Daily Market Analysis from NordFX

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NordFX Brokerage company has summed up the performance of its clients' trade transactions in March. If earlier traders from China, India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam waged an active struggle for leadership, all three steps of the podium were occupied by representatives of China last month.

The highest monthly profit, $66.377, was received by a client, account No. 1179XXX, mainly on transactions with gold (XAU/USD) and bitcoin (BTC/USD).

The second place in the rating of the most successful traders was taken by the owner of account No.1545XXX, who earned $26,142 on transactions with the main cryptocurrency.

And, finally, in third place is a trader, account No.1530XXX, with a profit of $16.977, among whose main trading instruments are the pairs XAU/USD and GBP/USD.

The passive investment services:
- in CopyTrading, the largest increase of 507% in March was shown by the VN.NO1 signal, however, its maximum drawdown was quite impressive, 63.65%. In the “middle” category, we can note the RED DOG signal: a profit of 34.86% with a drawdown of 23.25%. And, finally, among the most non-aggressive signals, Follow Trend attracts attention, it showed quite a good growth of 15.25% in March with a drawdown of only 4.18%.
- in the PAMM service, one should note the manager under the nickname GoodCandles5000: the growth for the month on his account was 26.77%, the maximum drawdown was 9.88%.

Among the IB partners, NordFX TOP-3 is as follows:
- the largest commission, $12,878, was accrued to a partner from Sri Lanka, account No.1483xxx;
- next is a partner from India, account No.1527xxx, who received $6,593;
- and, finally, a partner from India, account No.1491xxx, who received $4,855 as a reward, closes the top three.


Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. The U.S. economy continues to recover vigorously. This is evidenced by the impressive data from the labor market. Thus, the number of new jobs created outside the agricultural sector (NFP) has almost doubled compared to the previous period (growth from 468K to 916K) and, moreover, has exceeded the forecast (647K) by almost a third. The ISM Manufacturing PMI has risen from 60.8 to 64.7. Also, according to the ADP report, the employment rate in the private sector has increased from 176K to 517K. All this suggests that fiscal stimulation of the economy and the injection of money into it is working. But is it good for the dollar?
Of course, this scheme also includes yields on long-term US government bonds, as well as the prospects for monetary policy for the next few years. Investors are sensitive to statements by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on the possibility of curtailing the quantitative easing (QE) program and raising the interest rate.
On the one hand, according to the statements of the management, the Federal Reserve System does not intend to raise interest rates until at least 2023. The Fed is not going to change other parameters of the quantitative easing (QE) program either, believing that injecting $1.9 trillion into the economy will be quite enough. But on the other hand, US President Joe Biden presented a massive $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending plan on Wednesday March 31, along with a financing scheme through tax increases. If, indeed, these funds arise not at the expense of the printing press, but at the expense of an increase in the tax load, this will mean the curtailment of QE, and will entail the flow of capital from the stock market to the government bond market.
But while this is all just planning, the market has frozen in anticipation, and the EUR/USD pair has moved into a sideways trend. As predicted by the majority of experts (70%), the dollar continued to strengthen at the beginning of last week, and the pair came close to 1.1700. But then, largely thanks to Biden's new plan, it turned around and went up. However, this rebound can hardly be called a trend change. The pair just returned to where it had been on March 25-30. It completed the trading week in the same zone, at the level of 1.1760;

- GBP/USD. In general, the chart of this pair was similar to the chart of EUR/USD, with only one fundamental difference. If the euro continues to retreat against the dollar, the British pound, albeit with difficulty, is trying to hold the defense. This time, the UK GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2020 to 1.3%, as well as the revised upward index of business activity came to help it.
Let us remind that, when making a forecast for the previous week, 40% of experts voted for the strengthening of the dollar, 10% for the strengthening of the pound and 50% for the sideways trend. And in general, everyone was right. The pair both fell to 1.3705, and grew to 1.3850, and eventually finished only 40 points above the start. Having started the five-day week at 1.3790, it completed it at 1.3830;

- USD/JPY. Most analysts (60%) had expected this pair to consolidate above the 110.00 horizon. 100% of trend indicators and 75% of oscillators had agreed with this scenario. And it turned out to be absolutely true. The pair has been relentlessly moving north since January 6 and it renewed this year's high on Wednesday March 31, reaching 110.95.  The long-awaited correction to the south did not happen again, and the pair ended the trading session at 110.65;

- cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is storming the $60,000 threshold again. At the time of writing, the maximum it has reached so far is $60,170. However, as soon as the benchmark cryptocurrency approaches this milestone, another wave of sales follows, causing a pullback. However, these ebbs are not large enough. And this suggests that there are fewer and fewer people willing to part with bitcoin at this level. Investors are waiting for a leap up. And these small corrections just give them the opportunity to replenish their stock of tokens on the pullback.
A huge number of bitcoins are flowing into cold wallets, which indicates that the "whales" institutions are set for the further growth of BTC and see it as an asset for long-term investments. The news background also contributes to this. “We see Square, Tesla, MicroStrategy and others buying bitcoin,” says ARK Invest CEO Catherine Wood. - Now cryptocurrencies determine part of the business of these companies. And the announcement of the sale of Tesla for BTC will allow you to do business in any region without wasting time and money on exchanging fiat currencies." The major payment system, PayPal, has also joined the crypto race. it intends to provide its customers with the opportunity to pay in bitcoins in all stores that are partners of the company, and there are approximately 29 million of them around the world. According to Reuters, in addition to the main cryptocurrency, PayPal also plans to introduce support for payments in Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin.
We can talk about the gradual adoption of cryptocurrencies in various sectors of the economy at the moment. However, large investors are still very worried about the attitude of regulators to this type of assets. And, first and foremost, the US authorities. According to a number of analysts, while bitcoin and the main altcoins act as a store of value and speculation, the American regulator turns a blind eye to it. But as soon as bitcoin begins to compete with the dollar as a means of payment and international payments even a little, the attitude of the authorities can change dramatically. And it is not at all excluded that the initiatives of PayPal and other payment systems will cause a negative reaction from them. An example of this is Facebook's Libra, which was strangled in the bud.
In the meantime, as mentioned, the main cryptocurrency is trying to gain a foothold above $60,000, and the total market capitalization is trying to exceed the most important psychological level of $2.0 trillion. It reached a volume of $1.993 billion on the first day of April, but it rolled back to the level of $1.936 billion on Friday. It is noteworthy that the dominance of bitcoin in the market has slightly decreased over the past 7 days: from 59.56% to 57.88%. Moreover, its share in the crypto market literally fell to 55.50% on April 1. The reason for this is the closure of long positions when the BTC/USD pair reached the horizon of $60,000.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index has started to rise again. It rose by 20 points over the week, from 54 to 74, and came close to the strongly overbought zone.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. Europe is preparing for a new wave of coronavirus. The rate of vaccination, although growing, is slow. Only 16.5% of the EU population has received at least one injection so far, compared to 45.6% in the USA. The situation could be aggravated by another month of lockdowns. Coupled with the absence in the EU of a plan to stimulate an economy similar to the American one, it could provide additional support to the dollar and put pressure on the euro.
Analysts from Japanese bank Daiwa Securities note that dollars are now being bought not only by speculators but also by asset managers. And in their opinion, the USD DXY index will go up while the American economy improves and Treasury yields rise. This scenario is also supported by experts from Nordea Markets, according to whom the EUR/USD pair is expected to decline to the level of 1.1500.
On the other hand, excessive US stimulus measures could overheat the US economy. In addition, according to the WTO estimates, the surplus of dollars in the country will lead to an increase in demand for imports by 11.4%. Most of this demand will be met by exports from Asia and Europe. And if the countries of the Eurozone radically accelerate the rate of vaccination, then the preponderance will be on the side of the European currency.
It is clear that graphical analysis, 75% of oscillators and 95% of trend indicators on D1 are still colored red at the moment. However, the remaining 25% of the oscillators are already signaling that the pair is oversold. The picture is completely different On H4: about half of the indicators have switched to green.
As for the opinion of experts, the pair is expected to grow next week by 55% of them, however, when switching to the monthly forecast, their number grows to 65%. The bears' goals are 1.1700 and the low of November 2020 at 1.1600. The goals of the bulls are 1.1885 and 1.2000.
As for the events of the coming week, we can mention the publication of the ISM index of business activity in the services sector on Monday 05 April, the publication of the minutes of the US Fed's FOMS meeting on Wednesday 07 April and a speech of the head of the organization, Jerome Powell, on Thursday 08 April;

- GBP/USD. The British currency may continue to grow, as it did in the first two months of 2021. Especially so if there is a return to the country of major capital that fled from it due to Brexit. The pound is also supported by the successes of the early stages of vaccination against COVID-19. However, this may not be enough due to the problems after the UK exit from the EU, the impressive trade deficit and the country's budget deficit.
However, the majority of experts (65%) are quite optimistic about the future of the British currency at the moment. 15% predict its weakening, and the remaining 20% insist on a sideways trend.
The 1.3850 level can be designated as the support/resistance zone of the last eight weeks. It is the lateral movement along it that graphical analysis draws. On H4, the borders of the trading range look like 1.3755-1.3850. On D1, they are naturally much wider, 1.3670–1.4000.
85% of oscillators and 70% of trend indicators on D1 look north. Also, the green has an advantage among trend indicators on H4: those are 75%. But as for the oscillators, here 60% are painted in neutral gray, and 20% - in red and green;

- USD/JPY. It has been repeatedly written that the rate of this pair is greatly influenced by the yield of US Treasuries. However, the Bank of Japan has not been able to decide how to respond to rising yields on US securities and what to do with its own. If the yield on 10-year US bonds and commodity prices continue to rise, and the Japanese regulator does not respond to this, it could hit the yen hard. And it has already suffered quite tangible losses, having lost more than 800 points to the dollar over the past three months. 
Currently 85% of the trend indicators on H4 and 100% on D1 are facing north. 60% of the oscillators on H4 and 65% on D1 are looking in the same direction, the rest signal that the pair is overbought.
And a very interesting and unexpected picture emerged during a survey of analysts. Giving a weekly forecast, 70% of them were in favor of a correction to the south and 30% - for a sideways trend. The number of votes cast for the growth of the pair is 0. Moreover, when switching to a monthly forecast, the number of bears' supporters grows to 90%. The graphical forecast on both timeframes also supports the bearish scenario. Support levels are 110.35, 109.85, 109.00 and 108.50. The nearest resistance level is 111.00, the targets of the bulls are 111.70 and 112.20;

- cryptocurrencies. As has been noted many times, the "whales" store large stocks of bitcoins in cold wallets. According to Glassnode, not only the volume of frozen crypto assets is growing, but also the number of such long-term investors. For example, the Norwegian billionaire Oystein Stray Spetalen changed his attitude towards bitcoin in just one day! Back on March 18, he actively demanded that the EU authorities ban the cryptocurrency. And a day later ... he became an investor in the Norwegian crypto-exchange Miraiex, stating that "when the facts change, I also change." Another Norwegian billionaire, Kjell Inge Rokke, who opened a special company to invest in bitcoin, may have caused this turnaround. "I can’t let him make money, but me not," Spetalen said.
So, will there be an opportunity to make money on bitcoin anytime soon? During the current cycle, the price of the cryptocurrency has risen by almost 500% since October 2020 and has updated highs above $60,000. Bitcoin rallied during the first two months of 2021 but ran into a hurdle in March. However, according to a number of experts, historical data indicate that after the March rollback bitcoin's growth may continue in April. “The season may be the determining factor. - Danny Scott, head of CoinCorner exchange, said in a conversation with Forbes. - April always stands out because it marks the end of the UK and US tax period. If we start from historical information, April may well end with an upswing."
So, the data shows that bitcoin has risen by an average of 51% in April over the past 10 years. If this scenario is repeated, its price may be around of $80,000 by the end of the month. There were only two negative months of April: in 2014 (minus 6%) and in 2015 (minus 4%). But both of these times happened on bearish cycles, and therefore it is worth taking into account the "current sentiment in the industry." “Now we are, by and large, experiencing a bullish period, and momentum is consistently forming every week,” said Scott. If we apply Fibonacci levels to the charts of the BTC/USD pair, then the next targets for it may be the levels of $73,000 and $92,000.
It is appropriate to quote here the opinion of the popular cryptocurrency analyst Willy Woo, who said that we will see the final stage of the explosive growth of the first cryptocurrency rate this year. But it will also be the last one for a three-year bull cycle. Now the bitcoin rate is at a local bottom and there is no point in selling your BTC reserves, Woo thinks. “You have to be crazy to sell right now. At the bottom, bitcoin is now being bought up in huge volumes,” the analyst noted, citing the statistics of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange as an example. It is surprising that with such optimism of individual crypto enthusiasts, 70% of analysts expect not growth, but, on the contrary, a fall in the BTC/USD pair to the $50,000 mark during April.
And in conclusion of the review, we present you the next "miracle device" in our traditional micro-heading "Crypto Life Hacks". A group of enthusiasts adapted the Game Boy portable game console for cryptocurrency mining. A video about this was released on a YouTube channel. Only its 4 MHz Sharp processor was used directly for mining. However, this invention is unlikely to make the craftsmen millionaires: tests have shown that with a bitcoin rate of about $55,000, they will need 50 thousand years to mine $1.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. The dollar has periodically changed its status since the COVID-19 pandemic started, becoming either a safe haven currency or a risky asset for investors. For example, the US currency declined amid rising stock markets in November-December 2020. And since January, the dollar began to rise along with the S&P500. Now this index is in the area of its all-time high¬: 3.795. The DXY dollar index is also quoted in the area of annual highs: 92.72.   
The main reason for this volatility in the USD is the coronavirus situation and the US government's response to it. And the Fed threw in yet another riddle last week. Recall that it has become clear following the meeting of the Open Market Committee (FOMC) that the US Federal Reserve does not intend to raise interest rates until at least 2023. The Fed is not going to change other parameters of the quantitative easing (QE) program either. The bill signed by US President Joe Biden on a new $1.9 trillion package, according to the Fed, is quite a sufficient measure to stimulate the economy.
Just a few days later, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the regulator would gradually phase out $120 billion in monthly asset purchases from the moment the US economy almost fully recovers. And this, according to forecasts of the Fed itself could happen this summer.   
So, it turns out that the Government and the Senate may start a debate on winding down QE in the near future. But what about the information that the Biden Administration is now discussing another new package of fiscal stimulus for another $3.0 trillion?
The market "sided" with Jerome Powell this time, and the dollar continued to strengthen its positions. As predicted by the main forecast, which was voted for by the majority of analysts (65%), the EUR/USD pair went down, broke through the support at the 200-day SMA at 1.1825, and dropped to the 1.1760 horizon. This was followed by a slight rebound and a finish at 1.1790;
   
- GBP/USD. After a two-week stay in the sideways channel 1.3775-1.4000, the widespread strengthening dollar pulled the pair down. 55% of the experts were on the side of the bears, and they were right. The GBP/USD pair reached the local bottom at 1.3670 on Thursday, March 25, after which it returned to the lower border of the side channel, which turned from support to resistance. The last chord of the week sounded near it, at the level of 1.3790;   

- USD/JPY. The large-scale correction of the pair to the south never happened. Just 50 points were enough for the pair: having dropped to the level of 108.40, it turned around and went north again, following the strengthening dollar. The nearest target of the bulls was designated the height of 110.00, and the pair almost reached it: the week's high was fixed at 109.85. After that, it declined slightly and completed the working five days at 109.67; 

- cryptocurrencies. The forecast for the past week, which was supported by the majority of experts, was not most optimistic for the bulls. It assumed the cessation of growth, the breakdown of bitcoin's lower boundary of the upward channel and its lateral movement in the range of $50,000-60,000. Unfortunately for investors, this is exactly what happened. The BTC/USD pair was at a height of $60,000 on March 20, but it found a local bottom at around $50,290 on Thursday March 25. And if the fall in bitcoin was 16%, then some of the top altcoins lost about 25% in price.
One of the few that won was ripple. Starting at $0.4652 seven days before, it peaked at $0.5955 on March 22, and was trading at $0.5450 by the evening of Friday March 26.
In general, as we predicted, the crypto market turned out to be overheated. Elon Musk's statement that bitcoins accepted as payment for Tesla cars would no longer be converted into dollars did not help it either. such information could have pushed the market high up not so long ago, but now it has given only a small short-term impulse.
According to Skybridge Capital CEO and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, Tesla has about $1.5 billion in BTC at the moment. In total, Elon Musk owns little more than $5 billion in bitcoins through Tesla, SpaceX and personally. Perhaps this is no longer enough, and bitcoin needs more powerful locomotives than Tesla or MicroStrategy to move the market up.
But just a few words from regulators such as the US Fed are enough to push it down. The head of the US Federal Reserve System Jerome Powell questioned the qualities of the first cryptocurrency as a tool for savings and payments. During his speech at the virtual summit of the Bank for International Settlements, he noted the high volatility of digital assets, because of which, in his opinion, they are useless as a means of accumulation. “They are not backed by anything and are used more for speculation, so they are not particularly popular as a means of payment. Crypto assets are more likely to replace gold rather than the dollar,” Powell said.
The fall of BTC/USD was evidently affected by the fall of the S&P500, with which such a risk asset as “digital gold” correlates more and more. Traders have closed about 240,000 positions over the past few days, and the total capitalization of the crypto market has decreased from $1805 billion to $1,680 billion. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index moved from 71 to the central zone during the week and is at 54, which is flat. However, it is possible that this is only a lull before the storm.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. There are three main factors on the side of the American currency. The first is the successful vaccination of the population, including not only the results already achieved, but also the promise of President Biden to vaccinate 200 million US residents in the first 100 days of his stay in the White House. The second factor is the growing attractiveness of government bonds for foreign investors. And the third factor is the strength of the US economy, which is capable of lifting the economies of many other countries along with itself.
Europe has none of these factors. ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos did say that if vaccination in the Eurozone increases sharply by the summer, then Europe will face a sharp economic rise in Q3 and Q4. But these are just words.
At the moment, 70% of experts expect the dollar to continue strengthening and the EUR/USD pair to decline to the 1.1640-1.1700 zone. The ultimate target is the lows of September-November 2020 around 1.1600. This forecast is supported by 85% of trend indicators on H4 and 100% on D1, as well as 75% of oscillators on D1. The remaining 25% give signals that the pair is oversold.
Note that graphical analysis indicates that the euro may strengthen to 1.1880 in the coming days on both time frames, and the pair will go south only after that.
It should also be noted that when switching from a weekly to a monthly forecast, it is already 60% of analysts who vote for the growth of the EUR/USD pair. The targets are 1.2000 and 1.2200.
As for the events of the coming week, the release of data on the consumer markets in Germany on March 30 and the Eurozone on March 31 should be considered, as well as data on the US labor market on Wednesday March 31 (ADP report) and Friday April 02 (NFP). The speech of U.S. President Joe Biden on March 31 is also of interest. Markets will wait for signals from him regarding the steps that his administration will take to speed up the recovery of the country's economy;

- GBP/USD. We will receive UK GDP data for Q4 2020 on Wednesday, the last day of March. According to forecasts, the indicator will remain at the previous level of 1%. This is unlikely to add optimism to investors, but it will not upset them either. Therefore, 50% of them vote for the sideways trend, 40% for the strengthening of the dollar and only 10% for the strengthening of the British pound.
The technical analysis readings are as follows. On H4: 50% of the oscillators point to the north, 50% to the south. The trend indicators have a similar pattern. D1 is dominated by red. 65% of oscillators and 70% of trend indicators are colored red. 
The nearest support levels are 1.3760, 1.3700, 1.3670, resistance levels are 1.3820, 1.3900, 1.3960. The targets are 1.4000 and 1.3600, respectively;

- USD/JPY. The pair reached a nine-month high at 109.85 last week, showing an impressive increase of almost 730 points over the past three months. This suggests that such traditional safe havens, which is the yen, are now of little interest to investors.
It is unlikely that the Tankan index will greatly affect the market sentiment. Published by the Bank of Japan, this index reflects general business conditions for large manufacturing companies. Tankan is an economic indicator of Japan, which is heavily dependent on export-oriented industry. The index value above 0 is positive for the yen, the value below 0, respectively, is a negative factor. However, according to forecasts, the value of the index, which will be published on Thursday April 01, will not be higher or lower, but equal to 0. This is a neutral value. Although, it is possible that it will support the Japanese currency somewhat, since Tankan was at minus 10 a quarter earlier. But it is likely to be only a small correction of the USD/JPY pair to the south.
Overall, most analysts (60%) remain bullish, expecting it to consolidate above the 110.00 horizon. The targets are 111.70 and 112.20. 100% of trend indicators and 75% of oscillators agree with this scenario. The remaining 25% give signals that the pair is overbought.   
The remaining 40% of experts, supported by graphic analysis, still hope for a long-awaited correction to the south. At the same time, when moving to monthly and quarterly forecasts, their number increases to 75%. Support levels in case the pair falls are 109.00, 108.60, 108.40, 106.65. The target is zone 106.00;

 - cryptocurrencies. It was noticed that not only plants start growing in the spring, but also bitcoin quotes. So, the BTC/USD pair rose in April by an average of 40% for the past three years. That is, this time it should be somewhere in the area of $70,000-75,000 by the end of April. Call options with expiration on April 30 show similar expectations. Those are now open at a price of $80,000 on derivative exchanges for a total of $240,000,000. Its active withdrawal to cold wallets continues in anticipation of a new growth cycle for the main cryptocurrency.
We have already talked more than once about the support package for the US economy in the amount of $1.9 trillion, of which, according to a study by Mizuho Securities, US citizens can spend $20-25 billion on the purchase of cryptocurrency. Following this anti-Covid package, another one is possible, in the amount of $3.0 trillion. And if adopted, it would also benefit the crypto market.
But all this is in the future. In the meantime, 60% of analysts believe that the BTC/USD pair will move along the Pivot Point of $50,000 for the next one or two weeks, fluctuating in the $46,500-56,000 range.
If we talk about a long-term forecast, according to the co-founder and former CEO of the BTCC cryptocurrency exchange Bobby Lee, the price of bitcoin can rise to $300,000, after which the growth will be replaced by a long-term decline. “Bitcoin bull market cycles occur every four years, and the current one is a big cycle. I think that bitcoin may rise to $100,000 this summer,” he said. However, after reaching an all-time high of $300,000, even a small price decrease will cause the bubble to collapse. Lee suggested that the new crypto winter will last between two and three years, and "investors should be prepared for the fact that the value of bitcoin could fall 80-90% from the historical peak."
And in conclusion of the review, we present you the next "miracle device" in our micro-heading "Crypto Life Hacks". WiseMining has recently introduced the Sato ASIC miner boiler that allows you to heat water by mining bitcoin. The intermediate coolant of the boiler is a special dielectric coolant. The liquid boils and evaporates in the ASIC cooling unit, the vapor rises into the tank coil and condenses, giving off heat to the water. Condensation flows back into the cooling unit of the miner. The developers provided the possibility of connecting this water heater to the main heating system of the room. Sato sales will begin as early as this April.
And one more "life hack", from the criminal world. According to a new study by analytical company Elliptic, the largest darknet market, Hydra, has a new way of exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat money. The vacuum-packed treasure with money is buried "5-20 cm underground", and the exact GPS coordinates are communicated to the buyer. This same method has long been used to sell illegal substances such as drugs. However, it is quite risky, as bandits sometimes track down customers and take away "the parcels". The consequences in this case are unpredictable.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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It is possible to make money on currency fluctuations not only by trading. Forex PAMM services allow even those who have no previous trading experience to profit from changes in prices of foreign currency assets. On the other hand, for a professional trader, the Forex PAMM service is an opportunity to increase the size of their trading capital.

What is a PAMM account

PAMM account (from English PAMM - Percent Allocation Management Module) is a special investment account connected to the account of the managing trader. The essence of its work is simple. The trader makes an offer (offer of cooperation with clearly defined conditions), and investors contribute their funds to such an account. As a result of the trading conducted by the managing trader, the profits obtained are distributed among these parties in the proportion specified in the offer.

Key participants in PAMM services

There are three main parties involved in investing in PAMM services:
1. Managing trader. This is a broker's client who has a certain trading experience, confirmed by statistics.
2. Investor. A person who invests their funds into the account of a managing trader. Profits from the results of managing trader's work.
3. PAMM service. This is a broker, for example, NordFX, where trading and financial settlements between the manager and the investor are carried out.

It should be noted that one investor can simultaneously distribute their funds among several managers, forming an optimal investment portfolio, and one manager can accept funds from several investors at the same time.

PAMM services from a manager's point of view

Any trader can become a manager. To do this, you need to register with a broker, for example, NordFX, open a PAMM account, create an offer that will reflect the trader's commission, top up the account and start trading.

By and large, the activities of a manager are not much different from standard trading, but there is one exception. All trader's results will be recorded and displayed for all to see in the form of detailed statistics. It is necessary so that investors can assess the potential of the manager and decide how well the manager's trading strategies are suitable for the investment.

In the NordFX brokerage company, investors can evaluate a manager's trading by almost 50 different parameters that allow them to predict not only potential profit, but also possible risks.  

The managing trader will receive their share of the profit based on the results of their work. The rest will be distributed among all investors in the proportion specified in the offer. Moreover, all this is closely watched by the broker who provided the platform for the PAMM service, so that the trader does not have to calculate anything manually. There are no risks of conflict between the manager and investors due to miscalculations either.

What is the main advantage of a PAMM account from the manager's point of view? First of all, this is an opportunity to significantly increase your income from trading on the international Forex market. In addition to their own funds, the manager will work with investors' money and receive a percentage of the profit for this. The better the trading results, the higher the profit, the more investors will invest their funds in this manager.

As for the flaws, there are none. The manager conducts their usual trading, risks their own funds as usual  and does not bear any additional responsibility to investors for the results of trading. If successful, the number of investors who want to join the trader will grow. However, if the manager is trading at a loss, there will be no people willing to join their account.

PAMM accounts from an investor's point of view

Not only those who trade on their own, but also those who, for some reason, cannot engage in trading, can make money on the international Forex market. For example, you can't make money, you don't have talent, you don't want to study, you don't have time, and so on. But even in these cases, not all is lost.

The fact is that Forex offers almost limitless opportunities for earning money. It is one of the most liquid markets, with a daily turnover of trillions of US dollars, and many traders are keen to work in it. There is no supply of real assets here, and a trader can conclude a sell transaction with numerous financial instruments, even without possessing them.

For an investor, the Forex market is an opportunity to generate passive income by investing their funds in successful managers. Although this type of work cannot be called completely passive. The fact is that the investor will have to perform a certain amount of analytical work. But it will be connected not with how to predict market fluctuations in currencies, but with how to correctly choose a trader who will be entrusted with managing investor's funds.

What are the main advantages of investing in PAMM?

There are several of them:
1. Investing in Forex through PAMM is very convenient. You, as an investor, only need to choose a suitable manager and connect to their account.
2. Full automation. You don't have to deal with any calculations and settlements. The whole process is fully automated on the broker platform.
3. Control by the broker. The risks of cheating on the part of the trader are excluded. Everything is controlled by the service that provides PAMM investment services. For example, the manager does not have access to the funds that are on the investment accounts connected to him. He or she does not have the slightest opportunity to steal investors' funds and disappear with them in an unknown direction. 
4. Investors are offered a convenient investment format. The trading history and comprehensive multifactorial statistics for all managing traders are available, which allows you to evaluate their trading strategies and make competent and weighted decisions.
5. Investing in Forex using PAMM is possible without knowledge of this market. As a depositor, you do not need to dive into the intricacies of trading. All this knowledge is necessary only for the manager.
6. Possibility to create your own investment portfolio. Forex PAMM accounts make it possible for you to diversify your investments by choosing several traders with different trading styles and ratios of profit and risk.

Choosing a manager or how to create your portfolio

Investing through PAMM can be quite profitable. However, there are moments that require effort from those who are going to engage in such activities. The fact is that Forex PAMM accounts, including those at the NordF X broker, are a variety of managers. And the choice is not only about finding the most acceptable conditions in terms of the offer. As mentioned above, investing in the Forex market requires a thorough analysis of the trader’s statistics.

There are three main types of trading strategies that managers use: aggressive, balanced, conservative.

Aggressive managers usually perform well in terms of profit, which can reach hundreds or thousands of percent. But, accordingly, they have quite high risks and large drawdowns. Such accounts are more likely than others to suffer serious losses and can even lead to a complete loss of capital.

Balanced managers show average income. But the risks are also relatively low. Such PAMM Forex accounts suffer losses much less often than aggressive ones.

Finally, conservative accounts show low income. At the same time, investments in Forex with such managers pose the lowest risks. Such traders usually conduct their trading activities the longest, which is reflected in their history on the “showcase” of the PAMM service.

Which option should one choose?

This is where we come to the need to create an investment portfolio. If you plan to invest using PAMM technologies, investments are not much different from buying stocks or other instruments. Classic portfolios usually include different asset categories, both low and high-risk.

When working with PAMM brokers, such as NordFX, your task is to assemble approximately the same portfolio where risks and potential returns are balanced. That is, you can invest in all the categories of managers described above, from aggressive to conservative. As a result, you will be able to get a fairly high profit with limited risks.

In terms of percentage, there are many guidelines. Some experts believe that it would be ideal to allocate only 20% of the total account to aggressive accounts, and divide the rest between balanced and conservative. However, this ratio is not a must. You can determine how aggressive your portfolio will be and make calculations based on it.

Some recommendations for choosing PAMM accounts

And now back to the question of how to choose the most suitable Forex PAMM account. There are several important criteria to pay attention to:
1. Age of the PAMM account. This indicator is particularly important for those investors who plan to invest in aggressive strategies. The longer such managers show positive results, the more reliable they are.
2. Average monthly expected return. This indicator is made up of average monthly profits for previous periods. This way you can see how effective the trader's strategy is and what style of trading they use.
3. Maximum drawdown. This is an equally important indicator that reflects the investor's risks. The higher the maximum drawdown, the more aggressive the trader's style is, and the higher the probability of losing your funds.

Important criteria for evaluation are:
1. The used leverage. Naturally, the higher it is, the greater the load on the deposit, the greater the risks.
2. Limiting risks by the managing trader. If they make up more than 30% of the deposit, the manager either does not use stop orders, or shifts or deletes them in the expectation of a price reversal.
3. The use of various aggressive wealth management systems. The most famous in this case is the Martingale, which is described in numerous textbooks and articles on Forex. Some managers indicate the use of this approach in their offers. But even if this is not the case, it is possible to understand that the manager applies a similar method by loading the deposit and increasing losses during periods of long recoilless trends in traded currency pairs.

When planning to invest in a PAMM service, it is necessary to take into account the ratio of risk and return. This applies to a greater extent to those who will compose their own investment portfolios of managers. Many experts say that the profitability should always be 2-3 times higher than the risk. If the profitability is equal to the risk, you may face such a situation when after a certain period of time, your total profit will be equal to ... 0.

When working with PAMM services, it is very important to establish in advance the conditions for exit, that is, the completion of work with one or another manager (at least temporarily). Various criteria can be used for this, including:
1. Exceeding the maximum drawdown. This is one of the important indicators of risk that you should focus on. It says that the trader has started to work even more aggressively and there are chances of receiving serious losses.
2. Change of the manager's trading system. This is not exactly a reason to part with the manager. Rather, it is a reason for analyzing and re-evaluating the terms of this cooperation and the volume of investments. Perhaps the trader's trading system has become more flexible and efficient than in the original version. In this case, the manager can not only remain in the portfolio, but also get a larger share of investments. However, if irrational, from your point of view, changes have been made to the system, it's time to think about stopping such cooperation.


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. It has become clear following the meeting of the Open Market Committee (FOMC) that the US Federal Reserve does not intend to raise interest rates until at least 2023. The Fed is not going to change other parameters of the quantitative easing (QE) program either, as long as inflation in the United States is growing, the manufacturing sector is recovering, and is pulling up the service sector. The bill signed by US President Joe Biden on a new $1.9 trillion package, according to the Fed, is quite a sufficient measure to stimulate the economy at this stage.
This position of the American regulator satisfied (or upset) both bulls and bears on the EUR/USD pair to the same extent, and as a result the pair spent the whole week in a narrow sideways channel with an amplitude of only 110 points, 1.1875-1.1985, and ended the trading session near the 1.1900 level;

- GBP/USD. As mentioned above, the US Fed refused to adjust its monetary policy. But the management of the Bank of England refused to do the same unanimously at its meeting on Thursday March 18. According to their statement, the bank "does not intend to tighten monetary policy at least until there is clear evidence of the use of untapped potential and the achievement of the 2 percent inflation target." So, one should not expect a rise in interest rates on the pound.
As a result of the identical decisions of both regulators, the GBP/USD pair continued to move sideways. Recall that last week, a third of experts voted for the growth of the pair, a third - for its fall, and the remaining third made a Solomon decision, announcing that the pair would move eastward, limiting the growth by the resistance at 1.4000, and the fall by the support at 1.3775. And this forecast turned out to be almost perfect. The fluctuations of the pair were limited to the range of 1.3800-1.4000. The last chord sounded at 1.3865;

- USD/JPY. The Japanese regulator also performed in a chorus with the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. The Bank of Japan left the interest rate at the same negative level, minus 0.1%, on Friday, March 19. At the same time, it will continue to buy back long-term bonds in order to maintain the yield on its 10-year securities at near zero. The statements of the Bank's management regarding the prospects for monetary policy were also consonant vague with the statements of their colleagues from the USA and Great Britain: “we are ready for changes as needed”. It is not specified what the criteria for such "necessity" are. 
The result of such a “sluggish” week was the consolidation of the USD/JPY pair in an even narrower range than EUR/USD and GBP/USD. After holding in the channel 108.60-109.35 for all the five days, it finished at 108.87; 

- cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin renewed its all-time high once again over the past week, reaching $61,670. This was followed by a quick rollback. However, the main currency managed to stay within the upward channel, having received support at its lower border, in the $53,300-53,900 zone. This correction attracted buyers waiting for a new opportunity for their purchases, and the BTC/USD pair is trading around $58,500 on the evening of Friday March 19.
One of the reasons that bitcoin has not yet been able to gain a foothold above $60,000, according to JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, was a decrease in institutional investment. Thus, the volume of retail investment in bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021 exceeded the investment of institutional investors, who reduced the volume of cryptocurrency purchases. Retail investors purchased over 187,000 BTC tokens, while institutional purchases amounted to approximately 172,684 BTC.
According to Compound Capital Advisors investment company calculations, bitcoin has become the most profitable investment in the last 10 years and has surpassed all asset classes by at least 10 times, providing an average annual return of 230%. The Nasdaq 100 came in second with an annualized return of 20%, followed by US stocks with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion with an annualized return of 14%. Also, studies have shown that gold has shown a meager return of 1.5% per annum since 2011, and five of the last 11 years have brought losses to this asset.
Since 2011, BTC's combined profit has been a whopping 20 million percent. 2013 was the most successful year for bitcoin as it grew by 5507%. In addition, it is important to note that BTC has shown an annualized loss in just two years of its history: it fell 58% in 2014 and 73% in 2018.
All these figures are impressive for some, and they are intimidating for others. For example, the head of the Visa payment giant agreed that cryptocurrencies could become widespread over the next 5 years. In addition to JPMorgan, the largest American bank Morgan Stanley has shown loyalty to digital assets, promising to provide its large clients with the opportunity to own bitcoin.
But Bank of America published the report "Little Dirty Secrets of Bitcoin" on March 17, in which it announced that this token is an exclusively speculative instrument. "Without rising prices, there is no reason to own this cryptocurrency," the report says. "The asset is impractical either as a store of value, or as a method of payment, and 95% of Bitcoin belongs to the owners of 2.4% of wallets." The bankers recalled the negative impact of BTC on the environment due to high energy costs for mining as well as the low transaction speed. Although, one can guess that it is not this that worries them most of all, but the prospect of losing a significant share of income due to the development of the crypto market.
Note that the total capitalization of the crypto market over the last week increased from $1756 billion to $1805 billion. However, it could not break through the important psychological level of $2 trillion: the maximum value of $1851 billion was reached on March 14, after which the indicators fell slightly. As for the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, it practically did not change over the week: 71 now versus 70 seven days ago.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. In general, both experts and indicators have a bearish mood. Despite the US Federal Reserve's refusal to raise interest rates until 2023, investors are still guided by a favorable economic scenario. Mass vaccinations and direct payments to US citizens should support the dollar, even though some of that $380 bn will be invested in riskier assets.  
Most analysts (65%) expect the dollar to strengthen in the coming week. In their opinion, the EUR/USD pair should retest the support of 1.1835. The bearish forecast is also supported by 65% of oscillators and 85% of trend indicators on time frames H4 and D1. Recall that, from the point of view of technical analysis, the support level here is still the 200-day SMA at 1.1825. In case of its breakthrough, the next targets will be 1.1800 and 1.1745. The ultimate target is the lows of September-November 2020 around 1.1600.
As for the bulls, the resistance levels here are 1.1980, 1.2025, 1.2060 and 1.2100. And if the bullish forecast is supported by only 35% of experts now, the balance of forces changes in a mirror-like manner when switching to the forecast for April: it is already 65% who support the growth of the pair and only 35% are for its fall.
Graphic analysis also points to the pair falling. And also, not immediately. At first, according to its readings, having fought off the zone 1.1880-1.1900, the pair should rise to the level of 1.1980, and only then go south.
As for the events of the coming week, Jerome Powell's numerous speeches on March 22, 23 and 24 could be noted. However, the head of the FRS is unlikely to say anything new: everything important was already said last week. Therefore, we advise you to pay attention to the data on business activity of Markit of Germany and the Eurozone, which will be announced on Wednesday March 24. As for the American statistics, data on orders for durable goods will be published on the same day, and annual data on GDP of the United States the next day. 

- GBP/USD. The head of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey is also scheduled to speak on March 23 and 25. And just like in the case of his colleague from overseas, Jerome Powell, no surprises from his speeches should be expected. Of interest may be: data on the UK labour market March 23, and data on business activity and consumer market of this country on March 25.
It is clear that the technical indicators on the GBP/USD pair on H4 are looking to the south. However, they reflect the trend of only the last two days of the past week. As for the indicators on D1, there is complete discord: the two-week sideways trend is getting visible. Graphical analysis on both time frames also indicates a sideways trend in the trading range of a week ago - 1.3775-1.4000. There is no serious preponderance in the forecasts of experts: 45% side with the bulls, 55% side with the bears. The targets are 1.4240 and 1.3600, respectively;

- USD/JPY. The further strengthening of the dollar and the growth of the pair is indicated by graphical analysis at both time intervals, H4 and D1. 85% of trend indicators and 65% of oscillators on D1 agree with it. The rest of the oscillators are either in the overbought zone or are already colored red.
As for the experts, 55% of them expect a correction to the south, although they agree that it may be short-term. However, with the transition to monthly and quarterly forecasts, the number of supporters of the fall of the pair increases to 75%.
The nearest target of the bulls is 109.50-110.00. Support levels in case the pair falls are 108.35, 106.65, 106.10 and 105.70;

 - cryptocurrencies. The struggle between those who believe in the bright future of cryptocurrency and those who predict its destruction continues. This is especially noticeable among large institutional investors. And their opinion depends largely on the opinion of regulators.
The position of regulators in different countries is very different. For example, the Indian authorities have a bill nearly ready which prohibits operations with cryptocurrencies and introduces criminal and administrative liability for miners and traders. And the US head of the Fed Jerome Powell, on the contrary, does not deny the combination of traditional finance and cryptocurrencies. Although, of course, most likely he is pinning his hopes on the digital currency of the American Central Bank (CDBC).
Note that the governments of many large countries are considering the possibility of issuing digital counterparts of their own fiat currencies. And, most likely, they do not need competitors in the form of bitcoin and top altcoins at all. So, it is possible that we will see real battles between the public and private sectors in the near future, not only at national, but also at international platforms.
In the meantime, central banks continue to print unsecured money to support their economies in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. And according to the TV presenter and founder of the investment company Heisenberg Capital Max Kaiser, this will lead to a "hyperinflationary collapse" of national currencies and the growth of bitcoin to $220,000 already this year. Moreover, Kaiser believes that the advantages of bitcoin in global payments will render banks useless. As he stated, “$5 trillion a day in the foreign exchange market could be completely replaced by bitcoin.”
At the moment, according to analysts at JPMorgan, the main focus is on the growth of retail investment associated with the next portion of payments to US citizens as part of the economic stimulus program. According to a study by Mizuho Securities, of the $380 billion that US citizens will receive in the form of economic assistance, about 10% can be spent on the purchase of two types of assets: bitcoin and stocks. The study found that two out of five Americans who expect to receive checks in the coming days intend to use some of these funds for investment. According to Dan Dolev, Managing Director of Mizuho Securities, bitcoin is expected to account for 60% of the total investment, which could add about 3% to the market capitalization of the cryptocurrency.
Of course, 3% is a small figure. Perhaps that is why only 35% of experts believe that the main cryptocurrency will be able to steadily gain a foothold above $60,000 by the end of spring and even rise to $75,000. The majority of analysts (65%) predict bitcoin a sideways movement in the $50,000-60,000 channel.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. Recall that   the head of the Fed Jerome Powell literally brought down the American stock markets with his speech on February 4. Powell stayed indifferent to the surge in US Treasury yields, which closed at an annual high. At the same time, he hinted at the possibility of premature tightening of monetary policy.
And although the head of the Fed stressed that the economy is far from overheating, and he does not yet see the need to raise the interest rate, the market has had a hint of a possible change in monetary policy. In response, the Treasury yields rushed up with the dollar, and the stock market rolled down. The S&P500 lost over 120 points and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 300 points.
And then, everything changed on Tuesday March 09. Strong growth in technology stocks, positive statistics from the labor market, growth in household assets and a bill signed by US President Joe Biden on a new stimulus package for $1.9 trillion pushed the American stock market up. The S&P500 index not only fully recovered from losses, but also updated its historical high, reaching the mark of 3.960. As for long-term treasuries, their profitability, on the contrary, has stabilized. And this despite the fact that the volume of submitted applications exceeded the volume of the issue by 2.38 times, and foreign investors purchased about 20% of securities of the total volume of $38 billion.
The EUR/USD pair reached a height of 1.1990 on Thursday March 11 due to these factors. However, it failed to reach the 1.2000 level. The fall of the pair and the weakening of the euro was facilitated by the statement of the ECB management on the increase in the rate of buying bonds under the PEPP (Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program). But it turned out to be not convincing enough, and nothing was said about scaling up the PEPP. As a result, the fall of the pair was insignificant, and it ended the week at the level of 1.1950;   

- GBP/USD. More and more experts are wondering if the pound has passed its high on February 24. Is it time to consolidate with the dollar? The British currency has shown an impressive growth of 2830 points against its American “colleague” (from 1.1410 to 1.4240) starting from the third decade of March 2020. And we have been observing the sideways movement of the GBP/USD pair along the Pivot Point of 1.3900 for the last two weeks. The upper border of the trading range is drawn quite clearly: this is the resistance at 1.4000. Two support levels can be considered as the lower one: the nearest one - 1.3850 and the next one - 1.3775.
The GBP/USD chart of the last week is very similar to the EUR/USD chart. This suggests that both the pound and the euro are not so much independent players in the market now as hostages of the US Federal Reserve's monetary policy and rates on US government bonds. Having started the five-day week at 1.3840, the pair was moving within the above range for the whole week, and set the last chord at 1.3925;
 
- USD/JPY. The yen has passed one milestone after another in recent weeks, and the USD/JPY pair reached the eight-month highs. Many traders are afraid to open both long and short positions in such a situation. On the one hand, the pair was already overbought, and on the other, it could still fly further upward by inertia. This is what happened in fact: it first rose to the level of 109.25, then a correction to 108.35 followed, and a new rise to the horizon of 109.00, where the pair ended the working week;  

- cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin peaked at $58,340 on February 21, after which it pulled back to $43,160, shrinking by 26%. According to Material Indicators, this decline was used by whales and institutions to buy assets from small investors. For example, the number of orders for the purchase of BTC in the amount from $0.1 million to $1 million reached record values on the Binance crypto exchange. And now, twenty days later, on March 12, Bitcoin broke the $58,000 bar again. However, at the time of writing the review, It could not update the historical high, stopping at $58,240
The BTC/USD pair rose last week amid the rise in the US stock market. Although, most likely, this is only a formal reason, and not a real reason for the activation of the bulls. It was clear that they would definitely make an attempt to rise above $60,000. And the only question was when it would happen.
According to CryptoQuant, the demand for bitcoins continues to grow, and their number on exchanges has fallen to a two-year low. As Bloomberg experts point out in their February report, bitcoin is becoming an increasingly popular asset among a wide variety of investors and is gradually replacing gold from their portfolios. According to the authors of the report, the reduction in the range of price fluctuations signals that the main cryptocurrency has actually become an alternative to traditional investment assets.
The overall capitalization of the crypto market is also committed to new heights, along with bitcoin. It grew from $1444 billion to $1756 billion over the week. And now the volume of $2 trillion will become an important psychological level for it.
Interestingly, despite the weekly growth of the BTC/USD pair by 20%, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, on the contrary, fell from 77 to 70, which may indicate the general bullish mood of the market.
And another interesting observation. Bitcoin's market dominance has declined from 70.4% to 61.4% since early 2021. The indicators of altcoins from the TOP-10 have also gone down or remained at the same levels. But the total capitalization of smaller tokens has risen from 10.3% to 14.4%. It is unlikely that these coins can arouse the interest of large investors. Therefore, such statistics can only indicate that players have begun to use them more actively for short-term speculation.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR / USD A meeting of the US Federal Reserve will take place on March 16-17. We are waiting for the Summary of Economic Forecasts from the Open Market Committee (FOMC), the decision on the interest rate, commentary on monetary policy and a press conference by the Fed management following the meeting. The interest rate is likely to remain unchanged at 0.25%. Therefore, the regulator's forecasts will be of particular interest. High expectations will once again highlight the gap between the pace of economic recovery in the US and the Eurozone. Investors will also be concerned about the possibility of tightening monetary policy and the attitude of the Fed management to changes in government bond yields. Consolidation of 10-year yields in the 1.5-1.6% range will help the stock market and push the EUR/USD pair above 1.2000.
So far, the advantage is on the side of the dollar. 70% of experts, supported by graphical analysis, 85% of oscillators and 80% of trend indicators on D1, expect the pair to drop to the 1.1800-1.1850 zone. Support here is still the 200-day SMA at 1.1826. The nearest support is 1.1900.
An alternative view is held by 30% of analysts, supported by graphical analysis on H4. As for the technical indicators on this time frame, their readings are still confusing. Note that when switching from a weekly to a monthly forecast, the number of experts supporting bulls increases to 60%. Resistance levels are 1.2025, 1.2060, 1.2170, 1.2200 and 1.2270;

- GBP/USD. In addition to the meeting of the US Fed, a meeting of the Bank of England will take place on Thursday March 18. It is likely that its results will not affect investors as much as those of their peers on the other side of the Atlantic. However, information on the course of the British economic recovery and its prospects will certainly be given. The market will also be concerned about what is going on in relations with the European Union after Brexit.
The opinions of experts are divided equally at the moment. A third of them, together with graphical analysis on H4, believe that the pair will hold within the 1.3775-1.4000 trading range. Another third, supported by graphical analysis on D1, expects a rise to the February 24 high of 1.4240. And finally, the remaining third is waiting for the pair to fall to the 1.3600 zone;

- USD/JPY. It should become clear in the coming week whether the Japanese currency will stop its decline, and the USD/JPY pair - its rapid rise. There are three determinant factors: the yield of American bonds, the US Federal Reserve meeting and the meeting of the Bank of Japan on Friday, March 19, at which it should determine its policy for the near future.
The rise in US bond yields is pushing the yen down, and the Japanese regulator is expected to react to this catastrophic collapse. Whether the BOJ will insist on controlling the yield curve is open for now.
It should be noted that the last fall in the yen and the growth of USD/JPY on March 12 took place at increased volumes. This indicates that the interest of major players in the continuation of the uptrend of the pair has still not dried up. The trend can be reversed down by either the consolidation of the yield on US securities, or an active sale of risky assets.
But at the time of this writing, 55% of experts expect that the pair will still be able to rise to the 109.50-110.00 zone. 20% are in favor of sideways movement and 25% are for the fall of the pair. Almost 100% of the trend indicators on both H4 and D1 are painted red. Among the oscillators on H4, there are 80% of those, but on D1, 35% are already giving signals that the pair is overbought, which indicates an imminent possible downward correction. In the transition from a weekly to a monthly forecast, 80% of analysts are already expecting the pair to decline and return to the 105.00 zone,. Support levels are 108.35, 106.65, 106.10 and 105.70;

 - cryptocurrencies. Recall that in early March, the head of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz sharply changed the forecast for the BTC rate for the end of 2021.  “It feels like,” said the banker, “we’ll stay for a bit between $42,000 and $60,000, and then see the next big jump to $100,000.
The Bloomberg team is also positive about the further rate of the main cryptocurrency. "After the coin broke above $50,000, it got the opportunity to test higher values. Demand for this asset is increasing, and its macroeconomic indicators are improving,” they say in their February report. According to Bloomberg analysts, bitcoin will be able to reach $100,000 this year, and its value will also continue to rise in the long term.
So how long will bitcoin hang out, in Mike Novogratz's words, between $42,000 and $60,000? Or are we on the eve of the big jump?
A number of experts are pessimistic. As the reason, they point to miners who are buying more and more video cards on new chips, which leads to higher prices and a shortage of such cards on the market. This situation is somewhat reminiscent of the end of December 2017 - January 2018, when the mining boom ended with a market collapse, the destruction of many miners and the onset of a crypto winter. There may not be a new winter this time, experts say, but strong frosts are not entirely out of the question.
In the longer term, electricity costs for mining will also hinder the growth of digital assets. They are constantly growing, and this process consumes energy comparable to that of a country like the Netherlands already. At some point, it will require the energy of the whole world to generate just one unit. And this, according to futurologists from Singularity University, will become an insurmountable obstacle for the crypto market.
However, if there are bear pessimists, then there will certainly be bull optimists. So, according to the head of ARK Investment Cathie Wood, the price of bitcoin is most correlated with real estate prices  at the moment. But in the future, she believes, bitcoin will become similar to low-risk instruments like bonds and will enter the recommended portfolio of investors. “I think the first cryptocurrency will behave like fixed income markets,” Wood said to CNBC. “We have survived a 40-year bond bull market. And we won't be surprised if this new asset class becomes part of the investment portfolio. Perhaps it will be 60% stocks, 20% bonds and 20% cryptocurrency.”
The forecast, according to which the bitcoin rate may reach $1 million or more in the next 10 years, was announced by the CEO of the Kraken crypto exchange Jesse Powell. “Right now we are only guessing, but if you value bitcoin in dollars, then you must understand that its value tends to infinity", he said. In a dialogue with Bloomberg reporters, the head of Kraken also said that bitcoin could eventually replace all major fiat currencies that are not backed by gold and other precious metals. However, he agreed that there is a risk of sharp market fluctuations, and that prices could "rise or fall by 50% any day." Therefore, according to Powell, when investing in bitcoin, it is necessary to be ready to keep it in your portfolio for at least five years.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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NordFX Brokerage company has summed up the performance of its clients' trade transactions in February. The services of social trading, PAMM and CopyTrading, as well as the profit received by the company's IB-partners have also been assessed.

The first line in the rating of the most successful traders has been taken once again by a client from Vietnam, account No. 1416XXX, who received a profit of USD 29,880 on trades, most of which were carried out in pairs with gold (XAU/USD) and bitcoin (BTC/USD). The same trader was in the lead a month ago with an income of 83.598 USD obtained on transactions with the same two trading instruments.

The second place has been taken by a client from China, account No. 1536XXX. The client earned 23,640 USD in February, and their earnings were also based on operations with gold.

But the trader who took the third step of the podium (account No. 1503XXX) used a variety of trading instruments (GBP/AUD, AUD/NZD, EUR/CAD, EUR/AUD, CAD/CHF and AUD/USD), and achieved no less impressive success. Their profit for February was USD 20,716.

According to the results of the shortest month of the year, a competition unfolded among signal providers in the CopyTrading service. Let's list the TOP-3 of February: RichieFX-EA (profit 188%, maximum drawdown 49%), GOLD RUSH Inc. (profit 129%, drawdown 51%) and VN.NO1 (profit 110%, drawdown 31%).

As for PAMM, the past month was not as successful, but if you look at the entire investment period, then, for example, the manager under the nickname WyseTrader9711 showed a profit of 61.45% with a maximum drawdown of 15.7%, and the results of the ProCapital manager were 24.9% with a drawdown of only 9.8%, which is several times higher than the income on bank deposits in USD.

Commission fees of NordFX IB-partners almost doubled in February compared to January, which indicates a serious growth in trading activity. The TOP 3 of the month is as follows:
- the largest commission, USD 17282, was credited to a partner from India, account No.1527xxx;
- next is a partner from Sri lanka, account number 1483xxx, who received 11.749 USD;
- and, finally, a partner from China, account No. 1336xxx, who received 11.233 USD as a reward, closes the top three.


Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. There is a saying, “a new broom sweeps clean”. If the previous US President Donald Trump were in the shoes of Joe Biden now, he would probably call the head of the Fed Jerome Powell a "traitor" for the fact that his speech on Thursday February 04 literally brought down the stock markets of America. Powell stayed indifferent to the surge in US Treasury yields, which closed at an annual high. At the same time, he hinted at the possibility of premature tightening of monetary policy.
And although the head of the Fed stressed that the economy is far from overheating, and he does not yet see the need to raise the interest rate, the market has had a hint of a possible change in monetary policy. In response, the 10-year Treasury yields rushed up with the dollar, and the stock market rolled down. The S&P500 lost over 120 points and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 300 points.
The decline in stock prices is forcing investors to seek refuge in the dollar. As a result, the DXY dollar index reached a three-month high of 91.83 on Thursday, its growth continued Friday, March 05, and the DXY exceeded 92.00 at the time of this writing.
The data from the US labor market added optimism to investors. The number of new jobs outside the agricultural sector (NFP) increased from 166K to 379K, with the forecast of 182K. As a result, the forecast, for which the majority (70%) of analysts voted last week, turned out to be absolutely correct: the EUR/USD pair continued its movement to the south, reaching a local bottom at 1.1895 and ending the week slightly higher, at 1.1915;

- GBP/USD. Graphical analysis on D1 suggested last week a sideways movement of the pair within 1.3860-1.4240. However, the channel turned out to be narrower: it was trading in the range of 1.3860-1.4000 until Thursday. And then, thanks to the statement of the head of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, the dollar began to grow stronger, and the GBP/USD pair, having broken through the lower border of the channel, dropped to the horizon of 1.3775. The last chord of the five-day period was set at the level of 1.3840;

- USD/JPY. The multi-month downtrend of this pair was stopped on January 6, it reversed and moved north for almost all of 2021. When making a forecast for the last week, a third of the experts sided with the bears, a third took a neutral position, and a third voted for the growth of the pair. And even fewer experts agreed that it would be able to reach the zone 108.00-108.50, they were only 25%. And they were right: the week's high was recorded at 108.60, followed by a slight bounce down and a finish at 108.35.
The reason for the rise of the pair is still the same: against the background of the growth in the yield of American bonds, which outstrips the yield on Japanese securities, investors get rid of such a protective asset with a negative interest rate as the yen. Along with the Japanese currency, gold and the Swiss franc are also particularly affected. In addition, the mentioned statement by Jerome Powell added fuel to the fire, after which the USD/JPY pair reached an eight-month high;

- cryptocurrencies. There is good news for the bulls: Bitcoin hasn't dropped below $43,000. But there is good news for the bears too: Bitcoin has not gone above $52,000. Having drawn a sinusoid, the BTC/USD chart returned on the afternoon of Friday, March 05 to where it started seven days ago. The question of whether this is a correction or the beginning of a new "crypto-winter" remains open.
The news background looks quite controversial as well. Leading payment systems such as Mastercard, Visa and PayPal are playing on the side of the bulls, seeking to attract the "crypto generation". Skrill and Neteller are doing the same. The Opera browser has been enriched with new algorithms that will allow users to perform transactions with many popular cryptocurrencies. Another Opera feature would be creating a digital wallet without going to third-party sites. Such a giant as Google also turned to cryptocurrencies: the Google Finance platform added a tab for monitoring the prices of digital assets.   
User activity is growing. The trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges in February exceeded $1 trillion. Such numbers were achieved for the first time in history, according to experts. Even during the first bitcoin rally, the trading volume reached only $650 billion. According to experts of the analytical platform Block Research, large investors prefer to carry out transactions from one account to another through third-party services in order to maintain complete anonymity. Therefore, the real number of transactions can even be twice the official amount. 
However, not everything is as rosy as it seems at first glance. We already wrote that regulators can (and most likely will) become the main problem for digital assets in 2021. 
According to analyst Sven Henrich, the head of the USA Ministry of Finance janet Yellen has actually declared war on bitcoin. Her announcement led to a massive profit taking by the whales on February 21-23, and a sharp 23% drop in bitcoin quotes. And now the North American Association of Securities Administrators (NASAA) has published an annual list of the most dangerous financial products, calling cryptocurrencies the top investment risk this year.
In the framework of the struggle of states for control over financial flows, one should not forget about the imminent appearance of the digital yuan, which can deal a serious blow to bitcoin. The United States and a number of other countries do not exclude the possibility of launching their own digital currencies (CBDC) as well.
In the meantime, as we wrote above, the market is at a crossroads. The total market capitalization for the week grew very slightly: from $1,410 billion to $1,444 billion. And the Crypto Fear & Greed Index left the neutral zone (55) again and headed towards the overbought zone, reaching 77 points out of 100 possible.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. Judging by the latest indicators, the US economy is doing much better. Vaccinations are in full swing, the labor market is recovering, and GDP in the first quarter is ready to grow by almost 10%. According to Jerome Powell, consumer prices may even slightly exceed the target level of 2% as early as this summer.
However, there is still a long way to a complete recovery. It is this weekend, March 06-07, that the Senate will begin voting on amendments to the budget. And if legislators approve them, US citizens will receive a new gratuitous aid of $1,400 per person, and the overall stimulus package (QE) will amount to $1.9 trillion.
This injection of almost 2 trillion new dollars into the market could cause a serious weakening of the US currency and a return of risk appetite for investors. In this case, the sell-off of shares will stop and stock indices will go up again.
When making a forecast for the coming days, most experts (60%) do not exclude the continuation of the downtrend and the fall of the EUR/USD pair to the zone 1.1800. 100% of trend indicators and 75% of oscillators on H4 and D1 are looking down. But the remaining 25% is already signaling that the pair is oversold.
The picture changes radically with the transition to monthly and quarterly forecasts. Here 70% of analysts expect that the scales will tilt towards the euro after the $1.9 trillion in aid appears on the US market, and the pair will go up. Resistance levels are 1.2025, 1.2060, 1.2170, 1.2200 and 1.2270.
As for the events of the coming week, the publication of data on GDP in the Eurozone on Tuesday March 09, statistics on the US consumer market on Wednesday March 10, and Germany on Friday March 12, as well as the decision of the European Central Bank on the interest rate on Thursday March 11should be considered. According to forecasts, the rate is likely to remain unchanged, at zero. Therefore, the press conference of the ECB leadership, which will be held on the same day, will be of greater interest;

- GBP/USD. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey is scheduled to speak on Monday, March 8, where he intends to outline the main parameters of the country's monetary policy while it tries to cope with the financial damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to ING analysts, “overall, fiscal support should highlight the constructive prospects for the pound sterling in the second quarter of 2021. Further fiscal assistance will contribute to economic recovery and make the pound sterling a leader in the currency market of the G10 countries."
But until this happens, 50% of analysts expect that the GBP/USD pair will break through the support in the 1.3775-1.3800 area and rush to the 1.3600-1.3760 zone. This forecast is supported by 85% of trend indicators and 100% of oscillators on H4, but only 65% of their “colleagues” on D1.
25% of experts, supported by graphical analysis on both timeframes, expect the pair to grow, and another 25% have taken a neutral position. At the same time, as in the case of EUR/USD and for the same reasons, the number of bulls' supporters increases to 60% when switching to the monthly forecast. The resistance levels are 1.3900, 1.3950, 1.4000, 1.4085 and 1.4185, the target is the February 24 high of 1.4240;

- USD/JPY. After the pair literally soared by 215 points last week and reached eight-month highs, it is clear that 100% of the trend indicators are colored green. But as for the oscillators, 35% are already signaling fully that it is overbought. Graphical analysis also points to the south. Many traders are afraid to open both long and short positions in such a situation. 
As for the experts, the scales have already begun to tilt in favor of a downward correction: there are 50% of bears' supporters now. 25% expect the USD/JPY pair to continue to rise, and another 25% remain neutral. In the transition from a weekly to a monthly forecast, 80% of analysts are already expecting the pair to decline and return to the 105.00 zone. Support levels are 108.00, 106.70, 106.10 and 105.70; Resistance - 109.80;

 - cryptocurrencies. A Glassnode study found that only 4 million bitcoins are in free float on the market. The third halving in May 2020 halved the miners' reward for the mined block from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. It further enhances the shortage of coins in the market. And as you know, it is the limited emission of bitcoin that is one of its main advantages over gold and fiat currencies. 
“Suddenly, buying bitcoin is no longer insignificant or risky,” wrote Mike Novogratz, head of Galaxy Digital crypto bank. On the contrary, it has become risky not to have BTC in the portfolio when central banks continue to print money. We don't have enough time to hire sales managers to reach all the institutional clients who want to understand and participate in the market."
Even such a supporter of gold as Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff has supported Novogratz. It was just recently, that this bitcoin skeptic called bitcoin the largest bubble in history and unflatteringly spoke about the mental abilities of cryptocurrency investors. And now he has admitted his mistake. “When I first heard about bitcoin, I didn't think that smart investors would be stupid enough to buy bitcoin. I was wrong," Schiff wrote.
Going back tothe head of Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, we should note that he has dramatically changed the forecast for the BTC rate for the end of 2021 upwards.  “It feels like,” says the banker, “we’ll stay for a bit between $42,000 and $60,000, and then see the next big jump to $100,000. I will not be surprised if we reach this mark by the end of this year."
An unexpected conspiracy forecast was given by an expert in the field of competitive intelligence. He believes the creation and support of the Bitcoin hype for years is no coincidence. In case the American financial elite manages to convince its creditors that having bitcoins is better than dollars, it can transfer all external debt of the US to this cryptocurrency over time. "As soon as this happens, the cryptocurrency will only have to collapse, and America's gigantic debt will actually be zeroed," the expert reflects.
Time will tell whether it is true or not. In the meantime, events in the US stock market play one of the leading roles in influencing bitcoin. Recall that about a year ago, the fall in the stock market due to the panic around the COVID-19 pandemic provoked a collapse of the cryptocurrency market.
And in conclusion, another funny crypto life hack. We have already talked about an American fortune teller who predicts bitcoin rates by observing the movement of the planets. There was also a story about another resident of the United States who placed a mining farm in the trunk of his BMW. The farm receives energy from the car's battery, to which it is connected using a DC inverter, which allows the owner to mine cryptocurrency while the car is moving.
And now a gamer and crypto enthusiast from China named Yifan Gu has become known. He managed to bypass the technical limitations for cryptocurrency mining, set in the Sony PlayStation 5, and adapted this game console for Ethereum mining, gaining a profitability of about $50 per week. Earlier, Yifan Gu adapted his MacBook Air with Apple M1 chip for mining this leading altcoin. However, at the ETH current rate, you can earn only $0.14 in one day on the MacBook Air. 


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. As we expected, the speech by the head of the Fed turned out to be quite interesting. Jerome Powell presented to Congress a semi-annual report on monetary policy, from which it followed that not everything is as good as we would like as far as the recovery of the US economy is concerned. The surge in economic activity in the summer of 2020 was followed by the slowsown of the growth rate. The decline in unemployment has slowed down, and household expenditures are not growing either.
After the unrest and turmoil of 2020, a lot of attention is paid to socio-demographic differentiation, but the picture is not the rosiest either. Unemployment among "white" Americans, according to the Fed, is 5.7%, while among Hispanics - 8.6%, and among African Americans it is even higher - 9.2%. There is also discrimination based on gender: for the last month of 2020, men gained 16,000 new jobs, while women, on the contrary, lost 140,000.
All of the above raises certain doubts about the early recovery of the American economy, leads to a decrease in risk sentiment, and strikes a blow on the stock market and the US dollar. Investors are shifting attention to long-term government bonds. Since the beginning of 2021, the yield on 10-year treasuries has jumped from 0.91% to 1.56%, and their growth has become especially noticeable recently. As for stock indices (especially stocks of technology companies), they, accordingly, go down sharply. For example, the S&P500 was losing up to 3.8% in just two days - February 25-26, while the Nasdaq Composite was sinking by more than 3%. The DXY dollar index is also gradually approaching 2018 lows, losing about 9% this year.
In such a situation, most analysts (65%) expected the dollar to weaken and rise to the 1.2200-1.2300 zone, which happened: at the week's high, February 25, the EUR/USD pair was approaching 1.2245. However, then it seems that investors changed their minds and began to realize that the growing yield of long-term Treasury securities directly affects the growth of rates on current consumer lending. And that immediately brings to mind the 2008 mortgage crisis, which marked the beginning of a series of major bankruptcies. As a result, the dollar strengthened a little and the EUR/USD pair dropped to the zone 1.2070-1.2100 - the place where it has already been several times since last December. This can only say about one thing: the confusion of the market and the lack of clarity about the prospects of the European and American economies;

- GBP/USD. As predicted, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's speech on Monday 22 February, as well as the expectation of positive data from the UK labour market on Tuesday 23 February, continued to push the pair GBP/USD to the highs of 2018, raising it to the height of 1.4240.
And of course, the dynamics of the pair could not but be affected by what was happening in the United States. Therefore, repeating the EUR/USD parabola, the GBP/USD pair went south on Thursday February 25, especially since it was overbought, and some reason was simply needed to take profit on the pound.
On Friday, having lost 355 points, the pair found a local bottom at 1.3885. This was followed by a rebound and a finish at 1.3930;

- USD/JPY. It was said last week that this pair was moving within the medium-term side channel 102.60-107.00. Only 35% of experts believed then that the pair had not yet completed its movement to the upper border of this trading range. True, 75% of oscillators and 80% of trend indicators on D1 were on their side, which gave additional weight to this forecast, which turned out to be absolutely correct. The USD/JPY pair recorded a 26-week high at 106.70 on the second half of Friday, February 26. As for the final chord, it sounded at the height of 106.55;

- cryptocurrencies. We have repeatedly written that the presence of large institutional investors in the crypto market is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can strongly push the market up, and on the other hand, they can crash the quotes if they fix profits. In addition, the actions and sentiments of such institutions are highly dependent on the actions and sentiments of regulators and other government agencies. We felt all this in full last week.
After bitcoin hit an all-time high of $58,275 on February 21, investors were looking forward to taking the $60,000 high. However, there was a sudden reversal and a sharp drop of 23% to $44,985. Then the rebound to $50,000, and a fall again - to $44,000.
According to many experts, the trigger of the massive profit fixation by "whales" was the statement of the former head of the Fed and now the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the speculative nature of cryptocurrency and the possibility of using it for money laundering. According to analyst Sven Henrich, the head of the Ministry of Finance has actually declared war on bitcoin.
“Digital currencies can provide faster and cheaper payments. But there are many issues to be explored, including consumer protection and money laundering,” Janet Yelen said, also mentioning the possibility of launching the Central Bank's own digital currency (CBDC).
The fall in bitcoin could also have been facilitated by the fall in global indexes of technology companies and the beginning of large-scale vaccinations against coronavirus, but the main thing is the position of the US Government.
According to Bloomberg, against the background of the decline in the bitcoin rate, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, lost the first place in the ranking of the richest people on the planet. Tesla shares fell by 8.6%, as a result of which Musk lost $15.2 billion. At the same time, the fall in bitcoin, according to Bloomberg, may be partly due to the statement of Musk himself, who called the prices of cryptocurrencies too high. It is not for nothing that they say that a word is silver, and silence is gold. Musk would be better off keeping his mouth shut ?. 
Of course, someone loses, and someone finds. Thus, for example, due to technical failures, some customers of the Philippine crypto exchange PDAX were able to buy bitcoin almost 10 times cheaper than the market price, Bitpinas reports. One of the users admitted that he bought bitcoins for 300,000 pesos ($6,150), while the average market price of BTC was about $50,000, after which he transferred the cryptocurrency to his wallet. A day later, PDAX sent him a letter demanding the return of the bitcoins, but the buyer's lawyer claims that "the transaction was legitimate, in accordance with applicable laws, and PDAX cannot withdraw transactions unilaterally."
Another client of this crypto exchange unexpectedly found 40 billion Philippine pesos or about 820 million dollars in his account. It is not reported whether he was able to withdraw this "gift" from PDAX.
In general, the reliability of crypto exchanges is still a rather painful topic. According to BDCenter Digital agency, Kraken, Coinbase and Binance are the safest exchanges. The brokerage company NordFX can also be noted here, whose clients can also make transactions and store deposits in cryptocurrencies. In the 13 years of this broker, it has not had a single hack and not a single penny of client funds has been lost.
On Friday evening, February 26, the BTC/USD pair is trading in the $46,000 zone. The total market capitalization fell over the week from $1,625 billion to $1,410 billion. AND The Crypto Fear & Greed Index has finally come out of strong overbought zone to neutral levels, dropping from 93 to 55.
When it comes to altcoins, there is both good news and bad news. For example, the largest developer of GPUs - American technology company Nvidia announced plans to release a series of graphics cards specifically for mining Ethereum. According to CNBC, they can be expected to appear on sale this March.
But it looks like the hard times will not end for Ripple. One of the world's largest money transfer services, MoneyGram, refused to use the product based on the XRP token due to the claims of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Ripple. Against the backdrop of SEC claims, in addition to MoneyGram, Coinbase and OKCoin, Galaxy Digital, Bitstamp, B2C2, eToro and Kraken have already refused to support the XRP token. Asset management company Grayscale Investments announced the liquidation of an XRP-based investment trust, and 21Shares has removed the Ripple token from its exchange-traded products. As a result, the Ripple lost up to 45% of its value last week, and the XRP/USD pair was trading at $0.42 on the evening of February 26.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. The figures given in the first part of the review confirm the opinion of the US Federal Reserve management that it is still very, very early to talk about any curtailment of the quantitative easing (QE) program, as well as about raising interest rates. Therefore, the Fed will continue its soft monetary policy, even as inflation expectations rise caused by a doubling of the Fed's balance sheet over the past year.
However, not only the US has the problem of increasing national debt. Europe is experiencing similar problems, and the interest rate there is even lower than on the other side of the Atlantic. The profitability of European government securities is also growing. Thus, the rate on 10-year bonds in Germany has already reached an 11-month high.
In general, we can say that the balance between the problems and achievements of the Old and New Worlds remains on average at the same level, experiencing minor temporary fluctuations, which is reflected in the three-month sideways trend of the EUR/USD pair. If you look at its chart, it can be seen that, since December 2020, most of the time it moves in a fairly narrow trading range of 1.2050-1.2185, with emissions up to 1.1950 and 1.2350.
If we talk about the short term, 70% of analysts believe that the pair will continue to decline to the 1.1950-1.2000 zone. They are supported in this by 75% of oscillators on H4, the remaining 25% give signals that the pair is oversold. As for the oscillators on D1, there are approximately equal shares of red, green and gray-neutral colors. 95% of the trend indicators on H4 and 65% on D1 are painted red.
But graphical analysis on both timeframes gives preference to the upward movement of the pair. Resistance levels are 1.2170 1.2240 and 1.2270. However, after this push to the north, graphical analysis on D1 draws a decline in the pair during March to support at 1.1950.
And now about the events of the coming week, of which there will be quite a few. Firstly, we are waiting for the speeches of the head of the ECB Christine Lagarde on Monday March 01 and the head of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell on Thursday March 4. Statistics on the consumer markets of Germany and the EU will be released on March 01, 02 and 04. As for the US macro statistics, the indicators of ISM business activity in the manufacturing and private sectors will be known on Monday and Wednesday. And in addition, data on the labor market will be published on Wednesday and Friday. Moreover, according to forecasts, a significant increase in new jobs created outside the US agricultural sector (NFP) is possible - from 49K to 148K;

- GBP/USD. First, the readings of technical indicators. Oscillators: 90% on H4 are looking south, 10% are in the oversold zone; only 15% are looking to the south on D1, 50% to the north, and 35% are neutral. Trend indicators: 80% look south on H4, 20% look north, 25% look south on D1, 75% look north.
Graphic analysis on D1 draws a side trend in the range 1.3860-1.4240. And it is clear that since the pair finished the previous week closer to the lower border of this channel, it will move upward. 60% of experts agree with this forecast. Resistance levels are 1.3960, 1.4055, 1.4085 and 1.4175.
The remaining 30% believe that the pair will break the lower border of the channel 1.3860, then support around 1.3800 and will go to the 1.3600-1.3760 zone. It should be noted that, when moving from weekly to monthly forecast, the number of supporters of the bears increases to 65%.

- USD/JPY.  The multi-month downtrend of this pair was stopped on January 06, and it turned north, moving to the upward channel. According to the graphical analysis on D1, the USD/JPY pair has almost reached its upper border now, which is in the zone 106.70-107.00, and should soon bounce back to the south. Such a scenario is supported by 25% of the oscillators giving signals about the pair being overbought. It is clear that the remaining 75% of oscillators and 100% of the indicators on both time frames are colored green so far. 
As for experts, a third of them sides with the bulls, a third votes for the bears, and a third takes a neutral stance. However, in the transition from weekly to monthly forecast, 75% of analysts vote for the pair to stay within the medium-term trading range of 102.60-107.00 (it was mentioned in the first part of the review), and therefore await its return to its central zone at 105.00. Support levels are 106.10 and 105.70; The remaining 25% of experts believe that the pair will be able to reach the zone of 108.00-108.50;

 - cryptocurrencies. The popularity and prominence of cryptocurrencies continues to grow. According to BDCenter Digital, 12 out of 100 Twitter posts are about cryptocurrency. In just the week of February 7-14, Twitter users mentioned bitcoin over 675,000 times. The last record was set on January 10, when the weekly number of posts mentioning bitcoin reached 576,000. In total, the number of cryptocurrency users has stepped over 200 million people from more than 150 countries. 
Despite the drop last week, 2021 started off well for bitcoin overall. The pair started at $28,800 on January 1 and is trading at $46,000 at the time of writing, having gained almost 60%. And now, importantly, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index has finally emerged from a strong overbought state, dropping from 93 to neutral 55.
Of course, this does not mean that the quotes of the BTC/USD pair will immediately fly up. However, what is happening gives investors hope for the fulfillment of the positive predictions of many experts and crypto gurus. recall that Lisa Edwards, sister of self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright, has predicted that the first cryptocurrency would rise to $142,000. Based on Elliott Wave Theory, she suggested that digital gold would rise to $90,000 by May 2021, decline to $55,000 by January 2022, and skyrocketing to $142,000 in March 2023.
According to the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets Anthony Pompliano, the main cryptocurrency may reach $500 thousand by the end of this decade, and even $1 million in the long term.
However, the growth of cryptocurrency quotes may stop due to the rapid recovery of the global economy after the recession caused by the coronavirus epidemic. In this case, central banks will begin to roll back their quantitative easing programs, raise interest rates, stop buying assets and printing cheap money. As a result, investment flows into bitcoin, as one of the most attractive safe havens, can dry up very quickly.
So, what did we observe last week - a temporary correction or the beginning of a new "crypto winter"? The question is still open. However, the overwhelming majority of experts (70%) believe that the BTC/USD pair will reach the $ 60,000-75,000 zone in spring. The pessimism of the remaining 30% of analysts is expressed in the figures of $30,000-35,000.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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At the end of 2020, the Forex-Awards.com expert council named NordFX Best Forex Broker Middle East. The two-tier NordFX affiliate program was also awarded a prestigious award.

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Forex-Awards.com is a team of professionals headquartered in Hong Kong, which specializes in the analysis and evaluation of brokerage companies since 2010, aiming to identify the real market leaders. Based on the opinions of both independent experts and the trader community, Forex-Awards.com employees compile regular ratings of brokers, identifying their strongest and most attractive sides. The winners in each of the 30 nominations are then determined based on the results obtained. A convincing victory was won by the brokerage company NordFX in two of them in 2020.

More than one and a half million accounts have been opened by clients from almost 190 countries during 13 years of NordFX work, among them many traders from the Middle East. Back in 2013, at the 12th MENA Forex Show, the company won the prize as Best Forex Arabic Platform. And now the new award confirms the high level of services that NordFX provides to clients from this region: the first place in the Best Forex Broker Middle East nomination.

Another victory at the Forex Awards was won in the Best Affiliate Program category. Since 2016, thanks to its effectiveness and popularity, NordFX's two-tier affiliate program has been receiving the highest marks. It has been recognized as the best by expert committees of not only Forex-Awards.com, but also by Academy Masterforex-V and Saigon Financial Education Summit. More than 25,000 of the company's partners have already been paid more than $30,000,000 as commission until now, and these figures continue to grow steadily.


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. The sharp rise in bond yields in the US and Europe has hit not only the stock market, but also the “carry trade”, providing support to funding currencies, primarily the euro and the US dollar. Recall that the funding currency is usually a currency with a low interest rate. Implementing the carry trade strategy, traders borrow it and then deposit it in another currency, such as developing countries, with a higher rate. And now the fall in risk sentiment has led to an exit from such deals, and the strengthening of both EUR and USD. Apparently, this can explain the consolidation of this pair. And if the preponderance was on the side of the dollar in the first half of the week, then, investors began to buy up the cheaper euro starting from Wednesday, February 17. As a result, having started the week at the level of 1.2120, the EUR/USD pair ended it almost there, at the level of 1.2115; 

- GBP/USD. The pound continues to push north, approaching the 2018 highs. The pair broke through the psychologically important level of 1.4000 on Friday, February 19, recording a weekly high at the height of 1.4035. It completed the trading session at the same level 1.4000, after a slight rebound.
The American currency lost to the British one amid weak data from the US labor market. Investors expected a decrease in the number of initial applications for unemployment benefits from 848 thousand to 765 thousand, while, on the contrary, it rose to 861 thousand over the week. The number of secondary applications was not encouraging either, it decreased from 4.558 million to 4.494 million, instead of the forecasted 4.413 million. Investors were fast to recall the statements of the FRS officials that it would take more than one year to return the labor market to the previous levels, and that it was necessary to take new measures to support the US economy.
But the data on the consumer market and business activity, released in the UK last week, looked pretty good. The Markit index in February was at 49.7 against 39.5, only slightly short of 50, the threshold that separates growth in economic activity from its fall. These figures have once again strengthened the confidence of buyers of the British currency that the Bank of England will refrain from allocating new funds under QE and from cutting the interest rate. As a result, the GBP/USD pair went further up, taking the next important milestone - 1.4000;

- USD/JPY. The main trends of this pair, as well as EUR/USD, were determined last week by disappointing data from the US labor market and a sharp rise in government bond yields. The Japanese GDP data released on Monday 15 February, although was significantly better than the forecast (3.0% versus 2.3%), had no effect on market sentiment, once again showing that the rate of this pair is being formed in the USA.
Recall that the opinions of experts last week were divided almost equally: 40% supported the growth of the pair, 30% were for its fall and as much for lateral movement. And, in general, everyone turned out to be right. The pair grew for the first half of the week, reaching a height of 106.20, then it fell, and the finish of the five-day period took place near the place where it had already started on February 08 - at 105.40;

- cryptocurrencies. As we predicted, bitcoin has hit the $50,000 bar and is quoted at $55,000 at the time of writing. Starting from February 01, the main cryptocurrency added about 60% in weight, the growth of Ethereum (ETH/USD) amounted to a little less than 50%, the leader in this three was Litecoin (LTC/USD) with 80%.
In general, the situation for the digital market is quite positive. Even conservative structures such as American banks have turned their views in its direction. The oldest US bank, BNY Mellon, has announced the start of work with bitcoin and other digital assets. Another major US bank, JPMorgan Chase, is also ready to support bitcoin trading. It became known that JPMorgan Chase organized a virtual meeting in January with the participation of thousands of traders and sales professionals from different parts of the world, during which it inquired about their interest in trading BTC. And last week, another bank, Goldman Sachs, held a closed forum for employees and customers on the topic of cryptocurrencies, at which the speaker was Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital. 
The statements of a number of US politicians and officials also have a positive impact on the price of digital assets. For example, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced that he had already taken a number of steps to legalize cryptocurrency. “We have made bitcoin an available currency for potential investors. In addition, employees can receive salaries in cryptocurrency, which is a huge step forward,” he wrote on Twitter. Candidate for mayor of New York and former candidate for US President Andrew Young supported his colleague, saying that he will try to make the financial center of the world become a center for cryptocurrencies as well. And St. Louis Fed chief James Bullard called bitcoin a rival for gold.
Institutional investors continue to buy both cryptocurrencies and shares of miners and crypto funds. So, the Grayscale Investments fund added 20,000 ETH to its Ethereum portfolio last week, bringing its volume to $6 billion. Another impetus for the growth of the BTC/USD pair was MicroStrategy's decision to raise another $900 million to buy bitcoins.
Overall, the supply / demand ratio remains in favor of bitcoin: 150,000 BTC coins were mined and almost 360,000 were bought back over the last five months of 2020, and investors hope that this balance will continue in the future.
At the same time, buyers look at the head of Tesla Elon Musk, whose tweets alone push the quotes sharply upward. However, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now interested in his "creativity" on Twitter, considering that the billionaire's calls to buy digital assets fall under the law on the offer and advertising of securities and can be regarded as unregistered brokerage activities and attempts to manipulate the market. If proven, Elon Musk could face huge fines. In the meantime, the entrepreneur said that he was taking a break and would no longer post tweets, at least in the near future. 
As for the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, even without Musk's tweets, it grew over the week from $1,458 billion to $1,625 billion. And the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is slowly but inexorably approaching its maximum value of 100 points. It has now reached 93, which indicates a strong overheating of the market.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. The European Union is still under blockade of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the United States, not everything is as rosy as expected. Weak data on the labor market, the growth of initial applications for unemployment benefits put pressure on the dollar.
It can be understood from the statements of ECB executives that even if bond yields in Europe continue to rise, the bank is unlikely to increase the volume of the quantitative easing (QE) programme. Officials from the Governing Council of the ECB believe that the measures they have taken are quite sufficient, it just takes some time for them to have the maximum positive effect.
The situation is exactly the opposite on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Judging by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's appeals to the US Congress and the Federal Reserve minutes published on February 18, QE volumes will continue to increase. The soft monetary policy will continue until the economy of this country shows steady growth. The next measure will be the adoption of another stimulus package worth $1.9 trillion.
In such a situation it is logical to expect a weakening of the dollar in the medium term, and the rise of the EUR/USD pair first to the zone of 1.2200-1.2300, and then return to the January high of 1.2350. 65% of analysts agree with this scenario. But as for the weekly forecast, the picture is different.
The majority (70%) of experts believe that the pair should retest the support in the 1.2020 zone in the near future and try to reach the February 05 low of 1.1955. This bearish development is supported by 15% of the oscillators on H4 and D1, which give signals that the pair is overbought.
The rest of the oscillators, as well as 75% of the trend indicators, are colored green. But graphical analysis on both time frames draws consolidation in the range 1.2020-1.2155.
As for the events of the week, here the speeches of the head of the ECB Christine Lagarde on Monday 22 February and the head of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell in the US Congress on Wednesday 24 February are of interest, as well as annual data on GDP and the volume of orders for capital and durable goods in the United States to be published on Thursday 25 February;
 
- GBP/USD. It is clear that 100% of the trend indicators and 85% of oscillators on H4 and D1 point north. The remaining 15% of the oscillators give signals that the pair is overbought. The overwhelming majority of analysts (75%) are also awaiting a correction to the south. True, in their opinion, this may not happen in the coming week, but in the first half of March. Support levels are 1.3950, 1.3850, 1.3775, 1.3600. 
The potential for British currency growth has not yet been exhausted so far. And everything will depend on whose structural problems, the US or the UK, will put more pressure on their national currencies. This refers not only to quantitative easing and interest rates, but also the issue and yield of government securities, as well as the risk of high inflation due to excessively high budget spending.
We outlined in the first part of the review how the data from the US labor market affected the pair's behavior. Similar macro statistics on the UK labour market are expected to be released in the coming week, on Tuesday 23 February. And if it looks quite optimistic, you can expect the continuation of the uptrend of the GBP/USD pair. Other events include a speech by the British Prime Minister the day before. Although, most likely, Boris Johnson will do without much specifics, and will enthusiastically talk about the successes of his Cabinet in the fight against the pandemic, the record pace of vaccinations, and how relations with the EU are developing after Brexit;

- USD/JPY ... 104.40-105.40 is the zone that the pair has visited many times over the past 30 weeks. This allows us to speak of it as the Pivot Point of the medium-term sideways channel 102.60-107.00. By the way, the maximum trading range of 440 points on the semi-annual segment is actually not so great. In October, for example, the pair made 240-point throws in just one day.
At the moment, only 35% of experts believe that the pair has not yet completed its movement to the upper border of this trading range. True, 75% of oscillators and 80% of trend indicators on D1 are on their side, which gives additional weight to this forecast. Resistance levels are 105.70, 106.20, the target is 107.00.
The opposite view is held by 65% of analysts, with the number rising to 80% when moving from a weekly to a monthly forecast. They have a similar number of indicators on their side, on H4 this time. Support levels are 105.00, 104.40, 103.60, the target is 102.60.
Graphical analysis shows fluctuations of the pair in the trading range 104.40-106.20 with a predominance of bearish sentiment.

 - cryptocurrencies. As bitcoin prices grow, there are fewer buyers in the market. The most cautious ones left back in December, when the coin reached its previous all-time high of $20,000. The next phase of closing long positions followed after bitcoin's rise to $40,000. Only the most die-hard investors and crypto fans have made it to the $50,000 level.
Bitcoin is overbought. But after the price stepped over $55,000 on Friday evening February 19, there was no active sale. The market froze in anticipation. Alarming signals are already coming, though.
First, the share of sellers is growing, which has increased from 18% to 35% over the past two weeks. Second, about 2/3 of traders buy perpetual futures contracts using leverage, resulting in higher funding rates and commission costs while maintaining long positions. And third, the shares of miners went down.
According to CoinDesk, weekly earnings of bitcoin miners reached a new high of $354 million from February 08 to 14. The previous record figure in seven days was $340 million and was recorded in December 2017. But despite this positive, for example, Riot Blockchain Inc shares lost 20% in price only on February 18.
However, according to a number of experts, it is not worth waiting for the onset of a new crypto winter. Though it may be a deep one, it is just a correction. Moreover, at small volumes there is a probability of growth of bitcoin up to $60,000-65,000 even by inertia. And there, a new wave of purchases can be triggered by FOMO - Lost Profit Syndrome (Fear Of Missing Out). After all, fear and greed are known to drive the market.
Lisa Edwards, sister of self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright, has predicted that the first cryptocurrency would rise to $142,000. Based on Elliott Wave Theory, she suggested that digital gold would rise to $90,000 by May 2021, decline to $55,000 by January 2022, and skyrocketing to $142,000 in March 2023. After that, according to Edwards, the cryptocurrency market expects a bearish trend.
But even though the growth of the BTC/USD pair may continue in the near future, you need to be very cautious about purchases at current levels. Most analysts consider them to be quite risky and suggest waiting for a rollback, and only then open new long positions.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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Finding patterns, repeatability and historical cyclicality is one of the main tasks of a trader. Some use graphic patterns to look for the silhouettes of geometric shapes. Some study the characteristic price movements: acceleration, braking, and interaction with graphic objects. However, there is a huge category of traders who are engaged in technical analysis of Forex using indicators. They allow you to predict the market, study its various characteristics and use these patterns in your own trading. Even beginners who have just heard about the existence of technical analysis will be able to analyze the market with their help.

One of the largest categories of the entire variety of instruments is Forex trend indicators. They are based on a simple pattern of price movement, namely, the tendency to trend movements.  A trend is a forward movement of the price up or down, in which the rewriting of extremes is characteristic. It is formed under the influence of majority positions in the market when there is a prolonged imbalance between buyers and sellers.

By identifying a trend, you shift the likelihood of success of the trade to your own direction. We will tell you in this article what Forex trend indicators are used for, what you should pay attention to when working with them, and what place they can take in the trading system.

Purpose and Methods of Using Trend Indicators

The overwhelming majority of books on technical analysis are based on the fact that the trend is the basis around which strategies are built. You should always stick to its direction and open trades in its direction. A trader must be able to identify it and build trading in its direction. However, it is difficult to determine it in a timely manner and without errors.

This is due to market noise, which blur the overall picture of what is happening. Trend indicators were created to combat it, that, depending on the formula embedded in them, average the price or in other ways indicate the global price movement, helping to determine the direction of future transactions.

Most often, their use is reduced to the filter function in the strategy, when the signals from the oscillator are matched with a global trend. For example, it can be a bundle of EMA and Stochastic, RSI, any other indicators of building channels and levels can be used. If they match in their readings, a trade is opened, and in case of a discrepancy, a trade should not be opened.

In addition to the filter, they can give signals to enter the market. This could be both a change in global and short-term trends. One way or another, indicators of this type can be a source of data for opening future positions by a trader.

In some cases, trend indicators can also be used to set Stop Loss. A prime example is setting a stop order under EMA, where the indicator line is the main pointer to limit risk.

Three Main Trend Indicators

Technical Analysis is world famous for its range of instruments around the world. A huge number of custom developments allows you to create a wide variety of trading systems. As mentioned above, a trader can take any trend-type instrument as a basis and attach an RSI indicator or any other oscillator to it. As a result, you get a balanced basis for developing a trading strategy.

The following TOP-3 trend indicators on Forex can be distinguished among all the tools that the MetaTrader terminal allows you to use. This is Moving Average, MACD, Bollinger Bands. They are present by default in all existing terminals and are considered standard. By the way, NordFX broker allows you to work with them through the MT4 terminal, which can be installed not only on a computer, but even on your mobile phone.

Moving Average Review

The Moving Average indicator is a classic trend indicator that draws a price line on a chart by averaging its value over a specified number of candles. SMA is considered a basic tool for technical analysis. First, it is a medium-arithmetic value, easy to calculate, and therefore was created one of the first. Secondly, many modifications and other indicators have been created on its basis. Thirdly, a trader can implement absolutely any strategy on its basis (Fig. 1).

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There are several types of moving averages:

1. Simple moving average (SMA);
2. Exponential Moving Average (EMA);
3. Weighted moving average (WMA).

It is difficult to see the difference between them  at a first glance. The fact is that they differ in the type of price averaging, which entails some differences in sensitivity and lag. The last one on the list is the slowest and roughest of market noise. EMA is on the contrary the fastest and is more commonly used in practice.

The line you see on your chart can generate the following signals:

1. Crossing of the line and the price;
2. Crossing of the moving average lines between each other;
3. Average with a large period as a line of support and resistance.

We also want to pay attention to the angles of inclination and the position of price relative to the line. If it is above the line, the current trend is upward, if it is below the line, it is downward. It is worth reminding once again that in strategies Moving Average is almost always used in tandem with oscillators: Stochastic, RSI and others, which help to determine the beginning, continuation or end of the current trend.

A simple example of how the Stochastic indicator exits the overbought zone confirms a downtrend in the SMA and gives a command to open a sell trade is shown in Figure 2 below:

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MACD Overview

This indicator is sometimes mistakenly considered an oscillator. This is not the case, because it is based on price averaging. The MACD algorithm is based on the convergence and divergence of two Moving Averages, and the histogram shows the distance between them. So MACD, unlike Stochastic or RSI, is not a stochastic oscillator, but a classic trend indicator (Fig. 3).

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It is a huge source of signals, as it is able to find short-term and medium-term changes of the trend, generate signals to change the global trend. Its most formidable weapon is divergence. It has become a common signal for a huge number of Forex indicators.

Divergence is a reversal type of signal that is formed due to the mismatch of the extremes of the instrument with the real price. Simply put, if the price curve is still going down, and the indicator curve has already turned upstairs, this is a strong signal that the trend reversal should soon be expected. Thus, MACD, like other reversal indicators, is able not to post facto, but to warn in advance about fractures in price movements. The example is given in Figure 4:

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You can see divisions above and below the 0.00 mark on the histogram. At moments when the graph crosses this zero line, a global trend change is fixed. It is clear that if the intersection occurs from bottom up, then the trend has changed from downward to rising. Accordingly, at the reverse level crossing, the trend changes from ascending to descending.

Also note how the MACD histogram interacts with the signal red dotted line. Their intersection generates a signal of a short-term change in the price movement and helps to determine the moment for opening orders either for buy or sell (Fig. 5).

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Some Forex traders use this indicator not only together with other technical analysis tools, but also on their own. This is explained by the strength and accuracy of the MACD signals, especially if divergence occurs on the chart.

Bollinger Bands Review

Bollinger Bands round out the top three Forex trend indicators. They are an ordinary moving average, at a distance from which a trading range is built. It is interesting that this indicator is able to find and give the trader information not only about the direction of the trend, but also about the market volatility, as well as give signals to pull back from the boundaries of the range (Fig. 6).

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Bollinger Bands demonstrate the strength and potential of the trend with its range. When the channel narrows, a transition from trend to flat or accumulation stage should be expected. Expansion, on the other hand, indicates an increase in volatility and trend activity. Trading can be based on the interaction of the indicator lines and the price, which can bounce back from them, break them or test them. This allows you to trade either on the break, or on the breakdown of the range. Both options will be correct. An example of how the Relative Strength Index indicator works in tandem with Bollinger Bands to rebound from the range boundaries can be seen in Fig. 7:

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Strengths and Weaknesses

The strong point of trend indicators is the ability to cut off minor price fluctuations and identify the main trend of its movement. Фlmost all trend instruments use the averaging algorithm to combat market noise. On the one hand, it frees you from noise, makes the market picture clearer and more understandable. On the other side of the scale is the signal delay. Moreover, the more noise the indicator cuts off, the more delayed its signals.

It should also be borne in mind that signals such as, for example, divergence, can occur quite rarely. Therefore, having missed one such signal, you can wait a long time for the next one to appear. Especially if you trade on large time frames.

However, the usefulness and effectiveness of Forex trend indicators is beyond doubt. They allow not to be mistaken with the global direction of the price, due to which they are able to become the basis of a high-quality trading strategy and bring stable profits both in manual trading and in automatic trading with the help of robot advisors.


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. It often happens that monthly forecasts come true faster than weekly ones. That was what happened this time as well. Recall that only 30% of experts expected the EUR/USD pair to grow in the weekly perspective. In the transition to the monthly forecast, those were in majority already, 60%.
We started talking about the paradoxes of the relationship between stock indices and the dollar seven days ago. With the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last February, an inverse correlation was clearly visible between them: thanks to fiscal stimulus (QE), lower interest rates and pumping the US economy with cheap money, the S&P500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq stock indices went up, and the DXY dollar index - way down. And that was logical.
And here came 2021, and everything turned upside down. Against the backdrop of good economic data and expectations of a new injection of financial "vaccine" for almost $2 trillion, the growth of risk sentiment and stock indices continued. But in parallel, the yield of long-term US Treasury bonds and the dollar grew.
But the surprises with overturns did not end there. Based on the same fiscal incentives and rapid vaccination in the United States, Wall Street Journal experts are raising their forecasts for US GDP for 2021 from 4.3% to 4.9%. In Europe, the opposite is true: there are a lot of delays with vaccination, the EU countries, one after another, are tightening anti-covid measures once again, there is no end in sight to lockdowns. As a result, the European Commission lowers its forecast for the Eurozone economy to 3.9%. But at the same time, the euro is growing, and the American currency is falling.
According to a number of experts, it's all about the long-term policy of the US Fed, which is not going to wind down the QE program until the end of 2021 and will not raise interest rates on the dollar earlier than 2023. This should lead to the recovery of not only the American but also the global economy, including the EU, making the euro a reasonably attractive currency for some, primarily Chinese, investors. China's interests in Europe are great, and appetites are constantly growing, which supports the demand for a pan-European currency.   
As a result, having started at 1.2050, the EUR/USD pair rose by 100 pips and reached a weekly high at 1.2150 on Thursday, February 11. This was followed by a correction and a finish at 1.2120;

- GBP/USD. The released macro statistics looks quite contradictory. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, investment cuts and Brexit problems, UK GDP contracted 9.9% which is a record drop in more than 300 years. At the same time, monthly and quarterly GDP were better than expectations. GDP growth in Q4 2020 amounted to +1%. Industrial production figures were lower than forecasted, but the trade balance report pleased investors. 
Solid monetary policy of the Bank of England, positive interest rate, and the first in Europe and third in the world (after Israel and the UAE) in terms of vaccination rates also played on the side of the pound. At the time of writing this review, 20.67% of the country's population was already vaccinated (the figure in the USA is 14.02%).
Recall that the majority of analysts (65%) also sided with the British currency. The main forecast assumed that the pair would succeed, having broken through the resistance at 1.3750, to rise to the height of 1.3800, and possibly 25-50 points higher. And so it all happened: the high of the week was fixed at 1.3865, and the last chord of the GBP/USD pair set at 1.3850.
 
