Canadian Dollar Erases Daily Gains

The Canadian dollar retreated, losing its initial gains, after the report showed that the Canadian employment declined instead of rising as was predicted and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased.

The Canadian employment was expected to rise by 18,100 jobs, but instead it decline by almost the same amount (18,600 on the seasonally adjusted basis) in November. The unemployment rate edged up from 7.3 percent to 7.4 percent, while market participants hoped it to stay unchanged.

Earlier, the loonie (as Canada’s currency is nicknamed) gained on the rumors about the proposal of the European governments to channel loans for supporting the Euro-region through the International Monetary Fund. The European central banks are

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Pay Day Loans the Fast Cash Solution in Less than 24 Hours

When you need a nominal sum of money in an emergency or jiffy, pay day loans can be the gateway to getting fast ready money as soon as possible. If you have a job, are over 18 and have a valid bank account you can normally get the funds within 24 hours.

The internet is a useful tool for many things and this includes the ability to get help in making it to pay day when you are in a dire strait. We all have emergencies and we all need fast cash solutions to fix them. Pay day loans are a way of getting money and getting it normally within 24 hours to help you make it through to your next pay day where you can then pay it off.

This is one of the reasons that pay day loans are becoming a popular way to lend money to customers. They are easy to do and it is recognized that people need that help sometimes to get them through the unforeseen situations where they just won’t make it through the day. Read the full article…

Financial Planning Tools that Everyone Can Use

Financial planning tools are essentially tools that help a person in the area of finances. There are many free tools available out there (e.g. budgeting calculators, credit card calculators, debt calculators, loan calculators, mortgage calculators, savings calculator, etc.) and it is not necessary to be acquainted with all. For starters, the following ones are probably the most beneficial for usage for the common person who is aiming to get a head start on achieving their personal financial goals without having to hire an actual financial or wealth planner.

Budgeting calculators. As the name suggests, this tool is to help the average person identify what are the main areas that require budgeting so that one does not go overboard in personal spending each month so as to avoid the problem of getting into debt. Read the full article…

Japanese Yen In “No Man’s Land”

This, according to a hedge fund manager that has decided to cancel all of his fund’s bearish bets on the Japanese Yen. The reason: the yen is rising, and it’s unclear when – or even if – the government will intervene to push it back down. Even though the yen’s strength is fundamentally illogical, it seems that investors are growing increasingly wary of betting against it.

As I pointed out in my previous post on the Yen (“Japanese Yen Strength is Illogical, but Does it Matter?“), the yen has actually fallen over the last twelve months, on a correlation weighted basis (though to be fair, it has staged a pretty impressive comeback since the beginning of April). Unfortunately, investors mainly care about how it is performing against a handful of key currencies, namely the US Dollar. Simply, the y

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My Experiences Of Trading Forex And Stocks Using Long Term Charts

To some extent trading the forex markets using long term charts (such as the daily and weekly charts) is a lot easier than trading the short term charts (such as the 1 and 5 minute charts). Indeed thats why my core trading system, ie my main 4 hour trading system (see right for more details), is based on the 4 hour and daily charts.

However when you are comparing long term forex trading to long term share trading, there is only one winner for me – share trading.
 
There is one thing you have in your favour when trading good quality stocks, and thats the fact that the share price should continue heading higher as long as the company is growing its earnings every year (and ideally its dividends as well).
 
So all you have to do is find those stocks that have shown consistent earnings growth over many years (and are likely to continue growing in future years) and buy the actual stocks or open long positions when the opportunities arise, ie when they are oversold on a technical basis or massively undervalued on a fundamental basis.
 
In other words whenever the share price falls with the wider market, you should view this an opportunity to scale into long positions, safe in the knowledge that you are trading a solid long term growth company and the long term trend should prevail at some stage.
 
When you are trading forex pairs on the other hand, you cant really get a firm idea of the underlying long term trend. For

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Consolidation vs Bankruptcy

Credit card debt is a world wide problem and in most countries, the debt is in billions of dollars and a study shows that it is mostly incurred by the younger working crowd. Credit card debt not only gives you bad credit ratings, it also causes a lot of stress but it is not an impossible situation to get out off.

The very basic of not incurring a debt with your card is not to spend more than what you can afford. Your credit card limit may allow you to spend up to $10000 but remember that you have to pay the creditor or bank back plus interest. If your monthly income is $3000, it will take you a long time to pay off your $10000 plus interest. We are all tempted to spend and spend when the limit is high, so it is a good idea to ask the bank to lower your credit limit.

When a person simply cannot afford paying for their credit card debts, they can consider debt consolidation or declaring bankruptcy. Read the full article…

It’s the (Payroll) Holiday Season

U.S. News and World Report has an online debate regarding the payroll tax holiday, and here are a bit of my remarks:

This bill would make the tax code more complicated, more unstable from year to year, and more redistributive – all damaging to long term economic growth.

It is essentially the 2012 version of cash for clunkers.  Economists claim that the payroll tax holiday would stimulate consumption spending, and it very well might in the short term.  But just as cash for clunkers merely shifted car sales from the future into the present, this too will merely shift future consumption into 2012.  We would basically be borrowing from ourselves and future generations.

The bill I’m referring to is the Senate Democrat’s bill that combines a payroll tax holiday with a millionaire surtax, which was voted down last night.  R

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