FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - The single currency has bounced off session lows in the 1.2825 region, although can’t gain extra traction to overcome the intraday resistance at 1.2850 so far, as the US dollar seems to be consolidating into the NA session.

Worrisome headlines out of the euro zone regarding the Greek political crisis are still weighting on the cross, with market participants now focusing on tomorrow’s meeting between F.Hollande and A.Merkel.

EUR/USD is losing 0.38% at 1.2844 as of writing.
Next support levels are located at 1.2825, ahead of 1.2810 then 1.2800 and 1.2720, while a break above 1.2875 would bring 1.2935 then 1.2958 and finally 1.2979

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FXstreet.com (Córdoba) - Greek insolvency has been averted for now, sparking relief in the FX markets, so the euro looks set to recover lost ground in the week ahead, according to the Commerzbank analyst team.

"With only a few days left to reach a breakthrough in the US debt limit stalemate, however, it is still too early to sound the all-clear, as a failure by Congress to hike the debt ceiling would result in default on the other side of the Atlantic", said the Commerzbank team. "Against this backdrop, the focus of the FX markets should shift towards the US dollar in the coming days, which will benefit the euro".

The Commerzbank team expects EUR/USD will trade higher in the week ahead. "The only risk to the euro's recovery could be particularly weak US data and a renewed sparking of recession fears – with regard to the USA in particular but also for the world as a whole. Ironically, the subsequent increase in global risk aversion and the resulting flight into safe-haven investments would then send the dollar higher", they added.

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By: Tom Jennemann

New York 20/04/2011 - Comex gold was steady above $1,500 on Wednesday morning on a weaker dollar and governmental debt worries.

But prices have eased slightly from the morning's high following a flood of positive earnings reports and stronger equity markets.

Gold futures on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange for June delivery were recently trading up $9 at $1,504.10 per ounce in New York and earlier in the session reached an all-time record of $1,506.20.

"The impetus for the run-up early this morning was clearly the softer dollar, which is getting hammered and fell to its lowest level in the past 15 months [against the euro],” a US-based fund manager said. “When the dollar takes a beating like this, metals are going to rally."

The euro rose 1.4 percent to 1.4543 against the dollar this morning largely on increased risk appetite and after a successful bond auction in Spain.

But the yellow metal has edged down marginally from its intraday high since the open of equity markets in New York.

"We've seen some quite positive earning reports from the likes of Intel and Freeport-McMoRan, which had the Dow up by over 175 points," the fund manager said.

“Despite all the dire headlines of late, Wall Street doesn't think the economy is hanging off the cliff,” he added. “Some folks are looking at riskier assets this morning as the stock bulls have returned.”

Standard Bank echoed this sentiment in a note. "Fears that the global economic recovery might be in jeopardy, sparked by Standard & Poor's ratings outlook downgrade of the US, have been dispelled by strong corporate earnings results and a steady improvement in US housing data," analyst Marc Ground wrote.

Existing US home sales rose 3.7 percent in March to an annualised rate of 5.1 million units, slightly ahead of expectations, the National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday morning.

Nevertheless, many investors continue to express concerns about the burgeoning debt crisis in the US and Europe and inflation around the world.

Bolstering this argument was S&P's surprise outlook downgrade of US long-term debt to "negative" to "stable".

"This latest chapter in the saga of sovereign debt concerns highlights gold's benefits as a risk-hedge and currency diversifier. It also presents new challenges for investors who traditionally, in times of uncertainty, steer capital towards US Treasuries," Marcus Grubb, managing director of the Investment at the World Gold Council, said in a statement.

Additionally, the US government does not have a credible plan to cut the deficit, International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard said on Wednesday according to French paper Le Monde.

Comex silver for May delivery also soared on Wednesday - it was recently trading up about one dollar at $44.90 per ounce, which is a 31-year high. The closely watched gold-silver ratio has dropped to 33.5 - a 28-year low.


(Editing by Mark Shaw)

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FXstreet.com (Córdoba) – The Swiss Franc continues its rally against the Dollar. The USD/CHF fell further below 0.8900 and reached a new all time low at 0.8878. The pair remains trading near session low, holding a bearish bias. Greenback is headed toward the tenth daily decline out of the last 12 trading days.

The recovery of the Dollar earlier found resistance at 0.8930 and the pair resumed its downtrend as the Swissy strengthened across the board.

To the downside, support levels could be located at 0.8860 and below at 0.8820 while to the upside, probable resistance levels lie at 0.8890 and above at 0.8930 and 0.8965.

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Forex - How Does an Oil Crisis Impact the U.S. Dollar?
By: Kathy Lien on February 22 11 10:01 EST

Oil prices are on the rise and everyone is talking about the possibility of $100 oil. Right now, the rise in oil is accompanied by a rise in the U.S. dollar but will this relationship last? Taking a look back at the two prominent oil shocks of the past four decades (1973 and 1979) and others beyond that, we see that the dollar eventually weakens.

1973 Oil Crisis: Initially Dollar Bullish, Eventually Dollar Bearish

In 1973, oil prices jumped 134% when the members of the OAPEC, which is OPEC plus Egypt and Syria, announced that they were no longer shipping oil to nations that supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt. This effectively shut down exports to the US, Western Europe and Japan. As a result, prices rose significantly to account for the sharp reduction in supply. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Qatar unilaterally raised prices by 17 percent and announced production cuts after negotiations with major oil companies.

In response to this oil shock, the trade weighted US dollar index* as measured against the major currencies first strengthened alongside oil and then sold off immediately. At that time, the Federal Reserve was combating inflationary pressures by raising interest rates. The jump in crude exacerbated the need for further rate hikes, forcing the central bank to bring the Fed Funds target rate from 7.5 percent in May 1973 to a high of 13 percent by the summer of 1974. The focus on inflation was initially dollar bullish but once the rate hikes started to have a serious impact on US growth, the trend turned dollar bearish. Between the third quarter of 1973 and the first quarter of 1975, GDP growth contracted five out of the seven quarters and in response to the deterioration in growth, the US dollar erased all of its gains.

1973oil

1979 Oil Crisis: Initially Dollar Bullish, Eventually Dollar Bearish

The US’ second oil crisis in 1979 was triggered by the Iranian revolution and exacerbated by a gasoline shortage. OPEC raised prices by 14.5 percent on April 1st and the US Department of Energy announced phased oil price decontrols which involved the gradual increased of old oil price ceilings. Shortly thereafter, OEC raised prices a second time by 15 percent, the US halted imports from Iran, while Kuwait, Iran and Libya cut production. Saudi Arabia also eventually raised their market crude prices to $24 per barrel and because of all of these factors, crude oil prices increased 118 percent between January 1979 and December 1979.

The price action of the US dollar during that time was very similar to the price action of the greenback in 1973; it first rallied and then sold off. At that time, the Federal Reserve was also hiking interest rates to combat inflationary pressures and the oil price spike exacerbated their degree of rate hikes. Between January 1979 and December 1979, rates where taken from 10 percent to 14 percent and by March of 1980, the Fed Funds rate hit a high of 20 percent. Quarterly GDP growth dropped 7.8 percent in the second quarter of 1980, triggering the dollar’s demise.

1979oil

1990 Oil Price Spike: Persistent Dollar Weakness

Between June and October of 1990, oil prices also jumped 113 percent as a result of the first Gulf War. Interestingly enough, the US dollar behaved very differently for two reasons. The first was the short-lived nature of the oil spike; prices started falling 6 months after the initial rise and the second was the Fed’s monetary policy cycle. Unlike the oil crisis of 1973 or 1979, the Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates before the spike and continued to reduce rates throughout 1990 and into 1991 and the dollar was already in a downtrend due to the loosening of monetary policy. The weakness continued as growth slowed with GDP remaining stagnant in third quarter of 1990, and then falling 3 and 2 percent respectively over the next two quarters.

Although the U.S. dollar is rising right now, the abundance of spare capacity and the muted level of inflation means that the Federal Reserve is not pressured by the increase in oil prices. The market basically doesn’t believe that the Fed will start raising interest rates – and they have good reason to feel this way because based upon the last 3 oil shocks, the recovery could suffer from higher commodity prices. Back in the 1990s, the Fed took a break from cutting rates like they are expected to do in June, but they quickly resurrected their rate cuts as the economy slowed. Of course, interest rates were much higher then than they are now, but if growth does not pick up, the Fed may be forced to prolong its asset purchase program.

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A good method to identify This forex tip early is by using moving averages. This will help you manage forex liquidity better.

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Now that you have a trading system designed and coded, it is time to test it to make sure that your coding is free of logical and technical errors. We will also look at something known as optimization - a feature in some trading programs that allows you to fine tune your trading rules to fit the stocks that you plan on trading.

Testing Your Trading System
The vast majority of trading applications that support programming languages also support testing tools. These tools are divided into two categories:

1. Technical
Technical testing tools search for technical errors in your code. For example, if you forget to add a semicolon after a statement, the technical testing tool will notify you that your statement is invalid.

The location of the technical testing tool depends on the trading application being used. MetaTrader displays an error or flawed results when you try to compile your code, while trading applications like Tradecision have a "code check" utility built into the interface that lets you check your code for errors before applying it.

