The Fundamental FOREX Blog

On Friday, 10-23-09 at 10:00 AM ET 2 USD reports were released, they were the Existing Home Sales for September and the MoM reports by the National Association of Realtors.

Probably the most important report of the 2 is the “Existing Home Sales for September”.

I was set up to trade the currency pair EUR/USD, which I did and monitored 5 other currency pairs – GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CAD, EUR/JPY, and GBP/JPY.

I did a “previous” post on Thursday, 10-22-09, click here for a review.

Here are the stats and the results:

USD Existing Home Sales  for September stats:

Previous = 5.10 M revised = 5.09 M

Forecast = 5.39 M revised = 5.37 M

Actual = 5.57 M

Good – this came out higher then “forecast” by 180K, higher then revised “forecast” by 200K, higher then the “previous’ by 470K and higher then the revised “previous” by 480K.

USD Existing Home Sales  MoM stats:

Previous = -2.7% revised = -2.9%

Forecast = 5.0% revised = 4.9%

Actual = 9.4%

Good – higher then “forecast” by 4.4%, higher then revised “forecast” by 4.5%, higher then “previous” by 12.1% and higher then revised “previous” by 12.3%.

Both of these reports came out together much higher then expected and in favor of the US economy – strengthening the US dollar. Of the four USD involved currency pairs I watch, all but one pair USD/JPY moved in the direction I expected.

It appears that the market was buying the JPY after the reports release – why? I have no idea, but I will be looking to understand why.

Let’s take a look at the charts and see how things worked out:

a one minute EUR/JPY chart

This EUR/JPY currency pair moved up the 1st three minutes up about 26 PIPS – reversed down the 3rd minute for about 11 minutes about 50 PIPS.

a one minute GBP/JPY chart

This GBP/JPY currency pair moved up the 1st three minutes up about 44 PIPS – reversed down the 3rd minute for about 10 minutes about 60 PIPS.

a one minute EUR/USD chart

This EUR/USD currency pair spiked up the 1st minute – made a small move up the second minute – then reversed down the 3rd minute about 24 PIPS in 13 minutes.

I was able to execute two “scalp” trades and could have traded a 3rd.

a one minute GBP/USD chart

This GBP/USD currency pair moved up the 1st three minutes up about 22 PIPS – reversed down the 3rd minute for about 6 minutes about 31 PIPS.

a one minute USD/CAD chart

This USD/CAD currency pair spiked down the 1st minute – reversed up the 1st minute for the next 13 minutes about 50 PIPS.

This USD/CAD currency pair could have yielded more “scalp” opportunities.

a one minute USD/JPY chart

This USD/JPY currency pair moved up the 1st three minutes up about 17 PIPS – reversed down the 3rd minute for about 10 minutes about 24 PIPS.

Traders buying the JPY and selling the USD – even though the USD was strengthened by the housing reports.

The next scheduled release of this report will be Monday, 11-23-09 at 11:00 AM ET. At this point in time the Existing Home Sales reports are stand alone, a month is a long time, rescheduling can occur any time.

I will probably be writing a “preview” post for this report.

So, stay tuned!