USDJPY remains in downtrend from 96.70, the price action from 93.53 is likely consolidation of the downtrend. Key resistance is at the upper line of the price channel on 4-hour chart, as long as the channel resistance holds, the downtrend could be expected to resume, and another fall to 92.00 – 93.00 area to complete the downward movement is possible. However, a clear break above the channel resistance will indicate that the downtrend from 96.70 had completed at 93.53 already, then further rise towards 100.00 could be seen.

Daily Forex Forecast

By MoneyMorning.com.au

Phew! What a punishing second half of March.

There’s blood on the streets everywhere.

Investors are crying into their cheap beer.

And many are wondering if the stock market will ever go up again.

Oh, hang on a minute, it wasn’t that bad. Yes, the Australian market is 3% below the recent peak reached on 12 March. But seeing as the market is still 25% higher than it was last June, we’ll take that any day of the week.

The question is: are you still in the market or have you been spooked out of it?

Either way, here’s what to do now…

We’ll admit something. We told Pursuit of Happiness readers earlier this week that the Cyprus savings grab had spooked us.

It made us reassess our cash savings and whether we’re better off switching some of that into gold. We figured out that yes, we would be better off with more gold, so that’s what we’ll do.

But the one thing we didn’t do during the height of the Cyprus crisis was to change our view on the stock market.

Safer Than Cash?

That may seem strange. After all, in the event of a crisis isn’t it natural to sell risky assets and buy less risky assets? Well, yes, that’s true.

But the way we’ve come to think about it (and we don’t think we’re the only ones to come to this conclusion), we’ve got more faith in the ability of Australian companies to weather a financial storm than we have in the banking sector to weather a bank run.

That’s especially so when, as we also pointed out to Pursuit of Happiness readers, a bank like Australia & New Zealand Bank [ASX: ANZ] only has $75 in cash and coins in reserve for every $10,000 of deposits (that’s less than 1% by the way).

How do you think you’ll go getting your cash out if there’s a run on Australian banks? Enough said.

So, we’ll take the stock market any day of the week. That doesn’t mean you should ditch all your cash. But you should know the risks. We know the risks in shares, but just as importantly, we know the rewards.

And as the chart shows, a 3% drop…big deal:

You know our style. We’re not a shill or a spruiker for the stock market. If we thought things were bad – really bad – we’d tell you to sell.

But right now we figure the Aussie market has settled in for an extended period of volatile, but ultimately, sideways action. In fact, we doubt if you’ll start to see the market challenge the March high again until the last three months of the year.

For what it’s worth, just remember we tipped the market to end the year at 5,004 points. It hit that mark in February, and who knows, with the volatility, it’s still looking like a good bet to end the year at that level.

But this is exactly why we’re buying stocks, and it’s why you should too…

Big Investors ‘Game-Hunting’ for Yield

We’ve laid out our stall to say that it’s a great time to buy growth stocks. We said that a few weeks ago as stocks hit the peak. To us, dividend stocks looked overvalued at worst and fairly valued at best.

But as we showed you in last Friday’s Money Morning, the recent sell-off has presented an opportunity to fill up on a few dividend stocks. We used AMP Ltd [ASX: AMP] as an example. And what do you know? It rallied 4.6% on Wednesday, recovering about half of what it had lost since February.

This isn’t, and won’t be, an isolated case. Investors will scan the market for yields. They’ll look to pick up any unfairly sold off stock. That should see dividend stocks gain over the next few weeks.

So although the best opportunities for gains this year will come from growth stocks (especially the ones we focus on in the small-cap market), you’d be a mug not to take advantage of the opportunity to use incoming cash flows to top-up on your dividend stocks.

You shouldn’t expect to see the kind of capital growth gains you saw in the previous six months. But if you can get 4-5% gains, plus a 4-5% dividend yield, well, that isn’t a bad return on what most still think of as a super high-risk market.

