Forex Investment and Currency Trading

A surprise widening to $57.2 billion in the U.S. trade deficit in October, first since July, implies an even steeper GDP decline for 4Q 2008. Exports continued to soften in response to foreign economic weakness, while sharply declining crude oil prices led to a surge in petroleum imports. Exports declined 2.2%, following a 6.4% drop in September. The widening real trade gap in October and likely for the quarter as a whole is a significant additional source of drag on GDP. GDP is now estimated falling at a more than 5% annualized pace this quarter.
Retail sales fell for a 5th [...]

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November Payrolls plummet 533,000 (which shatters estimates of 335,000)  -  Largest payroll drop since 1982 - Unemployment rate 6.7%
 
The November employment report was staggeringly poor, even for a market increasingly inured to ugly data. Is there any good news – only in so much as it will be hard to get worse numbers going forward.   There are simply no redeeming features in this data.  Weakness is evident everywhere.  The household survey at -673K is even worse than the more reliable establishment survey.  Only a decline in the workforce (presumably discouraged workers) save the unemployment rate from not rising more sharply [...]

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November 24 - Existing Home Sales (Survey: 5.00 million)
November 26 - New Home Sales (Survey: 440k)
Two recent trends are likely to remain in place with the release of the home sales reports for October. Over the past thirteen months, existing home sales have moved within a narrow 4.89 million – 5.18 million unit range. October sales likely also fell within that range. New home sales, however, have essentially been falling since August 2007. With the deterioration in credit and economic conditions over the past several months, some expect that October sales fell 18% to 380,000, lowest since 1982.
November 25
GDP (Survey: [...]

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The larger than expected decline in the headline PPI report was partially offset by the data on core prices but the general thrust of the report supports the call that disinflation is now a reality and deflation will be the next major risk to financial markets. Specifically, headline producer prices fell by 2.8% as energy prices plunged 12.8% and food prices fell 0.2%. Excluding these two more volatile components wholesale inflation held steady at 0.4% for a second consecutive month, or up 4.4% year-on-year. This divergence between the deflation in the headline price measure and the core reading reflects the [...]

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