'Frankerstorm' & Tenaga Kerja AS mengangkat USD dan Menekan S&P 500 Jelang Pilpres AS

Hi...
Ini tulisan yang saya buat untuk pak boss saya di kantor sebenarnya, report yang dibuat untuk kantor kami yang berada di London, Inggris... Biasanya pak boss yg buat setiap hari, tapi jika pak boss saya itu lagi berhalangan, karena harus presentasi atau cuap-cuap di stasiun televisi maka saya yang disuruh gantikan beliau..
Si boss pernah bilang masukin aja di blog-mu tulisan mu itu.. tapi saya tidak punya blog saat itu, dan baru di kesempatan ini buat blog di Blogger ini. 
Mudah2an bisa bikin happy-ending untuk semuanya...

Oiya karena ini laporan untuk London, saya bikin in English, tapi tenang aja ini Menglish kok (Malay English alias Inggris Melayu) gampang dimengerti banget lah, mudah2an :p ... 
 
Happy-Reading....

 

October 30, 2012

Hi All,

Senior currency strategist of FXCM, John Kicklighter, said: “Hurricane Sandy threatens to take the US market offline for the first 48 hours of trade this week” – when market participants will monitor closely BoJ meeting result today and U.S. October nonfarm payrolls data later on Friday.

As stated earlier, U.S. stock trading has been canceled for yesterday and possibly tomorrow due to Hurricane Sandy – so trading should resemble a US holiday where some traders are in and some are not. 

Though no longer a hurricane, "post-tropical" superstorm Sandy packed a hurricane-sized punch as it slammed into the Jersey Shore on Monday, killing at least 11 people from West Virginia to North Carolina and Connecticut, CNN informs.

Sandy whipped torrents of water over the streets of Atlantic City, stretching for blocks inland and ripping up part of the vacation spot's fabled boardwalk. The storm surge set records in Lower Manhattan, where flooded substations caused a widespread power outage. It swamped beachfronts on both sides of Long Island Sound and delivered hurricane-force winds from Virginia to Cape Cod as it came ashore.

Gerard Yankowski, head of spot foreign-exchange trading for the Americas at Royal Bank of Scotland, said: “people are really focused on an inflation target” – of 1% set by BOJ earlier this year, aside from an estimated 10 trillion yen ($125 billion) in asset purchases.

Mr. Yakowski also expected the yen to weaken considerably in the next few weeks. However, some traders may hold off ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6.

On its September meeting the BOJ increased its asset buying and loan programme, its key monetary easing tool for now, by 10 trillion yen ($127 billion) -- double the usual amount -- to 80 trillion yen ($1.016 trillion), with the increase earmarked for purchases of government bonds and treasury discount bills.

  

The result of today’s BOJ meeting hasn’t been released when the Commentary is finished around 0517 GMT. The bank is expected to ease monetary policy for the 2^nd straight month by increasing asset purchases, as slumping exports and factory output heighten pressure for bolder action to support an the economy on the cusp of recession.

Standing over $1 trillion, the total stimulus is now equivalent to nearly a fifth of Japan's economy.

For the next pages, let’s take a U.S. binary event in November; October nonfarm payrolls and presidential elections. I read commentary that may useful for us from Michael Cloherty, head of U.S. rates strategy at RBC Capital Markets as quoted by Cynthia Lin of Dow Jones Newswire.

After dancing in a tight range since early August, the U.S. Treasury market is poised to break out. Shaking the market out of its doldrums could be either the October employment report due Friday, Nov. 02, or results of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 06. The outlooks on trading desks vary about the direction these events will lead Treasury, but the key is that, when the move happens, it will happen swiftly.

Since 2008, the Fed has been a committed buyer of U.S government bonds in its bid to stimulate the economy. In its latest decision in September, the central bank disclosed plans to buy $40 billion in agency mortgages monthly, on top of an existing program to buy and sell directly the Treasury market.

In large part because of these actions, benchmark 10-year notes have traded between tight yield of 1.45% and 1.89% for three months. Though anxieties about global growth and Europe’s debt crisis have subsided, the Fed remaining a committed buyer has meant U.S. Treasury have settled into a zone where traders are relegated to buy when prices tick down and book profits when prices edge up.

The invaluable question is: will the binary event give any strong direction in financial markets ahead?

   

There are some scenarios in markets recently:

• Volume and volatility may be slight with market participants opting to remain on the sidelines ahead of the jobs data and the election.

• The U.S. government’s October jobs report will give a snapshot of the current labor market. It could also give a bit to lift  to President Obama, should it come out better than anticipated, or help Republican candidate Mitt Romney – if it is worse than forecast.

• Should there be an upbeat jobs report, owners of Treasury could rush for the exits, driving process lower. Analysts also warn there could be a sell off if Mitt Romney, the Republican Party candidate, wins the presidential election or if President Barrack Obama is victorious by a wide margin.

Polls currently indicate that President Obama is a slight favorite to win on November 06, but the race will be tight. The most recent Reuters /Ipsos poll of likely voters shows the president ahead – 47% to 46%.

Expectations for the next nonfarm payrolls report, set for release later on Friday, are by no means certain, either. Analysts expect 124,000 jobs were added in October – up 10,000 from September. However, the unemployment rate is also seen ticking higher – to 7.9% from 7.8%.

What do the charts say

In the midst of what are going to happen in U.S. for the next days – from hurricane Sandy effect, nonfarm payrolls data to presidential election – the dollar index is still trying to hold above 80s and building its trend support from the bottom 78.604.

Since September, the dollar index has tried to break 80s but failed, and know it’s the 3^rd try. Will it fail again or will it manage to hold above the level? It is interesting moment to watch in the midst of what is going to happen in U.S. for the next days till and shortly after presidential election result comes out.

