General Forex News

Pessimism continued to dominate global financial markets on Thursday, where worse than expected economic data from the United States spread jitters across markets and weakened the U.S. dollar against majors, while the European debt crisis continued to weigh down on confidence levels, although news that China will buy Portuguese bailout bonds boosted the Euro against other majors. The U.S. Commerce Department released on Thursday, the second estimate for Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter of 2011, where the GDP report showed that the U.S. economy expanded at an annualized pace of 1.8% unchanged from the prior estimate, and worse than median estimates of 2.2%. Moreover, jobless claims rose unexpectedly last week, where jobless claims rose to 424,000, compared with the prior revised estimate of 414,000 and also worse than median estimates. Stocks in the United States dropped at opening on Thursday, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by nearly 0.45% to trade around 12,345, while the S&P 500 index dropped...

  Optimism is seen across broad markets today although there were no fundamentals to support it. However commodities gained today, as investors were more confident about the global recovery, dragging the Asian and European stock markets higher. As the global economy seems to be in a good shape, investors seized the opportunity to turn there attention for a while from the deepening credit crisis, Japan’s economic struggle and the disappointing European and US economic data released lately. The rise in commodity prices gave investors an opportunity to catch their breath, however it doesn’t mean caution is off the table. Volatility will continue as Europe is facing some serious problems, as it tries to put someone in charge of the IMF and find solutions for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. There are no major economic data from Europe and UK today, therefore investors will continue focusing on Greece, as its cabinet passed new austerity measures and accelerated the asset-sale plans as the nation tries to avoid...