(eToro Blog) Monthly PMI manufacturing data starts to trickle in today, with China among the first releases. News that China’s HBSC PMI data for February continues, for the 4th consecutive month, to fall into the contractionary territory has created new worries of a global economic slowdown. The Australian economy is heavily dependent on China’s growth… Read more

(eToro Blog) Earlier today, the Reserve Bank of Australia released the minutes from its February 7th meeting which showed that the central bank stands ready to consider an interest rate cut if conditions warrant given the inflationary outlook. News of possible additional easing, even perhaps well into the medium term, was enough to knock the… Read more

(eToro Blog) Traders on OpenBook expect to see oil prices decline from their current offering of $99.47, and sentiment is bearish by a 6-to-1 margin. OpenBook trader tomekdyd5, who employs a high-risk strategy but has thus far 20 followers and 5 copiers, earlier closed out two long positions with an 18.9% and 24.7% gain, respectively…. Read more

(eToro Blog) China’s General Administration of Customs earlier reported that January’s trade balance rose to a 27.30 billion surplus from December’s 16.52 billion, well above the consensus call for a decline to 10.40 billion. With China being Australia’s largest export partner, the news struck the AUD/USD pair almost immediately, which fell from a recent 6-month… Read more

(eToro Blog) Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi warned markets today over the strengthening of the nikkei. In a surprise move, the Reserve Bank of Australia kept rates on hold at 4.25%. Analysts were expecting the RBA to deliver a third round of rate cuts after it cut rates by 25 basis points in November and… Read more

(eToro Blog) The Reserve Bank of Australia is scheduled to announce its interest rate decision at 3:30 am London time on February 7th. Analysts are forecasting that the RBA will cut rates by 25 basis points. Australia has been one of the best performing economies in 2011 despite a global financial crisis due to the… Read more

(eToro Blog) The Aussie Dollar gained against the U.S. Dollar after the release of positive economic reports from Australia. Australian trade surplus increased to 1.7 billion Australian dollars in December. This was much higher than analyst expectations of a surplus of 1.2 billion Australian dollars. In November, the trade surplus printed at 1.3 billion Australian… Read more

(eToro Blog) With a relatively light economic calendar, Asian markets traded lower as skepticism focused on the EU economic summit starting today. The Nikkei was down 58 points, the Hang Seng was down 253 points and the Australian S&P ASX was down 14 points.  After the rate decisions last from BOJ, Fed and RBNZ, focus… Read more

(eToro Blog) An adviser to the People’s Bank of China said that the slowing economic growth means that the government is likely to have successfully orchestrated the soft landing for which it has been aiming. Inflation is expected to ease from 2011’s 4.5% to about 3% this year, and some analysts believe that the central… Read more

(eToro Blog) The Australian Dollar has been on a tear in recent months, striking multi-year or even record peaks against several major rivals including the U.S. Dollar, Pound Sterling and the Euro. Traders have two questions: How is the Aussie doing that and will it continue to rise still higher? Not that OpenBook traders are… Read more