Australian Dollar Reaches Record High

The Australian Dollar recently touched a 20-year high against the USD, having risen 15% in the last month alone. In fact, the currency has proved to be one of the top performers against the USD in 2007, having benefited from continued weakness in the US economy. It has also been one of the chief beneficiaries of the Yen carry trade, in which investors have sold Yen in favor of higher-yielding currencies, which also include the Swiss Franc and New Zealand Dollar. Meanwhile, Australia's economy is surging, as Chinese demand for raw materials is unabated. Many analysts are asserting that the Australian Dollar can go no higher, citing technical factors. However, there seems to be just as many analysts who expect the AUD to test the outer limits of parity with the USD. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:


The chief equities economist at CommSec, Craig James, said the dollar was now likely to enter the “nervous nineties.”

China Launches Forex Investment Arm

After much delay, China finally launched the bureau charged with diversifying its $1.4 trillion foreign exchange reserves. The agency will be capitalized with $200 billion and will invest in assets slightly more risky than US treasury securities. Most currency analysts view diversification as tantamount to the sale of dollar-denominated assets, but in practice, this may entail only the movement of funds into riskier dollar-denominated assets. In fact, the investment arm’s opening move was a $3 billion investment in The Blackstone Group, an American financial conglomerate. Dollar bulls can hold off on worrying just yet.

Dollar Holds Steady as World Awaits US Data Reports

Credit problems in the US have been the source of much turmoil throughout the global markets in the past few months. Tuesday was good for the US dollar, which held strong against both the yen and the euro. However, forthcoming economic reports from the US may or may not tip the scales. According to Reuters:

"The panic is almost over, but the market has lost its direction and is waiting for more news, especially any good news," said Kikuko Takeda, a currency strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Top 25 Forex Sites (By the Numbers)

At Forex Blog, we like to keep up on the latest forex news by keeping tabs on other forex Web sites. Recently, our desire to stay on top of the latest forex news begged the question: which forex sites have the biggest reach? With nowhere to turn to answer this question definitively, we thought it would be an interesting exercise to rank all Web sites in the forex niche.

In ranking the top forex sites, our goal was to show — using objective data from reliable sources — which sites that are solely about forex are the most popular. To this end, we used data for these four metrics to calculate the rankings:
— Google PageRank
— Alexa Rank
— Technorati Link Count
— Compete People Count
Top 25 (see complete methodology below)Rank Site Score
1 FX Street 6 10 10 10 36
2 Daily FX 6 10 10 10 36
3 Global Forex Trading 6 10 10 10 36
4 Forex Factory 4 10 10 9 33
5 Babypips 5 9 9 9 32
6 Action Forex 4 9 10 9 32
7 Forex News 6 9 9 8 32
8 CMS Forex 5 9 8 10 32
9 FX Solutions 4 10 7 10 31
10 Forex TV 5 6 10 10 31
11 Forex Markets 4 8 8 8 28
12 Global View 5 7 7 9 28
13 Finotec 4 9 8 6 27
14 Forex Directory 4 8 8 7 27
15 FX Words 6 6 6 9 27
16 Grace Cheng: Power Forex Trading 5 8 7 6 26
17 The Forex Project 4 6 9 7 26
18 Forex Blog 5 6 9 6 26
19 Forex Bastards 3 8 5 8 24
20 Secret Forex Society 4 8 5 7 24
21 Peter Bain: Forex Trading Commentary 3 7 6 8 24
22 MTI Forex Tips 4 7 7 6 24
23 Pip Trader 4 5 6 6 21
24 Forex Realm 4 5 4 7 20
25 Free Forex Charts 6 4 3 7 20

Methodology

To begin, we referred to an earlier post of ours, Top 100 Forex Resources, to gather an initial list of sites to rank.

For each metric, a score was assigned on a 0–10 scale. For Google PageRank, raw PageRank data was scored. For Alexa Rank, Technorati Authority, and Bloglines Subscribers, the Web sites were broken up into deciles. If a Web site was in the 0>10% decile, a 1 was scored; for the 10>20% decile, a 2 was scored; and so on, up to a 10 being scored for the 90–100% decile. If no data was available, a 0 was scored.