Cheers,
Kris

Join me on Google+

From the Port Phillip Publishing Library

Special Report: Australia’s Energy Stock BLOWOUT

Daily Reckoning: In Gold, Not Cyprus, We Trust

Money Morning: Silver ‘$100 Within Two Years’

Pursuit of Happiness: Safer Than Cash – Gold Regains Its Rightful Place

Australian Small-Cap Investigator:
How to Make Money From Small-Cap Stocks

By MoneyMorning.com.au

As you know, 2-D printing with ink on paper is being one-upped by 3- D printing with plastics and metals to create objects. But it doesn’t end there…

It’s one thing to print inanimate objects. That is, objects where the machine assembling them does all the work…whether it’s heating up or hardening materials in order to construct whatever your computer aided design (CAD) says.

But it’s quite another thing to print with self-assembling materials. Materials that aren’t just being moved around by the printer, but actually ‘help’ the machine make the product.

Chris Anderson, in his book Makers, explains the concept of ‘intelligent materials’ with the example of Lego blocks:

‘When a child plays with Lego, the blocks correct the child’s mistakes – they fit together only if they’re lined up right. The larger Duplo blocks guide the child to the correct orientation with bevelled edges that exert a force to rotate the parts in the right direction to fit when they’re pushed together.

‘The blocks themselves provide a coordinate system – the Lego grid. And when you’re done with the blocks, you don’t throw them away. You disassemble them and use them to build something else, making them the ultimate recyclable material.’

So How Can a 3-D Printer’s ‘Ink’ be Intelligent?

I’ll give you a hint: it won’t lay down Legos.

But the concept of materials that are inclined to rely on preconceived components is the same...A 3-D printer’s ‘ink’ can be intelligent in the same way that cells in your body are intelligent.

In other words, 3-D printing’s natural next step will be based on biology, the original factory. It will use ‘ink’ that follows instructions from your DNA, the very building blocks of life.

The next step in the 3-D printing revolution is the introduction of bioprinters into labs.

Bioprinters can print layers of living cells in order to create human or other animal tissues. And, in time, even entire organs. The printers build the relevant cells in a certain pattern, a framework, enough so that – amazingly – nature can fill in the rest of the work and complete the job.

Dissolvable gel keeps the cells from dying, which usually isn’t a problem when it happens naturally in a human blood network. The process uses ‘bioink spheroids’ and ‘biopaper gel’.

Incredibly, cells within the bioink spheroid actually rearrange themselves after printing, ‘correcting’ their positions and then turning into tissue.

How they effortlessly do this is all in the memory of their DNA.

Professor Makoto Nakamura at the University of Toyama was one of the first people in the world to use inkjet technology with real living cells to build a 3-D structure. He hopes to print a heart.

The idea first occurred to him in 2002 when he realized that droplets of ink from a standard ink jet printer are about the same size as human cells…one-hundredth of a millimetre.

He had bought a regular old Seiko Epson printer, loaded it with cells and…clogged the nozzle.

Woops.

He could have called it quits, and written it off as a crazy idea. But instead, he called the operator at customer service and explained that he wanted to print human cells, an idea she politely shut down.

Eventually, he reached an official who showed an interest and gave him technical support.

A year later, his experiments confirmed that cells could survive after the printing process if they were put in what we’ve affectionately been referring to as ‘biopaper gel’. So he became one of the first researchers in the world to print a 3-D structure with real living cells using inkjet technology.

His motivation is simple: His background as a paediatrician put him face to face treating children with heart problems. In a discussion he had with a journalist from iAfrica.com, he said:

‘I just had to watch them die. Clinical doctors can’t give them treatment that isn’t in textbooks. I clung to the hope that medicine will make progress and save more lives in the future.

‘I’m not envisioning making superhuman cyborgs. There are simply lives that could be saved if there are organs.’

Nakamura’s represents only one person with the desire to make organs readily available for transplants, but it’s an ambition shared by many. According to the National Network of Organ Donors:

‘More than 111,000 people are currently on the UNOS’ transplant waiting list…the number of people who die waiting for a transplant continues to grow: from 10 people each day in 1990, to 14 a day in 1996, to 19 today. That number will be even higher by 2020…’

That’s just in the United States.

