There seems to be no end of forex news reports willing to provide their commentary on price movements, most notably their commentary on what has just happened.
Well, while that may have its place, frankly anyone can give commentary on things that have already happened !
There is nothing worse than academic style reports that go on forever yielding up very little useful or applicable information. In our view, if the first 5 paragraphs haven’t given you some information you can use, it’s time to look elsewhere.
Here we share with you our favourite sources of forex news that explain the factors influencing recent movements, project future market direction, and identify factors to watch over the coming days.
Forward looking forex research
As profitable forex traders what we really need is concise commentary which blends solid analysis of forex news with assessments of how upcoming announcements and broader market trends are likely to influence the currency pairs in the coming days and weeks.
Particular useful is forex commentary which provides in bullet point format an analyst’s view of whether a particular currency is likely to strengthen (bullish) or weaken (bearish).
We’ve trawled through various websites and subscribed to numerous daily emails in search of this Holy Grail and have to say that our favourite for overall quality (not least for the fact that it’s also free) is dailyfx's forex news. (Opens in new window).
Their fx news articles are up to the minute and written by various contributors with real expertise, which shows through immediately.
We really like the inclusion of charts in their forex market commentary and their use of technical analysis to identify critical price points which the trader should be aware of when trading, while at the same time keeping an eye on fundamental data which may also be influential.
This latter point is really important – it’s so easy to come away from a trading course with narrow vision thinking that technical analysis is the answer to everything, and then wonder why the fx pair you were trading didn’t hold to its trendline when a key piece of data was released.
There’s no doubt that technical analysis is important, but we’ve found that the dailyfx reports help us to keep perspective on the broader global and macro economic picture as well when making our trading decisions.
FX News - Identifying factors influencing recent trading
Of course there’s nothing wrong with reports that offer commentary on past events, so long as they have no pretences about doing otherwise. In fact its’ important that you have a good day to day understanding of what factors have influenced recent forex news…….and what factors to look out for in the coming hours and days.
Our favourite for giving a really good “nuts and bolts” overview of the key economic data which has affected fx news in the last 24 hours has to be Currency Online forex news. (Opens in new window).
Written from the perspective of a company actively involved in day to day currency exchange for their clients, these reports give a straight to the point assessment of influencing factors, and point to what you should be looking out for in the coming days.
Beware the Telly types !
If the above resources are new to you we might hazard a guess that you have thus far been looking at forex news from the big brands like Reuters, Bloomberg, Thomson, and The FT.
There’s no doubt that these organisations have a role to play, but just remember that they are media companies and are NOT traders. There’s a galaxy of difference.
Bloomberg TV as much fun as it is to watch (!) is in the TV business, and as such is good at building hype and playing on viewers’ emotions, which is exactly the opposite of the way you should be feeling when you trade.
As it tends to focus mainly on stock trading anyway rather than forex news it’s become less relevant to our trading, but largely we’ve given up watching it and focused solely on the key economic data and technical analysis.
However, we have placed a forex video news feed at the top of this page which keeps you up to date with the key data you need on each of the fx pairs.
