Finance

By Aileen Wang and Simon Rabinovitch BEIJING, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Chinese inflation sped to a 25-month high in October and bank lending blew past expectations, highlighting the challenge faced by Beijing as it battles to keep a lid on price pressures. The data left little doubt about why the central bank raised reserve requirements this week and pointed to further tightening steps, from rate rises to yuan appreciation, in coming months. Markets have already moved to factor in tighter policy with five-year Chinese government bond yields rising sharply in expectations of a rate rise before the end of 2010. However, while world markets swooned in October on fears that Chinese tightening would dent demand, evidence of the economy's continued strength and a belief inflation might drive investors to hard assets provided a lift to commodity prices globally. A stabilisation of key growth indicators, notably industrial output and capital spending, should give the government the confidence to take more steps to mop up liquidity, reassured...

The Forex retail market is becoming more and more popular as time goes on, a phenomenon that begs the obvious question:” Why? What makes Forex so attractive to so many people?” Here are a few suggestions to answer that question: 1. Size: Let's start with the most obvious. The size of the Forex market is unprecedented and unmatched by any other global market. The astronomic number of anywhere between 2 and 5 trillion dollars is what is estimated to be traded daily in the Forex market. This characteristic of the Forex market is what probably causes the initial attraction to new traders. What keeps them interested are the following 6 features. 2. Accessibility: The Forex market, as opposed to any other market, is open around the clock. No need to wait for this institution or the other to open. You can trade currencies from the comfort of your own at any time during the day, something that makes Forex trading a simple and...

The greenback came back after the better than estimated US confidence data which showed improvement to 50.2 in October from the revised 48.6 while analysts expected 49.9. However, the dollar remains under pressure before next week's Fed meeting which is expected to witness a second round stimulus to give another boost to the economy that started to show sluggishness. The dollar index rebounded from a low of 77.03 to a high of 77.68 where it is doing attempts to breach resistance at that level. On the other hand, the euro slipped after Mohamed A. El-Erian, Pacific Investment Management Co. Chief Executive Officer, said Greece will fall into default over the coming three years as the announced austerity measures are not sufficient to reduce the budget deficit that reached 13.6% of GDP last year. The announcement raised concerns that despite the improvement seen recently debt woes will cause recovery to falter. Concerning the euro-dollar pair, it is plummeted to a low of 1.3838 below 1.40 key...