- USD/JPY. The movement of this pair in most cases depends on what is happening not in Japan, but in the United States, on where stock indices, as well as the yield of American state bonds and the DXY dollar index are moving. This happened last week as well.
DXY climbed to 91.21, USD/JPY grew to 105.66 on February 8. On February 10, the dollar index dropped to 90.26, followed by a bottom at 104.40. On February 12, we see an increase in the DXY to 90.71 and an increase in USD/JPY to 105.17, then a slight drop: in the index to 90.39, in the pair to 104.95. So, if anyone wants to try the DXY as a leading indicator for this pair, they can try it;

- cryptocurrencies. At the end of 2020, Forbes compiled a list of the wealthiest representatives of the cryptocurrency business with capitals of over $1 billion. The top three included Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong with $6.5 billion, FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried with $4.5 billion and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen with $2.9 billion. In total, Forbes counted 11 billionaires, although, given the rise in the price of digital assets in January-February, there may have already been more of them. Suffice it to say that the total cryptocurrency market capitalization increased by 87% in less than a month and a half in 2021, from $776 billion to $1,452 billion.
The past week was one of the most successful this year. The rally began with the news that Tesla bought $1.5 billion of bitcoins. At the same time, its head, Elon Musk, said that he plans to sell cars of this brand for cryptocurrency in the near future. Bitcoin went up in price by 23% on this news, on February 8.
But this did not end there. Global payments giant MasterCard has announced that it plans to provide merchants with the ability to receive payments in cryptocurrency starting later this year. As a result, bitcoin once again renewed all-time highs, reaching $48,930 in the afternoon of Friday, February 12. The capitalization of BTC has risen to $885 billion at the moment and exceeded the volume of the money supply of such a large country as Russia, for the first time.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index has reached 92 (it was 81 a week ago) and is in the overbought zone. At the same time, the BTC Dominance Index has decreased from 70.36% to 61.06% since the year started. But, according to many experts, this does not indicate a deterioration in investor attitudes towards bitcoin, but an improvement in their attitude towards altcoins.
So, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launched trading in Ethereum futures on Monday, February 08. The turnover reached $30 million on the very first day, and the open interest - $ 20 million, which indicates the stable interest of investors in this token. The capitalization of ETH has increased by 32% since the year started and amounts to more than $203 billion as of February 12.
Another top coin that we have already paid attention to in the previous review is Litecoin. Over the past three months, aggregate open interest in LTC futures has grown by 285% to $584 million. And, although the share of Litecoin in the total cryptocurrency market capitalization is quite small (8th place with 0.85%), it now occupies an honorable 3rd place among derivatives after bitcoin and Ethereum.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. Throughout the coming week, China is celebrating the New Year, which will cause a significant portion of trade volumes to leave the global markets. However, this does not at all promise a calm or a decrease in volatility. Although right now, investors are at a crossroads. US stock indices, after a powerful upward leap in January, have gradually moved to consolidation and look overbought. No surprises are expected from the Fed any time soon, and the report of the Open Market Committee meeting on Thursday February 18 is likely to be boring enough. On the same day, the report on the ECB meeting on monetary policy will be released, but it will be highly likely filled mostly with general streamlined phrases. Therefore, the main drivers for the EUR/USD pair will again be news about the successes in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
As for experts, 60% of them, together with graphical analysis for H4 and D1, expect the pair to decline, at least, to support 1.2050. In case of a breakout, the next target for the bears will be the February 05 low at 1.1950. The nearest support is in the 1.2100 zone.
40% of analysts adhere to the opposite scenario. However, when moving from weekly to monthly forecast, the number of bulls' supporters increases to 60%. 85% of trend indicators on H4 and D1 are also painted green. But the readings of the oscillators on both timeframes cannot be analyzed: there is complete chaos of red, green and neutral gray colors there. The nearest resistance level is 1.2150. The bulls' targets are first a return of the pair to the 1.2200-1.2300 zone, and then the January high at 1.2350.
As for the economic calendar of the week, in addition to the already mentioned meetings of the Fed and the ECB, we are waiting for: on Tuesday, February 16 - data on GDP of the Eurozone, on Wednesday, February 17 - data on retail sales in the United States (a noticeable increase from -0.7% to + 0.7% is expected), and at the end of the working week, on Friday, February 19, statistics on business activity of Markit in Germany and the EU will be published (here, although not so noticeable, but still growth is predicted);

- GBP/USD. A quarterly GDP growth of 1% means that the country has every chance of getting out of the recession. The high rates of vaccination will also contribute to this (although there are concerns about new strains of coronavirus). Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to unveil a plan to exit the quarantine towards the end of the month, or rather February 22, which should clarify the prospects for the recovery of the UK economy.
In the meantime, analysts' votes have been distributed as follows: the pound has reached 34-month highs, and 45% of experts believe that it would be time for it to stop and play back a little down. 20% vote for the continued growth of the pair, while the remaining 35% take a neutral position. 100% of trend indicators and 75% of oscillators on H4 and D1, together with graphical analysis on H4, point north, targets are 1.3900 and 1.3950. The remaining 25% of the oscillators give signals that the pair is overbought.
As for the graphical analysis on D1, it shows a rebound from the resistance of 1.3865 and the decline first to support in the zone 1.3700, then 1.3630 and 1.3575.
As for economic statistics, one should pay attention to data on the UK consumer market, which will be released on Wednesday February 17, and business activity in the service sector on Friday February 19; 

- USD/JPY. Graphical analysis on D1 predicts the movement of the pair in the channel along the Pivot Point 104.85 during the month. Moreover, it will first rise to the upper border of the channel at 105.75, and then descend to its lower border at 104.40. On H4, the oscillation amplitude is naturally less, from 104.85 to 105.30.
Apart from the green colored 75% of the trend indicators on D1, the readings of the other indicators and oscillators look quite confusing. It is also difficult to draw any conclusions from the opinions of experts, who are divided almost equally: 40% for the growth of the pair, 30% for its fall and the same amount for the sideways movement.
The GDP data for the IV quarter of 2020, which the Japanese Cabinet of Ministers will publish on Monday February 15, may somehow influence the formation of the short-term trend of the USD/JPY pair, especially if this indicator differs greatly from the forecasted +2.3%; 

 - cryptocurrencies. We wrote about bitcoin's readiness to storm the $50,000 high two weeks ago. And its rise to $48,930 on February 12 is a clear confirmation of the correctness of this forecast, which is supported by 80% of experts in a monthly perspective. 
The growth of bitcoin and other top coins pulls up the entire crypto market. Its members look forward to following the example of Tesla and MasterCard and other S& P500 companies listed on the NYSE to announce their readiness to work with digital assets. As, for example, did the Bank of New York Mellon, which said it would allow digital currencies to pass through the same financial network that it uses for traditional financial assets.
The fact that every company in America will soon follow the example of Tesla, was mentioned by the founder of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz in an interview with Bloomberg. According to the billionaire, this will help bitcoin grow to $100,000 by the end of this year.
In the longer term, the BTC/USD pair may rise even to $600,000. At least, this is the opinion of specialists of the financial and investment company Guggenheim Partners. According to the company's investment director, Scott Minerd, everything will depend on the number of coins in the public domain. “Cryptocurrency can rise to very high values. It is possible that we are talking about 400 or even $600,000 per coin... Bitcoin used to be unjustified for institutional investors, but now everything has changed,” Minerd said.
According to the specialist, the concern is caused by the rapid growth of the asset in the past few weeks. It is possible that we are talking about speculation in which institutional investors are involved, capable to manage the value of the coin with the help of large investments. So far, bitcoin is in a difficult situation, as the departure of large depositors will lead to a return of the negative trend. This development of events is unlikely, says the director of Guggenheim Partners, but it should definitely be taken into account.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. The dollar has been growing throughout the week, fueled by optimism about the imminent recovery of the US economy. The incidence of coronavirus is down sharply: in just three weeks since the peak, the 7-day moving average has dropped by almost 50%. And a successful vaccination, complete with a new economic aid package, can generally lead to an economic boom in the country.
And that is where the confusion begins, which has puzzled many economists. With the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last February, an inverse correlation has clearly emerged between the dollar and stock indices. After an initial sharp collapse, thanks to fiscal incentives (QE), lower interest rates and pumping the US economy with cheap money, stock indices, S&P500, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, went up, and the DXY dollar index went down.
And here came 2021, and everything turned upside down. Against the backdrop of good economic data and expectations of a new injection of financial "vaccine" for almost $2 trillion, the growth of risk sentiment and stock indices continued. But in parallel, the yield of long-term US Treasury bonds and the dollar grew.
“But it shouldn't be that way,” many experts exclaim. A soft monetary policy and pumping liquidity into the market should lead to a weakening of the currency, but not vice versa. Or maybe it's not the dollar's strength at all, but the weakness of its competitors? First of all, the euro? 
Starting on Monday at 1.2135, the EUR/USD pair groped the local bottom at 1.1950 on the morning of Friday 05 February, breaking through 1.2000 support for the first time in 10 weeks. After that, the correlation between the stock market and the dollar once again changed its sign, from plus to minus this time: the S&P500 continued to grow, while the DXY began to fall. As a result, the EUR/USD pair went up again and finished the five-day period at 1.2050;

- GBP/USD. We predicted that at its meeting on Thursday 04 February, the Bank of England would leave both the volume of bond purchases of ?895bn and the interest rate at 0.1% unchanged. And so it happened, no changes in monetary policy took place. But at the same time, in just a couple of hours the pound has strengthened sharply against the dollar, jumping up 135 points, from 1.3565 to 1.3700. 
The whole point was not in the results of the meeting of the Bank, but in market expectations. The Bank's committee unanimously decided to leave key parameters of its policy unchanged. Some investors expected that a split in the ranks of the Committee would happen, and that a number of its members would support the introduction of negative rates. The split did not occur, the result of the vote was 9:0.
A negative rate, no doubt, would have led to a collapse of the pound, but the situation was saved by the optimism of officials regarding the growth of the UK economy. In their opinion, thanks to vaccination, the country's GDP will reach pre-COVID indicators during the current year, and the consumer price index will rise to 2% at the beginning of 2022.
The Bank of England's unanimous decision to abandon negative rates for the near future should encourage capital inflows into the country. And this was clearly demonstrated by the GBP/USD pair, which continued its growth on Friday February 05, and ended the weekly session at 1.3735;   

- USD/JPY. The movement of this pair in most cases depends on what is happening not in Japan, but in the United States, on where the DXY dollar index, stock indices, as well as the yield of American state bonds are moving. This happened last week as well.
Back on January 27, the pair broke through the upper border of the medium-term descending channel, along which it had been descending since the end of last March and went up sharply. And although the overwhelming majority of oscillators and trend indicators on both ?4 and D1 indicated an uptrend, only 30% of experts voted for further growth among analysts. But it was their forecast that turned out to be absolutely accurate: at the high on Friday, February 05, the pair reached a height of 105.75, after which a correction followed and then a finish at 105.35;

- cryptocurrencies. We noted in our last review that the bulls are gaining strength again, forming another upward momentum in bitcoin. It also said that the main problem of the crypto market in 2021 will be regulators, whose goal is to take this segment under their maximum control.
Starting from the second half of 2020. institutional investors have become the main drivers of growth. In addition to specialized funds like Grayscale Investments and technology companies such as MicroStrategy, Harvard, Yale and Michigan universities have begun to acquire cryptocurrencies, using their endowment funds for this. Even conservative giants such as US government pension funds like CalPERS have been seen buying digital assets. However, due to regulatory issues, these institutions are acting very cautiously, investing in bitcoin, for now, very small amounts in their scale.
Recall that as soon as the BTC/USD pair renewed its all-time high on January 8, rising above $42,000, and the crypto market capitalization exceeded $1 trillion, the head of the European regulator Christine Lagarde immediately stated that this was a very speculative asset, which is used to conduct a rather "strange business" and money laundering activities. The new US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also joined her from across the ocean, according to her, "cryptocurrencies are of particular concern, and many of them are used to finance illegal activities." Both Lagarde and Yelen indicated that there is a need for serious regulation of this market. However, both kept silent about the main reason for such concern. Although, it is clear that governments are most concerned about the loss of their control over monetary resources.
Be that as it may, but after the statements of the President of the ECB and the US Treasury Secretary, the price of bitcoin fell below $30,000. However, by the end of January, the market came to its senses, and the main coin rate went up again.
On Friday evening, February 05, the BTC/USD pair is trading in the $38,000 zone, and the total capitalization of the crypto market hits highs, rising to the level of $1.16 trillion. As for the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, it reached 81, and although it is in the overbought zone, it is still far from the maximum values.
According to Glassnode specialists, the number of unique active BTC addresses reached 22.3 million in January. “This is the highest rate in the history of bitcoin to date,” analysts say. The January surge in activity beats the previous record of 21 million active addresses in December 2017.
BTC miners also showed indicators close to the record ones. Despite a 30% drop in the price of bitcoin, January was a very good month for this "strange business". Mining the main cryptocurrency brought them $1.1 billion (the maximum of $1.2 billion was recorded in December 2017). The production of Ethereum showed a record result of $0.83 billion, exceeding the figure of December 2020 by 120%.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. So far, the situation seems to be still in favor of the dollar. In anticipation of the explosive growth of the US economy, investors are ready to turn a blind eye to another increase in the country's national debt, which will follow the next package of economic stimuli. The yields on long-term treasuries are growing, and the spread between US and European bonds is growing, strengthening the dollar, and putting pressure on the European currency. Thus, the yield of 10-year American state bonds has already reached about 1.15%, and the growth potential has not yet been exhausted. Here you can also recall the statements of Christine Lagarde that the ECB is not at all against the weakening of the euro.
The above has led to the fact that 70% of experts, supported by 85% of oscillators, 70% of trend indicators and graphical analysis on D1, agreed that the dollar will continue to grow in the coming days, and the EUR/USD pair to fall. Support levels are 1.1950, 1.1885, 1.1800 and 1.1750. However, the situation is changing with the transition from weekly to monthly forecast and here it is already 60% of experts together with graphical analysis who are waiting for the pair to return to the zone 1.2200-1.2300. The target is the January high of 1.2350, the nearest resistance is 1.2175.
As for important economic events in the coming week, we can note data on consumer markets in Germany and the United States, which will be released on Wednesday February 10;

- GBP/USD. Will the market still be able to maintain its bullish optimism about the British currency for some time? 65% of analysts believe that at least briefly the pair will still succeed, breaking through the resistance of 1.3750, to rise to the height of 1.3800, and possibly 25-50 points higher. Graphical analysis, 85% of oscillators as well as 100% of trend indicators on H4 and D1 agree with this. However, 15% of oscillators are already giving clear signals about the pair being overbought. 
The remaining 35% of experts consider the 1.3700-1.3750 zone as an insurmountable obstacle, according to them, having broken through the support at 1.3700, the pair will first go down 100 points and then reach the 1.3485-1.3500 zone.
Among the events to which attention should be paid, of interest are the speech of the head of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, February 10, and the publication of GDP data for the IV quarter of 2020 on Friday, February 12;    

- USD/JPY. Most experts (70%) supported by graphical analysis on D1, 75% of oscillators and 80% of trend indicators, expect the pair to continue to grow at least up to 106.00-106.25 zone. The next goal is 107.00. The nearest resistance is 105.75.
The remaining 30% of analysts believe that the pair will return to the level of 104.00, and graphical analysis on H4 predicts an even greater drop, to the low of January 21, 103.30. Supports are at 104.75, 104.00 and 103.50 levels.

 - cryptocurrencies. What is good, and what is bad. 
The support of cryptocurrencies from large institutional investors is, of course, good. It can provide further growth for bitcoin. However, the fact that the crypto market now largely depends on the sentiments of this rather small group, and that, in turn, on the sentiments of government officials, is bad, and can lead to a collapse of the quotes. A clear example is the January drop in the BTC/USD pair by 30%.
However, government actions can not only put pressure on the crypto market, but also push it up. Thus, US President Joe Biden has confirmed his readiness for a new stimulus package for almost $2 trillion. And this is good, since with an almost 100% probability, some of these funds will flow to the digital asset market.
But, for example, is Chinese New Year good or bad? It is definitely good for people, a fun holiday, gifts, fireworks... But, according to a number of experts, on the eve of this joyful event, the value of bitcoin may fall again. Moreover, in this case, the price of the main coin is threatened not by the central banks, but small investors, who will begin to transfer their crypto assets to fiat for the purchase of New Year's gifts.
Currently, it is in China that the bulk of the owners of bitcoin wallets with savings of up to 10 thousand dollars are concentrated. And, according to the specialists of the investment company Stack Funds, “since it is customary to celebrate the New Year in China very splendidly, small investors will definitely begin to withdraw funds before the holidays. In addition, - they explain, “charts over the past few years show that it is in the run-up to the holidays that the capitalization of bitcoin is greatly reduced.” We do not have long to wait for either a confirmation or a refutation of this prediction: the New Year in China is this Friday, February 12, and the holidays will last from February 11 to 17.
Now about Ethereum. This leading altcoin continues to deliver impressive results. It has increased in price by 130% since the beginning of the year, and its increase was 448% in 2020. The main impact on such dynamics is the expectation of the launch of futures on it on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which is scheduled for Monday, February 8.
The forecasts for this event are mixed. Optimists (and they are the majority) recall that the launch of bitcoin futures on the CME allowed this cryptocurrency to break the $20,000 mark at the end of 2017. Pessimists say that it was this event that marked the beginning of the crypto winter of 2018. So, the question of whether futures is good or bad remains open.
In December 2020, when the BTC/USD pair reached its previous high of $20,000 and ETH/USD was still very far from its similar mark, we noted a significant potential for the Ethereum growth. Now a similar situation is observed with another token, Litecoin, which we have not thought about for a long time.   
This coin appeared in October 2011, becoming an early fork of bitcoin, from a technical point of view is almost identical to it. Litecoin's all-time high of $370 was recorded on December 19, 2017. Then crypto winter came and, a year later, the price of the coin dropped to $20, having lost almost 95% of its value. At the moment, the quotes of the LTC/USD pair are at the level of $155, which is more than twice below its historical maximum, which can lead to its growth. Moreover, Litecoin even surpasses the main cryptocurrency in some important parameters. So, for example, the transaction speed with it is four times higher than with bitcoin.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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NordFX brokerage company has summed up the performance of its clients' trade transactions in the first month of 2021.

The maximum profit in January was received by a client from Vietnam, account No.1416xxx, whose profit amounted to 83.598 USD. This solid result was achieved mainly in gold (XAU/USD) and bitcoin (BTC/USD) trades.

The second place in the rating of the most successful traders of the month is taken by a client from China, account No.1416xxx. Their profit was 40.902 USD, and was received on transactions with the same gold and bitcoin, as well as with a currency that is quite exotic for Chinese traders, the South African rand (USD/ZAR).     

The third place on the January podium went to the representative of India (account No. 1518xxx) whose result of 40.217 USD was achieved mainly due to transactions with two cryptocurrency pairs, BTC/USD and ETH/USD. It should be noted that this trader occupied the third place in the previous, December TOP-3 as well, and their total profit for two months has amounted to almost 80 thousand USD.

As for traders focusing exclusively on Forex currency pairs, here the leader was a resident of Sri Lanka (account number 1528xxx), who earned 33.684 USD on transactions with the British pound - GBP/AUD, GBP/CAD and GBP/USD.  

The passive investment services:
- in CopyTrading in January the largest increase of 382% was shown by the sab aq4x signal, however, its maximum drawdown was more than impressive, 74.15%. But KennyFXPRO  demonstrates a small, but stable growth with a very moderate drawdown (growth in January 34.57% with a maximum drawdown of 12.30%). We can also note another non-aggressive signal - NordFX Pro (increase 24.08%, drawdown 11.31%);
- in the PAMM service, the manager Nacarino achieved the maximum profit for the month (increase 82.82%, drawdown 77.42%). The minimum drawdown of only 1% with a gain of 12.53% was shown by a trader with the nickname COPY CAT 01.

Among the IB partners, NordFX TOP-3 is as follows:
- the largest amount of commission, USD 9.461, was accrued in January to a partner from China, account No. 1336xxx;
- next is also a partner from China, account number 1175xxx, who received 6.124 USD;
- and, finally, a partner from Sri Lanka, account No. 1483xxx, who received 6.123 USD as a reward, closes the top three.


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. The trade wars unleashed by the previous US President Trump have just seemingly subsided, but now we can "congratulate" everyone on the start of a new - currency - war. And it could prove equally exciting and unpredictable. This time, it was the European Central Bank, headed by Christine Lagarde, that declared hostilities. The adversary was, as you might guess, the US Federal Reserve System.
We have repeatedly written that the growth of the euro was caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The European currency rose against the dollar by more than 1700 points from March 20, 2020 to January 15, 2021. For the time being, the ECB leadership pretended that the problem lies not in the current level of the EUR/USD rate, but in the rate of its growth. But it turns out now that the current quotes are also of great importance for the EU economy, and that it would not be bad for them to go down.
The heads of the Banks of Finland and the Netherlands have started to speak actively about the fact that the ECB is very concerned about the euro exchange rate and should take decisive steps to stimulate inflation, hinting at a further decrease in interest rates. And Janet Yelen will definitely not like it. Recall that the former head of the Federal Reserve, and now the new US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yelen promised in every possible way to stop other countries' attempts to artificially reduce the rates of their currencies.
So, we can assume that the challenge has been posed and accepted, and the duel has begun. And right from the start, the EU has been let down... by its main support, Germany. It turns out that inflation in this country in January jumped from -0.7% to + 1.6%, which will certainly affect the growth of the total indicator of the Eurozone. Whether this will entail an accelerated curtailment of the ECB's quantitative stimulus (QE) program remains in question. The market is at a crossroads, which can be clearly seen from the EUR/USD quotes: the pair has been moving in a rather narrow sideways channel 1.2055-1.2185 for the last two and a half weeks. And even the fall of US stock indices on January 27-29 could not push it out of this corridor. As for the end of the week, the pair put the final point at 1.2135;

- GBP/USD. Last week, most analysts (65%) refused to share the bullish optimism of technical analysis. The reason is the poor performance of the British economy and the statement of the country's Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that the third round of the lockdown could last well into the summer. This is forcing investors to not just revise their forecasts for the pound, but also to re-start discussing a scenario with negative Bank of England interest rates.
Looking at the chart of the pair, we can state that the bullish momentum has exhausted itself for the time being. Even fresh positive data on the UK labor market, published on January 26, did not help the pound. The pair cannot break above resistance 1.3750 for the second week in a row. Its volatility has also plummeted. If it exceeded 400 points a week at the end of December, the figure has now fallen to 150 points. As for the end of the five-day period, the final chord sounded in the zone of another strong resistance level, at 1.3700;

- USD/JPY. The medium-term trend for this pair was laid back at the end of March 2020, when it began to slide smoothly along the descending channel. There have been many discussions among experts, whether the pair will be able to reverse this trend and break through the upper limit of this channel.
It was only 30% of analysts who voted for such a development a week ago, but they were the ones who were right. The zone 104.70-105.00 was indicated as the target of the bulls, which was reached by the pair USD/JPY on Friday, January 29. Unlike the euro and the pound, it reacted quite actively to both positive reports on the labor market and the US trade balance. But the main impetus was given by the redistribution of financial flows caused by the fall of the American stock indices S&P500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq. As a result, the pair reached the 10-week high at 104.95, and ended the trading session slightly lower at 104.70;

- cryptocurrencies. We were certainly joking, but it seems the forecast of a fortune teller from New York is starting to come true. Last week we talked about Maren Altman, who determines the trends of the BTC/USD pair based on the stars movement. So, she absolutely accurately predicted the beginning of the January correction of bitcoin, since the trajectory of Mercury (the price of BTC) was to be crossed by Saturn (the limiting indicator) on that day. Her latest forecast spoke of "some favorable signals at the end of January."
For the past three weeks, the main cryptocurrency has been clinging to support in the $30,000 zone, trying to break even lower and thereby instilling pessimism in many experts and investors. For example, Scott Minerd, the director of investments at Guggenheim Partners, said that the bitcoin rate would not stay above $35 thousand or even above $30 thousand, since there is no institutional demand now that can support the quotes at these levels.
However, the end of the month showed that the fortune teller could win in a duel between a fortune teller and an expert, . Having found the local bottom at $29,200 on Wednesday January 27, the pair turned around and reached $38,100 on Friday January 29. But then another sharp reversal followed, and it dropped to the level of $33,500. So, the outcome of the fight at the time of writing the review remains in question. 
Scott Minerd is certainly right that big professional investors are not digital currency fans at all. And what happened in the second half of 2020 can rather be considered an experiment on their part, which they went to, constantly looking back at the reaction of regulators. But the director of Guggenheim Partners may not have taken into account that, in the absence of institutions, retail investors can also move bitcoin up, as was the case in 2017. Moreover, if then they were young enthusiasts, now the middle generation has joined them.
A study conducted by specialists of the Wirex platform together with the company Stellar Development Foundation showed that most of cryptocurrency investors are not at all young millennials, as the case was recently, but people over 45 years old. Investors aged 25 to 45 are only 22%. 
The active buyback of bitcoin after the drawdown below $30,000 and the absence of panic sell-off showed that many investors still believe in the growth of bitcoin to new heights. The total capitalization of the crypto market once again broke the psychological mark of $1 trillion over the past seven days, rising from $0.933 trillion to $1.08. As for the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, it also began to grow along with the growth of quotations. If at the end of last week the index was at around 40 points, it climbed to 77  on Friday, January 29. This is already close to the overbought zone, but the maximum values are still far away. Recall that the index values were constantly in the zone 95-98 out of 100 possible during the rally in December - the first week of January.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. The currency war referred to in the first part of the review is not a matter of one week and not one month, it can stretch for years. The US economy “shrank” by 3.5% in 2020. And this is not only the first negative indicator since 2009, but also the largest drop since the end of World War II. However, investors expect a low interest rate and huge cash injections into the US economy ($900 billion from Donald Trump and $1,900 billion from Joe Biden), together with successful vaccination against COVID-19, will help it return to growth in 2021. Although, this will happen gradually, incrementally.
In contrast to the United States, support for the Eurozone economy was much more modest - €750 billion, therefore, the Eurozone GDP growth will be more moderate (according to forecasts + 1.5%). And the rate of vaccination is lower here than overseas. If we add to this the efforts of the ECB to weaken the common European currency, we can expect that the EUR/USD pair will be under certain pressure. But, as already mentioned, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yelen will make every effort to prevent this from happening.
After two and a half weeks of sideways movement of the EUR/USD pair in the channel 1.2055-1.2185, technical indicators are in confusion, giving no clear signals in either direction. As for the experts, most of them (65%) expect that in February, despite all, the dollar will continue to lose its positions and the pair will return to the 1.2200-1.2300 zone. The target is the January high of 1.2350, the nearest resistance is 1.2185. The nearest support is 1.2055, the main goal of the bears is the zone 1.1800-1.1900.
As for important economic events, there will be a lot of them in the coming week. Data on business activity and the labor market in the US will be published on Monday February 01 and Wednesday February 03. We will find out preliminary data on GDP On Tuesday February 02, and on the Eurozone consumer market on the next day. Finally, on February 05, on the first Friday of the month, data on the number of new jobs created in the United States outside the agricultural sector (NFP) will traditionally be released. This indicator is predicted to show an increase from -140K to +85K, which may lead to a short-term strengthening of the dollar, although this is often taken into account in advance by the market;

- GBP/USD. We will be waiting for a meeting of the Bank of England on Thursday February 04, where questions will be resolved about the planned volume of asset purchases under the programme to support the economy, as well as the interest rate reduction. Will Britain's regulator surprise investors? According to our forecasts, it is unlikely. It is likely that the volume of purchases of bonds on the open market will remain the same - ? 895 billion, and the rate will remain at 0.1%. Therefore, the market will wait for any signals, explicit or implicit, from the head of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey, whose speeches are scheduled for February 04 and 05.
As for analysts, 70% of them believe that the GBP/USD pair will still manage to break through the resistance at 1.3750 and rise to the height of 1.3800 for at least a short time. Graphical analysis and 85% of oscillators on D1, as well as 100% of trend indicators on H4 and D1 agree with this. At the same time, 60% of experts, along with graphical analysis, believe that after a dash to the north, the pair will return to the zone 1.3615-1.3700. The next support level is around 1.3500;

- USD/JPY. Most experts (70%), supported by graphical analysis on D1, believe that the pair's movement to the south will continue. However, now it has changed echelon, and the upper border of the medium-term descending channel will now become a support line for it. The main resistance level is 105.00, support is at 104.00, 103.55 and 103.00 levels.
The remaining 30% of analysts expect that the pair will be able to rise even higher and reach the zone of 105.70-106.10.
Among the trend indicators, 100% look up at ?4 and 85% at D1. As for the oscillators, 75% on H4 and 60% on D1 are colored green, the rest give signals that the pair is overbought;

- cryptocurrencies. According to a number of experts, the January drawdown is now fully redeemed, and the BTC/USD pair is ready to grow to $50,000. Those who wanted to take profits and transfer their crypto assets to fiat have already done so. And now the bulls are regaining strength, forming another upward momentum. Central bank interest rates, which are close to zero, the huge scale of fiscal stimulus, putting pressure on the dollar in the first place, and stock market fluctuations, drawing attention to Bitcoin as a hedge asset, can still act as arguments for the rally to continue. 
It is likely that 2021 will be the scene of a struggle between the crypto market and regulators. And if we set aside the optimism of crypto fans, it remains questionable whether digital assets can seriously strengthen their positions.
So, for example, Bank of Singapore, which is one of the largest Asian financial organizations, called bitcoin a promising instrument that can not only compete with gold, but also shift it from the first place on investments security. At the same time, the bank's experts believe that "we are unlikely to see widespread adoption of bitcoin soon, since regulators simply will not allow users to independently decide how transactions with millions or even billions of dollars will be performed." Governments are making it increasingly clear that they will not allow attacks on their main instrument of power - national currencies.
As for the second most important cryptocurrency, the market is waiting for the launch of futures on Ethereum. It is this factor that allowed the ETH/USD pair to hold its positions even in the days of January, when bitcoin sought to break through support in the $30,000 zone.
Recall that one of the factors that allowed bitcoin to surpass the $20,000 mark at the end of 2017 was the launch of futures for this cryptocurrency by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). And now, on February 8, 2021, the same exchange is awaiting regulatory approval of the application for listing Ethereum futures, which may lead to a further increase in its quotations.
And in conclusion, another funny life hack from the life of cryptocurrencies. Last time we talked about an American fortune teller who predicts bitcoin prices by observing the movement of the planets. Now we are talking about another resident of the United States, Simon Berne, who placed a mining farm in the trunk of his BMW i8 sports car. The farm receives energy from the car battery, to which it is connected using a DC inverter. The battery power of the BMW i8 is 3500W, while the mining plant only consumes 1500W. According to Berne, this is a great way for him to make money even while traveling.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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What is Forex? This is a huge over-the-counter marketplace where various currencies are exchanged. Its turnover exceeds 5 trillion dollars a day! (For comparison: the turnover of all world stock markets is "just" about 85 billion dollars, that is, almost 60 times less).

Forex was created for international commercial activity, but today there are not only companies conducting such work, but also private traders who have received access to trade, as well as investors whose main purpose is to profit from fluctuating quotations.

