Wednesday, January 25, 2012

US Pending Home Sales - Sell the Rumor Buy the News

A half an hour after the New York Cash Stock Equity Open at 10:00 EST (15:00 GMT) the Pending Home Sales figures were released. There were some negative headlines out of Europe about Greece and Portugal later in the European mid-day which gave the risk-on sentiment a pullback. The Emini S&P 500 sold off as the 9:30 open passed and headed down in the half hour leading into the News.

This really isn't the best economic news release to trade as everyone knows that housing is generally bad anyhow. In the past we have watched the USDJPY on US news but really the EMini S&P 500, the DOW or really any of the major Stock Indices generally follow US news quite well. The USDJPY does work but usually doesn't move many pips, perhaps 10. Here the figures:

US Pending Homes Sales MoM
Estimates- Median: -1.0% Average: -0.8% Range: -8.1% to +7.0%
Actual: -3.5% Prior: +7.3% No Revision
US Pending Homes Sales YoY
Actual: +4.4% Prior: +6.9% No Revision
US Home Price Index MoM
Estimates- Median: 0.0% Average: 0.0% Range: -0.5% to +0.5%
Actual: +1.0% Prior: -0.2% Revised: -0.7%

This is not large enough deviation trade, normally something closer to +/-5.0 or more, so this was a small -2.5 deviation and as the EMini had sold off into the news there was a good chance of a bounce back on a 'less worse than it could have been' type of rebound. Here is the 1 minute chart of the EMini S&P 500 from a spreadbet broker:

If you are stuck to just trading Forex, then the CADJPY is a good pair to trade because it has a good correlation to the main stock indices, which are driven by risk-on/risk-off price flow dynamic. Here is the 1 minute chart of the CADJPY forex pair:

No comments: