For once it wasn’t just the Dollar that took a beating last Friday as the British pound fell sharply against the Yen, Euro, Swiss Franc and even the Greenback itself. The fall was all the more telling given the general mauling the dollar took last week against a whole host of currencies. Before Friday’s pullback [...]
Wall Street advanced sharply last week as investors interpreted minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting, as an indication that the central bank is going to keep cutting interest rates in order to boost the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average, and Standard & Poor’s 500 index, reached new record highs. Leading the charge has [...]
Back in the summer of 2008 Mervyn King gave the startling news that the average family’s standard of living would ‘stagnate’. This is hardly news as the same thing happened (pretty much) last year and the year before. The huge rise in personal debt is evidence that many people have been financing any increase in [...]
The Bank of England expects that house prices have seen the worst and that there are enough independent signals to indicate that the economy is in a position to grow into 2010. The temptation to look into a few months of stable-to-mildly-rising house activity and to extrapolate this into a much sought after upswing seems [...]
If you are trading the forex markets then a big concern will be growth forecasts and indications of when the various central bank stimulus packages will end. Growth has returned to the US, mainland Europe and is expected to return soon to the UK.Looking the forex markets, the US Dollar has been out of favour [...]
So it looks like we have avoided a 1930’s style depression however the current forecasts still suggest slow growth and a difficult time ahead. So what should you do in a difficult environment with your own finances?If we were to be honest with ourselves, then we should probably accept that we can improve on at [...]
The Federal Reserve were busy this week, first cutting interest rates by .25% on Tuesday, and then proceeding to announce a novel approach to injecting money into the banking system, as it struggles to combat the severe credit crunch that threatens to drag the country into recession.
The Fed said it would conduct two auctions next [...]
In such volatile times there will always be opportunities to make a profit and plenty of opportunities to lose more.One industry that has been thriving is the spread betting industry. Whilst there is currently a ban on shorting financial stocks, investors are still enjoying the ability to buy and sell indices like the FTSE 100, [...]
With the world in recovery mode, many people are still questioning how the markets got so out of control. They are also questioning something a little closer to home; their own finances.Some people will be looking for more tax efficient investments. Others will want to diversify their existing portfolios as well as look at new [...]
Stock trading is one of the last true meritocracies. All that matters for your investment success are your own decisions. Stock trading is a precision-based activity and one tiny mistake in judgment could send you plummeting right to the bottom and result in a huge loss.
Likewise, the opposite could happen. You may make a great [...]