a little more surprising picture to the dollar bullish traders. Industrial production increased 0.3% in November, while capacity utilization for a total industry rose up from 81.4% (revised down from 81.7%) to 81.5%.

EUR/USD Bearish After Excellent Economic Data

EUR/USD began the day with some slow downtrend, but continued to accelerate its bearish tendencies after news releases from U.S. showed some well above average macroeconomic stats.

Advance retail sales report for November from U.S. Census Bureau showed that this indicator increased by 1.2% compared with October - much better than 0.6%, which was expected by the market analysts.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) in November rose by surprising 3.2%, compared with 0.1% in October and 1.5% expected growth.

Initial jobless claims for the week ending December 8 were also released today - 333k against 340k (revised up from 338k) last week and below the 335k, as the economists were expecting.

Manufacturing and trade business inventories in October increased by 0.1% - less than expected value of 0.3% growth rate.

EUR/USD Mildly Volatile on Trade Balance Data

EUR/USD was ranging today inside the yesterday's rate limits which were formed with the bullish tendencies triggered by the Tuesday FOMC meeting's statement. Main operational interest rate in the United States was cut by 25 basis points, which equals 0.25% - from 4.50% to 4.25%, while futures markets for the interest rate predicted a 0.50% cut.

Today came out the information on the international trading balance deficit for October 2007 - it increased from $57.1B (a revised value from $56.5B) to $57.8B, while only a mild growth to $57.0B was expected. The reason for the deficit growth was in the fact that imports growing faster than the exports.

U.S. crude oil inventories already made it a habit to drop every week, like there are not enough reasons for the oil prices rally yet. Last week inventories fell by 0.7 million barrels after 8 million decline in a previous week.

Meanwhile federal budget deficit appeared above the average expectation value of $90.0B. In November it went up from the October's $55.5B to $98.2B.

Forex E-Books: Two New Pieces

Two new Forex e-books were uploaded to my site today, again, they are more articles than books, but I think that they fit better in Forex books section rather than articles, because they are finely formatted into the Word documents (EDIT: I've converted them to PDF as a more conventional format) and are more complex than other articles. These e-books both come from Mr. S.A. Ghafari, who decided to share his Forex trading experience with other traders on the non-profit basis. The titles of the articles speak for themselves:

A Practical Guide to Technical Indicators; Moving Averages
How to Trade Both Trend and Range Markets by Single Strategy?

EDIT: Added another two Forex articles by the same author. This time they are more articles with less pictures and tables:

Too Many Strategies, But Still Frustrated?
Stop Loss?? I Don't Want To Use It

Forex Technical Analysis for 12/10-12/14 Week

EUR/USD trend: sell.
GBP/USD trend: sell.
USD/JPY trend: buy.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

Floor Pivot Points:
Pair	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res
EUR/USD	1.4286	1.4405	1.4531	1.4650	1.4776	1.4895	1.5021
GBP/USD	1.9598	1.9889	2.0096	2.0387	2.0594	2.0885	2.1092
USD/JPY	108.01	108.78	110.23	111.00	112.45	113.22	114.67
EUR/JPY	158.77	159.83	161.76	162.82	164.75	165.81	167.74

Woodie's Pivot Points:
Pair	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res
EUR/USD	1.4407	1.4534	1.4652	1.4779	1.4897
GBP/USD	1.9889	2.0096	2.0387	2.0594	2.0885
USD/JPY	108.78	110.23	111.00	112.45	113.22
EUR/JPY	159.83	161.76	162.82	164.75	165.81

Camarilla Pivot Points:
Pair	4th Sup	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res	4th Res
EUR/USD	1.4521	1.4589	1.4611	1.4634	1.4678	1.4701	1.4723	1.4791
GBP/USD	2.0029	2.0166	2.0212	2.0257	2.0349	2.0394	2.0440	2.0577
USD/JPY	110.45	111.06	111.26	111.47	111.87	112.08	112.28	112.89
EUR/JPY	162.05	162.87	163.14	163.42	163.96	164.24	164.51	165.33

Tom DeMark's Pivot Points:
Pair:	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
Resistance:	1.4713	2.0740	112.84	165.28
Support:	1.4468	2.0242	110.62	162.29

Fibonacci Retracement Levels:
Pairs	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
100.0%	1.4770	2.0678	111.78	163.88
61.8%	1.4676	2.0488	110.93	162.74
50.0%	1.4648	2.0429	110.67	162.39
38.2%	1.4619	2.0370	110.41	162.03
23.6%	1.4583	2.0298	110.08	161.60
0.0%	1.4525	2.0180	109.56	160.89

EUR/USD Unconcerned with U.S. Employment Data

EUR/USD was mainly ranging today as the markets were undecided whether it is going bullish or bearish expecting the release by U.S. BLS on the November employment situation. After quite optimistic release came out dollar bulls took their ride for a while, but then euro bulls started to push EUR/USD back up keeping it slightly above the average daily range.

Nonfarm payrolls - the main indicator of the U.S. employment situation was at 94,000 in November - an expected continuation of the last month 166,000 increase. But analysts were expecting just 70,000 growth, so the dollar now has some good news to grow on.

Unemployment rate left at the same rate as in October - 4.7%, while markets expected growth to 4.8%. Average hourly earnings increased by 0.5% compared to 0.3% - the average forecast for this indicator.

