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After reporting notable decreases in new orders for U.S. manufactured goods in the two previous months, the Commerce Department released a report on Wednesday showing that factory orders rebounded by more than expected in the month of February.

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The service sector in China expanded at an accelerated pace in March, the latest PMI from HSBC and Markit Economics revealed on Thursday, showing a score of 51.9.

That's up from 51.0 in February, and it moves farther above the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction.

The employment sub-index moved higher for the first time in five months, the data showed, while input costs declined at manufacturers but gained at service providers.

The composite PMI dipped to 49.3 in March from 49.8 in February.



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While the Labor Department released a report on Friday showing that U.S. employment increased by slightly less than expected in the month of March, the report also showed upward revisions to the job growth in the two previous months. The Labor Department said non-farm payroll employment rose by 192,000 jobs in March compared to economist estimates for an increase of about 200,000 jobs.







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Stretching the Price

Most traders are familiar with moving averages. They are a useful technical tool for identifying the direction and strength of a trend. However, many traders overlook a very useful characteristic of price that allows us to identify a trading opportunity using moving averages. That characteristic is elasticity.

Prices are elastic. They will move away from an average and then snap back. They repeat this process in a trend over and over, stretching away from that average before returning. In a trend, however, the average will slowly move in the direction of the trend thus making the price cover less distance when retracing.

Imagine a rubber band. If you stretch the band slightly, it will snap back to its original shape. If you stretch the band further, you will have a more violent snap back to the original shape. Price acts in a similar manner. If you observe price stretching away from an average, it will snap back as soon as it strikes a level of supply or demand. Stretch price further, such as a parabolic move, and you will often experience a stronger return.

This elasticity is due to the actions and emotions of the people trading and investing in the stock/commodity/index/currency. It works the same on any security. If you go to the store and your favorite product is marked down on sale, you are more likely to buy it or even buy more of it. If inflation caused the price of the product to rise, you may buy less of it, not buy it at all, or look for a substitute to buy.

The same occurs with securities. When price is below the average price, it is undervalued and a bargain. If it moves to an extreme away from the average then it becomes irresistible to traders and investors who will rush in to buy it and send the price higher. The traders will stop buying when it reaches the average price since it is no longer a bargain. However, those who missed out on the initial buying spree may try to join and will push prices above the average. If prices extend too far above an average, then the price is overvalued and no one will want to buy it. Nervous holders of the security will start to sell and cause prices to drop to… you guessed it, the average.



In the chart, I have used a simple moving average to demonstrate this effect. Note how price will move away from the average and then return after reaching extremes. We can locate high probability long and short entries when this is combined with support and resistance. Typically, when price stretches away from the average, it will extend until it reaches a supply or demand level. These are levels where traders caused the price to reverse in the past. The over or undervalued nature of price being far from the average, added to the fact that the price has reached a level where it turned previously will usually lead traders to take that action again.

This gives us the opportunity to predict where traders will take action and more importantly, where we can profit by acting sooner. There are some important rules that you must keep in mind when trading. Always be mindful of the trend and do not trade against it. For instance, you shouldn’t buy in downtrends. Look to short or close shorts until you have confirmed the trend is reversing. You shouldn’t short in up-trends. Go long or exit according to your analysis. Learning to read price and its relationship to averages is a valuable skill that can be used to trade successfully in any market.


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Heartbleed Bug: Public urged to reset all passwords

Several tech firms are urging people to change all their passwords after the discovery of a major security flaw.

The Yahoo blogging platform Tumblr has advised the public to "change your passwords everywhere - especially your high-security services like email, file storage and banking".

Security advisers have given similar warnings about the Heartbleed Bug.

It follows news that a product used to safeguard data could be compromised to allow eavesdropping.

OpenSSL is a popular cryptographic library used to digitally scramble sensitive data as it passes to and from computer servers so that only the service provider and the intended recipients can make sense of it.

If an organisation employs OpenSSL, users see a padlock icon in their web browser - although this can also be triggered by rival products.

Copied keys

Google Security and Codenomicon - a Finnish security company - revealed on Monday that a flaw had existed in the software for more than two years that could be used to expose the secret keys that identify service providers employing OpenSSL.

They said that if attackers made copies of these keys they could steal the names and passwords of people using the services, as well as take copies of their data and set up spoof sites that would appear legitimate because they used the stolen credentials.

They nicknamed it the Heartbleed Bug because the flaw caused the "leak of memory contents" between servers and their clients.

It is not known whether the exploit had been used before the revelation, since doing so would not leave a trail - unless the hackers published their haul online.

"If people have logged into a service during the window of vulnerability then there is a chance that the password is already harvested," said Ari Takanen, Codenomicon's chief technology officer.

