ForexMetals

EUR/USD gained yesterday and ended the week in the moderately positive zone as the fundamentals reports in U.S. were predominantly good for the world’s economy and bad for the low-yielding currencies, such as the dollar. EUR/USD ended the week at 1.3274.

Michigan sentiment index grew from 57.3 to 65.1 in April — the highest value since September 2008. It was expected to go up to 61.5.

Factory orders decreased by 0.8% in March, following 1.6% gain in February. The analysts’ forecast showed 0.7% decline for March.

ISM Manufacturing Index unexpectedly rose from 36.3% to 40.1% in April. The marked analysts predicted a growth to 38%.

I added two new Forex broker categories to the site today — Forex brokers with gold trading and Forex brokers with oil trading. Recently I’ve noticed that many traders seek opportunity to trade on something other than plain old currency pairs. Apart from being able to trade currencies they usually also want to have an opportunity to trade oil or gold from time to time when there are some good fundamental conditions for such trades. These two new categories should help traders to find those Forex brokers that fit their oil/gold trading needs, while they will still be able to choose only those brokers that support their favorite payment method and trading platform.

By the way, I failed to find any Forex broker with oil trading that wouldn’t offer gold trading, though it’s not true for vice versa (not all gold trading brokers support oil trading). So, if you see an oil trading broker you can be almost 100% sure that it also has GOLD among its trading symbols. And almost all gold trading brokers feature not only gold but also silver and sometimes platinum, while more advanced brokers offer all possible precious (and sometimes not only precious) metals.

EUR/USD rose for a second day today and reached the highest value in more than a month after the U.S. employment declined at a less than expected rate. Traders felt more confidence in the high-yielding assets and turned to stock and euro buying, dumping the low-yielding greenback. EUR/USD is now trading near 1.3488.

Nonfarm payrolls decreased by 539k in April instead of the expected 600k. In March they were down by 699k. The overall unemployment rate rose from 8.5% to 8.9% as expected.

Wholesale inventories were down by 1.6% in March, following 1.7% drop in February. Forecasts by the economic strategists showed -1% change.

EUR/USD rose immediately after ECB announced a rate cut today but then began to fall sharply before the reports on the U.S. employment sector were released. Now it’s trading near 1.3360 — above its daily open level at 1.3312.

ECB decided to cut the interest rate by 0.25% today and now the Eurozone’s benchmark rate is at 1%.

Initial jobless claims were at 601k last week — down from 635k reported a week before. They were expected to remain at 635k level.

Nonfarm business productivity growth was reported at 0.8% for the first quarter of 2009 after posting 0.6% change in the fourth quarter of 2008 (revised down from -0.4%). This indicator was expected to come out near 0.6% today.

EUR/USD declined fro the second day after rising earlier today as the stock markets failed to sustain a growth and corrected almost to a zero daily change after opening positively today. Very good fundamental reports were released in U.S. today and yesterday but they failed to inspire the markets for another bullish wave. EUR/USD is now trading near 1.3282.

ADP employment change was reported at -491k from March to April on a seasonally adjusted basis; that’s a positive value if you compare it to -708k decline during a previous month (revised upwardly from -742k). Forecasts showed -645k change for April.

Crude oil inventories increased by 0.6 million barrels last week and now total above 375 million barrels.

Yesterday, a report showed that the ISM services index rose from 40.8% to 43.7% in April. It was expected to go up only to 42%.

Housing sector in U.S. showed some improvement today, while the stock markets were less than usually concerned with the swine flu outbreak and the global recession. EUR/USD rose for the second day today and is now trading near 1.3328.

Construction spending rose by 0.3% in March compared to February level. That was the first gain in more than a year. February change was -1%. The median forecast for March was at -1.5%.

Pending home sales index rose by 3.2% in March, following 2% increase in February. According to the market analysts’ forecast it should have remained unchanged in March.

When using some MT4 expert advisors you may have encountered a rather annoying error message, which reads «OrderSend Error 129». This error should be avoided during EA’s creation, but even if you aren’t the author of the problematic EA, this error is rather easy to fix. OrderSend Error 129 in MetaTrader platform is internally called ERR_INVALID_PRICE («Invalid Price»), which means that expert advisor is trying to open an order with the invalid current price. There are two possible reasons for this error and respectively two solutions.

First reason can be that the price (Ask or Bid) used in the OrderSend function is different from the current market price and theis difference is greater than the Slippage parameter of the OrderSend function. In this case the problem usually lies in the fast market price action, which requires a price refresh inside MT4 immediately before calling the OrderSend function. Just add this code before every OrderSend call:

RefreshRates();

If this is the only error popping up with this EA it’s also a good idea to use the cycle that will try several RefreshRates and OrderSend calls for better reliability:

int count = 0;
while ((result == -1) && (count <>
{
RefreshRates();
result = OrderSend(...)
count++;
}