2. Logical
Logical testing tools search for logical errors in your code. For example, if you happened to use a "greater than" sign instead of a "less than" sign (which is not a technical error), a logical testing tool will show you that your results don't make sense.

The most popular logical testing tool is the backtesting tool. This tool allows you to take past data and apply your trading system to that data. This gives you an idea of the following:

* Whether your trading system is a profitable one
* What conditions prove to be most profitable
* Where any errors in your rules might exist

(For more information, see Backtesting: Interpreting The Past.)

Troubleshooting Your Trading System
As with any other type of programming, troubleshooting can be a tedious and difficult task. Finding errors in your code requires systematically sorting through your code to identify syntactical errors that, although often minor, can bring your program to a halt.

Here are some common errors to look for:

* Missing semicolons after statements - These have to be after every statement.
* Undefined variables - Remember that you have to declare them before you use them!
* Spelling mistakes - If any names or functions are spelled incorrectly, the trading application will return an error (see example below).
* Incorrect usage of (=) - Remember that "=" assigns one value to another value, while "==" means "equal to".
* Incorrect usage of built-in functions - Consult your trading application's documentation or application programming interface (API) to make sure that you are using the correct syntax.

Some trading applications contain a feature that will let you test your code before using or compiling it. This feature allows you to see what the error is and on which line it can be found. Take Tradecision for example:



Figure 1

Here we can see that Tradecision gives us the location (line and column) of the error, a description of the error and the type of error (in this case, it is syntactical). If we look at the expression, we can see that in column 8 "xrossBelow" is not a valid function. If we replace the "x" (which is in column 8) with a "c", then we will have valid code.

If we look at MetaTrader, we can see that the errors come up when we try to compile the program:



Here we can see that in the description it says the "BuyNow" variable wasn't defined. Double clicking on this error message will bring us to the specific location of the error in the code.

As you can see, most trading applications give you an easy way to locate technical errors and fix them. Fixing the errors simply involves systematically going through each error message and then recompiling the code and/or applying the trading system to your charts.

Optimizing Your Trading System
Some trading applications let you select variables to be optimized. Tradecision, for example, lets you easily select a variable and replace it with code that will attempt optimization. Optimization itself is simply a process that finds the optimal value for a particular trading system element based on past results and performance. Note that over-optimization results in trading systems that are unable to adapt to market conditions; therefore, it is important to only optimize a few important variables, not every variable!

Here is what the optimization feature looks like in Tradecision:



Figure 3





You can see that we declared two new variables and set them equal to "#". The "#" simply means that the trading program will replace this with the optimal number. Next, you can see that we used the new variables within our trading strategy. Finally, we set a range for the numbers (so that the program will not search to infinity).

Some other trading programs have features that operate in a similar way, allowing you to replace the numerical value with a "#" and telling the trading application to optimize it.

Conclusion
By now you should have developed a working trading system in which you can have confidence. In the next part of this series, you will learn how to apply your trading system to charts and how to use it to make trading decisions!

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A ceremony to send back the remains of four US soldiers was held at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport on Tuesday, the 112th repatriation of its kind since 1973, according to the US Embassy.

The remains and their relics, which were sent in four coffins, were found during a cooperative search conducted between this October and November and were handed in by local people. Initial autopsies by the two countries’ experts showed that the remnants might belong to US soldiers who were lost in the Vietnam War. However, they were sent to Hawaii State for further examination. Speaking at the handing-over ceremony, the US Government’s representative expressed gratitude and appreciation for Vietnam’s human and goodwill policy as well as its effective cooperation in the search during the past years. Also on Tuesday a mass grave together with soldiers’ belongings was discovered during excavation work at the construction site of a drainage system in the central province of Quang Ngai. Nguyen Trong Luyen, head of Quang Ngai Town’s Army Steering Committee, said they are yet to identify the remains as also estimate their number. But local agencies suspect it was the grave of Vietnamese soldiers who died in an attack on Quang Ngai Prison under the US army’s control in 1968, according to Luyen. An excavation was planned on Wednesday to carry out further tests. Reported by Huong Giang – Hien Cu

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Vietnam will import 6 tons of gold this month, state broadcaster VTV said on Thursday, after the central bank last week lifted a ban on imports to stabilize an overheating market.

So far, 1.5 tons had been imported, 500 kg each by Sacombank, ACB and Eximbank. Saigon Jewellery Corp will import 1 ton, and 500 kg being imported by Agribank Jewellery Company will arrive in a few days, the VTV 1 Financial bulletin said. Source: Reuters

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Vietnam’s central bank is placing greater importance now than earlier this year on managing the stability of the country’s foreign-exchange market, fund manager Dragon Capital said in a note to investors.

