I spotted this and thought it would be of interest. A few months ago it was $1.5 Billion. http://www.fxstreet.com/nou/content/110070/content.asp?menu=macro "As the US Current Account Deficit approaches -$700 Billion while the Federal Budget Deficit exceeds -$400 Billion, global investors have sold the dollar out of fear that US Balance sheet problems will become unmanageable. At the current rate, the United States needs to attract approximately $1.8 billion of working capital every day to finance the current account deficit and American investments abroad."
Thomson commented on why and how the USDJPY crumbled today. I guess I have to brush up on some of those old japanese skills from uni, and start having testing trading there. I do like watching NHK from time to time too... I will of course do scalping at first since I'm extra fearful when looking at new products. Actually it could be quite nice, because my 2-yr old is normally sleeping when it opens. Good with some diversification - and at extreme price levels - as today it's much more "interesting". edit: Hey! I like this 6J ... !! I guess I got in at a very advantageous level though - new daily highs. The profits are the same - tick for tick. So it compares very well.
Heh...a good read: http://www.fxstreet.com/nou/content/106750/content.asp?menu=market I know it'll probably upset the general euro bull mood here, but I thought it might provoke some good thought. Peace. -Ivan
My initial view on this 6J USDJPY CME futures contract is that it seems just as good for scalping as the 6E EuroFX CME contract. chinook, if you're not collapsed of sleepiness - take a look at this one. At these extremes you can probably do a nice set of trades - because it can give better moves than the 6E - and it pays the same tick for tick. Very important to use the e-quivalents CME service for this one to understand and compare the prices to USDJPY spot !! http://equivalents.cme.com:443/index.html Right now, it seems 6J is offset roughly 13-15 ticks below spot, and the spread is 1 tick (of course !!!) Viva CME and their futures !! - which absolutely crush those sordid spot dealers with their 5-6 pip spreads on USDJPY (like Refco right now). edit: got to see how I can build this into my application too - to keep it simpler to trade 10x.xx than 0.009xxx . edit2: the larger offset also means that there is a little more "slippage" to what's the "right price" - thereby offering what we had with the 6E EuroFX during the summer... Remember roughly 8-10 ticks below spot ? edit3: my first scalp was "position-sized" and closed at +6 ticks. I guess I can directly translate that into -14 ticks total for the day on 5 trades (the last one being 6J). edit4: I got long USDJPY as well on demo spot as well - got to try it out some more. That's for longer time frames - since the spot pirates clean those initial 5-6 pips from every trade.
Just the CME product designations for 6E EURUSD aka EuroFX and 6J USDJPY .. both full-sized contracts. It's because of their 2-letter designations on products. edit: seems like easy money when I got in at the top.
shorting the usd/jpy i take it? do you know where i can find a real time chart of the usd/jpy? the one on dailyfx shows it at like 103.910 which i don't understand when i see it at .0009635 :> edit: oh, well after looking at it for a few minutes, i think i get it. on dailyfx, it's strength of USD against JPY. on my broker window it's showing from the other side. ah hmm. what a pain.
Remember the e-quivalents URL I posted - take a look at that one - it makes it easier. I am (succesfully) long USDJPY of course. The 103.50 level is as scary as playing Silent Hill on the PSX the first time.