Stocks and Dollars

Stocks higher on final day of quarter on drillers, firmer crude-oil price.

Financial eked out meager gains on Wednesday as losses in real estate investment trust shares thwarted a rally on the back of strong mortgage insurers. The sector as a whole rose 14% in the first quarter and 10.2% in March.

Stocks struggled Wednesday after ADP s March employment report showed the private sector lost 23,000 jobs. Gregg Greenberg has The Real Story.

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:

Below we highlight our trading range charts for four currency ETFs — The Mexican Peso (FXM), Euro (FXE), Japanese Yen (FXY), and US Dollar (UUP). For each chart, the light blue shading represents between one standard deviation above and below the 50-day moving average. The top of the red shading and bottom of the green shading represent between two standard deviations above and below the 50-DMA. A move into the red zone is considered overbought, while a move into the green zone is considered oversold.

As shown, the Mexican Peso has been on fire lately. FXM is now trading just above its red zone, which has previously been a point of resistance in recent months. The US Dollar (UUP) traded at a level that the Peso is currently trading at just a few days ago, and it quickly pulled back. UUP is still in a nice uptrend channel, however. The Euro (FXE) has been stuck in a nasty downtrend over the last six months. It recently bounced off of the bottom of the green zone, but it still has some work to do to break its downtrend. Finally, the Japanese Yen (FXY) just broke below a key support level and is trading well into oversold territory. Buying once key support gets broken can be like catching a falling knife, but the Yen is so oversold at this point that some buyers may be tempted to step in.

Complete Story »

Shares of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group rose to a new year-high as an analyst upgraded the stock, saying the investment manager is positioned to emerge from the recession stronger.

USD traded mostly lower in Wednesday’s trade pressured by speculation that an unexpected drop in ADP employment will encourage the Fed to maintain a dovish policy bias. EUR was supported by report of above expectation EU inflation and announcement that the Irish government plans to recapitalize Irish banks. GBP traded…

EURUSD has powered relentlessly higher throughout the day as a combination of strong European inflation data, disappointing US labour figures and quarter-end rebalancing flows have all conspired to push the pair upwards. The European morning began well for EURUSD bulls as Germany’s unemployment level unexpectedly dropped -30k in March (+7k…

Market forecasts were proven wrong as the ADP employment change showed a decrease of 23K private sector jobs, when expectations were calling for a 40K increase. While the result is close to what we saw in February, the news is a blow coming before Friday’s non-farm payroll report which is…