3-D Printing: A New Hope for Patients

When this new technology comes to fruition, there may not even be a need to ask for organ donations. It will most likely be one of the many future technologies that converge in what our in-house expert calls ‘the Phoenix Event’.

Induced pluripotent stem cells, for example, can be used as the raw materials for this kind of technology. Using the DNA from your own stem cells limits any chance of immune system rejection. And all this can happen without the potentially controversial use of embryonic stem cells.

Organovo already has proprietary technology that boasts itself as the world’s first commercial 3-D bioprinter.

In the words of CEO Keith Murphy, ‘Scientists and engineers can use the 3-D bioprinters to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3-D.’ He continues, ‘Ultimately, the idea would be for surgeons to have tissue on demand for various uses, and the best way to do that is get a number of bioprinters into the hands of researchers…’

Think of the demand from well-endowed medical schools and hospitals.

In December 2010, Organovo successfully created the first bioprinted blood vessels from a single person, and they plan to go through with human trials of bioprinted tissues by 2015.

They also anticipate their first artificial human organ will be a kidney, which is the most straightforward part in your body. In time, any organ might be bioprinted.

But Organovo is just one exciting company harnessing the power of breakthrough technologies.

Stay tuned for more!

Josh Grasmick
Contributing Editor, Money Morning

Join Money Morning on Google+

From the Archives…

Why You Should Buy This Falling Stock Market
22-03-2013 – Kris Sayce

Stock Market Warning: Part II
21-03-2013 – Murray Dawes

New Developments on Whether You Can Get Your Mortgage Cancelled
20-03-2013 – Nick Hubble

Your Retirement or Your Mortgage?
19-03-2013 – Nick Hubble

Get Used to This Stock Market Action, It’s Set to Last…
18-03-2013 – Kris Sayce

By J.W. Jones – OptionsTradingSignals.com

By www.CentralBankNews.info     Zambia’s central bank held its policy rate steady at 9.25 percent, saying inflationary pressures should continue to moderate in April due to improved seasonal supply of food, mainly fish, vegetables and beef.
    The Bank of Zambia, which raised its policy rate by 25 basis points in 2102 but has held them steady this year, added that a continued supply of maize to millers by the Food Reserve Agency should also help keep inflation low in April.
    “This notwithstanding, cost-push pressure associated with the lagged pass-through effects of the depreciation of the Kwacha are likely to pose upside risks to the inflation outlook for April 2014,” the central bank said, adding these risks had been weighed in the decision to hold rates steady.
    Zambia’s inflation rate fell to 6.6 percent in March from February’s 6.9 percent.
    In 2012 Zambia’s Gross Domestic Product expanded by 7.3 percent from 2011.

    www.CentralBankNews.info
   

By www.CentralBankNews.info     Romania’s central bank held its policy rate steady at 5.25 percent, saying inflation is expected to continue to follow a downward trend due to a persistent negative output gap and reach the ceiling of the central bank’s inflation target by the end of this year.
    The National Bank of Romania (NBR), which has held rates steady since a 25 basis point cut in March 2012, said annual inflation fell to 5.65 percent in February from January’s 5.97 percent. The adjusted core2 inflation rate was 3.1 percent in February, just below January’s 3.2 percent.
    The NBR targets annual inflation of 2.5 percent, plus/minus one percentage point.
    Romania’s Gross Domestic Product expanded by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter from the third for annual growth of 0.3 percent, up from a 0.3 percent contraction in the third quarter.

    The central bank said a widening of the negative output gap had slowed in the fourth quarter and monetary indicators point to lending to the private sector to remain in negative territory, as in the euro area and in most countries in this region.
    “As domestic political and financial tensions eased, the NBR carefully calibrated the monetary policy instruments, also by shifting from firm to adequate liquidity management, which led to an improvement of liquidity conditions on the money market and hence drove interbank rates considerably lower,” the central bank said.

    www.CentralBankNews.info

By www.CentralBankNews.info     Taiwan’s central bank held its benchmark interest rate steady at 1.875 percent, as expected, saying the current stance was appropriate as the country’s economy was “experiencing a mild recovery along with muted inflationary pressures.”
    The Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan), which has held its discount rate unchanged since June 2011, said economic activity had picked up since the fourth quarter due to better-than-expected exports and private consumption.
    The government’s budget, accounting and statistics directorate has revised upwards its forecast for first quarter Gross Domestic Product growth to 3.26 percent and “bolstered by the world’s moderate economic expansion, exports and private investment will likely drive the domestic economy to grow by 3.92% in the second quarter and 3.59% for the entire year,” the central bank said.
    In December, the bank said it forecast 2013 GDP growth of 3.15 percent.
    For the first two months of this year, consumer price inflation averaged 2.05 percent but core inflation only grew by 1.25 percent, the bank said.

    It added the government projects 1.99 percent inflation for the first quarter, then 1.40 percent in the second quarter due to recent falls in international commodity prices and base effects of last year’s fuel and electricity price hikes. For the full year, inflation is forecast at 1.37 percent.
    The central bank has tightened controls on mortgages and land financing to keep property prices from rising too fast and it said that it was keeping a close watch on real estate lending and urged financial institutions to ensure sound operations and thus preserve financial stability.

    www.CentralBankNews.info

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

STORMY WATERS:Analysts expect the central bank to leave interest rates alone, and urged caution as risks from abroad could derail Taiwan’s nascent economic revival

aipei, March 16 (CNA) Taiwan’s central bank said Friday that it expects inflationary pressure in Taiwan will ease this year partly due to stabilizing grain and energy prices in the global market.

In addition, as growth in local vegetable and fruit prices is likely to slow due to a high comparison base recorded in 2012, and domestic communications fees are trending lower, the upward pressure in consumer prices is expected to be mitigated in 2013, the central bank said.

The comments echoed a forecast made by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) in February which said the local consumer price index (CPI) for 2013 is expected to grow 1.37 percent, down from an increase of 1.93 percent recorded in 2012.

In addition to the slower growth in the local CPI forecast by the central bank and the DGBAS, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research and the Chunghua Institute for Economic Research, two of the major think tanks in Taiwan, expect local consumer prices will rise 1.53 percent and 1.57 percent, respectively.

Global Insight, a worldwide economic institute, has also anticipated Taiwan’s inflation will ease to 1.5 percent in 2013, while it has forecast that global inflation will fall to 3 percent this year from 3.2 percent recorded in 2012.

As the central bank’s concerns over inflation has been reduced, market analysts said, the bank will likely leave its key interest rate unchanged in the upcoming policymaking meeting scheduled for March 28, in a bid to keep liquidity ample to boost the economy.

Several foreign banking groups, including Barclays, Standard Chartered Bank, and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., have forecast the central bank will leave the interest rates intact in the meeting.

In the previous policymaking meeting held Dec. 19, the central bank maintained its key discount rate at 1.875 percent, the rate of accommodations with collateral at 2.25 percent and the rate of accommodations without collateral at 4.125 percent.

Meanwhile, the central bank said it will keep a close eye on the movement of the Japanese yen, which has fallen sharply as the Bank of Japan continues to ease liquidity to depress the currency.

The weakness of the yen has triggered a currency depreciation competition in the region with the central banks in Taiwan and South Korea stepping in to allow their currencies to fall in an attempt to protect their country’s global competitive edge, analysts said.

The local central bank said the Taiwan dollar appears relatively stable compared with the South Korean won, but it emphasized that it is determined to closely monitor the foreign exchange market and 



aipei, March 13 (CNA) Several foreign banks predicted Wednesday that the local central bank will leave key interest rates unchanged in a policymaking meeting scheduled for March 28 as local inflation remains mild.

Among the foreign banks, British banking group Barclays Plc said it expects the central bank to keep liquidity ample in an effort to further lift the economy, although local economic fundamentals have shown some signs of recovery.