The overall score for each Web site is the sum of the scores of the four metrics. In the event of a tie in overall score, the tie is broken according to the Alexa Rank raw data.
Raw Data for Entire SetRank Site
1 FX Street 6 7,252 15,114 31,817
2 Daily FX 6 12,991 3,350 50,605
3 Global Forex Trading 6 22,638 1,479 45,665
4 Forex Factory 4 5,385 1,085 8,726
5 Babypips 5 29,534 951 6,078
6 Action Forex 4 47,022 7,853 7,191
7 Forex News 6 54,775 745 3,939
8 CMS Forex 5 59,052 310 15,723
9 FX Solutions 4 28,263 207 160,374
10 Forex TV 5 195,082 1,247 15,380
11 Forex Markets 4 101,022 309 2,849
12 Global View 5 173,139 228 9,070
13 Finotec 4 37,691 346 1,016
14 Forex Directory 4 96,132 435 2,405
15 FX Words 6 213,487 183 5,082
16 Grace Cheng: Power Forex Trading 5 99,604 291 1,121
17 The Forex Project 4 210,968 466 1,392
18 Forex Blog 5 218,080 1,042 1,047
19 Forex Bastards 3 60,769 113 4,343
20 Secret Forex Society 4 102,413 110 1,871
21 Peter Bain: Forex Trading Commentary 3 112,319 126 3,341
22 MTI Forex Tips 4 119,283 261 1,045
23 Pip Trader 4 318,320 115 1,312
24 Forex Realm 4 442,474 72 2,153
25 Free Forex Charts 6 735,587 23 1,987
26 FX Power Trading Course 5 762,178 14 2,725
27 Earn Forex 3 285,271 891 0
28 Open Forex 5 522,180 433 0
29 Piptopia 4 283,227 95 0
30 Currency Secrets 4 319,276 74 0
31 Forex Reader 4 925,415 251 0
32 E-Forex 4 725,463 45 0
33 Forex Training 4 792,896 83 0
34 Forex Central 3 882,795 123 0
35 Ace Trader 3 183,248 4 0
36 Top 100 Forex Sites 0 353,883 158 0
37 Forex Predictions 3 1,019,283 33 0
38 Forex Trading USA 3 1,239,717 70 0
39 Scotia FX 5 2,771,289 14 0
40 FX HomeTrader 4 3,349,877 48 0
41 Learn4X 3 1,295,120 30 0
42 Forex Fibonacci 3 1,873,925 11 0
43 Forex Business 4 3,136,818 5 0
44 Info Forex 4 3,234,432 14 0
45 A Forex Loser 3 3,844,810 19 0
46 Forex Glossary 4 4,104,774 13 0
47 IFXTAG 4 29 0
48 Forex Planet 0 7,461,379 18 0
49 Forex Economic Calendar 0 2,340,539 3 0
50 My Forex Trading Tools 2 No Data 1 0
51 FX Quote 0 No Data 1 0

Canada Going Strong, Currency Gaining

Interest rates in Canada remained at 4.5 percent today, resulting in a gain for the Canadian dollar. A statement made by the Bank of Canada showed that the nation's economy is doing better than expected. Amid credit problems from the neighboring US, it seems Canada remains somewhat unscathed. Forbes reports:

'Canadian bank traders see little in the BoC minutes to suggest that future rate hikes are in the works, after today's 'no change' decision,' said Peter Wadkins at Thomson IFR Markets.

Yen Drops As Investors' Desire For Risk Returns

The US dollar and euro did very well on Thursday, while the yen dropped in comparison. Investors, temporarily confident about the US mortgage crisis, have returned to riskier, higher yielding ventures. So, while Asian and European stocks are going strong, the yen will suffer until the next scare. Reuters reports:

Eyes are now turning to the European Central Bank's interest rate decision. Expectations of a rate hike from the ECB have diminished since a credit market squeeze that has forced the bank to inject liquidity into the banking system. Most analysts now expect rates to be kept on hold at 4 percent.

US Job Slump Causes Dollar To Fall

August reports show that the US lost 4000 jobs in one month. The biggest employment slump in several years, it appears that problems with the subprime market are affecting more people than ever. The dollar fell to a 30-day low after these reports went public. According to Reuters:

The euro vaulted to a one-month high of $1.3768 after the report before easing to $1.3751, up 0.5 percent. The dollar was down 0.8 percent at 114.42 yen , near a session low of 114.31 yen.