Economic Indicators and their Impact on Currency Values
Most Forex traders belong to one of the two type of traders. One type uses only technical indicators. The other one uses fundamental and trades the news. The first group argues that technical analysis is enough to give a good prediction of the market move. The second group on the other hand, states that it is fundamental news that actually move the price. I can state from my personal experience that both types of analysis of equal importance.
Simply speaking the difference between fundamental and technical analysis is that fundamental analysis studies the impact of economy and politic on currency value while technical analysis studies the chart patterns in effort to predict the price movement.
In my opinion it is obvious for everyone that national economy would be reflected on the value of the national currency. Poor health of country’s economy would result in unstable and weak currency. The same way as a company’s stocks will fall in value when that company is doing poorly.
I invite you to look at your charts during the time when everyone expects the major economic news. You will see the increase of volatility at the time of news release. Such major news are: country’s Gross Domestic Product, trade balance, employment levels, statement of national debt etc. Most of these report have predetermined schedule when they are being released.
Any serious trader needs to keep track of those news releases not only in home country but also in those countries whose currencies are extensively involved in currency exchange market. Therefore you can not rely only on the local publications. You will need special economic publication or you can use the Internet as an alternative.
However it is not only those fundamental economic news that impact the currency values. Political events and social forces also have significant influence on national currency. Examples of such events can be elections, social disturbances or even natural disasters can introduce high volatility into Forex market.
It’s not an easy task to predict the price behavior due to these events, however traders can still plan their trades around those times and after the events to try to catch some portion of the move. But such approach needs to be thoroughly back tested on history of such events.
If you decide to use a system that utilizes these fundamental indicators you need to be familiar with their impact on the currency prices. What’s more you have to be a person who enjoys to follow the news in economy an politics.
You may think that if you use only chart patterns and technical indicators in your trading you don’t need to know anything about fundamentals. I would disagree with that since the knowledge of the fundamental indicators and their schedule will allow you to adjust your trading system to make you more profit in the long run.