In this article, we will look at the history of the emergence and formation of the international currency exchange market, the main participants in this market, as well as the principles of trading.

Is Forex an Exchange or Not?

You can often find on the internet the opinions of traders who say that Forex is an exchange. In fact, this is not the case. An exchange is a separate platform for trading. Forex is an over-the-counter market, that is, there is no common platform for currency exchange transactions.

At its core, the Forex market is a set of market makers (banks) that offer their services to everyone who wants to exchange certain currencies. Some banks are merging into larger aggregators to increase liquidity. Subsequently, all those who want to participate in trades connect to market makers and gain access to their Depth of Market (table of orders for buying and selling currencies).

Forex Market History

We owe the emergence of the modern international currency market to the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. It was he who abolished the gold standard and the possibility of converting American currency into gold.

The Bretton Woods Agreement was signed In 1944, which set the dollar standard. The American currency, in turn, turned out to be pegged to gold. However, this system lasted less than 30 years.

The Smithsonian Accord was signed In 1971 in response to the economic crisis of the time. In fact, it was this document that caused the subsequent devaluation of the American currency. The agreement was signed by 10 states at the Smithsonian Institution.

The agreement resulted in three key decisions that the American president described as historic. First and foremost, the criteria for revising the exchange rates were agreed. This led to the subsequent decline of the US dollar. At the same time, the value of other currencies of countries from the so-called “Group of Ten” rose against the dollar.

Another important result is the setting of a limit for exchange rate fluctuations. This made it possible to temporarily exclude floating exchange rates and their sharp fall.

Finally, the United States agreed to remove the 10% foreign duty surcharge. As a result of this agreement, the price of gold rose to $ 38 per ounce, exchange rate fluctuations increased to 2.25% in relation to par, and, finally, the value of many currencies changed.

Despite the fact that the Smithsonian Agreement played an important role, it was the Kingston Meeting of the IMF member countries that laid the foundation for the modern Forex market. Let's look at the main changes in the world monetary system:
- Cancellation of the exchange of dollars for gold. From this point on, no other currency is tied to the gold standard. Gold has become a commodity market instrument.
- IMF member countries have been able to choose their own exchange rate regime. In total, there are three main types: a free floating rate, limited (a corridor to some currencies and floating to others) and fixed.
- There is a new type of international means of payment: SDR (Special Drawing Rights).
- Countries have received more opportunities to conduct independent financial policies.

Forex Market Key Participants

Forex market participants include banks, various funds and financial organizations, brokers, dealing centers , private traders and investors. Let's take a closer look at each of the groups.

Central banks are among the key players in the currency market. Their main task is to maintain the stability of the national currency exchange rate and fulfill certain economic and financial goals.

In modern realities, Central Banks have several mandates, among them, for example, achieving certain inflation or labour market targets. The Central Banks achieve their goals, among other things, by targeting (controlling) the exchange rate levels in the international arena.

Central banks can influence the currency market through direct interventions, as well as through interest rate changes or verbal influence (when executives make comments in which they can point out too overvalued or, conversely, undervalued national currency).

Commercial banks are the main players in the international currency market. The vast majority of operations go through them. They are intermediaries between companies engaged in foreign economic activity. Commercial banks are also aggregators and providers of liquidity, that is, market makers.

Various financial organizations and funds can also be noted here. Their main goal is to increase clients' capital and work with assets. The best known is George Soros's Quantum. Also, notable organizations include “Omaha Oracle” Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Although the latter is unlikely to resort to investment strategies aimed at dealing with currencies. They definitely use Forex services to buy securities on local stock exchanges.

Dealers and brokers are another group of Forex market participants. These are companies providing services to private traders and investors. Here, clients can open trading accounts, make transactions using a variety of trading platforms, undergo training, work with analytics and much more.

What is the difference between a broker and a dealing center? The key is that the broker acts as an intermediary between the trader and the market. The dealing center is also a market maker, that is, it itself acts as a market for its clients.

However, at present there are almost no purely dealing centers. All companies, basically, work on a mixed principle. For clients with small trading accounts and turnovers, they act as a counterparty, and for larger traders and investors - as a broker, that is, an intermediary connecting traders with liquidity providers such as large international banks.

Traders and Basic Principles of Work in Financial Markets

As mentioned above, traders are also participants in the Forex market. They, among other things, maintain the level of liquidity, which is a positive point for currency trading. These market participants perform their trading operations through the trading terminal offered by the broker.

Before starting trading, a trader needs to complete some preparatory activities. First of all, you need to learn how to open a trading account and where to do so. To do this, you can familiarize yourself with the trading conditions of the broker NordFX and open your account with this company.

The Forex trading scheme is quite simple - you open a trading account, download the trader's terminal and start making trades. However, in order to trade Forex profitably, this is clearly not enough. You need to gain some knowledge, develop your own trading system, fund your trading account and carefully monitor your risks. At NordFX, transfers to a trading account can be made from bank cards and accounts, as well as through electronic payment systems and even cryptocurrencies.

As for the trading platform, NordFX experts have selected the most popular software in the professional community - MetaTrader (MT4). Moreover, such a platform is available both for desktop solutions (PCs and laptops) and for the most popular mobile operating systems (Android and iOS).

The MetaTrader terminal is one of the most functional solutions on the Forex market. It offers a rich toolkit not only for opening positions and tracking quotes, but also for analytical work, using trading robot advisors and even testing strategies.

Moreover, MetaTrader is written in an open source language, which allows you to create your own indicators, scripts and algorithmic programs (advisors) that will trade for you in a fully automatic mode.

To work successfully on Forex, a trader must be familiar with the following aspects:
- Types of market analysis.
- Work with analytical tools (graphics, indicators, news).
- Creation of one's own trading strategy and system.
- Learning the basics of money and risk management.
- The psychology of trading.

Trading is carried out with real money. But before you start, you can try your hand at a demo account . This is a special training account that allows a trader not only to study the trading terminal without any financial risk, but also to work out their own strategies.

You can open a demo account at the brokerage company NordFX. All quotes that come to the terminal on such a training account are real. That is, you will be able to try your hand at real market conditions.

Once you have completed your training, you need to top up your trading account and then you can get to work. As noted above, trading strategies are fundamental. They allow the trader to predict future asset fluctuations in the Forex market.

Such strategies can be both borrowed and created by the broker'sclient itself, if they have enough knowledge to do so. The most popular among traders are indicator trading tactics, based on indicators of technical analysis.

They are easy to find in the MT4 terminal. But you need to carefully study how each indicator works before using it. Today, four main groups of such instruments are distinguished:
- Trending.
- Oscillators.
- Indicators that reflect the volatility and strength of the trend.

Working with the MetaTrader trading platform, you can simultaneously use one or more indicators already built into it and add to it your own ones created by you or other traders.

Some Forex Trading Recommendations

It is not enough to have a good trading strategy for successful trading. It is very important to follow certain rules and recommendations that we give below.

Study the asset carefully.

Before you start working with a particular currency, you need to carefully study it. It is important to pay attention not only to the chart, but also to the schedule of important economic events and publications. Among them, for example, meetings of Central Banks, business activity indices, data on the labor market, statistics on inflation.

Even if you do not plan to engage in news trading in the future, you will need to know the exact time of the news release, since these are periods of sharp jumps in rates and increased volatility in the financial markets.

Work systematically.

The biggest problem for many novice traders is that they do not know how to work systematically. Even with a rather interesting and profitable strategy behind them, such market participants, under the influence of emotions, often deviate from its main provisions and open trades at random, intuitively. As a result, they lose their money easily and quickly.

In trading, discipline is one of the key factors. Traders who do not have it do not succeed. Those who strictly follow their trading system are much more likely to increase their deposit.

Controlling emotions.

Emotions and psychological state play a very important role in trading. You need to learn to rule out negative thoughts from your work. The mistake of most traders is that, having made one or several unsuccessful trades, they start trading in order to win back. It happens the other way around ­— under the influence of greed, a person opens one trade after another instead of stopping in time.

A professional trader makes decisions based solely on the situation on the chart, their own analysis and trading system. Emotions are completely excluded from their work. If you cannot cope with them, it is better to use the opportunities for automatic or social trading that the broker NordFX provides to its clients - this is the use of robot advisors in MT4 and PAMM accounts, and the automatic copying of trades of experienced traders in the Copy Trading system.


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. We published a chart seven days ago that clearly showed how the correlation between the S&P500 index and EUR/USD was broken in early January. But now everything is back to normal: the S&P500 continued its growth, reaching a historic maximum of 3859.84 on January 21, and the EUR/USD pair went up with it, fully justifying the forecast of the majority (65%) of experts. Groping on Monday the local bottom at 1.2053, the euro then rose to 1.2190, the final chord sounded slightly lower, at 1.2170. 
The end of the week was quite calm, thanks to the head of the European Central Bank. Christine Lagarde was never able to weaken the European currency, but also did not allow it to seriously overtake the dollar. And this can be considered a certain success.  
In her speech following the ECB meeting on Thursday 21 January, Madame Lagarde explained what is good and what is bad. The "Good" section includes the start of vaccinations, the success of the EU economic recovery and the reduction of political uncertainty in the US. The "Bad" section includes the worsening epidemiological situation, increased lockdowns, the likelihood of a double recession in the eurozone and low inflation, which is reluctant to grow because of the strong euro. At the same time, the ECB refused again at its meeting last Thursday to adjust monetary policy, only stating that “the package of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme may not be used in full.” That news pushed the euro up. However, not by much since no specifics followed. And what criteria will be used to determine the scale of PEPP has remained a mystery to investors;

- GBP/USD. The pound grew along with the euro for the first half of the week. And it even broke through the upper boundary of the channel 1.3450-1.3700, reaching the height of 1.3745. However, the ending of the five-day period turned out to be blurry. The rally in the pound was not supported either by retail sales (an increase of 0.3% instead of the forecasted 1.2%), or business activity indicators: in the service sector, the Markit index fell from 49.4 to 38.8. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson added pessimism, saying that the third round of the lockdown could last well into the summer. As a result, the pound made a reversal, returned within the designated channel, and finished at 1.3680;

- USD/JPY. Recall that the main forecast, supported by 65% of analysts, said that this pair would hold within the downward medium-term channel, which began in the last days of March 2020 of the year. Levels 103.60 and 103.00 were called as supports.
That scenario turned out to be perfectly correct. The pair moves for the second week in a row unsuccessfully trying to break the upper bound of this channel. The first attempt last week was made on Tuesday January 19, when it bounced off the support at 103.60 and reached 104.07. The next rebound, on Thursday January 22, from the level of 103.30, was stopped at 103.90, after which the pair ended the working week where it had already visited repeatedly in January, in the 103.80 zone;

- cryptocurrencies. Is this atemporary correction or the beginning of a new crypto winter? This question became dominant last week. Bitcoin dipped below $29.000 on Friday December 22, which, of course, scared many investors. Guggenheim investment director Scott Minerd predicts a further decline down to $20,000 - the zone from which the explosive rally started in the second half of December 2020, which raised the BTC quotes by 100%.
Optimists reassure: over the year, bitcoin has risen in price by 5.75 times, from $7,300 on January 01, 2020 to $41.900 on January 08, 2021, so a correction by "some" 30% is, they say, not a reason for panic. In addition, a number of analysts note that this time the fall of bitcoin is not accompanied by an exit to fiat. Investors, fixing profits on the main cryptocurrency, do not leave the digital market, but open positions on more promising, in their opinion, altcoins. For example, on ethereum, the price of which has increased more than 11 times over the year. And if by the evening of January 22, the BTC/USD pair lost 22% relative to the maximum, then the decline in ETH/USD was less than 10%.
This version is also supported by data on the crypto market capitalization. In seven days, total capitalization, including bitcoin, decreased by 9.5% (from $1.028 trillion to $0.933 trillion). At the same time, the capitalization of altcoins remained at the same level of $300 billion. It was mainly bitcoin that was losing, the dominance index of which decreased from 67.48% to 64.31%. The share of Ethereum, on the contrary, increased from 13.52% to 15.01%.
As for the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, it finally came out of the overbought zone and fell from 88 to 40 points in a week. This value corresponds to a neutral state, when it is too late to open short positions on the BTC/USD pair, and too early to open long positions. Although, according to analysts, it is during such price rollbacks that "whales" begin to actively replenish their bitcoin wallets, buying up coins of small alarmist investors.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. Analyzing the results of the last ECB meeting, we can conclude that, despite the not very clear comments of Ms. Lagarde, the mood of the European regulator is still hawkish. The bank's Governing Council noted that EU debt markets had shown a rise in yields and concerns about a rapid strengthening of the euro had eased. Now we must wait for the meeting of the US Federal Reserve, which will be held on January 28. The interest rate on the dollar is likely to remain at the same level of 0.25%, so the main interest will be the comments of the regulator's management regarding the monetary policy in the near future. Special attention will be drawn to them also because this will be the first Fed meeting since the inauguration of the new US President Joe Biden.
Of course, we will also see the release of a fairly large volume of macro statistics next week, including the volume of orders for capital goods and durable goods in the United States (to be announced on Wednesday January 27), as well as data on the GDP of the United States and Germany, which will be released, respectively, on Thursday January 28 and Friday January 29.
In the meantime, the opinions of experts have been distributed as follows. 45% of analysts supported by graphical analysis on D1, 75% of oscillators on ?4, 90% of trend indicators on H4 and 75% on D1, side with the bulls. The nearest resistances are 1.2275, 1.2300 and 1.2350. The medium-term target is the same - rise to a height of 1.2500-1.2550.
The opposite view is held by 55% of experts. 25% oscillators on H4 signal that the pair is overbought. The nearest support is 1.2130 and 1.2060. The main objective is the zone 1.1800-1.1900;

- GBP/USD. At the time of writing the review, oscillator readings on H4 look pretty chaotic. As for the remaining indicators, most of them are still painted green. Thus, 75% of oscillators and graphical analysis on D1, as well as 75% of trend indicators on H4 and 100% on D1 look to the north.
But as for analysts, they, for the most part (65%), do not share the bullish optimism of technical analysis. The reason, as mentioned above, is the poor performance of the British economy and the statement of the country's Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that the third round of the lockdown could last well into the summer. This is forcing investors to not just revise their forecasts for the pound, but also to re-start discussing a scenario with negative Bank of England interest rates.
The support levels are zone 1.3615-1.3635, then 1.3525 and finally the lower limit of the three-week side channel 1.3450. Resistance levels ¬- the upper limit of the channel 1.3700, 1.3745 and 1.3800;

- USD/JPY. At its meeting on Thursday January 21, the Bank of Japan, as well as the ECB, did not adjust the parameters of its monetary policy. The expectations for GDP were slightly lowered over the past, 2020, but the regulator raised its forecasts for 2021, considering that despite everything, the country's economy will continue to grow.
Based on this, 70% of experts favored further smooth strengthening of the yen and the descent of the pair to support 103.00, and in case of increased volatility - another 50 points lower. The nearest support is 103.30.
An alternative scenario, for which 30% of experts voted, assumes a breakdown of the upper border of the descending channel, and the rise of the pair first to the resistance of 104.00, then 104.40. The next goal of the bulls is zone 104.70-105.00;

- cryptocurrencies. It is no secret how highly volatile and risky bitcoin is. Its explosive growth was driven by large institutional investors who began to enter the crypto market in the second half of 2020, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and fiscal stimulus from the US Federal Reserve, which cut interest rates and flooded the market with cheap dollars.
And now analysts are talking about the fact that cryptocurrencies could only be a temporary measure to preserve capital, and that now institutions are phasing out purchases of digital assets. 
According to JPMorgan Chase strategists, the key to the short-term outlook for bitcoin's price is the world's largest digital asset management company Grayscale Investments, with a crypto portfolio currently valued at $23 billion. According to the calculations of bank analysts, for the BTC/USD pair to break through the resistance of $40,000, it is necessary that Grayscale Bitcoin Trust maintain the pace of inflow funds of $100 million per day in the coming days and weeks. Otherwise, a deep correction can be expected.
At the time of writing the forecast, the pair's quotes are in the region of $32,500. This is a fairly strong support/resistance level for the past three weeks. And if capitalization does not go up, and the price again manages to fall below $30,000, one can expect increased pressure from the bears and a new wave of active sales. 65% of experts agree with this.
But there are also professional market participants who maintain a moderately bullish mood, which is confirmed by positive premiums for March futures, + 3.5-5.0%. And the head of investment company Pantera Capital Dan Morehead expects to see "bitcoin for $45,000 or even more" in February. However, he advises traders and other industry participants to be as prudent as possible.
The statements of the new US administration also inspire some optimism. So the candidate for the US Treasury and former Fed Chairman Janet Yellen, speaking about possible improvements to the traditional financial system, called for encouraging the use of cryptocurrencies, if it, of course, occurs within the framework of the law. But time will tell what these laws will be. Although ... already now those who wish can use the services of ... a fortune teller.
As Reuters reported, fortune teller Maren Altman from New York makes her predictions of the bitcoin rate based on the movement of the stars. She predicted the beginning of the January correction of bitcoin absolutely accurately, since on that day the trajectory of Mercury (the price of BTC) should have been crossed by Saturn (the limiting indicator). Looking ahead, Ms. Altman sees “some favorable signals at the end of the month and especially in February and early March.” “However, a big correction will begin in mid-March,” the fortune teller says. “Mid-April also looks pessimistic. May is bullish.”
By the way, Ms. Altman already has more than a million followers on social networks, among whom there may be large institutional investors. So, it is possible that it is she, together with the stars, and not Grayscale Investments, who runs the crypto market ?.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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The Forex currency market is one of the few places where everyone can try to realize themselves. The absence of superiors, the non-existent ceiling on earnings, the work schedule for which you are responsible — all this is in the trader's profession.  But becoming one is not an easy task.

Newcomers who come here face a number of difficulties. Many do not understand how to start trading Forex and what is needed for this. Therefore, they make mistakes at the beginning, which can discourage the desire to trade on Forex forever after the first attempt.

Since the path of novice traders and investors cannot be called an easy walk, we have prepared our own action plan. By following it, you will quickly find the key to understanding the market, and Forex trading will begin to generate income, for which, in fact, you came here.

Where to Start Trading on Forex

Forex market is a decentralized interbank exchange where currency is traded between its participants. In simple words, Forex is the global market for currency trading . The main source of a trader's earnings is the exchange rate difference between the price of buying and selling one currency in exchange for another. For example, you can buy and then sell back dollars for euros, or Japanese yen for Chinese yuan. But before you start predicting the benefit of a particular deal and making money from it, you should go through the following main stages. There are seven of them, and these are:
1. Choosing a broker ;
2. Opening of a trading account;
3. Downloading the platform (for broker NordFX, this is MT4);
4. Acquaintance with the theoretical part;
5. Choosing a currency pair and trading strategy;
6. Testing theory on a demo account and obtaining the necessary skills;
7. Smooth transition to real trading with real money.

How to Choose a Forex Broker

The foreign exchange market is arranged in such a way that only large capital can access it directly. We are talking about millions of dollars, because the main participants in trading are banking institutions and institutional investors, such as hedge funds. To start trading on Forex , a private trader needs to use the services of an intermediary - a broker . The latter accumulates all orders of traders into a single powerful pool and enters the market with it. Thanks to this, Forex trading has become available to everyone, even those who have very little capital.

It is important to choose a decent brokerage company. When you open a trading account , the next step is to fund it. Your money is a tidbit for scammers. There are cases when fake companies simply imitated real trading. There are also those that are doing their best to under various pretexts not to return customers profit earned by them. To do this, they use non-market quotes or fictitious server crashes. There are those who deliberately insert sticks into the wheels, juggling spreads, requotes, slippage. Therefore, choosing a broker can be compared to laying the foundation for building a house.

Regulation and Reputation

One of the basic criteria for choosing a broker is their regulation and reputation.

A law-abiding company must be legally registered to allow the appropriate type of business. Despite the fact that the conditions for each country are different, the company's activity in the financial markets is always closely monitored. These are the issuance of a license, verification of reports, payment of insurance premiums, consideration of complaints and monitoring. As soon as a broker begins to go beyond the law, at best it is fined for a very large sum, or even deprived of its license, forbidding it to work.

In addition to the license, you should carefully study the company's reputation and history. Brokers who once took the path of deception cannot exist for a long time. First, the regulator's response is imminent. Secondly, there is a wave of negative reviews.

The longer the broker stays in the market, the clearer its reputation becomes. From the position of a trader, choosing a company without history and reputation is not justified.

The brokerage company NordFX has been operating in the financial markets since 2008 and is included in the TOP-10 and TOP-20 of many international ratings. It has received more than 50 honorary awards, including those as an exceptionally reliable highly professional broker. During this time, clients from more than 190 countries of the world have opened more than one and a half million accounts in it. Agree, that says a lot!

NordFX works not only in the foreign exchange, but also in the stock and cryptocurrency markets. And during this time, unlike many cryptocurrency exchanges, there was not a single hacker hacking in the company, not a single penny of customer funds was stolen. And all this thanks to the combination of many years of experience of NordFX specialists and the advanced technologies and equipment they use.   

Trading Terms

The beginner may have the impression that the terms of the trading account are identical regardless of the broker. In fact, this is not the case. The size of the spread, commission or swap, the speed of order execution, the minimum deposit size, the variety of trading instruments, leverage - all these factors uniquely affect the final profitability of a trader's work. 

The difference becomes noticeable when studying the details. For example, some have huge spreads for the currency pair you are interested in, while others, on the contrary, have low spreads. The broker that you choose should have the trading conditions that are right for you. Trading in poor trading conditions will do no good. For example, if you trade inside the day on short time frames, the size of the swap doesn't make any difference to you. But if you keep your position open for several weeks or months, then a negative swap can “eat up” all your profits and bring only losses.

The size of the leverage is also important. Under normal conditions in the market, you may not use it, but under extraordinary conditions it can be your lifeline that will keep you from falling victim to financial storms and hurricanes. At NordFX, for example, the maximum leverage for currency pairs reaches 1: 1000, which significantly expands your opportunities for using a variety of trading strategies and hedging risks.

Speed and Withdrawal Methods, Support

It is important to check the future partner (and the broker is your partner) for the ability to solve current problems. To do this, ask Support a few questions  and assess how quickly you got the answer to your question. If the problem is not solved, ­you should think about the quality of service.

Many do not attach importance to this, but at times of real problems only effective support can minimize damage.

Pay attention to the methods of depositing and withdrawing money, their variety, the size of the commission and the speed of order execution. It is counterproductive to cooperate with a brokerage company, which has a term of withdrawal of money as one month in the regulations.

Opening a Trading Account

When you have laid the foundation, that is, decided on a reliable brokerage company, the next step is to open a trading account. Forex trading is carried out through it. One company may have several types of accounts. You should choose a specific one, focusing on your tasks, the amount of capital, and expediency.

Broker NordFX offers its clients four types of accounts. Each of them is unique in its own way and endowed with advantages that, in total, cover all the requirements that a trader can impose on them, and allow you to effectively use a wide variety of trading strategies, conducting transactions with currencies, cryptocurrencies, precious metals, oil, stock indices and shares of leading world companies.

Downloading the Platform

Trading on financial markets is carried out using special software. Depending on which terminal is selected, the number of tools for price analysis and your capabilities will depend. Indicators, advisors, scripts make trading more comfortable and efficient.

Today, in Forex, the majority of traders in the world choose the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platform. Its interface is intuitive, which allows, just a few minutes after meeting, to make the first transaction. As for the tools and opportunities, they are huge. Study the functional features of MT4 in detail, and you will understand how much it can do for you.

Acquaintance with the Theoretical Part

A trader is a profession that, in principle, anyone can comprehend. But, like in any occupation, there are a number of secrets here, without which you cannot rise from a beginner to the level of a high-class professional. In order to become one, you need to study the theory that is dedicated to the foreign exchange market. This applies not only to methods of technical analysis of charts, but also to understanding the basics of pricing and the functioning of world markets. The following tutorials and tutorials will help you with this:
1. “How to Make a Living Trading Foreign Exchange” - Courtney Smith;
2. “A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street” - Edward O. Thorpe;
3. “The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets” - B.  Steenbadger;
4. " Beyond Candlesticks " - Steve Nison;
5. "How to Play and Win at a Stock Exchange" - Alexander Elder.

You can find useful content on exchange topics on thematic sites and, of course, in the NordFX educational section. There's just a huge amount of it. And when you become grounded in theory, you will naturally be able to make significantly more informed decisions when opening and closing trades.

However, the theoretical base may not be enough. The psychology of a trader has a huge impact on the financial result. And if you are still not confident in your abilities, such areas of social trading as PAMM accounts and CopyTrading can come to the rescue.

Choosing a Currency Pair and Trading Strategy

It is enough to read one book about currency, commodity, or world stock exchanges to understand the importance of system trading. In this case, you can do the following:
1. Create your own strategy based on the obtained theoretical data;
2. Take someone else's, adjusting it for yourself.

The currency pair will play an important role. We recommend that beginners pay attention to assets where the spread value is minimal. These are currency pairs such as: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, AUD/USD, EUR/GBP, EUR/JPY, and a number of others.

If you wish to work with CFDs on stocks, NordFX has allocated a separate Stocks trading account to do so. Many tens of shares of the world's largest companies are available for trading on it.

Testing Theory on a Demo Account and Gaining Skills

The major advancement in the exchange business, made possible in recent decades by computers and the Internet, is electronic trading. Modern platforms store a huge historical array of quotes, on the basis of which you can automatically conduct a thorough analysis, form a trading strategy and test your ideas. It is worth learning the strategy tester built into MetaTrader-4 here.

Of course, the demo account should also be borne in mind. Thanks to it, you can trade in real time with virtual money. But the demo account has one huge drawback. The trader here does not risk losing real capital, therefore, they act much more recklessly than when trading in the real market. 

To understand psychology and how important it is in this profession, you can test ideas on a Fix account. The minimum deposit is only $10 here, so it's a great way to feel all on yourself: the grief of defeat, excitement, fear and, of course, the joy of victory.

Smooth Transition to Real Trading

The preliminary experience gained on a demo account allows you to proceed to the final stage - to start using a real trading account. It is important to be aware that there is a huge difference between the real and the demo accounts.  As mentioned above, it lies in the perception of loss. In the case of real money, losses are always taken to heart. And it is critical at this stage not to do the following stupid things:
1. Try to deviate from the terms of your trading strategy;
2. Start to recoup;
3. Forget about cutting losses;
4. Start waiting through drawdown;
5. Succumb to the excitement.

When you start trading real money, learn to stop on time, work on your mistakes. A couple of hours spent analyzing the transaction report can reveal the strengths and weaknesses not only of your trading strategy, but also of your own character. And this is often more important than knowledge in technical or fundamental analysis of Forex.

With What Amount You Can Start Trading on Forex

Among beginners, there is an opinion that a small amount of capital is enough to start making serious money. For example, a Fix account allows you to make a trade with a “capital” of just one dollar. Is that enough to begin with? From our point of view, it is. But only for a start, and not to buy a villa, a yacht and a personal plane.

Examples are often advertised on the Internet in which traders manage to get astronomical profits of hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of percent. And the most interesting thing is that this is not a lie, it really happens. But this is a very risky game, which then, most often, leads to the collapse and loss of all funds.

Imagine that, having accelerated your car on the Formula 1 track to 300 km/h, you then jump out into a city intersection. How will this end? Everyone has a chance of staying alive, but it is small and has nothing to do with a professional approach. Any rider will say the speed must meet road conditions. Likewise in Forex, you need to learn to hurry slowly, give up crazy ideas and set realistic goals for yourself. Everyone has a chance of success. However, you should not treat trading in financial markets as a casino where luck decides everything.  Knowledge and experience decide everything here.

Though, some luck won't hurt either...


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. Making a forecast for the past week, the majority of experts (60%) were in favor of reducing the pair first to support 1.2100, and then, possibly, another 50 points lower. Almost everything happened as forecasted: the EUR/USD pair was at the level of 1.2075 at the end of the trading week.
It should be noted that a somewhat atypical situation has developed on the market since the start of 2021. Usually, the rise in the stock market puts downward pressure on the dollar. This is exactly what happened in the previous month: fueled by risk appetites, the S&P500 grew steadily, while the dollar index, which plays the role of a defensive asset, was steadily falling. According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in December, large investors hoped for a quick victory over COVID-19, a surge in GDP, they were actively buyingt shares of technology companies and were also actively getting rid of the dollar. And now the situation has changed dramatically: the USD DXY index began to grow in parallel with the S&P500.
What is the reason for this? First, US stocks look overvalued at the moment. At least from the point of view of American investors. In addition, we wrote in the previous review that after the certification of the US President-elect Biden and the majority of Democrats in the Senate, the yield of 10-year American Treasuries went up sharply, pulling the dollar with it. The leaders of the Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) of Richmond and Philadelphia added fuel to the fire, hinting at a possible curtailment of the QE program and an increase in interest rates on the dollar; bulls began to close long positions in EUR/USD;

- GBP/USD. Over the past five days, this pair has drawn a clear sinusoid, moving in the 1.3450-1.3700 channel along the 1.3575 Pivot Point. At the beginning, it dropped to the lower border of this trading range, and then turned around and sharply went up, reaching the values of 2.5 years ago on Wednesday.
The pound was supported last week by the head of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, who not only rejected the possibility of introducing a negative interest rate, but also expressed the opinion that the coronavirus pandemic is not capable of causing any structural changes in the UK economy. As a result, the pound showed the biggest gains in the past two months. However, then, following the general trend of strengthening dollar, the pair returned to the Pivot Point and finished the week at 1.3580;

- USD/JPY. The forecast, which was voted for by the majority of analysts (55%), turned out to be absolutely correct: the pair kept within the descending medium-term channel and, having bounced off its upper border, moved to its center.
Recall that another 10% of analysts assumed that the pair would move sideways, making fluctuations around Pivot Point 104.00. And they also turned out to be right: having started the five-day week at 103.95, it completed it also within this zone, at 103.85;

- cryptocurrencies. By the evening of Friday January 15, the bitcoin chart can equally likely speak of both a return to an uptrend or a continuation of a downward correction. Reaching a historic high of $41.435 on January 08, the BTC/USD pair turned south and dropped to $30.600 by January 11. All major indicators have long been giving signals of bitcoin being overbought, and only an excuse was needed for such a deep correction. And it was found in the form of an increase in the yield on US government bonds, which caused the dollar to strengthen. As a result, the main cryptocurrency lost more than 25% in price in just three days.
Then, to the delight of investors, the pair again approached the $40,000 mark, and the USA again became the formal reason for this. More precisely, President-elect Joe Biden, who announced a new $1.9 trillion economic aid package that includes $2,000 in direct payments to Americans. Such massive fiscal and monetary stimulus is likely to drive inflation and, as a result, increase demand for risky assets, including cryptocurrencies.
All good things are known to end someday. So bitcoin stopped its growth on January 14, and failed to set a new height record. And then the head of the ECB Christine Lagarde called for global regulation of the digital currency market. Referring to the speculative nature of bitcoin, she stated that such regulation could be initiated within the G7 countries, then carried over to the G20, and eventually expanded to a global level.
Taking advantage of the situation, the bears regained control of the situation and the BTC/USD pair dropped below the $ 35,000 level again in the second half of Friday, January 15.
It should be noted that the activity of investors has significantly decreased at the start of 2021. According to CoinShares, only $29 million was invested in crypto funds in the first week of January. This is despite the fact that similar investments amounted to more than $ 1 billion the week before Christmas. Of course, such a lull can be explained by a respite for the holidays. Moreover, crypto whales also reacted sluggishly to the correction on January 8-11: withdrawal operations were recorded only on a very small number of their BTC wallets.
PayPal data show that at least the retail market is gradually waking up after the Christmas and New Year hibernation, the volume of bitcoin trading on this platform has increased by 950% since the beginning of January, that is, almost 10 times. If, according to the analytical service Nomics, platform users made transactions with BTC for only $22.8 million on January 01, 2021, their volume amounted to $242 million ten days later.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization was $1 trillion by January 15 (it was $1.13 trillion at the high of January 10). The BTC dominance index is in the region of 68%, and the Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell from 95 to 88 points over the week.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell denied the statements of his colleagues from the regional Federal Reserve Banks, saying that one should not count on raising interest rates and curtailing soft monetary policy in the near future. These words, coupled with Joe Biden's new $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package, are likely to halt the rise in US Treasury yields and support the bulls on S&P500. Moreover, the hopes for vaccination, which will lead to a rapid growth in GDP, have not disappeared. Thus, Wall Street Journal experts predict an increase in American GDP by 4.3% in 2021. 
But will this break the current correlation between the dollar and the stock market? Will the dollar stop rising? It is not excluded that the growth of the S&P500 will be supported not only by American, but also by major investors from other countries. And such an infusion of foreign capital into the US economy will lead to the strengthening of the US currency.
Now, specifically about the EUR/USD pair. It is clear that at the time of writing the forecast (January 15), most indicators are painted red. 100% of trend indicators on H4, 75% on D1, as well as 75% of oscillators on both timeframes look to the south. The remaining oscillators signal that the pair is oversold.
As for the experts, their opinions are divided equally at the moment. But when moving from a weekly to a mid-term forecast, the scales are tilted towards the bulls. 65% of analysts, supported by graphical analysis on D1, expect the dollar to weaken and the pair to rise to at least 1.2500-1.2550 over the next one and a half to two months. The nearest resistances are 1.2175, 1.2275, 1.2300 and 1.2350. The main support area is 1.1800-1.1900. 
As for the important events of the coming week, attention should be paid to the ECB's interest rate decision and the subsequent press conference of the management of this regulator on Thursday 21 January. And data on business activity of Germany and the Eurozone as a whole will be published the next day, on January 22;

- GBP/USD. Not only Germany and the EU, but also the UK will release statistics on business activity (Markit in the services sector) on Friday 22 January. This data could send a signal to investors about how the attack of a new coronavirus strain has affected the country's economy. Recall that earlier Britain reported record levels of deaths and new cases over the past few weeks in London and the south-east of England.
However, problems associated with COVID-19 are intensifying in other countries as well, including the United States. Therefore, 60% of analysts, supported by graphical analysis on H4 and D1, believe that the pair will be able to return to the level of 1.3700, and perhaps rise another 100 points higher. An additional argument for its growth is the new fiscal stimulus in the US, which has been discussed above.
Support levels 1.3540 and 1.3450;

- USD/JPY. The rise of the pair from the lower to the upper border of the descending medium-term channel, which took place in the first two weeks of January, is associated by a number of experts with an increase in risk sentiment and a decrease in interest in the yen as a safe-haven currency. Based on this, they believe that the pair will still be able to break through the upper border of the designated channel and rise to the 105.00 zone. 35% of analysts and graphical analysis on D1 vote for this scenario. The next target of the bulls is 105.70, the nearest resistance is the zone 104.00-104.35.
The majority of experts (65%) are confident that the pair will stay within the designated channel. The nearest support is 103.60, the next one is 103.00. The target is located in the 102.50 area.