The so-called official exchange rate of the Vietnamese dong against the US dollar was about 17,856 per dollar as of Friday, compared with 17,483 at the end of 2008. On unofficial markets, the currency’s exchange rate is fluctuating between 18,200 and 18,300 per dollar, according to the research note from Ho Chi Minh City-based Dragon. “Over the past quarter, indications are that the State Bank of Vietnam has shifted tact from expanding credit to managing the foreign exchange” rate, Dragon wrote in a note Thursday. “Dollar injections (Vietnamese dong subtractions) are the likely policy component in rising Vietnamese dong interest rates.” Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., which predicted last month that the Vietnamese central bank would devalue the dong by 4 percent by the end of the year, this month said that “pressure for greater flexibility” in the exchange rate is increasing, citing a decline in the country’s foreign reserves. Vietnam’s foreign-exchange reserves dropped to US$17.6 billion by the end of June from $23 billion at the end of 2008, according to the Asian Development Bank. HSBC Holdings Plc said this month it expects “modest” depreciation in the official exchange rate to 18,200 dong per dollar “in the next few months.” The State Bank of Vietnam is working with international organizations such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank to bolster the country’s foreign-exchange reserves and prevent instability in the dong, central bank Governor Nguyen Van Giau said this week. “Vietnamese dong liquidity is getting tighter,” Dragon said. “Dollars are available, but domestic sentiment for the Vietnamese dong is uninspired.” Source: Bloomberg

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Phạm Băng Băng làm điệu với chiếc cặp hình cánh bướm.

Hồ Tịnh khoe vẻ đẹp trong sáng và duyên dáng với chú bướm trên mái tóc.

Mạc Văn Úy làm con bướm xanh lả lướt.

Ca sĩ Đàm Duy Duy khoe gương mặt nổi bật giữa những cánh bướm.

Người đẹp Hoàng Tư Đình gắn đôi cánh xanh.

Những cánh bướm đủ màu làm nổi bật mái tóc của ca sĩ Phạm Vỹ Kỳ.

Thái Y Lâm dễ thương với đôi cánh đen trắng.

Người đẹp Thiệu Mỹ Kỳ hóa nàng bướm đỏ duyên dáng.

Ca sĩ Tiêu Tiêu được chắp đôi cánh xanh.

Người đẹp Thư Sướng với đôi cánh mỏng manh như tơ lụa.

Hai người đẹp nhóm nhạc Twins sặc sỡ đủ màu.

Lưu Diệc Phi làm công chúa bướm trong cổ tích.

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12 tới.

Hoa hậu thế giới năm 2008 Ksenia Sukhinova trao vương miện cho Dư Thanh. Tân Hoa hậu năm nay 22 tuổi và là sinh viên của Học Viện Truyền thông ở Nam Ninh.

Hai Á Hậu của cuộc thi là Chiến Dương (Á hậu 1) và Dư Vy Vy (Á hậu 2). Ba người đẹp rạng rỡ trên bục đăng quang.

Tân Hoa hậu có gương mặt thuần Trung Quốc, nhưng theo đánh giá của một số người thì nhan sắc của cô chưa thực sự gây ấn tượng.

Nụ cười hạnh phúc của Dư Thanh khi đăng quang. Cô sẽ đại diện cho các nhan sắc của Trung Quốc tham gia cuộc thi Miss World 2009 tại Nam Phi.

Người đẹp nhận được những lời chúc tụng của các thí sinh sau khi đăng quang.

Dư Thanh trong vòng thi áo tắm.

Á hậu 1 Chiến Dương.

Á hậu 2 Dư Vy Vy.

Các thí sinh trình diễn trên sân khấu.

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Hồ Ngọc Hà xuất hiện trong chương trình với trang phục sang trọng và quyến rũ.

Sự cố xảy ra khi đang trình diễn solo không làm anh Bo mất tự tin, ngược lại bản lĩnh của một ngôi sao đã giúp anh nhanh chóng lấy lại tinh thần.

Hồ Ngọc Hà không chỉ cuồng nhiệt và trẻ trung trong các ca khúc có tiết tấu sôi động…

… mà còn rất nhẹ nhàng và tình cảm trong những bản ballad ngọt ngào.

Cô xuống tận hàng ghế khán giả để “quậy” cùng các fan.

“Quý ông” Đàm Vĩnh Hưng đã có một màn song ca rất ấn tượng với Hồ Ngọc Hà theo phong cách jazz.

Ngay sau đó, anh tiếp tục làm nóng chương trình với ca khúc quen thuộc “Say tình”.

Điểm nhấn của chương trình là màn bay từ trên không xuống của Hồ Ngọc Hà.

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