Below is S&P 500 daily chart that has managed to break its supports – its trend line support at first then two immediate horizontal supports – and stay below them to get closer to 1400.

There’s important moment in U.S. and there’s interesting thing in the two daily charts of U.S. assets.

And I am going to watch if S&P 500 can break the next horizontal support which is around 1400 and also around 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of its upside in the second half of the year, from 1266.74 to 1474.51.

Ending the Commentary I feel deepest sympathy for those affected by the ‘Frankerstorm’, and wish the worse is not coming.

 

Emas Mulai Konsolidasi Pasca Kenaikan Tajamnya?

Hi...Sebenarnya ini tulisan yang saya buat untuk pak boss saya di kantor, dibuat untuk kantor kami yang berada di London, Inggris... Biasanya pak boss yg buat setiap hari, tapi jika pak boss saya itu lagi berhalangan, karena harus presentasi atau cuap-cuap di stasiun televisi maka saya yang disuruh gantiin beliau..
Si boss pernah bilang masukin aja di blog-mu tulisan mu itu.. tapi saya tidak punya blog saat itu, dan baru di kesempatan ini buat blog di Blogger ini. 
Mudah2an bisa bikin happy-ending untuk semuanya...

Oiya karena ini laporan untuk London, saya bikin in English, tapi tenang aja ini Menglish kok (Malay English alias Inggris Melayu) gampang dimengerti banget lah, mudah2an :p ... 
Happy-Reading....

October 08, 2012

Dear Everyone,

Let me start this Monday’s Daily Commentary by quoting a comment from a market analyst in Sydney today:

“We are arrived at one of the sorts of levels where the market needs to see a bit more evidence of a medium-term outlook before it takes prices much beyond current levels.”

Asian stocks and other riskier assets, such as commodities, fell on Monday despite surprising well US jobs report on Friday – that also eventually pulled Wall Street stocks down at the end of the week.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan fell around 0.7 percent on about 0300 GMT – Japanese financial markets, however, were closed for a public holiday.

Over the year to date, the index is still up around 13 percent, and so is the All Countries World index.

Alex Richardson from Reuters said during Asian Markets today that:

“Equity markets have been rallying since hitting their nadir for the year in early June (or better I’d like to say during the end Q2 up to the earlier Q3 in general), receiving a renewed burst of impetus last month when major central banks rolled out fresh measures to support fragile economies.”

“But with the euro zone’s sliding back towards recession amid a still unresolved debt crisis and the U.S. recovery far from secure, investors remain reluctant to chase growth-sensitive riskier assets too aggressively.”

I’d like to write 3 some important things (in my opinion) we should take a look that may be used as the evidence said by the Sydney’s analyst.

• A near concern in markets is U.S. corporate earnings season which kicks off with Alcoa on Tuesday. According to Thomson Reuters data that S&P 500 earnings for Q3 are forecast to have fallen 2.4 percent from the year-earlier period, which would be the first decline in 3 years.
• China’s GDP Q3 report on 18-Oct. that is forecast to be released 7.4 percent lower than previous one, 7.6 percent, the slower in 3 years. The full year growth target is 7.5 percent, and World Bank expects China’s full-year growth forecast for 2012 to come at 7.7%. The levels are the lowest more than a decade. The Bank also said the slowdown in China has a risk to get worse and to last longer than expected. It used the reason as well to cut its growth forecast for the East Asia and Pacific region today.
• Without a Spanish bailout, there’s no ECB money and more fear of “convertibility” – a euro breakup. Fear alone could weaken the euro. At this point, we better read an article from Yohay Elam - the Founder, Writer and Editor at Forex Crunch:

(Jurgen) Donges, a member of Germany’s 5 strong Council of Economic experts, said clearly that when Germany is rescuing Greece or Spain, it is thinking of rescuing German banks with exposure to in these countries.

His words caused a stir in the twittersphere and in Spanish papers and add to the already tense relations between Berlin and Madrid, as the discussions about a Spanish bailout request heat up.

Donges, 72, was born in Seville, Spain, and is a long serving member of the Council, sometimes dubbed in Germany as the “Wise Men”. He released these crude statements to Jordi Évole, the director of a show called “Salvados” on the Spanish channel LaSexta.

As in every country, bankers possess a lot of power and influence. When Germany demands about necessary austerity and economic reforms, does this come to mask the actual motivation for the bailouts?

Many pointed out the circular nature of the bailouts, which was the clearest in Ireland’s case, which is extremely similar to Spain.

The government wasn’t suffocating from high debt, until it “adopted” the banks. So then, Ireland was “saved”. Funds from the EU, IMF and from Irish taxpayers went into Irish banks that in turn went into German, French and British banks.

Iceland took a different path when banks were in trouble: it let them fall. Spain had a choice in between walking in Ireland’s shoes or in Iceland’s shoes. It seems to have to chosen the Irish path, but the hour may not be too late.

After such an angering statement, Spain may just let its banks fall – this is a very strong card, a card that Greece doesn’t have, and a card that may change the balance of power.

What do the charts say

While it’s been said that markets need more evidence, some higher risk prices are in congestion zone after their strong run.

Above is a gold <XAUUSD> daily chart, running between horizontal resistance line around 1790s - that already hit but sot strong yet to hold – and sharp trend line support around 1770s, already tested in Asia today.

Unexpected evidence and bearish reversal signal from the RSI’s negative divergence may halt the price more from its top in this congestion zone, and it’s interesting to see whether the price is on the turning around mode from its strong run. It need to see the price breaks below the sharp trend line support and the next reaction low around 1740 to 1710 is reachable.  

Happy Monday