Some encouraging news from the climate summit in Copenhagen. After days of bickering and accusations, most of the countries seem to be on a brink of striking some kind of agreement. Apparently United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries. Agreement on a climate fund could add political drive to the U.N. talks which meant to agree a host of other measures on Friday, from saving rainforests to boosting carbon markets and stiffening global carbon emissions cuts. Whatever comes out of it, I hope it will have more binding power than the previous Kyoto accord.

Whatever the costs associated with implementation of new resolutions, in the long run, they should be worth it. Not only in term of arresting the problems of green house gas emission. I believe this would be beneficial from business stand point. New technologies and processes will have to invented and implemented, creating plenty of employment and financial opportunities. Sure, all of this would be expensive, but if we can afford to bail out fat-cat bankers, and other questionable expenditures like that, this should be a no brainer. Biggest problem would be making sure that everybody is actually doing whatever the final agreement calls for.

On the economic front, number of new unemployment claims rose to 480,000 last week, up 7,000 from the previous week. But it was quickly pointed out that the four-week average for jobless claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell. Every single time employment data is released, somebody is trying to put a positive spin on it. We have heard weekly since at least summer, yet there is still no net job gains. This nonsense about “jobless recovery” is really becoming worn out. Bottom line is- more jobs were lost than created once again.

The long awaited short EUR-GBP trade came to a conclusion yesterday. I closed it while writing last post, as indicated at the end of that update. My exit was at 0.8893 for 79 pips profit. Today price moved 0.8850. More short trades in this pair will probably happen in near future. For now I’m happy with my latest string of GBP trades- all of them produced gains. Nothing to complain about.

Last time I discussed NZD-JPY was in the “Slack markets” post, using 4H chart. Couple of possible buy points were outlined. One on an upside break out, another on a pull back to about 64.00. Second scenario happened, with market forming strong hammer on the chart of interest. I went long but decided to get out relatively quickly for a small 26 pips profit. I find current Yen conditions a little confusing and lacking clarity. Even the way this chart looks, it favors a sell under 63.60 or so. Besides, at the same time I’m looking for a sale of NZD-CHF, which has not happened yet, so took few pips here. I’m not adding new trades here, still have few riding the markets and will update them later. If nothing interesting happens, will post short term GBP-JPY trading efforts tomorrow. Other than that, it is time to slowly shift into holiday mode.

Mike K.