- cryptocurrencies. So, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization is now at the level of $1 trillion. This is an important psychological level, especially for retail investors. Further growth of this indicator will be a clear confirmation of forecasts about the rise of the BTC/USD pair at least to a height of $50.000. If the capitalization goes down, then this can cause a landslide sale of coins: the example of the 2018 crypto winter is alive in the market memory.
In the meantime, the market is still dominated by an optimistic mood. So, for example, Bloomberg crypto analyst Mike McGlone believes that $50.000 is a real target for bitcoin.  He gave a forecast a few months ago, according to which BTC was supposed to grow to a new historical high in December 2020, which eventually did happen. “I think that the asset will take the barrier of 50 thousand in the near future,” said this expert and added that the chances of BTC growth are much greater than its further weakening, and a pullback to $20,000 is now practically excluded.
Dan Morehead, CEO of investment company Pantera Capital, predicts that bitcoin's price will hit $115,000 by August 2021 and events such as the launch of the digital yuan will help further the penetration of cryptocurrencies into the global economy.
If this happens, there will be even more crypto millionaires and billionaires in the world. For now, according to Forbes, the list of the richest of them looks like this:
In first place are the founders of the bitcoin exchange Gemini, the Winklevoss brothers. The estimated value of their cryptocurrency assets, according to Forbes, is about $1.4 billion each. Bloq co-founder Matthew Roszak with $1.2 billion in digital assets ranks second, followed by venture capitalist Tim Draper. According to Forbes, the value of his assets is estimated at $1.1 billion.
In fourth place is the head of MicroStrategy, Michael Sailor, with assets worth $600 million, in fifthis the founder of the crypto bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz. Forbes valued his cryptocurrency assets at $478 million. The last on the list is the co-founder of ethereum Vitalik Buterin with assets worth $360 million.
Speaking of ethereum. According to the founder of the investment fund DTAP Capital Dan Tapiero, this coin is ready for further growth. This is evidenced by the interest on the part of institutional clients of the American financial holding Northern Trust. The holding company launches a service for storing cryptocurrencies, in partnership with Standard Chartered bank. And "if Northern Trust stores bitcoin and ethereum, then they have buyers for both assets," Tapiero substantiated his point of view.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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The winners of the awards of the International Academy of Trading Masterforex-V and the International Association of Forex Traders IAFT became known at the very beginning of the new year, 2021. Among the winners is the brokerage company NordFX, which has won three prestigious professional awards.


Founded in 2005, Masterforex-V International Academy is one of the leading and most ambitious online projects in the field of foreign exchange trading. Today traders from more than 50 countries of the world are trained at the Academy. The rectorate and the students of the Academy evaluate the performance of financial organizations throughout the year, forming ratings, at the top of which NordFX has repeatedly found itself. And now, at the end of 2020, the MasterForex-V Academy community has once again expressed its trust and recognition to the company, having honoured it with the title of "World Most Reliable Broker."

The company received two more awards based on the results of the annual voting on the IAFT Awards website. It is organized by the International Association of Forex Traders (IAFT), in which more than 200,000 traders from various countries take part. Each of them can vote on the award website, which makes it possible to assess the activities of a broker as objectively as possible.

For the third year in a row, NordFX won the Best Broker in Asia nomination by a wide margin, which is an unconditional recognition of the company's active work and success in this most important region of the planet.

And another award from the International Association of Forex Traders, the title of the Best Cryptocurrency Broker of 2020, was a testament to the high quality of services that the company provides for operations in the digital asset market.


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First, a review of last week’s events:

- EUR/USD. The dollar has been falling, and the EUR/USD pair has been rising accordingly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last March. And now it is no longer far from its Q1 2018 highs. True, the result of the last three weeks can be considered zero. And the blame is not only the Christmas and New Year holidays, but also the growth in the yield of US Treasury bonds, coupled with the hawkish statements of the Fed representatives.
After the certification of President-elect Biden and the majority of Democrats in the Senate, the yield of 10-year-old American Treasuries skyrocketed, pulling the dollar with it. The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Thomas Barkin, said that the growth in Treasury yields confirms the desire of investors to see higher interest rates on USD, and the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Patrick Harker, predicted that the curtailment of the QE program could begin in the second half of 2021. All this sharply reduced the appetite of the bulls, who began to close long positions in EUR/USD, as a result of which the pair ended the week at 1.2225;

- GBP/USD. The storms associated with the signing of the Brexit agreement subsided, and, following the EUR/USD, the GBP/USD pair took a breather. Having reached a high of 1.3705 on January 04, by the end of the week it returned to where it had already visited in mid-late December, and finished at 1.3560;

- USD/JPY. Three weeks ago, we predicted the movement of the pair from the central line to the upper border of the medium-term channel, along which it has been sliding smoothly south from the end of March 2020. This is exactly what happened. Twice, on January 4 and 5, after bouncing off the central line, the pair went up sharply, approaching the upper border of the channel at 104.10 on January 8. A small pullback followed, and it froze at 103.95. Note that the 104.00 zone has been a strong support/resistance level for the last four months, from which the pair has repeatedly bounced off in one direction or another;

- Cryptocurrencies. it was 12 years ago, on January 3, 2009, that a person or group of people under the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto launched the main bitcoin network, mining a genesis block with 50 BTC. A few days later, on January 12, the first bitcoin transaction took place: Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney. And more recently, in July 2020, information appeared on the Whale Alert Twitter account that before his mysterious disappearance more than ten years ago, Nakamoto managed to mine 1,125,150 BTC. Now, when bitcoin has reached the mark of $41,000, the value of these coins would exceed $45 billion, and Nakamoto would have taken the 25th place among the richest people on the planet.
Here, in fact, we have already announced the most important news of the past week: the quotes of the main cryptocurrency exceeded $41,000 on Friday, January 8. Thus, starting in December 2020, in just five weeks, each BTC coin grew 115% heavier.
Which pleases not only investors, but also miners. December turned out to be their most successful month in the last three years. According to the analytical service Block Research, in December the total revenue of miners reached $692 million, which is almost $1 million per hour.
At the moment, the cryptocurrency mining market is dominated by China, which, according to some estimates, accounts for more than 50% of the global hash rate. The head of Ripple even called Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies controlled by China.
By the way, about Ripple. The last week and a half have given some hope to the owners of this altcoin. Recall that while the rest of the top coins were growing in price, the XRP/USD pair, starting from November 24, was steadily going down. Starting at $0.77, it fell to $0.17 by the end of 2020, shrinking 78%.
But this is not all either. The biggest disaster awaited Ripple in the futures market. On December 23, the price of the March futures for this token fell to $0.00023 on the BitMEX derivative platform. Investors sold 80 million coins in one minute - this is how the market reacted to the lawsuit of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which accused this startup of illegally selling securities under the guise of XRP for $1.3 billion.
Now the situation has stabilized somewhat, and XRP/USD is quoted at $0.31 on January 8. And if a trader placed orders in advance to buy Ripple at the minimum price, then they made a profit of 1350% in just the last two weeks.
Returning to the main cryptocurrency, we note that its volatility, of course, is not as cosmic as that of Ripple, but it still remains more than impressive, reaching 10% per hour. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index is in a very overbought zone: at 95 out of 100. But, despite this, following the BTC/USD quotes, the total crypto market capitalization continues to grow steadily, having reached $1.1 trillion. At the same time, the bitcoin dominance index came close to 70%.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. We described in detail a week ago how analysts from the world's leading banks and financial agencies see the rate of this pair in 2021. The median forecast is 1.2500, which corresponds to the January-February highs of three years ago.
As for the near future, 60% of experts hope that this January will become, if not a month of trend reversal, then at least a sufficiently deep correction of the pair to the south, which will return it to the level of 1.2050, or even 1.1900. The nearest support is in the 1.2100 zone. However, as for the indicators, this development was supported by only 80% of indicators on H4. On D1, both oscillators and trend indicators have taken a neutral position.
40% of analysts side with the bulls, supported by graphical analysis on H4 and D1. According to them, the pair, having pushed back from 1.2200, should return to the uptrend, and we will soon see it at 1.2350. And then 1.2500 is not far off.
As for the events of the coming week, of interest are the data on the US consumer market, which will be published on Wednesday January 13 and Friday January 15. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is also scheduled to make a speech at the end of the working week, and the market will wait whether he confirms the words of his colleagues Thomas Barkin and Patrick Harker regarding a possible increase in interest rates and curtailment of the quantitative easing (QE) program;

- GBP/USD. In general, the forecast for the next week or two here is very similar to the forecast for the euro/dollar. Technical indicators on D1 provide either neutral or multi-directional signals. 60% of experts, 70% of oscillators and 75% of trend indicators on H4 vote for the fall of the pair. 40% of analysts are for its growth, as well as the remaining indicators on H4 and graphical analysis on both timeframes. Support levels are 1.3525, 1.3485 and 1.3285. The next strong support is in the 1.3185 zone. Resistance levels are 1.3620 and 1.3725.
As for the events of the coming week, we should pay attention to the speech of the head of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey, which will take place on Monday, January 11;

- USD/JPY. How the yen will behave largely depends on both the risk sentiment of investors and the behavior of US Treasury securities. For now, most analysts (55%) are confident that the pair will stay within the downward medium-term channel and, having fought off its upper border around 104.00, will return to its central zone. This possibility is confirmed by 25% of oscillators giving signals on the pair being overbought on H4 and D1. The nearest support is 103.65, the next one is 103.00. The target is located in the 102.50 area.
35% of experts and graphical analysis on D1 vote for the fact that the pair will still be able to break through the upper border of the designated channel and rise to the zone 104.70-105.00. The next target of the bulls is 105.70; And finally, the remaining 10% of analysts are neutral, suggesting that the pair will fluctuate around Pivot Point 104.00;

- cryptocurrencies. Investors' optimism was added by the imminent coming to power in the United States of the Joe Biden administration. The founder of the Galaxy Digital crypto bank, Mike Novogratz, noted on CNBC that Trump's team was never able to stop the record growth of the main cryptocurrency, and expressed hope that financial regulators under the leadership of the new president would take a more loyal position. “I hope that after the inauguration [January 20, 2021] we will get more progressive regulators. I will be happy to wait for the new administration and get a regulatory framework that supports rather than fights cryptocurrencies,” said Novogratz.
As for the entry into the market of large institutional investors, in addition to regulatory restrictions, they are hampered by extremely high volatility of major cryptocurrencies. Thus, experts at the investment bank JPMorgan believe that the image of an alternative to gold will make bitcoin even more popular and predict its growth to $146,000. But this requires convergence of the volatility indicators of bitcoin and gold, and this is a "multi-year process."
Looking at what's been happening with bitcoin lately, JPMorgan's estimate may seem too conservative to many. According to investment analytics from Pantera Capital, the market is just weeks away from seeing Bitcoin price at $115,000. Speaking on CNBC, Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital investment company, called the limited supply of bitcoin as a key driver of growth in the value of this cryptocurrency. Currently, giants like PayPal and Grayscale are buying more BTC than bitcoin miners can mine, he explained. 
At the moment, Bitcoin and Ethereum Grayscale trusts have accumulated digital assets of $14.075 billion and $1.808 billion, respectively. And, according to analyst Kevin Rooke, this giant continues to buy bitcoins, which suggests that Grayscale is set for long-term growth in the value of the largest digital currency.
Another popular analyst, Willie Woo, agrees with this. In his opinion, after bitcoin crossed the border of $24.000, it became clear that the market finally came under the control of long-term investors.
Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges, also raised its forecast. “We thought the $50,000 price was reasonable, but that number will definitely be higher. I think that we will reach $75.000 - $100.000 for 1 BTC, by the end of 2021” says the CEO of its US unit Catherine Coley.
And finally, the most daring predictions for the BTC/USD pair, made by Insider co-founder Henry Blodget and the CEO of the Kraken bitcoin exchange Jesse Powell: both named $1 million per coin. However, the former believes that this will happen thanks to speculators, while the latter relies on the growth of institutional investments in cryptocurrency.
As for altcoin No.1, the capitalization of ethereum has exceeded $140 billion, which is many times more than that of such auto giants as, for example, General Motors ($59.5 billion), BMW ($47.1 billion) and Ferrari ($36.2 billion). Capital inflows into ETH will be even more significant in 2021, according to Messari analyst Ryan Watkins. Some investors are already concentrating exclusively on ethereum. And the key event for this altcoin will be the launch of ethereum futures on the Chicago Exchange (CME). In general, according to the estimates of the trader of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, Michael van de Poppe, a strong rally in the altcoin market should start after the first quarter of this year.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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NordFX brokerage company has summed up the performance of its clients' trade transactions in December, last month of the past year 2020.

The highest profit in December was received by a client from China, account number 1345xxx. His profit exceeded the milestone of 100,000 and amounted to 107.654 USD. This impressive result was obtained mainly in transactions with the EUR/USD, GBP/USD currency pairs and gold (XAU/USD).

In second place is a trader from India (account number 1518xxx), whose profit amounted to just under 40 thousand dollars (39.506 USD), and was obtained through trading in many pairs, primarily GBP/USD and GBP/JPY, as well as operations with altcoin No.1, Ethereum (ETH/USD).

The third place in the December TOP-3 belongs to another Chinese trader (account No.1465xxx), with a result of 38.409 USD, who also made transactions with the British pound and gold, GBP/USD and XAU/USD.

The passive investment services:
- in CopyTrading in December, the Mak jemah signal (increase of 111.06% with a fairly serious maximum drawdown of 37.12%) attracted attention, as well as KennyFXPRO (an increase of 27.61% with a moderate drawdown of 6.65%);
- in the PAMM service, the results are more modest. Here the leader was the manager with the nickname The Owl Midnight Scalper, who showed an increase of 18.43% over the month. However, the drawdown here was significantly lower, only 2,39%, which can be attractive for investors who prefer stable income with a moderate degree of risk.

Among the IB partners, NordFX TOP-3 is as follows:
- the largest amount of commission, USD 8.425, was accrued to a partner from Sri Lanka, account No.1483xxx;
- next is a partner from India, account number 1491xxx, who received 5.991 USD;
- and finally, the top three in December 2020 is closed by another Indian partner, account No.1328ххх, who received $5.704 as a reward. 


Notice: These materials are not investment recommendations or guidelines for working in financial markets and are intended for informational purposes only. Trading in financial markets is risky and can result in a complete loss of deposited funds.

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If someone asks which currency pair is the most important and most liquid on Forex, the answer will follow immediately. Even a beginner will say: “Of course, EUR/USD”. There is even nothing to doubt about this: the trading volume for this pair reaches $1.1 trillion per day. These currencies represent two of the world's most powerful economies, and the US dollar is the first most important reserve currency. Most central banks continue to store large volumes of their gold and foreign exchange reserves (over 60%) in US dollars. The euro comes in second with over 22%.

It should be noted that the dollar is gradually losing its positions, according to Bloomberg, its peak (45.3%) in global payments was in April 2015. Now, following the SWIFT statistics, the euro has managed, although not by much, to bypass the dollar. In October 2020, 37.8% of money transfers served by this system were in the euro, while the share of the dollar was 37.64%. (The British pound took the third place with a huge margin with 6.92%).

Despite the weakening US currency, it is certainly too early to bury the dollar. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced in the summer of 2020 that about 50% of cross-border loans and international bonds are denominated in USD. Finally, about half of all trade invoices in the world are issued in dollars, even for non-US trade.

And let's not forget that market analysts evaluate the strength of different currencies by looking at the US Dollar Index (DXY). In fact, this is a basket of monetary units of six countries, the value of which is compared with USD. And the euro takes the lion's share of 57.6% in it (the remaining 5 account for only 42.4%).

All the above statistics indicate unambiguously that EUR/USD is number 1 among the major pairs on Forex. It is this pair that sets the main trends for other currencies. And that is why it is necessary for every trader to know and understand whatever happened to it, is happening and will happen.

 
A Bit of History

Surprisingly, despite its importance, the EUR/USD pair is quite young. The euro appeared thanks to the creation of the European Union in 1992, first in non-cash form, and it was only on January 1, 1999 that it officially replaced the rest of the European currencies. A few more years passed and in June 2002 the EUR became the sole means of payment in the Eurozone, displacing the then favorite, the German mark (USD/DEM) from the pedestal.

This event was preceded by two others, which had an important influence on the formation of the subsequent EUR/USD exchange rate. The first is a cut in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve in late 2000, and the second is a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks, the largest in the history of mankind, committed in the United States on September 11, 2001, including the destruction of the twin skyscrapers of the World Trade Center in New York. As a result, having started from the rate of 0.93 dollars per euro, by the middle of 2008 the pair rose to the level of 1.60. In other words, the dollar has lost more than 70% against the euro.

However, the European Central Bank (ECB) did not want to see the euro so strong, as it posed serious problems for European exports and dealt a blow to the trade balance. Therefore, verbal intervention began in the market. In addition, positive news constantly came from the United States regarding the state of the economy of this country, as a result of which the EUR/USD pair began to slide southward and recorded the low of the second decade of the 21st century near the 1.032 mark by the end of December 2016.

Many analysts then predicted a quick parity for the pair at the level of 1: 1, but this did not happen. And now the European currency is quoted in the area of 1.22 dollars per 1 euro.  

What Happened: Year 2020

Exactly a year ago, we published forecasts given by experts from leading world banks regarding the EUR / USD rate for 2020, and now we can decide which of them was right and to what extent.

Thus, back in December 2019 analysts at Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon and a number of other banks reached consensus, predicting a fall in the US dollar in 2020. The main reason was the slowdown in global economic growth. In addition, it was predicted that on the eve of the presidential elections, the US Federal Reserve under pressure from Donald Trump will continue to reduce interest rates, or at least keep them at the current level.

Both of these forecasts proved to be absolutely correct. If at the end of 2019. the DXY dollar index fluctuated around 97, then after 12 months it fell below 90 points. The interest rate also went down: in December 2019 - January 2020 it was 1.75%, in early March it was lowered to 1.25%, and then completely dropped to 0.25%.

Recall that in December 2019, only the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Chinese Wuhan was recorded, and there was no idea of a global pandemic. But even then, the Financial Times published a forecast of Citigroup experts that the quantitative easing (QE) policy pursued by the US Federal Reserve and pumping the market with cheap dollar liquidity could cause the dollar to fall. Colleagues from Citigroup were supported then by analysts at the Swiss bank Lombard Odier, as well as one of the world's largest investment companies, BlackRock. And this scenario also came true 100%, and the coronavirus pandemic only played the role of a catalyst for this process: almost a quarter of all existing dollars were released in just one past year.

Some conspiracy theorists argue that the coronavirus was deliberately invented to implement the plan of a secret world government and help the financial elite buy up the bulk of dollar liquidity on the cheap. But exposing all sorts of conspiracies is not the purpose of this review. Therefore, let us turn to specific figures and see whose forecast turned out to be the most accurate.

According to Bloomberg, the consensus forecast of the largest market operators suggested that by the end of 2020, the US dollar wouldl "lose weight" by another 400-500 points, and the EUR/USD pair would rise to the 1.16 zone.

JPMorgan Chase specialists predicted the level of 1.14 for this pair for the end of 2020. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch called 1.15. And the German Deutsche Bank and the French Societe Generale pointed to the level of $1.20 per euro. The last two forecasts turned out to be the most accurate: the pair reached a high of 1.225 at the end of 2020. (Recall that all these scenarios did not take into account the consequences of the blow that COVID-19has inflicted on the economy).

 
What Will Happen: Year 2021

Some experts believe that for the United States, the onset of COVID-19 can be compared with the Third World War: more than 300,000 dead, a third of the working population is left without a constant source of income. The pandemic hit the country at the end of the 10-year economic growth cycle and in a presidential election year. Additional pressure on the economy was exerted by the trade wars that Donald Trump unleashed with China and Europe, as well as the growth of the dollar supply.

Most likely, in 2021, money will actively flow to Europe, and the dollar will face a deep devaluation. True, different analysts assess the depth of a possible fall in the USD differently.

So, for example, Goldman Sachs predicts a fall in the weighted USD rate in 2021 by only 6%, while Morgan Stanley expects the EUR/USD pair to rise from current levels to 1.25. (By the way, the figure 1.25 also sounds in many other moderate forecasts).

But there are also those who predict a catastrophic fall in the American currency. Prominent economists, Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff and former Morgan Stanley Asia head and Fed Board member Stephen Roach estimate the likelihood of a dollar collapse in 2021 at 50%. At the same time, Roach believes that the devaluation of the dollar can reach 35%. A slightly smaller but also impressive devaluation of 20% is forecast by analysts at Citigroup. That is, in their opinion, we can see the EUR/USD pair in the 1.40-1.44 zone by the end of next year.

What can stop the dollar from falling?

Naturally, the Federal Reserve's monetary policy tightening. As of today, long-term inflation expectations have already jumped to 1.85%, which is not far from the regulator's target threshold of 2.0-2.5%. This inflation leads to the depreciation of the dollar. And at some point, lest the US currency collapse definitively, the Fed will be forced, albeit with great reluctance, to stop pumping the economy with cheap money and start a cycle of raising basic interest rates.

By the way, Europe, perhaps even more than the USA, is interested in stopping the growth of the EUR/USD pair.

Since mid-March 2020, the euro has strengthened against the dollar almost continuously. This is despite the fact that the ECB has printed over €2.2 trillion in a year and set negative interest rates.

There are calculations showing that a 10% strengthening of the euro is reducing Eurozone GDP by about 1%. And imagine that the EUR/USD pair will rise, as predicted in Citigroup, to the level of 1.40. Such growth would put all European exports at a blow. Who will then buy goods from the EU at rapidly rising prices? 

The ECB already had a chance to weaken the euro against the dollar. However, this did not happen: the European regulator has decided not to interfere in the affairs of the foreign exchange markets and simply limit itself to "monitoring the exchange rate." But, according to many analysts, with the growth of the pair to levels around 1.25, the ECB will be forced to take very serious steps to limit the further growth of its currency. And it is quite possible that the next program of assistance to the EU economy in the amount of €2 or €3 trillion will be adopted in the near future. And in the wake of Europe, similar steps will be taken by the central banks of Great Britain, Canada, China and many other countries. And if 2019-2020 can be called the time of the World Trade Wars, then 2021 will be the time of the World Currency War.

Although ... most likely we will see both wars at the same time.   

Happy New Year, 2021! It promises to be very interesting!



NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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Technical analysis in the Forex market provides a wide range of opportunities to study and predict prices. The number of instruments that are capable of solving the tasks set by the trader is hundreds. If the indicators are justifiably amenable to criticism for signal lagging, the levels of support and resistance find their admirers even among  people most skeptical towards technical analysis. This is not surprising. Forex levels are a benchmark that all traders, without exception, pay attention to.

Levels are abnormal zones on the price chart, near which there are sharp changes in the dynamics of quotations. Thus, when the price approaches the levels, there is a noticeable response: bounces, reversals, breakouts, acceleration or deceleration of quotes . Since this happens with enviable consistency, the trader has the opportunity to create trading strategies based on such levels. Trading with their help becomes active, impulsive and allows you to fix a good profit in a short time frame.

The Reason Why Markup is Effective

Trading in the financial markets is carried out using a huge number of instruments. However, there are only two key areas in the analysis - technical and fundamental. Textbooks on them are written and regularly published in all languages of the world. This creates a unified learning base for all traders and investors. Therefore, guided by a similar algorithm of actions, the vast majority of traders will, like you, see Forex levels and push quotes in their direction.

In addition to the same algorithm of actions, do not forget about the convenience of calculations. For example, when a trader chooses a place to place Stop Loss , it is easier for them to focus on round levels. This is convenient, because in the heat of active trading there is no time for the perfect calculation of points - everything is rounded one way or another.

The third argument is monetary policy. Each head of the Central Bank and the government sets a price corridor, which is the basis of the budget. Out-of-bounds always result in the intervention of the regulator.

Types of Levels and Their Differences

There are many ways to calculate levels, and as a result, their types. If we generalize them conditionally, we can distinguish the following main groups: horizontal, sloping, dynamic. The key difference between them is in the way they are built, and the number of elements required for this.

Ways to Build Horizontal Levels

To do the markup, your trading platform must have drawing tools. Broker NordFX offers its clients to use the world's most popular platform - MetaTrader 4 (MT4). Its graphical toolkit, among other things, includes horizontal lines.

Resistance and support are built on historical points where rebounds have occurred more than once in the past. The support level is drawn through local lows, and the resistance level is drawn through local highs.

For many, the debatable question is at what prices to draw the line. There is no basic difference. The level is marked both by the body of the candle and by its shadow. There is a concept of a zone, so a deviation of several points is the norm. Moreover, the higher the timeframe, the wider this zone will be.

An example of how horizontal Forex levels are marked in Fig. 1:

Sloping levels

These levels are no different from the previous ones, as far as their impact on price is concerned. The main difference is the angle of the lines. They are drawn at local lows/highs and completely depend on the direction of the trend. The main rule when applying is that the price should bounce. Two points are enough to draw this level. This is a simple geometric rule for drawing line segments.

In literature, they are also called the trend line. If you draw such lines parallel to each other, you can identify price channels. An example of one of them can be seen below in Fig. 2:

They are used for only one purpose - to find the entry point. It is difficult to set price targets according to them. By the way, when working with sloping levels, the extremes should be consistent, namely, above each other (for an upward market) or below (for a downward one).

Dynamic

In the classical understanding, levels are manual markup. However, progress has gone far from the textbooks of the 80s and 90s of the last century. In addition to markup, indicator techniques are gaining popularity: Moving Average, Envelopes, Donchian Channel, Bollinger Bands.

Their main feature is that they are volatile and are rearranged following the price. This is both their strength and weakness.

The principles of building the horizontal and dynamic level are different, but the properties and principles of use are the same. As an example (Fig. 3), we propose to study the most famous of them, Moving Average, and working it out as a level:

The Difference Between Support and Resistance

Beginners sometimes find it difficult to clearly define what support is, and mistakenly call it resistance, and vice versa. They have the same properties in terms of trade practice. Quotes bounce off them, and accelerate sharply after the breakout. However, the difference still exists: it is the position of the price relative to the level.

Support is the level that the price relies on during its movement. It connects important lows and occurs when traders can no longer, or do not want to sell this financial instrument at lower prices. Resistance, on the other hand, is a level that connects important highs (tops) of the market and stands in the way of growth, preventing the price from going up.

In both cases, it is important in what trend the markup is considered. They can change places during a breakout. An example of how support turns into resistance is shown below (Figure 4):

How to Build Forex Support and Resistance Levels

You can build levels on charts of any timeframe in different ways. Professionals often and quickly do this manually using the auxiliary charting tools built into the MT4 terminal. However, it is difficult for beginners to find extremes. To simplify their detection, auxiliary indicators such as, for example, Fractals or ZigZag are used, which automatically highlight local lows/highs.

Pivot, Murray, Fibonacci formulas are also used to calculate support and resistance levels. They are implemented as separate user indicators. It should be noted that there are many other indicators that apply all types of markup without your involvement. Many of them are already integrated into MetaTrader 4, making market analysis much easier.

How Levels Are Used in a Trading Strategy

Patterns in price movements near support or resistance make it possible to use them for different purposes. One of the most important purposes in developing a trading strategy is the signal function. Trading in this case occurs both on a rebound from the level, and on its breakdown. There is also a mixed type of trading, which includes other signals for opening or closing positions as well.

The ways of trading at levels can be very different. Conservative trading , advocated by many textbook authors, involves working in the direction of the trend, while aggressive trading involves opening positions in both directions or against the trend. Each technique has a right to exist, but one should consider how strong the level is. The probability of a breakout of a strong level is extremely low, so rebounds are practiced in this case. Weak levels , which have only a couple of touches, are overcome by the price like a knife in butter. Therefore, the probability of a breakdown of a weak level is quite high. Although false breakouts often occur on Forex - cases when the price seems to have already overcome the support or resistance zone, but instead of going further, it turns back and returns to its previous positions.

At moments when the strength of traders playing to raise and lower the price is roughly equal, there can be price consolidation. If you see that the price is being squeezed like a spring - consolidation is there for you. And we can expect that at some point this spring will be open, which will lead to the appearance of a sharp impulse in the change in quotes and an increase in volatility.

Setting Stop Loss and Take Profit

According to many traders, a trading strategy without using Stop Loss is a time bomb. Beginners find it difficult to choose where to place it on the chart, because there is a possibility that the price will accidentally hook it. And it is very disappointing to see how your order closes with a loss by Stop Loss, after which the price will reverse and go in a direction that is profitable for you. That is why it is customary to place Stop Loss beyond the nearest level at a distance of several points from it. Recall that this distance depends on the timeframe you are working on. The higher the timeframe, the greater that distance must be. Thus, on the H4 time frame and above it is measured by dozens of points, forming not a line, but a support/resistance zone. It may also depend on the selected Forex currency pair, as well as the current volatility of the market. 

Also, in addition to Stop Loss, levels are used to solve one more task - to determine a price target for profit fixing. Take Profit at the opened trade is placed on a similar principle, which is described above. However, it is put on the open order direction, rather than against it. And here, again, the concept of a zone must be taken into account, because just as the price can slip several points beyond the level (false breakout), the same few points will not reach it.

A huge number of trading strategies have been created at the support and resistance levels of Forex, the effectiveness of which is also influenced by a number of other factors. This is the accuracy of quotes, the size of spreads, the speed of execution of trades, etc. And here NordFX clients have an obvious advantage, since the trading conditions provided by this broker are among the best on the market.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Working on Forex support and resistance levels has a number of advantages and disadvantages. The cons of their use are as follows:
- The presence of false breakdowns;
- The presence of slippage (backlash), which turns a thin line into a support/resistance zone, the width of which depends on many factors: the currency pair being traded, the time frame and the current market situation. All this makes it difficult to set orders and to open and close a trading position.

