Market News by FXB Trading

[raniya]

The historical importance of January in the financial markets

On Jan 7 1901, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) reported that trading had exceeded 2 million shares for the first time in history. The first week of 2018 has seen a continuation of last year's bull run with the Dow Jones index breaking 25,000 for the first time ever, which follows MSCI's world index and London's FTSE both set records in Europe. Tokyo's Nikkei – Asia's biggest market – had earlier shot to its highest since 1991.

January 10, 2000 marked what is considered the peak of the dot-com boom when America Online (pioneer of dial-up Internet access and an investors favourite) announced plans to merge with Time Warner, the world's largest media company and the largest merger in history at that time. Within two years it was described as the worst deal in history which ended up driving out both CEOs who made the deal and resulted in AOL being dropped from the AOL Time Warner name. Within 32 months the NASDAQ Composite fell 78% from its peak of 5132.52.

Investment in cryptocurrencies has been compared to the dot-com boom because of the rapid acceleration of their prices. Since January 2017 Bitcoin has soared from just under $1000 to $20,000 and is currently around the $15,000 mark. But while Bitcoin's drop in performance has dropped of late this hasn't affected the overall market capitalization for cryptocurrencies which just passed $700 billion.

 

[raniya]

EUR/USD
Industrial Production. Eurozone, 12:00 (GMT+2)

The Industrial Production publication is due at 12:00 (GMT+2) in EU. The YoY index is expected to fall to 3.2% in November from 3.7% in the previous month. The YoY index is expected to grow to 0.8% in November from 0.2% in the previous month. Data on industrial production represents changes in industrial output and are considered as one of the major indicators of the state of the economy. A high reading strengthens the EUR. A low reading weakens the EUR.

[raniya]

AUD/USD
Employment Change s.a. Australia, 02:30 (GMT+2)
The Employment Change s.a. release is due at 02:30 (GMT+2) in Australia. The index is expected to fall to 9K in December from 61.6K in the previous month. It is a measure of the change in the number of employed people in Australia. A high reading is seen as positive for the AUD, while a low reading is seen as negative.

 

[raniya]

EUR/USD
Producer Price Index. Germany, 09:00 (GMT+2)

German Producer Price Index is due at 09:00 (GMT+2). The indicator is expected to grow to 0.2% on a monthly basis in December from 0.1% a month earlier. On the year-on-year basis, the indicator is expected to drop to 2.3% in December from 2.5% a month earlier. The index shows the dynamics of prices on the markets of raw materials on the wholesale scale. The growth of the indicator leads to the strengthening of EUR, and fall weakens it.