There hasn´t been anything particularly important in the economic calendar so far today, but from what I can see the numbers vary from one “extreme” to another.

It started green with the UK GFK consumer confidence last night which beat expectations, yet it was still negative.

About an hour later came the most important economic data today – the Japanese household spending, which declined 3.8% year on year. That´s a horrible number, which adds to the negative state in Japan.

At -0.4%, the Tokyo price index (consumer inflation) was also red. At the very least, the unemployment rate fell by 2 points to 2.8%, while the industrial production grew 2%.

There was a slight pickup in Chinese manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMI, but there was no consensus on expectations so the numbers are not coloured.  

Back to Japan, the housing stats fell by 2.8% on a yearly basis. We can conclude that the numbers from Japan were primarily bad.

French consumer spending was also negative, as it fell 0.8% last month, though CPI (consumer price index) jumped 0.6% higher.

The German factory orders surged by 1.8% this month, so we are seeing mostly green numbers from Europe. The Euro has managed to make a 30 pip comeback and is trading at the 20 SMA on the hourly forex chart.

This looks like a good opportunity to open a sell forex signal since the stochastic indicator is also oversold, but I´d prefer to see the price another 20 pips higher before shorting this forex pair. We might be tempted to short it right now though, so stick around guys.