The strengths of the levels are as follows:
- They have a lot of information about the dynamics of the market;
- They allow you to define the price corridor, the market entry and exit points;
- They are applicable on any timeframe and for any trading instrument;
- There are many charting tools and indicators that automatically determine these levels. Many of them are already integrated into the MT4 terminal;
- A huge number of ready-made solutions -­ scripts and robot advisors that allow you to conduct semi-automatic and fully automatic trading using data levels;
- Ability to include in any trading strategy;
- A large number of signals are generated on each timeframe.

Only practice can teach you how to use support and resistance levels effectively. And in order for you to gain the necessary experience without any financial costs, we recommend using a demo account of the NordFX brokerage company. It can be opened for free, and registration will take no more than a couple of minutes of your time.


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Is it the "gold of the XXI century" or a soap bubble about to burst? We have repeatedly discussed the advantages and disadvantages of bitcoin over the past year,  and analyzed the reasons for its ups and downs. Therefore, we decided to cite only the opinions of experts regarding the prospects for the main cryptocurrency in this review.
You may decide to be patient and invest in bitcoin for a long-term profitability. Or, on the contrary, you do not want to take risks and prefer to forget this word altogether. In general, the decision to buy, sell bitcoin or simply do nothing is always yours.


Optimists' predictions: Only to the North!

1. Bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki is convinced that cryptocurrency will continue to rise to $50,000 next year amid further influx of institutional money. The entrepreneur, having said that “America is in trouble”, precludes the “death” of the US dollar and a “bright future” for gold, silver, bitcoin.
“Bitcoin's rise has outpaced gold and silver,” he wrote. - What does it mean? This means that you need to buy as much bitcoin and precious metal as you can and don't put it off. The train is already leaving. The dollar is dying. When the dollar falls, the price doesn't matter anymore. What matters is how much gold, silver and bitcoins you have.”

2. According to analysts at the JPMorgan Chase banking holding, bitcoin outperforms gold as an alternative currency and has a significantly better chance of continued growth. According to their report, the capitalization of the crypto market is not large enough yet. JPMorgan estimates that the physical gold market, including ETF backed by it, is $2.6 trillion. Bitcoin needs to hit the $130,000 mark to catch up with the precious metal in this respect.
According to JPMorgan Chase, institutional investors can invest up to $600 billion in the first cryptocurrency in the coming years. This requires American, European and Japanese insurance companies and pension funds to invest only 1% of their assets in bitcoin. However, at the moment there are still regulatory requirements for the selection of investment assets in terms of risks and performance of obligations for such traditional investors. This can limit the amount of funds available for buying BTC.

3. The well-known Dutch cryptanalyst PlanB, who developed the popular BTC stock-to-flow valuation model, believes that the price of the reference cryptocurrency may rise to $100,000 by the end of 2021, and maybe up to $300,000. PlanB admits his forecast sounds extremely optimistic. However, the rise in the price of bitcoin in the past allows him to make such predictions.
The expert notes that during periods of market corrections, the algorithms of bitcoin whales pick up hundreds of portions of 0.01 BTC from "weak hands". Later these coins “disappear” in “deep” cold vaults. This leads to a supply shock and triggers a bull market.

4. Scott Minerd, investment director of Guggenheim Investments, considers bitcoin to be a grossly undervalued asset, even at current price levels of around $23,000. “Our fundamental work shows that bitcoin should be worth about $400,000,” he said in a conversation with Bloomberg TV.
Analysts at Guggenheim Investments came to this conclusion based on two factors: the limited emission of bitcoin and its value relative to gold. There are many common characteristics that cryptocurrency shares with the precious metal, Minerd said, but bitcoin, unlike gold, "has extraordinary value in the context of transactions."

5. Popular analyst and founder of Quantum Economics Mati Greenspan believes that “we are at the very beginning of a period of mass investor entry into the cryptosphere. If demand continues to rise and supply is constrained, then there is a possibility that we will see growth of 250% or more." At the same time, Mati Greenspan excludes a scenario in which BTC will soar to $400,000. “The rally will certainly continue, but there is no need to talk about any astronomical figures yet,” the analyst sums up. He believes that, unlike in 2017, the market is now controlled not by speculators but by corporations and large investors interested in its stability. The entry of these large players leads to the fact that volatility will weaken, and this area will become more attractive.

6. Bloomberg experts believe that there is no reason for a change in the direction of bitcoin's movement now, and its cost may increase to $50,000 in 2021.  “The dollar is gradually losing its position, ducking other fiat currencies,” writes this authoritative agency, “All this is noticed by investors who are forced to switch to alternative assets.” Bitcoin has significantly more support now, which minimizes the likelihood of a pullback. Open interest in the CME bitcoin futures market has exceeded $1 billion for the first time in history, which also speaks of growing support from investors.
Looking into the longer term, Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone has suggested that within 5 years the price of the main cryptocurrency could exceed $100,000.

7. A similar point of view is followed by the American billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, head of Tudor Investment Corporation, who said that “cryptocurrencies are facing a crazy flight on a rocket with ascents and descents along the way.” “In 20 years, bitcoin will be significantly higher than the point where it is now. From here, the road for it lies north,” Yahoo! Finance quoted him.

8. The report of the fintech company Cindicator is of great interest. This is due to the fact that the figures presented in it are not the opinion of individual specialists, but the average results of the survey of more than 156,000 participants of the crypto market, according to which bitcoin next year will rise to $29,569. The respondents with the most accurate forecasts, the so-called "superforcasters", expect even greater growth on average, to $32,056.
According to the calculations of the “Hybrid Intelligence” Cindicator, which uses machine learning algorithms to process data from a team of analysts, the BTC rate next year will not exceed $25,222.

9. According to Mike Novogratz, head of the Galaxy Digital crypto trading bank, everyone should invest 2-3% of their funds in bitcoin. “After that, it is enough to wait a little time, and you will be surprised, but cryptocurrencies will cost significantly more. If you wait for five years, the assets will multiply several times,” he wrote.

10. According to experts of Stack Funds, bitcoin is ready to rise to a new high of $86,000.

11. The Director General of Global Macro Investor Raoul Pal expects that even conservative institutional investors, who usually prefer precious metals, will start investing in bitcoin next year. Therefore, Pal made a bold assumption that the rate of the first cryptocurrency could reach $250,000 in a year and placed an order for the sale of all the gold he had in order to invest in BTC and ETH in the ratio 80 to 20.

12. Even more inspiring forecast was given by Gemini crypto exchange founder Tyler Winklevoss, one of the twin brothers who are called the first cryptocurrency billionaires. He said on CNBC that the value of bitcoin could exceed the $500,000 mark. 
"The question isn't whether bitcoin will cost $500,000 or not, the question is how quickly it will happen. In fact, even this assessment seems to me very conservative - the game has not really even started," said Tyler's brother Cameron Winklevoss.

13. A similar figure is also called by a member of the Board of Directors of the Bitcoin Foundation Bobby Lee, according to whom the price of the main coin can reach $500,000 by the year 2028.

14. According to experts from one of the shareholders of Tesla, the ARK Invest fund, the capitalization of bitcoin may exceed $5 trillion. This will take the coin up to 10 years, but massive investments can start earlier. This figure could reach $1 trillion in the next 5 years, after which growth will occur at a faster rate.

15. A forecast was presented by Tom Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of one of the largest banks in the world, Citibank. According to him, thanks to consolidation in the status of digital gold, the rate of the first cryptocurrency can reach $318,000 by the end of 2021.
In his new report, Bitcoin: Gold for the 21st Century, Fitzpatrick writes: "Bitcoin moved in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, when new changes in the monetary regime took place and we dropped to zero interest rates." And further he concludes that currently, financial stimulus measures against the background of the coronavirus pandemic have led to the formation of conditions similar to the 1970s, when the dollar inflation led to the increased demand for gold.

16. Popular TV presenter and Wall-Street veteran Max Kaiser believes that at current levels, bitcoin futures traders are suppressing the price of BTC to give institutional players a chance to "load the boat." However, once the asset reaches the $28,000 mark (the intermediate benchmark set by Kaiser), the number of coins for sale will go zero, and thanks to the deficit, their price will burst up to the cosmic heights.
“For the poor of this world, the current price and availability of BTC,” says Kaiser, “is the only opportunity in life to purchase non-forfeitable hard money before the price of it rises to 40-80 times, and prices will soar to the level of golden parity at around $400,000.”
“The demand for bitcoin is growing almost exponentially,” he says, “while its supply is mathematically fixed at 900 coins per day. And in 2024, the supply will be halved to 450 BTC per day. That's why I think people simply won't have the opportunity to buy coins, since the price can soar even to $1,000,000 per BTC. Meanwhile, Gen Z, who bought a lot of bitcoins when they were under $100, will become the new global power elite. The world order is about to change...” 


Pessimists' Predictions: A Fly in the Ointment

1. Despite the optimism in general, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz believes that bitcoin instability can be expected in the near future. Its price in 2021 will certainly not return to zero, but could fall to the $14,000mark, or even $12,000. Although a correction to such levels is unlikely, investors need to be prepared for losses of 30-40%.

2. According to the average forecast of fintech company Cindicator, the lower bar of the trading range for the BTC/USD pair in 2021 will be at the level of $15,000. “Superforcasters” are less optimistic and expect a decrease to $12,000, and according to the calculations of “Hybrid Intelligence” Cindicator, the bitcoin rate will not go down next year below $16,000.

3. Matt Maley, strategist at financial services firm Miller Tabak, believes the cryptocurrency market will face a major setback next year. According to him, the main coin may fall in price by about 25-30 percent in the first months of 2021. According to Maley, the market is overheated due to large-scale investments, which is why corrections by one or several thousand dollars may become a norm.
“I consider cryptocurrencies to be a promising asset, but the minimum correction size next year will be 10%. At the same time, the fall may be at the level of 30% or even more. Therefore, it is worth being prudent before large-scale investments,” the specialist warns.



NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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Dear clients and partners! We extend our warmest congratulations on the upcoming holidays.

The outgoing 2020 turned out to be not the easiest one for most of us, requiring resilience, a lot of effort and energy. It has been a difficult time, but we are confident that together we can overcome any difficulties.

Let the coming year be the year of new joint victories and achievements. Let all adversity and troubles remain behind us, and only prosperity and success lie ahead.

Let all your hopes and dreams come true in the new year. We wish you and all your loved ones good health, prosperity, endless joyful smiles, and optimism! 

Happy New Year!

 
First, a review of last week’s events:
  
- EUR/USD. According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the most popular strategy in the market after “buy shares” is “sell the dollar”. Speculative short positions in this currency have risen to a two-year high. The USD index (DXY) has fallen below 90, while it was at 102.82 on March 15, 2020. As for the retreat of the dollar in recent days, it is taking place against the background of the discussion in the US Congress of an additional package of fiscal stimuli. After all, every new dollar poured into the country's economy will lead to a decrease in its purchasing power.
The Federal Reserve meeting held on Thursday, December 17 had virtually no effect on market sentiment. The interest rate remained at the same level, and, one might say, a blissful pre-Christmas mood prevailed at the press conference: nothing new was said about the prospects for further quantitative easing and no worries about the current state of the economy were voiced. Although, perhaps, such passivity was caused not only by Christmas, but also by the change of the US President. The new owner has not yet settled in the White House. And the old one is already a duck lame on both legs.
True, thanks to the hopes of investors for the future growth of the S&P500 and for a positive outcome of the Brexit negotiations, the EUR/USD pair still continued its movement northward, adding about 140 points in a week. As for the final chord, it sounded at the height of 1.2250;

- GBP/USD. With the weakening USD and hopes that the Brexit talks will succeed at the last moment, the pair continues to push higher. At the week's high, December 17, it reached 1.3625, showing a gain of as much as 400 points. However, then a correction followed, and it completed the five-day period just below the level of 1.3500.
Belief in the deal is fueled by media reports that the fishing problem in British waters remains the last hurdle. The markets were encouraged by the statements of the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who said that there is a "narrow path" to the agreement, as well as European Commissioner for Internal Trade Michel Barnier, who confirmed that "the possibility of a trade agreement remains."
Britain also seems to agree to the deal, but, as it was stated, "not at the cost of sovereignty, and control should include the sea as well." Prime Minister Boris Johnson has threatened to keep European fishermen out of British waters for at least eight years if his three years quota fishing proposal is not accepted.
In general, Hamlet's question “To be or not to be?”, which has been sounding for 420 years, as applied to Brexit, is still open;

- USD/JPY. The yen is stable, US Treasuries remain in the same trading range, the dollar is weakening, the USD (DXY) index is falling. All this allows the USD/JPY pair to continue its smooth descent within the downstream medium-term channel, which began at the end of last March. On Thursday December 17, it reached the midline of this channel, fixing a weekly low at 102.85. The last point in the five-day period was set at 103.30;

- cryptocurrencies. What has been expected from bitcoin for three whole years has come true. It not only renewed the all-time high, not only broke through the $20,000 level, but also soared in a short period from December 12 to 17 from $18,000 to $23,620, adding more than 30%. 
If we compare the rallies in December 2017 and December 2020, the main difference between them, according to many experts, is that in the first case, the main driving force was retail investors, but now it is institutional. According to the analytical company Chainalysis, the "population" of bitcoin whales (1000 BTC and more) has been expanded with 302 new wallets since the beginning of the year and peaked at 2274 at the end of last month, and balances at the corresponding addresses increased by 1.4 million BTC during this time.
To be fair, it should be noted that the number of retail users is also growing. The number of bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance has approached the mark of 33 million, updating the historical maximum, according to the data of the analytical service Glassnode. The number of wallets with a balance of more than 1 BTC is also steadily growing. The indicator has set a new record at 827,105 recently, recovering from a slight recession at the end of September.    
Of course, we have written about this many times, the coronavirus pandemic contributed to the popularization of bitcoin. However, it is probably early to talk about the mass acceptance of cryptocurrencies by the population. So, in a survey conducted by Opinium and AltFi among UK residents, only 10% said they bought a cryptocurrency. And although the results of 2020 can be viewed as an undoubted improvement - a year ago the figure was half as much, 5.3% - it is still a very small percentage, which leaves significant potential for growth in the crypto market, the total capitalization of which reached $670 billion on December 17.
It should be noted that despite the fact that BTC/USD quotes have already by far exceeded the high of 2017, the capitalization has not reached its record value of $830 billion, recorded on 07 January 2018. That is, the rise in the value of bitcoin is fueled by significantly smaller amounts of fiat than before, which may indicate the pair is strongly overbought. This is evidenced by the values of the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which rose again in seven days from 89 to 95 and is very close to the maximum value of 100 points. But while waiting for a correction, one should take into account that the end of the year is now, the Christmas holidays are coming, and the most unexpected things can happen on the thin market - from zero volatility to new spikes to the north;


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the opinions of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. Next week on Thursday, December 24, Forex trading will end at 17:00 CET, and there will be no trading at all on December 25, Christmas. (please visit the NordFX website, the Company News section for details on the trading schedule during the Christmas and New Year holidays in the currency and cryptocurrency markets, as well as on CFD contracts).
The end of the year is a period when big players close their positions, sum up and go on vacation. But it is at this point of low liquidity in the market, as already mentioned above, that traders need to be prepared for sudden surprises. And it is not necessary that they will be as pleasant as gifts from Santa Claus. The main surprise may be the agreement between the EU and the UK on the Brexit terms (or lack thereof).  
At the time of this writing, 95% of the trend indicators on H4 and 100% on D1 are green. Also, 75% of oscillators on both timeframes look up. However, the remaining 25% signals that the pair is overbought, and a correction is possible.
Graphical analysis on H4 predicts the movement of the pair in the trading range of 1.2175-1.2300, and D1 indicates the possibility of its growth to the height of 1.2355. 80% of experts support this development. The remaining 20% expect the pair to decline to support 1.2100, and in the transition from weekly to monthly forecast, the number of bear supporters increases to 65%. Closest supports are at 1.2055 and 1.1900 levels.

- GBP/USD. As we wrote last week, there are three possible options regarding Brexit.
1 - neutral soft. It is a decision to extend the current terms of the transition period for another six months or a year in order to gradually move to rules similar to the basic rules of the World Trade Organization. In this case, a catastrophic collapse of the pound would be avoided, although the pair would go south. The nearest support level in this case is 1.3275, then 1.3100, 1.3000 and 1.2850.
2 - the “hardest” Brexit, without any agreements or prolongations, which will lead the pair to fall first to the 1.2700 horizon, and over time, possibly to the lows of May 2020. in the area of 1.2075-1.2160.
3 - the conclusion of a full-scale deal between the EU and the UK. In this case, we will see a rise of the pound first to the height of 1.3500, and then perhaps to the highs of 2018 in the area of 1.4350.
We will know soon which of these options will be chosen;

- USD/JPY. 90% of oscillators and 100% of trend indicators on D1 are still colored red, expecting further decline in the pair within the descending medium-term channel. As for analysts, they, supported by graphical analysis on H4 and D1, they consider most likely the pair to move in the trading range 102.70-104.00, that is, between the central and upper boundaries of the designated channel;

- cryptocurrencies. So, is it worth waiting for a repeat of the "crypto winter" of late 2017 - 2018? Or, after a slight correction, the BTC/USD pair will again rush to new heights?
Bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki is convinced that cryptocurrency will continue to rise to $50,000 next year amid further influx of institutional money. The entrepreneur, having said that “America is in trouble”, precludes the “death” of the US dollar and a “bright future” for gold, silver, bitcoin.
The well-known Dutch cryptanalyst PlanB, who developed the popular BTC stock-to-flow valuation model, believes that the price of the reference cryptocurrency may rise to $100,000 by the end of 2021, and maybe up to $300,000. PlanB admits that his outlook sounds extremely optimistic and even somewhat amusing for some investors. However, the rise in the price of bitcoin in the past allows him to make such predictions.
According to analysts from the financial conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, institutional investors can invest up to $600 billion in the first cryptocurrency in the coming years. This requires that American, European and Japanese insurance companies and pension funds invest only 1% of their assets in bitcoin.
As JPMorgan lead strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou noted, the recent $100 million investment by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company marks another milestone in the adoption of the first cryptocurrency by such organizations. At the same time, the analyst admits that it is quite difficult for such traditional investors to invest in cryptocurrency, since there are still regulatory requirements for the choice of investment assets in terms of risks and fulfillment of obligations. This can limit the amount of funds available for buying BTC.
In general, the topic of the attitude of government regulators to cryptocurrencies is one of the key factors for the development of this market. This issue has been actively discussed at the recent BlockShow conference. The speakers said that although decentralized finance needs to communicate with regulators, it cannot be full concessions to them. If we introduce complete regulation of the market, then it will hardly differ from fiat.
Now about the prospects of the BTC/USD pair for the next few weeks. According to the average forecast, the probability of its rise to $25,000-26,000 is estimated at 30%, above $30,000 - 10%. As for the fall, the probability that the pair will decrease to the $18.500-20,000 zone is 20%.
As for altcoins, those who at this stage are wary of investing in bitcoin may pay attention to ethereum. If BTC has already exceeded its 2017 high by 16%, then ETH is still to grow from its current values in the region of $670 to its all-time high of $1,420. And this despite the fact that this main altcoin showed better dynamics than bitcoin this year: it has added 640% from the March low against 465% for BTC.       
In addition, altcoin blockchain No.1 has recently been updated. Ethereum 2.0 has made the cryptocurrency safer, more efficient, scalable and, hopefully, potentially more profitable.
And here it is necessary to recall the recent warning of the co-founder of ethereum Vitalik Buterin, who urged not to get into debt or take out loans to buy any digital assets, be it bitcoin, ethereum or any other coins. He said he had “only a few thousand dollars of net equity” before Ethereum was created. “However, I sold half of my bitcoins to be sure I would not break up if the rate fell to zero,” he writes.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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The line of  the brokerage company NordFX trading accounts was supplemented by the new Stocks account last December, intended for transactions involving the shares of the world's largest companies. Due to favorable trading conditions, this account has gained considerable popularity over the past time, and therefore it has been decided to include CFD trading of shares in the list of trading instruments on the Fix, Pro and Zero accounts.


Now the company's clients do not need to open a separate account for these operations, since the trading terms and contract specifications on the Fix, Pro and Zero accounts will be exactly the same as they were on the Stocks account.

Trading on the Stocks account will be discontinued. At the same time, previously opened trade orders remain in effect until the client decides to complete these transactions.


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First, a review of last week’s events:
  
- EUR/USD. As expected, the European Central Bank left its interest rate unchanged, at the same level of 0%. The euro had a chance to somewhat weaken its position against the dollar. However, it missed it due to the ECB's decision to ramp up the volume of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) by another €500bn and a subsequent comment from the head of that bank Christine Lagarde. Actually, there was nothing unexpected in this decision, we predicted such an outcome a week ago. In addition, it definitely fell into the middle of the market participants' forecast of €400-600 billion. But it was precisely this predictability that prevented the EUR/USD pair from turning south.
The hawkish sentiment of Christine Lagarde's statements also supported the European currency. It appears she tried to lower the euro rate by announcing that the ECB is closely monitoring the euro. However, the decision of the regulator not to interfere in the affairs of the foreign exchange markets influenced investors much more than a simple statement about “monitoring the exchange rate”. And the unexpectedly hawkish remark of Ms. Lagarde that if the situation with the Eurozone economy improves enough, it may not be necessary to use all these €500 billion, put the final end to the efforts of the bears to move the pair south.
As a result, having dropped to the level of 1.2060, the pair rushed to the north again, rising to the height of 1.2165, and completed the five-day period in the middle of this range, in the 1.2113 zone, practically in the same place where it started on Monday;

- GBP/USD. The weakening pound has outpaced the weak dollar. The British currency slid down as the threat of a "hard" Brexit becomes more evident. The latest statements by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen suggest that there will be no real agreement on the terms of Britain's separation from the EU. Johnson advised his citizens to prepare for a "tough" exit, von der Leyen said about the same.
It is worth emphasizing the word "real" here, since some agreement may still be reached, and we will not see the "iron curtain" blocking the tunnel under the Channel. Neither side needs it, much less at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most likely, the document that will be called the "Agreement", will have many blank spots left, which the parties will start filling in as early as 2021. But such an inferior contract will definitely not benefit the pound. The proof of this is what happened to the GBP/USD pair last week.
From the high of Friday 04 December to the low of Friday 11 December, the pound lost more than 400 points! And this despite the fact that the pair did not follow the EUR/USD in the wake, as it was until recently, but began to live a completely independent life. Having reached the local bottom at 1.3135 on Friday December 11 afternoon, it managed to win back about 90 points by the evening, putting the final chord at the level of 1.3225. However, this bounce may well turn out to be just a small correction in the pair's tendency to the south;

- USD/JPY. Due to the rise in risk sentiment, investors have lost interest in such protective assets as the dollar and the yen. As a result, these currencies reached a temporary truce and moved to a sideways trend. However, the pair never went beyond the medium-term channel, along which it has been smoothly sliding south since the end of March. And, giving a forecast for last week, the vast majority of experts (70%), supported by graphical analysis on D1, suggested that the lateral movement with bearish sentiment dominance would be continued.
In general, everything happened like that. The pair continued to move eastward, gradually reducing the amplitude of oscillations to the range of 103.85-104.55 and forming a medium-term “pennant” figure with the main support around 103.65. As for the end of the trading session, the finish was set at 104.00 this time;

- cryptocurrencies. Financial conglomerate Wells Fargo, one of the "big four" US banks, has published a new investment report, in which a separate page under the heading "Bitcoin - 2020's best performing and most volatile asset" is devoted to the cryptocurrency market. The authors do not directly encourage clients to invest in digital assets, but generally maintain an optimistic tone regarding their prospects. “Over the past 12 years, they have grown from literally nothing to a $560 billion market cap,” writes Wells Fargo. "Hobbies don't usually last 12 years."
The bank notes that bitcoin is up 170% over the year but warns about its high volatility. “Investing in cryptocurrencies today is akin to living in the early days of the 1850s gold rush, which involved more speculation than investing”, the bank's analysts think. And yet they add that cryptocurrencies attract a lot of attention, but not necessarily a lot of investment. (Here the title of William Shakespeare's play immediately comes to mind: "Much Ado About Nothing"). 
It is difficult to disagree with this: the total cryptocurrency market capitalization now is far from even its own high at the beginning of January 2018, $830 billion. And this is in a world where, according to billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, "there is a $90 trillion stock market, and God knows how many trillions are in fiat currency."
The crypto market went down another $50 billion last week: starting from $575 billion, it dropped to $525 billion. Optimists call the clear bearish trend a seasonal correction and associate it with the end of the year and the desire of investors to fix profits after such an impressive leap up. Recall that the BTC/USD pair was never able to overcome the $20,000 mark. And analysts estimated that it will be able to gain a foothold above this iconic level by the end of December, as 30% probability. The likelihood of its fall to the $15,000-15,700 zone is estimated at the same 30%.
In the meantime, the bears were able to lower quotations to $17,600, and they did it twice: on December 09 and 11. And also twice, at the time of these failures, buyers came to the rescue of bitcoin. However, they did not manage to radically reverse the trend, and as of Friday evening, December 11, bitcoin is trading in the zone of a strong support/resistance level of $18,000.
It should be noted that the Crypto Fear & Greed Index declined very slightly in seven days, from 92 to 89, still signaling the pair BTC/USD is strongly overbought, which could portend an even deeper correction.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the opinions of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. The dollar is weakening. It has conceded more than 550 points to the European currency in the last month and a half alone. Finally, the pair moved to a sideways movement in the range of 1.2060-1.2165 last week. And although most oscillators (75%) and trend indicators (95%) are still green on D1, the market is waiting for a downward correction.
If you look at the statistics of a number of leading UK brokers, about 65% of their traders hold short positions. 55% of analysts agree with them as well as graphical analysis on H4 and D1, predicting a decline of the pair to the zone 1.1965-1.2010. Both a sharp drop in demand for risky assets and a "hard" Brexit can push it south.
However, given the cautious optimism of the ECB regarding the recovery of the European economy, the improvement of the epidemiological situation in the EU countries and the general weakness of the dollar, many experts believe that the pair will again move north after the correction, to the highs of the 1st quarter of 2018 in the zone of 1.2400-1.2565. Apart from analysts, the possibility of such a scenario is also confirmed by the readings of graphical analysis. And the resistance here is likely to be the round levels 1.2200 and 1.2300.
As for the events of the coming week, it is worth paying attention to the release of data on business activity in Germany and the Eurozone as well as on the US consumer market on Wednesday 16 December. But the most interesting events await us on Thursday 17 December, when, in addition to the US Fed's interest rate decision, the Summary of Economic Forecasts from the Open Markets Committee of the Fed will be published and a press conference of the leadership of this organization will take place.

- GBP/USD. We will have a lot of macro-statistics regarding the UK in the coming week. Data on the labor market of this country will be released on Tuesday, December 15, consumer prices and business activity in the services sector (Markit) will be published the next day, and a meeting of the Bank of England will be held on Thursday, December 17, where decisions will be taken both on the interest rate and on the planned volume of asset purchases. However, all these events pale in front of the threat of a "hard" Brexit. It is precisely what happens at the negotiating table between the UK and the EU that will decide the fate of the pound.
A message should be issued on the state of the negotiation process, either its termination or continuation, on Sunday, December 13. The softest (and most realistic) option would be to extend the current conditions of the transition period for another six months or a year in order to gradually move to rules similar to the basic rules of the World Trade Organization. In this case, although the downward trend of the pair would have continued, it would have been possible to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the British currency. The nearest support level in this case is 1.3100, then 1.3000 and 1.2850.
The second option is the “hardest” Brexit, without any agreements and prolongations, which will lead the pair to fall to the values of mid-May 2020 in the area of 1.2075 or even to the March low at 1.1420.
There is, of course, a third, most improbable, option in which the EU suddenly gives up its positions and completely yields to the British demands. In this case, we will see a rise of the pound first to the height of 1.3500, and then perhaps to the highs of 2018 in the area of 1.4350. Although, we repeat, this outcome is rather from the field of fiction;

- USD/JPY. The yen expects that the market's appetite for risk investments will finally recoil, and it will again turn its attention to the haven currencies. But that's what the dollar awaits too. The chance for the Japanese currency may be a "hard" Brexit, as a result of which investors will start fleeing from the euro and the pound. But what "safe haven" they will give preference to, the dollar or the yen, is another question.
85% of oscillators and 100% of trend indicators are still painted red, waiting for a further fall of the pair within the downward medium-term channel, the beginning of which was at the end of March. Supports are 103.65 and 103.15.
But the average forecast of experts is very different from the indicators. 90% of them, supported by the graphical analysis on D1, prefer the dollar and expect that the pair will first rise to the upper boundary of this channel in the area of 104.60, and then, breaking through it, the resistance of 105.00 will be tested. Although, it is entirely possible that before the onset of the new year, 2021, neither bulls nor bears will make sharp movements, and the pair will continue its sideways movement, consolidating in the 104.00 zone;

- cryptocurrencies. So, a correction or a repeat of the collapse of the late 2017-2018? The question is still open.
Bloomberg experts believe that there is no reason for a change in the direction of bitcoin's movement now, and its cost may increase to $50,000 in 2021.  “The dollar is gradually losing its position, ducking other fiat currencies,” writes this authoritative agency, “All this is noticed by investors who are forced to switch to alternative assets.” Bitcoin has significantly more support now, which minimizes the likelihood of a pullback. Open interest in the CME bitcoin futures market has exceeded $1 billion for the first time in history, which also speaks of growing support from investors.
A similar point of view is followed by the American billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, head of Tudor Investment Corporation, who said that “cryptocurrencies are facing a crazy flight on a rocket with ascents and descents along the way.” “In 20 years, bitcoin will be significantly higher than the point where it is now. From here, the road for it lies north,” Yahoo! Finance quoted him.
But Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz is less optimistic. In his opinion, bitcoin will certainly not return to zero, but may fall to the $14,000 mark. Therefore, although the losses of investors will not reach 80-90%, they may well be about 30-40%.
The report of the fintech company Cindicator is of great interest. This is due to the fact that the figures presented in it are not the opinion of individual specialists, but the average results of the survey of more than 156,000 participants of the crypto market, according to which bitcoin next year will rise to $29,569. The respondents with the most accurate forecasts, the so-called "superforcasters", on average expect even greater growth, to $32,056. As for the lower bar, according to the average forecast, it is at $15,000. “Superforcasters” are less optimistic and expect a decline to $12,000.
Cindicator's “hybrid intelligence”, which uses machine learning algorithms to process data from a team of analysts, predicts similar values, only in a narrower range. According to its calculations, the BTC rate next year will not exceed $25,222 and will not fall below $16,000. At the same time, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market in 2021 with a probability of 80% will surpass the 2018 record of $828 billion.
In addition to institutional investors, additional serious support for the crypto market in 2021 should be provided by countries with troubled economies and those under sanctions. As of now, the SWIFT International Banking System, together with the Financial Crimes Agency (FinCEN) and the Financial Anti-Money Laundering Development Group (FATF), control each international transaction in dollars. Because of this, the countries that have come under the sanctions are deprived of the opportunity for international trade and are literally forced to turn to cryptocurrencies. So, for example, Venezuela, which at first paid in gold, has now switched to settlements for imports with Turkey and Iran in bitcoins. At least this is evidenced by anonymous sources from the Central Bank of this country.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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The Forex market is a place where almost everyone has every chance to make money. But do not confuse luck with a professional approach. Trader is a profession that needs to be learned. Otherwise, intuition will fail sooner or later, and a series of trades will turn into a continuous loss. That is why, as a start to your career, it is better not to waste time, but to start by studying technical market analysis. It will let you trade with awareness.

Technical analysis is a global trend in the study of price behavior, its dynamics and external signs, which is based on statistical historical data. It is important to note this trend includes a huge arsenal of tools and specific movements that allow to analyze the quotes from different angles. Its main feature is its historical recurrence, cyclicality. Thanks to it, you will not only learn how to navigate in the current situation, but also to predict the future.

Whom Technical Analysis of Graphs Suits

There are two main areas that beginners should study at the level of theory ­ - fundamental and technical analysis.