Offset Trading Strategy E-Book

Another Forex strategy e-book can now be downloaded from my site, it is Offset Trading by Dana Martin. This e-book isn't very bright, but describes one of the most potentially profitable Forex trading strategy - range breakout trading on news releases. After 2-3 pages of actually describing the strategy it becomes a some sort of advertisement for MB Trading broker and their trading platform. But I can assure you that there are other ways to trade such strategies with comfort - i.e. Amazing MT4 expert advisor. And Forex news trading is one those strategies I use on my real trading account.

Dollar Stronger Against Euro, Pound

Dollar started to trade higher today against euro after the productivity report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out, as it was trading against pound sterling earlier in the morning after some bearish data on United Kingdom PMI and housing were released.

Nonfarm productivity (revised value) in third quarter of 2007 increased unexpectedly well - by 6.3%. Previous value was 4.9% and the analysts' expectations averaged at 5.8% growth. This indicator without any doubts will continue to strengthen dollar until the end of the week.

Factory orders in October also showed a growth that almost no one could see happening - 0.5%, while analysts' consensus was at 0% stagnation.

Bad news came with non-manufacturing ISM report which showed today that November Business activity index in services sector declined to 54.1% from 55.8% in October, which worse drop than it was expected - 55.0%.

Crude oil inventories again were in the red zone, but today with a very high negative value - 8 million barrels drop compared to previous week report. Combined with today's OPEC decision not to increase oil output, this news may hit dollar as the oil prices will surge to the new maximums.

New MetaTrader Indicator

I've added a new MT4 indicator - Var Mov Avg - based on the varying period moving averages crosses. It can be used as a current trend indicator and can be very good on the trendy markets. On the flat market it will show some bad picture, but it can be filtered out. This indicator also produces a sound alert every time it detects a trend change.

MetaTrader 4 Expert Advisors and Indicators

I've reworked the MetaTrader expert advisors page gradually, removing more than a half of the expert adviors that were poorly tested earlier and aren't profitable according to my new test results. I've been testing all the expert advisors on the period from 11/19/2006 to 11/19/2007 and EAs that were successful on this period I also tested on a 11/19/2004 to 11/19/2007 period to confirm their results stability. All backtests had 90% testing quality. The descriptions of the expert advisors now include the test results and my own notices reg their use.

Another change to the site - I've added MetaTrader indicators page which will contain free MT4 indicators available for download. Right now it holds only 5 indicators, but more will be added soon. All indicators have their own description.

Carnival of Forex Trading - December 2, 2007

Welcome to the December 2, 2007 edition of Carnival of Forex Trading.

ATradeADay presents What kind of trader are you? posted at A Trade A Day, saying, "Does your method have an edge? Are you a swing trader because it works? Or do you day trade because it sounds cool..."

Sagar presents 7 Countries Considering Abandoning the US Dollar (and what it means) posted at Currency Trading.net.

GiselleS presents Expert Advisors - For and Against Automating Your Forex Trading System posted at Finance: Currency Trading Articles from EzineArticles.com, saying, "An expert advisor is a piece of software which works as a plug-in for your trading platform. The purpose of an expert advisor is to automate your own (or someone else's) trading system. Are there advantages to using expert advisors and should they be part of your overall trading strategy?"

vld2czech presents Stocks hedging with long position in Yen. posted at StockWeb, saying, "Going long with Yen to cover your stocks portfolio."

That concludes this Carnival of Forex Trading edition. Again, not many articles were left by me after the editing, but I hope that you'll enjoy all of them.

Forex Technical Analysis for 12/03-12/07 Week

EUR/USD trend: sell.
GBP/USD trend: sell.
USD/JPY trend: buy.
EUR/JPY trend: hold.

Floor Pivot Points:
Pair	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res
EUR/USD	1.4258	1.4443	1.4537	1.4722	1.4816	1.5001	1.5095
GBP/USD	2.0154	2.0343	2.0453	2.0642	2.0752	2.0941	2.1051
USD/JPY	104.52	105.87	108.53	109.88	112.54	113.89	116.55
EUR/JPY	155.66	157.51	160.13	161.98	164.60	166.45	169.07

Woodie's Pivot Points:
Pair	2nd Sup	1st Sup	Pivot	1st Res	2nd Res
EUR/USD	1.4420	1.4492	1.4699	1.4771	1.4978
GBP/USD	2.0343	2.0453	2.0642	2.0752	2.0941
USD/JPY	105.87	108.53	109.88	112.54	113.89
EUR/JPY	157.51	160.13	161.98	164.60	166.45

Camarilla Pivot Points:
Pair	4th Sup	3rd Sup	2nd Sup	1st Sup	1st Res	2nd Res	3rd Res	4th Res
EUR/USD	1.4478	1.4554	1.4580	1.4605	1.4657	1.4682	1.4708	1.4784
GBP/USD	2.0398	2.0480	2.0507	2.0535	2.0589	2.0617	2.0644	2.0726
USD/JPY	108.99	110.10	110.46	110.83	111.57	111.94	112.30	113.41
EUR/JPY	160.28	161.51	161.92	162.33	163.15	163.56	163.97	165.20

Tom DeMark's Pivot Points:
Pair:	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
Resistance:	1.4769	2.0847	113.22	165.53
Support:	1.4490	2.0548	109.21	161.06

Fibonacci Retracement Levels:
Pairs	EUR/USD	GBP/USD	USD/JPY	EUR/JPY
100.0%	1.4907	2.0832	111.22	163.84
61.8%	1.4800	2.0718	109.69	162.13
50.0%	1.4768	2.0683	109.22	161.61
38.2%	1.4735	2.0647	108.74	161.08
23.6%	1.4694	2.0604	108.16	160.42
0.0%	1.4628	2.0533	107.21	159.37