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by ForexNewsNow Team on July 15th, 2011

Forex Weekly Outlook for July 18th – 22nd

This week has so far proved to be quite an eventful one in online forex news as the EU continues to struggle with ongoing sovereign debt concerns and the US public debt deadlock remains unresolved.

The EU sovereign debt issues threatened to engulf a new country – Italy – this week but fears that the Mediterranean nation would join the likes of Portugal and Greece seem to have subsided for now.

Credit rating agency Moody’s took the decision to downgrade Portugal and Ireland’s ratings this week and placed US government bonds on “review for a possible downgrade given the rising possibility that the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis.”

On Wednesday, investors followed closely the words of US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as he spoke to the US Congress about the national economy. Bernanke declared that the central bank was ready to ease monetary policy further if the economy weakens and inflation moves lower which many interpreted as a sign that the Fed may soon launch a “Quantitative Easing 3” program to help move the US economy forward.

Here is a list of economic events next week that are likely to impact the trading of the major foreign currency pairs:

  1. Euro Zone Leaders Summit on Greece  – N/A – Leaders of countries in the euro zone are likely to meet next week to discuss a second aid package for Greece as well as private-sector involvement in reducing the country’s debt burden, EU diplomats said on Wednesday. The outcome of this meeting is sure to impact trading of the euro as the currency appears to be quite fragile as its survival is being questioned by some.
  2. US Housing Starts (Monthly) – Tuesday July 19th 1:30 P.M. GMT – The housing starts statistic is published by the US Census Bureau and captures the annualized number of new homes or buildings that began construction in a given month. Recently there have been reports that the amount of building permits issued in the US has been rising indicating the amount of housing starts could be higher than expected. The previous housing starts number was 560K last month and the forecast for this month stands at 571K.
  3. US Existing Home Sales (Monthly) – Wednesday, July 20th 3:00 P.M. GMT – The Existing Home Sales measures the annualized number of existing residential buildings that were sold during the previous month as measured by the National Association of Realtors. The previous figure was listed at 4.81M and the forecast is 4.92M.
  4. UK Retail Sales (Monthly) – Thursday, July 21st 9:30 A.M. GMT – The Retail Sales is a monthly measurement of all goods sold by retailers based on a sampling of retail stores of different types and sizes in the UK compiled by the Office for National Statistics. The previous figure was -1.4% which was very negative since the previous forecast was -0.5%. The forecast this month is for an increase of 0.5%.
  5. German Ifo Business Climate Index (Monthly) – Friday, Jul 22nd 9:00 A.M GMT – The Ifo Business Climate Index is a report published by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research that determines the business sentiment and conditions in the euro zone. The reading is concluded from a survey of about 7,000 businesses. The previous Ifo index reading came out at 114.5 and the current forecast for this reading is 113.6.

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