"In that sense it's a good idea to change the passwords on all the updated web portals."

Other security experts have been shocked by the revelation

"Catastrophic is the right word. On the scale of one to 10, this is an 11," blogged Bruce Schneier.

The BBC understands that Google warned a select number of organisations about the issue before making it public, so they could update their equipment to a new version of OpenSSL released at the start of the week.

However, it appears that Yahoo was not included on this list and tech site Cnet has reported that some people were able to obtain usernames and passwords from the company before it was able to apply the fix.




The bug has been called Heartbleed to reflect data leaking from computer servers

"Our team has successfully made the appropriate corrections across the main Yahoo properties - Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Food, Yahoo Tech, Flickr and Tumblr - and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now," said a spokeswoman for the company.

New passwords

NCC Group - a cybersecurity company that advises many members of the FTSE 250 - described the situation as "grave".

"The level of knowledge now needed to exploit this vulnerability is substantially less than it was 36 hours ago," the company's associate director Ollie Whitehouse told the BBC.

"Someone with a moderate level of technical skills running their own scripts - the Raspberry Pi generation - would probably be able to launch attacks successfully and gain sensitive information.

"As long as service providers have patched their software it would now be a prudent step for the public to update their passwords."

Several security firms and independent developers have published online tests to help the public discover if the services are still exposed.

However, there is no simple way to find out if they were vulnerable before.

Organisations that used Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) web server software would not have been affected.

But Codenomicon has noted that more than 66% of the net's active sites rely on the open source alternatives Apache and Nginx, which do use OpenSSL.

Even so, some of these sites would have also employed a feature called "perfect forward secrecy" that would have limited the number of their communications that could have been hacked.

'No rush'

A researcher at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory said it would be an overreaction to say everyone should drop what they are doing to reset all their passwords, but that those concerned should still act.

"I think there is a low to medium risk that any given password has been compromised," said Dr Steven Murdoch.
"It's not the same as previous breaches where there's been confirmed password lists posted to the internet. It's not as urgent as that.

"But changing your password is very easy. So it's not a bad idea but it's not something people have to rush out to do unless the service recommends you do so."

Australia posted a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 5.8 percent in March, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.

That handily beat forecasts for 6.1 percent, and it was down from 6.0 percent in February.



The Australian economy gained 18,100 jobs in March 18,100 to 11,553,200 - blowing away expectations for a gain of 2,500 following the upwardly revised jump of 48,200 in the previous month (originally 47,300).

Full-time employment decreased 22,100 to 8,029,100 and part-time employment increased 40,200 to 3,524,000.

Unemployment decreased 29,900 (4.0 percent) to 713,200. The number of unemployed persons looking for full-time work decreased 16,700 to 509,800 and the number of unemployed persons only looking for part-time work decreased 13,300 to 203,400.

The participation rate was 64.7 percent - in line with forecasts but down from the upwardly revised 64.9 percent a month earlier (originally 64.8 percent).

Aggregate monthly hours worked increased 8.0 million hours (0.5 percent) to 1,617.2 million hours.

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The Vix spiked up and has dropped 20% in 2 days! Clearly a sign of the times and what the year holds in store for everyone! Steve Moses, joins Merlin for a look at how to take advantage of current markets through the use of Options. Steve answers listeners questions about the Greeks and the various strategies that one could use to capitalize on the volatility.


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Audio :

Creator of Online Trading Academy’s Real Estate investment course, Diana Hill, joins Merlin for a look at what is trending in the housing market. One interesting is urban development of big cities catering to the younger generation who don’t want rural living. Diana also talks about when is the best time to consider selling your home to get the greatest return on investment.






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Retail sales in the U.S. rose by more than expected in the month of March, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Monday.

The report showed that retail sales jumped by 1.1 percent in March after climbing by an upwardly revised 0.7 percent in February.

Economists had expected sales to increase by about 0.9 percent compared to the 0.3 percent increase originally reported for the previous month.

Excluding an increase in auto sales, retail sales still rose by 0.7 percent in March compared to economist estimates for an increase of 0.5 percent.

USDCAD M5 : 22 pips price movement by USD - Retail Sales news event :




AUDUSD M5 : 13 pips price movement by USD - Retail Sales news event :




EURUSD M5 : 17 pips price movement by USD - Retail Sales news event :





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Economist Robert Murphy joins John O’Donnell and Merlin Rothfeld for a look at how the Government is wrecking the economy. Mr. Murphy is also teaching a class starting in 2 weeks on the subject.
He also gives away his book: Lessons for the Young Economist. This broadcast is the first from the brand new studio and world headquarters for Online Trading Academy!






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