Month: September 2013

US Dollar mixed last week in Forex Trading

The US dollar was mixed against the other major currencies last week after the US currency had fallen for multiple weeks against most of majors. Overall for the week, the USD advanced against the euro, the New Zealand dollar and the Australian dollar while falling to the British pound sterling, Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. The USD was virtually unchanged against the Canadian loonie dollar for the week.

Non-Farm Payrolls & Interest Rate Decisions on tap this week

This upcoming week has a number of major economic news on the schedule that are worth watching for.

• Monday has the Eurozone consumer price index data due out as well as Canada’s GDP report for July.

• Tuesday’s major economic releases are the Chinese manufacturing PMI data, Australia’s interest rate decision, Germany’s unemployment change for September and the ISM manufacturing data out of the United States.

• Wednesday has the European Central Bank interest rate decision.

• Thursday will feature the United States ISM non-manufacturing index.

• Friday will have the United States non-farm payroll government employment report as well as the Bank of Japan interest rate decision and Japan’s monetary policy statement.

Please see the week’s highlighted economic events below:

This Week’s Economic Highlights:

Article by CountingPips.com – Forex Trading News

The Republican-run House has voted to avoid a partial government shutdown next week but also delay President Barack Obama’s health care law. (September 29)

For the first time since the financial crisis, the government faced off in court against a major bank over lending practices during the mortgage mania. Lawyers for the Justice Department contend that Countrywide Financial, a unit of Bank of America, misrepresented the quality of mortgages it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giants, starting in 2007. The government said Fannie and Freddie incurred gross losses of $850 million on the defective loans and net losses of $131 million.

By CountingPips.com

The weekly Commitments of Traders (COT) report, released on Friday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), showed that large futures traders and currency speculators decreased their bullish bets of the US dollar last week for a second straight week.

Non-commercial large futures traders, including hedge funds and large International Monetary Market speculators, cut their overall US dollar long positions to a total of $3.58 billion as of Tuesday September 24th. This was a decline of $7.22 billion from the total long position of $10.80 billion that was registered on September 17th, according to data from Reuters that calculates this amount by the total of US dollar contracts against the combined contracts of the euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and the Swiss franc.

US dollar overall long positions are now at a new lowest level since February 19th when long bets were at a total of just $1.481 billion.

COT explanation: The weekly cot report summarizes the total trader positions for open contracts in the futures trading markets. The CFTC categorizes trader positions according to commercial hedgers (traders who use futures contracts for hedging as part of the business), non-commercials (large traders who speculate to realize trading profits) and non-reportable traders (usually small traders/speculators).

Individual Currencies Large Speculators Positions in Futures:

The large non-commercial net positions for each of the individual major currencies directly against the US dollar last week saw weekly increases for the euro, British pound sterling, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar, Mexican peso and the New Zealand dollar while the Japanese yen and Australian dollar had a declining number of large speculator positions.

Individual Currency Charts:

EuroFX:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: EuroFX

British Pound Sterling:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: Pound Sterling

Japanese Yen:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: Yen

Swiss Franc:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: Franc

Canadian Dollar:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: CAD

Australian Dollar:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: AUD

New Zealand Dollar:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: NZD

Mexican Peso:

Last Six Weeks of Large Trader Positions: MXN

The Commitment of Traders report is published every Friday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and shows futures positions data that was reported as of the previous Tuesday (3 days behind).

Each currency contract is a quote for that currency directly against the U.S. dollar, a net short amount of contracts means that more speculators are betting that currency to fall against the dollar and a net long position expect that currency to rise versus the dollar.

(The graphs overlay the forex spot closing price of each Tuesday when COT trader positions are reported for each corresponding spot currency pair.)

See more information and explanation on the weekly COT report from the CFTC website.

Article by CountingPips.com

By CountingPips.com

Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Report

10 Year Treasuries: Large trader and futures market speculators decreased their overall bearish positions last week in the 10-year treasury notes after adding to bearish positions the previous week. The 10-year treasury non-commercial contracts totaled a net position of -89,107 contracts in the data reported for September 24th. This was a change of +36,919 contracts from the previous week’s total of -126,026 net contracts that was registered on September 17th.

In the same time-frame, the yield on the 10 Year treasury note declined from 2.86 on Tuesday September 17th to 2.67 on Tuesday September 24th, according to US Treasury data.

Last 6 Weeks of Large Trader Positions

*COT explanation: The weekly cot report summarizes the total trader positions for open contracts in the futures trading markets. The CFTC categorizes trader positions according to commercial hedgers (traders who use futures contracts for hedging as part of the business), non-commercials (large traders who speculate to realize trading profits) and nonreportable traders (usually small traders/speculators).

Article by CountingPips.com – Currency Trading News

The Senate has approved a bill to avert a government shutdown in a few days, now the focus turns to the House. This time, President Barack Obama says, he’s not budging. (Sept. 27)

President Barack Obama appealed to House Republicans not to trigger a government shutdown and debt crisis because he refuses to give in on defunding his health plan. Obama urged the GOP to consider who will be hurt if a partial shutdown occurs. (Sept. 27)

Greece’s plan to return Eurobank to private ownership will see the country’s fourth largest bank issue more than $1.35 billion of new stock to private investors, boosting its capital ratio. Eurobank was the only one of Greece’s four systemically important banks to have its summer 2013 recapitalization needs met solely by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund.

Dell is the latest company to benefit from the red-hot U.S. leveraged loan market as strong investor demand allowed the computer giant to cut funding costs on the $10.6 billion financing package backing its $25 billion buyout. Although the multibillion loan and bond financing was essentially a difficult turnaround story as CEO Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners took the firm private, the books were strong for the loans and bonds.

Struggling department store operator J.C. Penney expects to raise up to $932 million from a share sale, leaving it with about $2.2 billion in cash at the end of the year. J.C. Penney, whose shares have been hit by concerns that it does not have enough cash to fund its operations going into the holiday season, said it would sell 84 million shares in a public offering at $9.65 per share. Penney’s shares were down 7 percent at $9.69 before the bell. The share sale would increase Penney’s shares outstanding by 38 percent.