The first is difficult, as it requires an understanding of macroeconomics, world politics and their relationship with each other. Therefore, it is logical that people with the appropriate education are inclined towards the fundamental analysis.

If you adopt technical analysis (TA), you will not need to study complex economic theory and immerse yourself in the monetary policy of each individual state or bloc. You will not need to think about how, for example, the presidential elections of any country might affect the demand for oil on the world market, and that, in turn, the quotes of a particular currency.

Unlike fundamental analysis, technical analysis assumes that the market has already taken into account all these factors in its current quotes. The price dynamics, its movement features demonstrate the psychological portrait of the bidders. Knowing what motivates the participants, the key players, it is possible to build unique trading systems.

Technical analysis is suitable for beginners not because of its simplicity, but because of its versatility. The history of its development gave birth to thousands of instruments and views on price movement. Each trader can choose something of their own, without delving into complex mathematical calculations. Regardless of your background, profession, type of character, Forex technical analysis is an effective solution for making money in the foreign exchange markets for both beginners and experienced professionals.

Trader's Work Environment

One of the main challenges in learning to work with charts can be the choice of the working environment and the object of study. For example, one of the key questions is the choice of the currency pair to be traded, the time frame and, of course, the trading terminal.

The trader adjusts all these parameters personally, depending on their goals. For example, the brokerage company NordFX provides its clients with the opportunity to trade on MetaTrader 4, the world's most popular terminal. It can be both a stationary MT4 terminal and its mobile versions, which allow you to analyze the market, open and close up to 100 trading orders at any time from anywhere in the world where there is Internet access. MetaTrader 4 has a friendly interface, a huge number of built-in useful features and is a powerful weapon in the hands of the trader. You can learn more about how MT4 works in the corresponding section on the official NordFX website. 

Time Frame

A time frame is a time interval during which one candle or bar is formed. Using different intervals allows you to cut off market noises and catch global trends, moving from a shorter time frame to a larger one.

In MT4 there are 9 options for presenting quotes charts - М1, М5, М15, М30 (that is, 1 candlestick or bar corresponds to 1, 5, 15 or 30 minutes), H1, H4, D1, W1 and MN (respectively, 1 candlestick is equal to 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week and 1 month). Thus, by choosing the one-minute time frame, you will see on the screen how the price has changed every minute for several hours, and by choosing, for example, the MN time frame, you will see the price change over several years.

Also, you will see the so-called tick charts in MT4 which are formed not by time, but by trades. One deal has passed - one tick has formed. And there can be several such ticks even within one minute.

Each trader selects the necessary interval for themselves, depending on the desired trading activity, their trading strategy and, ultimately, temperament and discipline. The higher the timeframe, the more averaged the picture you get. Some traders , called scalpers, can open and close trades in a very short time, so they use M1, M5 time frames and tick charts. Others are guided by long-term trends, relying on charts not lower than H4 or D1.

Currency Pairs

There are a lot of recommendations as to which specific currency pairs to use when trading. Moreover, in most cases, the emphasis is on the main, so-called "major", currency pairs, consisting of the main and most liquid currencies - USD, EUR, JPY, CHF, GBP. Pairs using AUD, CAD and NZD (Australian, Canadian and New Zealand dollars) as well as CNH (Chinese yuan) are also popular.

Basically, Forex technical analysis is applicable not only to these currency pairs, but also to rarer ones, such as ZAR (South African rand), SGD (Singapore dollar) or NOK (Norwegian krone). It can also be used to forecast many other trading instruments available to clients of the NordFX brokerage company. These are cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ethereum and many others), gold, silver, oil, shares of various large companies and leading stock indices. That is, technical analysis is a universal method that can be used to make money not only in Forex , but also in other markets - stock, commodity, cryptocurrency.  However, the technical analysis tools used each time require individual settings depending on the currency pairs and time frames used in trading.

So, for example, exotic currencies and cryptocurrencies are more difficult for technical analysis, since interest in them is weaker, there are fewer transactions, and trading volumes are lower. As a result, any news or manipulation, even by a not very large speculator, can lead to sharp unpredictable jumps in quotations.

Technical Analysis Tools

Do not confuse trading tools and technical analysis tools. The first is what you trade (currencies, cryptocurrencies, stocks, etc.), while the second is what you use to analyze the market and make decisions about a particular transaction. The diversity of this area has no boundaries. Every year, many new and unique tools are invented that allow you to make more and more accurate trading decisions. At the same time, the vast majority of them can be divided into the following groups.

Graphic Tools

Using graphic tools, the trader sets out patterns on the price chart and simplifies the forecasting process. They can be based on both a complex mathematical model and ordinary geometric shapes, the main task of which is to simplify the work with chart markings. These include: lines, channels, shapes, icons. As a simple example, the graph shows a down-to-date price channel that has changed to an uptrend.

All graphical instruments, based on the Fibonacci numerical sequence (levels, arcs, extension, time zones) are commonly called the mathematical model in this analysis. This also includes developments using the methods of William Gunn (grid, line, fan, pitchfork), pitchforks of Andrews and Schiff, Eliott waves and the methods of a number of other well-known scientists and practicing traders.

With their help, you can determine the direction of the trend, possible pivot points, the depth of the rollback (correction), and form the current trading range.

Indicators

This is a separate area, the essence of which is a mathematical way of averaging and converting the price into different graphs (rarely tables), allowing to cut off the superfluous and highlight the most important characteristics, and therefore more convenient for analysis and forecasting. This can be work according to given formulas with trading volumes, volatility, speed and acceleration of price changes and, of course, trends.

There are a lot of variations of indicators, and there are both basic, time-tested and custom ones. Basic or standard indicators are usually called those that are included in the trading terminal toolkit by default. There are more than 50 of them in MetaTrader 4. A number of them are based on the aforementioned mathematical models of graphic analysis. Custom indicators can be either completely original developments or a modification of standard ones. There are thousands of them at the moment, and many new ones appear every day, which can be purchased or downloaded for free online and integrated into your personal MT4 terminal.

They are divided by their function and purpose:
- Trending (Moving Average, ADX, Bollindger Bands);
- Oscillators (Stochastic, RSI, RVI, MACD);
- Volumes.

The first huge category serves the trader in order to highlight the trend, its strength and direction, predict changes, cut off noise. The second group shows the overbought and oversold market, giving entry and exit points (for opening and closing trades). Volumes demonstrate the involvement of players and their money supply in the market. This is a kind of way to see what capital is behind the selected movement of an asset. All trading add-ons underlying the indicators are the transformation of mathematical formulas.

Patterns

Patterns are graphic patterns that are often repeated in the market, the appearance of which, according to long-term observations, can lead to one or another price movement. These are patterns of formation of bars or candles , their combinations, which are cyclical and in most cases lead to a pre-known scenario. The concepts of "Japanese candle" and "candle models" on Forex are discussed in a separate article in more detail. Here we note that in practice all models are divided into:
- Reversal Pattern;
- Uncertainty Pattern;
- Trend Continuation Pattern.

Each of them can lead to a specific scenario. However, one should not take any of them as an axiom. The efficiency changes in the conditions of the selected time frame, currency pair and type of trading asset. This is why each pattern is tested before being used in real trading conditions. Popular candlestick patterns: hammer, hanging man, harami, doji, falling star, absorption. Graphic shapes: wedge, rectangle, double top, head and shoulders, cup, flag, pennant.

The Main Purpose of the Study and Use

The mistake of beginners is that they try to absorb as much knowledge, and then use all of it in practice. In fact, it is impossible to do that, because it can lead to a “brain explosion”. Mutually exclusive conditions constantly arise in the market. For example, the trend line indicates a dominant up market, and the candlestick formation indicates an imminent reversal. We see a downward trend on the M30 timeframe, while on H4, it, on the contrary, is pointing upwards, and the oscillator is in a neutral position at the same time. What is the priority?

The main task of technical analysis is to give the conditions on the basis of which you will create a trading strategy.

A trading strategy is a set of rules and conditions that can include the readings of one or several indicators, analysis of patterns, and the construction of your own chart patterns on different time frames. A fundamental analysis of macroeconomic statistics and political events can be added there. And the more of these rules you put into your strategy, the worse it will be... the harder it will be for you to analyze the situation and make trading decisions.

There is this proverb — “All in good fun.” The complication of a trading strategy makes it impossible to apply it, even if you create a trading robot instead of your own brain and use all the capabilities of your computer.

A trading robot or a trading advisor is a computer program that will automatically implement the trading strategy embedded in it according to a given algorithm. The advantages are obvious: the program trades 24 hours a day, seven days a week, does not give in to panic or the excitement inherent in humans, and operates within a strictly specified algorithm. There are tens of thousands of trading advisors for MT4 . And now it is easier to buy a ready-made or even download one for free on the Internet than to invent your own with the help of a programmer. Most of the ideas that come to mind for a novice trader have long been implemented. However, keep in mind that an expensive advisor is not necessarily a good one, and a free one is not necessarily a bad one. Quite often the opposite is true.

How to Learn to Make money

The best way to learn is to use good literature. The main condition ­is to read the books of real traders. We can recommend the following fundamental textbooks among the huge number of repetitive editions:
- Jack Schwager “Technical Analysis. Full course”;
- Thomas DeMark "Technical Analysis - The New Science";
- Steve Nison “Japanese Candles: A Graphic Analysis of Financial Markets.”

Also note that the broker NordFX has created a special section "Education" on its website, where you can gather a lot of information necessary for both beginners and experienced traders. All this useful knowledge is presented not only in the form of dozens of books and articles, but also in the video format.

To consolidate your knowledge, you should definitely go from a theoretical plane to a practical one. The demo account NordFX will help you with this, on which you can, absolutely risk-free, gain real experience trading virtual money.


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First, a review of last week’s events:
  
- EUR/USD. The dollar continues to fall, the euro continues to rise. The pair has traveled from 1.1600 to 1.2175 since early November. The main reasons for the weakening of the US currency lie in the growing global risk appetite. Against the background of positive news about vaccines against coronavirus, the market has believed in the imminent recovery of the global economy. Moreover, not the US economy, but the economies of other countries, including developing. The situation in the United States itself is not encouraging: the main indicators, including business activity and employment of the population, turned red here last week. Suffice it to say that the number of new jobs created outside the agricultural sector (NFP) collapsed from 610K in October to 245K in November, due to new quarantine measures.
Investments in the US economy are becoming unpopular, the S&P500 and Dow Jones stock indices have switched to a sideways trend, treasury (government debt) yields are not growing, but inflationary expectations, on the contrary, have soared to annual highs. Interest rates are minimal, which contributes to the departure of investors to other assets, overseas.
The interesting thing is that Europe has enough problems as well. Based on the dynamics of purchasing managers' indices, it is the EU, not the United States, that is now the main brake on the world economy. Yes, Joe Biden has welcomed the compromise proposal for another $908 billion aid package for the US economy, adding that he would not be limited to it. But the ECB, according to the Bloomberg forecast, will expand the emergency asset purchase program by €500 billion at a meeting on December 10, extending its term from mid to late 2021. In addition, the European regulator will also increase the scale of LTRO, a program for long-term anti-crisis refinancing of banks. Added to this are concerns with the UK over the Brexit agreement, plus disagreements with Poland and Hungary over the COVID-19 Rescue Fund and interest rates in the EU are even lower than in the US.
In general, there are enough problems on both sides of the Atlantic. But, nevertheless, as expected by most experts (60%), the EUR/USD pair continued its growth last week, ending the five-day period at 1.2120. And the point here is not so much in the strength of the euro, but in the weakness of the dollar, the DXY index of which fell to 90.5 for the first time in two years;

- GBP/USD. The British currency has also grown against the dollar, having risen by 670 points since early November. And this despite the fact that London and Brussels cannot come to an agreement on the Brexit terms, and the tough position of France in general makes one doubt that such agreements are possible.
The forecast, which was supported by 75% of analysts last week, was absolutely correct: the pair rose to the upper limit of the 1.3300-1.3400 channel. Then it was broken down and the pair moved further north to 1.3540 and finished the trading session at 1.3435. 
The pound, of course, was supported by the weakening dollar. In addition, the bulls were also helped by the announcement of the signing of a contract between the British government and Pfizer for the purchase of 40 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, 10 million of which the UK will receive next week. The market was also pleased with the removal of a number of quarantine measures in the country, and the decision on partial admission of spectators to the national football league games;

- USD/JPY. The forecast for this pair also turned out to be correct. Supported by graphical analysis on D1, 60% of experts had said that the pair would stop its decline and move east in the 103.70-105.30 range. In reality, this lateral channel turned out to be somewhat narrower, 103.66-104.75. And the reason for the emerging equilibrium between the dollar and the yen was the same rise in risk sentiment and a drop in interest in such protective assets as the Japanese currency. The final chord of the week sounded in the central zone of the specified channel at 104.15;

- cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has been pounding towards the psychologically important $20,000 level over the past two weeks. And although it updated the historical high, reaching the mark of $19,930 on December 01, all attempts to conquer the height of twenty thousand ended in profit taking and a rollback.
According to a number of experts, in addition to triggering stop orders, there are also political reasons that force investors to go to fiat. So, according to one version, the correction of the main cryptocurrency on November 25-26 from $19,480 to $16,280, which had many chances to develop into a catastrophic collapse, was associatedwith the decision of the administration of American President Donald Trump to tighten control over the circulation of digital assets. Officials chose to change the rules for registering cryptocurrency wallets as one of the ways to manage transactions.
Many crypto companies have already begun developing new versions of wallets, which will receive permits from the US Securities and Exchange Commission before launching. Trump is probably trying to resist China in this way, which is preparing to release its own cryptocurrency. If the digital yuan becomes a cross-border payment instrument, it can be used instead of the dollar. This will make sanctions against China ineffective, and Washington will lose the ability to put pressure on Beijing.
“Bitcoin has an indirect relationship to everything that happens", Mark Usko, head of Morgan Creek investment company, comments, "but even the first statements by representatives of the American government about the desire to start controlling the industry brought it down by several thousand dollars in a matter of hours".  
After this drop, bitcoin returned to the $19,000 zone very quickly. Along with the BTC/USD quotes, the total market capitalization of the crypto market has also recovered. It stood at $582 billion at its peak on November 25, then dipped to $500bn on November 27. And now, seven days later, on December 04, it is at $575 billion.
According to analytical companies Glassnode and BitInfoCharts, the number of addresses containing more than one bitcoin is also steadily growing, exceeding 820 thousand at the moment. These wallets hold 95% of the total BTC market volume. In total, there are 32.6 million addresses with a non-zero balance in the world.
Despite the seemingly positive dynamics, the fall ofbitcoin by 16.4% on November 25-26shows the precariousness of its current state. Both investors and traders understand this, and they are ready to start massively closing long positions at any time. Bitcoin's Crypto Fear & Greed Index rose from 86 to 92 in seven days, showing that the overbought coin is only getting worse, which could lead to another strong correction. In the meantime, the pair has chosen the $19,000 horizon as the Pivot Point, along which it has been moving throughout the past week.
As for altcoins, they, rise and fall for the most part, following the reference cryptocurrency. So, despite the increase in the total capitalization of the crypto market, the bitcoin dominance indicator has remained practically unchanged and is 62.44% (62.33% a week ago). Similar indicators of altcoins from the TOP-10 have hardly changed either. Although, we can highlight the ripple (XRP/USD), whose share in the total market capitalization has grown 1.8 times over the month, from 2.69% to 4.89%. This is because Flare Networks will airdrop spark coins on December 12th based on a snapshot of all XRP Ledger addresses. Thanks to this, each ripple holder will receive free spark in a 1:1 ratio, which is reflected in the popularity of this coin and the growth of its quotes. After a long stagnation in the region of $ 0.24, it rose to $ 0.77 at the high over the past three weeks, and it is quoted in the zone of $ 0.60 at the time of writing.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the opinions of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. The higher this pair rises, the more willingness of large speculators to start taking profit on it. Moreover, the end of the financial year is just around the corner, it's time to take stock. In order for the dollar to continue its fall, the risk sentiment needs constant recharging, but the market may lose it. US stock indexes have been holding sideways since November 09. But this stability is very relative and threatens with a sudden collapse, which will entail the withdrawal of investors from the stock market in favor of the dollar.
For example, a reassessment of the optimistic expectations related to vaccination against the COVID-19 may lead them to this. And there are reasons for this. For example, the Pfizer has already reported problems with supplies, due to which the volume of vaccine production in 2020 will be halved, from 100 million to 50 million doses. A sharp rise in the yield of 10-year US government bonds could also strike the stock market. And you never know what else can happen this year rich in surprises!
There will be a meeting of the European Council, the ECB's decision on the interest rate and a subsequent press conference by the bank's management on Thursday, December 10. But the meeting of the US Federal Reserve on December 16 seems to be more interesting.
At the moment, graphical analysis on H4, 90% of trend indicators and 75% of oscillators on H4 and D1 are colored green. However, the remaining 25% of the oscillators are already giving active signals that the pair is overbought. The pair is expected to decline to the 1.1850-1.1950 zone by the majority (65%) of experts as well, supported by graphical analysis on D1. Immediate support is at 1.2000. Resistance levels are 1.2175, 1.2200, 1.2260 and 1.2320;

- GBP/USD. Significant for this pair is the level of 1.3500, which it reached at the end of last week. Graphical analysis, 100% of trend indicators and 85% of oscillators on H4 and D1 predict further movement to the north. Resistance levels are 1.3625 and 1.3725. However, only 40% of analysts agree with this scenario. The remaining 60% believe that this pair will also turn down, following the EUR/USD reversal. Moreover, if the negotiations on Brexit do not come out of the impasse, its fall may turn into a collapse. However, even if the agreement is concluded, it is likely to be formal and very limited, and is unlikely to please the fans of the British currency. Support levels are 1.3400, 1.3285, 1.3175. The ultimate goal of the bears in December is to return to the 1.3000 horizon;

- USD/JPY. The dollar and the yen have reached a temporary truce due to rising risk sentiment, moving to a sideways trend. However, the pair never went beyond the medium-term channel, along which it smoothly slides south since the end of March. And the vast majority of experts (70%), supported by graphical analysis on D1, believe that this downtrend will continue. More precisely, it will be a lateral movement with a dominance of bearish sentiment. The main resistance will be the level of 104.50, fighting off from which, the pair will fall first by 100 points lower, and then reach the November 09 low in the zone of 103.15.
An alternative point of view is held by 30% of analysts who expect that the pair will first reach the upper border of the two-week sideways channel 104.75, and then try to consolidate above the horizon of 105.00. The next target of the bulls is 105.65;

- cryptocurrencies. The fall of bitcoin on November 25-26 by 16.4% occurred, according to a number of experts, due to the tough decision of the Donald Trump administration regarding digital assets. However, if the team of the current US President is an obstacle to the development of the crypto market, then everything can change with the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House. Former Harvard and Oxford professor and now Stanford senior fellow Niall Ferguson believes that the administration of the new President should focus on integrating bitcoin into the US financial system instead of creating a digital dollar following China's example.
In a new article, the world-renowned economic historian looked at the US dollar, gold and bitcoin as the monetary revolution continued, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing parallels with the plague of the 14th century, the historian noted that the pandemic let digital gold cover a decade-long path in only ten months. And this happened not only because of the closed banks, but also due to the tightening of financial supervision.
According to Mike Novogratz, head of the Galaxy Digital crypto trading bank, everyone should invest 2-3% of their funds in bitcoin. “After that, it is enough to wait a little time, and you will be surprised, but cryptocurrencies will cost significantly more. If you wait five years, the assets will multiply several times,” he wrote. According to the head of Galaxy Digital, bitcoin volatility can be expected in the near future, but it is unlikely to sink below $12,000, and even a correction to such levels is unlikely. The above-mentioned correction on November 25-26, according to experts from Stack Funds, is not only "healthy", but will also allow Bitcoin to prepare for a new high of $86,000.
The Director General of Global Macro Investor Raoul Pal expects that even conservative institutional investors, who usually prefer precious metals, will start investing in bitcoin next year. Therefore, Pal made a bold assumption that the rate of the first cryptocurrency could reach $250,000 in a year, and placed an order for the sale of all the gold he had in order to invest in BTC and ETH in the ratio 80 to 20.
Even more inspiring forecast was given by Gemini crypto exchange founder Tyler Winklevoss, one of the twin brothers who are called the first cryptocurrency billionaires. He said on CNBC that the value of bitcoin could exceed the $500k mark. He called the current price of the main digital coin “an opportunity to buy” as it could rise in price by 25 times in the future. “Bitcoin will surpass gold. If this happens, the capitalization of this cryptocurrency will exceed $9 trillion,” predicted Tyler Winklevoss.
In the meantime, the probability that the BTC/USD pair will be able to gain a foothold above $20,000 by the end of this month is estimated at 30%. The likelihood of its fall to the $15,000-15,700 zone is estimated at the same 30%.


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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NordFX brokerage company has summed up the performance of its clients' trade transactions in November.

The maximum profit for that month was received by a client from Vietnam, account No.1416xxx. The client's profit of 40.153 USD was obtained mainly from transactions with the EUR/AUD currency pair and gold (XAU/USD).

Second is the trader from India (account No.1485xxx), whose profit was just under 40 thousand dollars (38.930 USD), and was obtained through trading on many pairs, including GBP/USD, USD/CHF and GBP/NZD.

The third place in the November TOP 3 belongs to the Vietnamese trader (account No. 1511xxx), with a result of 15.925 USD, who traded in the NZD/USD, AUD/USD and XAU/USD pairs.

The passive investment services in November:

- in CopyTrading, the signal provider under the nickname 78XGaming showed the maximum growth with a fantastic result of + 1539% with a drawdown of 79%;

- in the PAMM service, the results are much more modest. Here the manager with the nickname ProCapital became the leader, showing an increase of 15.51%. However, the drawdown here was significantly lower, only 9.8%, which can be attractive for investors who prefer stable income with a moderate degree of risk.


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First, a review of last week’s events:
  
- EUR/USD. Making a forecast for the past week, most experts (65%) preferred the European currency. Graphical analysis, 90% of trend indicators and 75% of oscillators on D1 also sided with the bulls. And this forecast turned out to be almost correct. “Almost”, because it was expected that, having broken through the resistance of 1.1900, the EUR/USD pair will reach the zone 1.2000-1.2100. However, it managed to rise only to the height of 1.1960 at the very end of the working week. Perhaps this is due to the weekend in the United States - Thanksgiving on Thursday November 26th and Black Friday on the 27th. 
The pair is pushed to growth by the improvement of the epidemiological situation in the European region. For example, France has already passed the peak of the second wave of the pandemic, and on November 28, a phased weakening of the existing restrictions begins. But there are also numerous global factors that make this pair's movement difficult to predict. The number of applications for unemployment benefits in the US last week was as much as 778 thousand - the worst figure in five weeks. This indicates a worsening economic situation.  That being said, Republicans and Democrats still have no way to agree on the amount of additional stimulus payments under the QE program. And incumbent President Donald Trump does not want to cooperate with the opposite camp at all.
As for the timing of the appearance of the vaccine against COVID-19 and how vaccination will affect the recovery of the economies of the Old and New Worlds, there is no clarity, only guesses. The assessments of experts are diametrically different about the decision of the US President-elect Joe Biden to appoint the former head of the Fed Janet Yellen to the post of Treasury Secretary, Markets hoped that some guidelines would be suggested by the minutes of the meeting of the US Federal Reserve Committee on Open Markets. But there was not much clarity in it either, only an indecisive discussion of the asset purchase program. We quote: “Most of the participants believed that the Committee should update the forecast of actions over time and apply results-oriented guidance of a qualitative nature”. Well, and then everything is in the same style.
So far, the only indisputable thing is that the dollar index dropped from the March highs by more than 10% as a result of the Fed's monetary policy, reaching a two-year low, and the EUR/USD pair returned to the values of mid-August 2020. These facts are beyond doubt;

- GBP/USD. The result, which, due to general uncertainty, including negotiations on Brexit, was shown by this pair, can be called zero. Three weeks of November marked the Pivot Point at 1.3300. But if this line performed the function of resistance for the first two weeks, then it turned into support. The pair spent the entire five-day period in a lateral trend in a fairly narrow range of 1.3300-1.3400, and finished the trading session at its lower border;

- USD/JPY. The yen has made its unconditional contribution to the fall in the DXY dollar index. Its strengthening and the entry of the USD/JPY pair into the downward channel started at the end of March this year, in parallel with the spread of the coronavirus epidemic around the world. And in search of a safe haven currency, investors once again turned to the Japanese currency.
The pair not only kept within this channel last week, but also narrowed its trading range to 100 points in its upper half. As for the final indicators, they turned out to be even less - having started the five-day week at 103.80, it ended it at 104.05, showing an increase of only 25 points;

- cryptocurrencies. This time we will skip the introduction, like crime news, and immediately move on to the most important thing. Bitcoin being overbought is something we've written about on numerous occasions, something that has long been warned about by indicators including the RSI and Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Everything indicated that the market urgently needs a correction. And so it happened: the BTC/USD pair fell down, and now traders and investors are concerned about only two very important issues. 1) If this is a correction, at what level will it end? And 2) Is this a correction, and will the disaster that occurred with bitcoin in December 2017 happen again? Recall that then, getting close to $20,000, the pair turned sharply and found itself in the $3.125 region a year later, shrinking more than 6 times.
The current rally of the main cryptocurrency started in the first decade of September from the $10,000 area and was stopped on November 25 in the area of $19,500. This was followed by a collapse, and the local weekly low was fixed the next day at $16.280. After a slight rebound, BTC was quoted in the $17,000 zone on the evening of Friday 27 November.
At its peak on November 25, the total capitalization of the crypto market was $582 billion, but on Friday 27 November fell to $500 billion, losing 14%. This movement is fully correlated with the BTC/USD quotes. Much more interesting is that the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is still at 86 as it was seven days ago, and continues to indicate that the pair is strongly overbought. So, it is entirely possible that bitcoin has not yet completed its journey south.
As for altcoins, a number of them have recently shown more positive dynamics than the reference cryptocurrency. So, if the BTC/USD pair lost about 11% over the past seven days, the ripple (XRP/USD), for example, on the contrary, grew heavier by almost 70%, while ethereum (ETH/USD) ended this period with a zero result. Note that the leading altcoin still has good growth prospects. Business for the leading altcoin took off in the summer, thanks to the growth of the decentralized finance sector (most of these projects were created on the basis of Ethereum). To date, investors have already invested $13 billion in the DeFi-sector, and the number of wallets on which at least 1 ETH is stored has reached a historic high of 1.171 million.


As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the opinions of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following:

- EUR/USD. We spoke about the fog that has covered financial markets in recent weeks, in the first part of this review. And even the appearance of a vaccine against COVID-19, for all its obvious usefulness, is unclear how it will affect the exchange rate of a particular currency. Indeed, the degree of damage to the economies of different countries by the coronavirus is different, and the speed of their recovery will also differ. Undoubtedly, the policies that the new US administration under the leadership of Joe Biden will carryout will play a huge role, including domestic policy and the end of trade wars with Europe and China. Considering scenarios for next year, Goldman Sachs predicts a 6% drop in the USD weighted rate in 2021, Citibank does not rule out that the dollar index could fall by 20%, and Morgan Stanley expects the EUR/USD pair to grow from the current levels to 1.2500.
Most experts (60%) expect the pair to grow in the coming week as well. 100% trend indicators and 75% of oscillators on both H4 and D1 side with them. The nearest goal is still the same: to overcome the  September 01 high and consolidate in the zone of 1.2000-1.2100. 
The opposite point of view is supported by the remaining 35% of analysts, graphical analysis and a quarter of oscillators that give signals that the euro is overbought on both timeframes. Support levels are 1.1880, 1.1800, 1.1740 and 1.1685. 
Among the macro-events of the week, we can note the publication of data on business activity (ISM) on December 01 and 03, as well as data on the US labor market on December 02 and 04. In addition, we will find out the statistics on the consumer market of the Eurozone on Tuesday 01 December and Thursday 03 December. Also, the speeches of the head of the ECB Christine Lagarde on November 30 and December 1, as well as the head of the Fed Jerome Powell on December 1, may also influence the formation of short-term trends;

- GBP/USD. The general tendency towards the weakening of the dollar affects the forecasts for this pair as well. 75% of analysts predict its growth first to the upper border of the channel 1.3300-1.3400. Perhaps it will be able to break through the resistance of 1.3400 and rise another 80-100 points higher, but only 30% of experts vote for this. Graphical analysis on H4 and 90% of oscillators and trend indicators on D1 also side with the bulls.
Indicators on H4 give a mixed picture. But graphical analysis on D1 showed that, after several days of movement in the 1.3300-1.3400 corridor, the pair may decline to 1.3200, after which it can return to the upper border of this corridor and even reach the September 1 high at 1.3480.
Support levels 1.3175, 1.3100 and 1.3000;

- USD/JPY. Albeit minimal, but still the growth of this pair last week made analysts think about its transition from a downward movement to a sideways movement. So, 60% of them assumed that it would move east in the range 103.70-105.30 for some time. Such a scenario is supported by graphical analysis on D1 and only 10% of oscillators giving signals that the pair is oversold. In case of a breakout of the upper border of the channel, the pair will meet resistance at 105.70, then at 106.15.
The remaining 40% of experts, along with graphical analysis on H4, as well as 100% of trend indicators and 90% of oscillators on both timeframes, side with the bears, indicating the direction to the south for the pair. The first support is 103.70. It is followed by the 09 November low at 103.15, which corresponds to the center line of the descending medium-term channel. The ultimate target of the bears is the 2020 low, which the pair reached on March 09, at 101.17;

- cryptocurrencies. If you look at the charts, you can see that the current situation is very similar to what it was in December 2017. At the same time, many experts say that the market is no longer the same, and that the collapse of three years ago is unlikely to repeat. Indeed, there is a growing acceptance of bitcoin by both private depositors and large institutional investors. Indeed, against the background of the coronavirus pandemic, the mass of fiat is growing, which increases the popularity of bitcoin as a protection against inflation. But what if the current fall is caused by the fact that large speculators simply started taking profits ahead of the end of the year? What if the stop orders set near the historic high have already started to work?
According to CoinTelegraph, shortly before the collapse, the All Exchanges Inflow metric showed an increase in BTC placement on exchanges, which clearly indicates the intentions of whales to start selling their crypto assets. But after the whales, looking at the current situation, many retail investors will follow. Moreover, Christmas holidays are not far off, and this is a period of increased need for fiat.
So there are plenty of resons for the further fall of the BTC/USD pair. But no compelling reasons for new growth are foreseen at least until early 2021. Although, of course, the pair's jerks to the north are quite possible. Some of the major speculators may try to play bullish, or, for example, the Chinese government will deal another blow to its miners, creating a supply shortage in the crypto market. All of this could push the quotes back up.
Looking ahead, it is appropriate to quote the opinion of the analyst Mati Greenspan. He believes that, unlike in 2017, the market is now controlled not by speculators but by corporations and large investors interested in its stability. The entry of large players leads to the fact that volatility will weaken, and this area will become more attractive. In connection with the above, Greenspan, like many other experts (there are now 65% of them), expects a further update of the bitcoin highs already this year.
In the meantime, the market is interested in the level at which the current correction will end. In general, is it a correction or a global trend reversal downward? In addition to the $17,000 zone, in which there was a consolidation at the end of the last working week, the next strong support may be the November 26 low in the $16,000-16,300 area, which fits within the Fibonacci correction. However, if the pair overcomes this support confidently, then it will return to the $14,700-15,700 zone, where it stayed in the first decade of November and from which the last stage of the upward rally started.
And at the end of the review, one more, already global, forecast from Max Kaiser. This Wall Street veteran believes the supply shock will drive bitcoin to rise to $1 million. “The demand for bitcoin is growing almost exponentially,” he says, “while its supply is mathematically fixed at 900 coins per day. And in 2024, the supply will be halved to 450 BTC per day. This is why I think that institutions that buy bitcoins will do it directly from miners, and people simply won't have the opportunity to buy coins as the price will skyrocket to $1 million per BTC. Meanwhile, Gen Z, who bought a lot of bitcoins when they were under $100, will become the new global power elite. The world order is about to change.” 


NordFX Analytical Group


Notice: These materials should not be deemed a recommendation for investment or guidance for working on financial markets: they are for informative purposes only. Trading on financial markets is risky and can lead to a loss of money deposited.

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