Forex Fundamental Analysis

Retail sales levels represent a key barometer of the state of the world’s largest economy and will be a factor considered when the Federal Reserve meets (today and tomorrow) to set interest rates.

The origins of the Global Financial Crisis can be traced back to the sub-prime lending fiasco which originated in the American market.

To be or not to be? That is the question posed by global economists when considering whether the Federal Reserve Board will raise interest rates at its upcoming forum.

Last week saw all of the world’s major markets regaining all of the ground that they lost last week, but they are still well below where they were before the “China Crisis” kicked off.

News out of Brazil has gone from bad to worse. Despite efforts by President Dilma Rousseff's government over the last few months to divert a recession, sliding commodity prices and corruption scandals have forced the hand of Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the world's eighth largest economy from investment grade credit rating to “junk’ status.

Japan is the major trading partner of China’s, accounting for 19% of the nation’s exports and eclipsing exports to the USA by 1%.

Whilst the darkest days of the Global Financial Crisis are behind us; the European Sovereign debt crisis has been defused and fears of an imminent “Grexit” have subsided, the Eurozone economy is hardly enjoying the economic, sunny uplands.

Data released by the US Department of Labor suggest that the US economy created some 173000 new jobs in the month of August.

With the many financial calamities happening throughout the world of late, it would seem that the scheduling of a major event to discuss key issues in the global economy would be announced with great fanfare.

Last week saw all of the world’s major markets in significant falls again as investors react to weak economic data from China and lack-lustre US job creation figures.

The IMF thinks that the slowdown in the Chinese economy could dampen global growth, but anticipate that the 2015 figure will come in at 3.3% marginally below last year’s 3.4% figure.

The Greek crisis is on a back-burner whilst the Greeks prepare for a fresh general election in a little under three weeks.

Anyone with a strong interest in precious metals and currencies is probably already aware that there is a sizeable body of opinion in the U.S.A. that believes paper money is essentially a fraud on the people.

If the behaviour of stock markets was logical, we could all make a killing, but they seem to be largely driven by fear, gut-instinct, rumour and the herd mentality.

The Brazilian economy shrank by 1.9% in Q2 and revised figures for Q1 put the contraction at 0.7% rather than the initial estimate of a 0.2% contraction.