In February, the government raised its forecast for the country’s economic growth for 2013 to 3.59 percent from a previous estimate of 3.53 percent, citing an increase in exports and private consumption. In 2012, the local economy grew by just 1.26 percent from the previous year.

The government also anticipates that the local consumer price index for 2013 will rise 1.37 percent from a year earlier, down from an annual increase of 1.93 percent in 2012.

Barclays said the forecast of a 1.37 percent increase in local consumer prices means local inflation will be in check so that the central bank is likely to leave the discount rate unchanged at 1.875 percent in the upcoming policymaking meeting.

The British bank also raised its forecast for Taiwan’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 4.0 percent from a previous prediction of 3.4 percent.

Raymond Yeung, a senior economist with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ), agreed that Taiwan will have contained inflation and that the central bank is likely to keep its key interest rates unchanged in the first quarter.

For its part, Standard Chartered Bank, another British financial institution, said the central bank has no urgent need to tighten its monetary policy in the first quarter, adding that it is unlikely to raise key interest rates before the middle of the year at the earliest.

Earlier this month, Standard Chartered maintained its forecast of Taiwan’s GDP growth at 3.9 percent.

The foreign banks also said the central bank could address the issue of rising real estate prices at the March 28 meeting and come up with further measures to rein in property prices.

In the previous policymaking meeting held Dec. 19, the central bank maintained its key discount rate at 1.875 percent, the rate of accommodations with collateral at 2.250 percent and the rate of accommodations without collateral at 4.125 percent.

If the central bank does not alter the key interest rates in March, it will be the seventh consecutive quarter in which they have rem

Central bank unlikely to change key interest rates in 2013: Barclays 2012/12/21 18:15:17

Taipei, Dec. 21 (CNA) Taiwan’s central bank is likely to leave key interest rates unchanged throughout 2013 because it wants to keep domestic markets liquid and push the local economy on the road to recovery, British bank Barclays Plc said Friday. Growth remains the focus of policymaking, Barclays said in a market comment, though the central bank’s concerns seemed to have eased “slightly” amid improving economic prospects. With signs of stabilization in China, the U.S. and the eurozone, the central bank has turned less pessimistic over the outlook for the world economy, it said. Barclays predicted that Taiwan will see improving exports, consumption and private investment in 2013, and inflation should be “more benign” at around 1.2 percent, compared with 1.93 this year, as prices of international raw materials stabilize. At a quarterly policymaking meeting Dec. 19, Taiwan’s central bank maintained its discount rate at 1.875 percent, its secured loan rate at 2.25 percent and its unsecured loan rate at 4.125 percent. It was the sixth consecutive quarter that the central bank left key interest rates unchanged, hoping that sustained low interest rates will pull the domestic economy out of its doldrums.

By www.CentralBankNews.info     The Czech Republic’s central bank left its benchmark two-week repo rate steady at 0.05 percent and said rates would remain at its current level of technically zero “over a longer horizon until inflation pressures increase significantly.”
    In a statement following a meeting of the Czech National Bank (CNB) board, the bank said it was also ready to use foreign exchange interventions “if further monetary policy easing becomes necessary.”
    The CNB, which cut rates by 70 basis points in 2012 but has held them steady this year, said its forecast calls for a slight decline in market interest rates and then a rise from mid-2014 and inflationary pressures are not expected to rise and there were “no tangible risks of such an increase in inflation pressures” at the present.
    Inflation in the Czech Republic fell to 1.7 percent in February from January’s 1.9 percent. The CNB targets inflation of 2.0 percent, plus/minus one percentage point.
    The Czech economy more than forecast in the fourth quarter and in 2012 Gross Domestic Product shrank by 1.2 percent, the bank said.

    Fourth quarter GDP contracted by 0.2 percent from the third, the sixth quarterly contraction in a row, for annual shrinkage of 1.7 percent, up from 1.5 percent in the third quarter.
    The CNB said data from industrial production, construction output and retail sales in January point to subdued economic activity and the labor market remains weak.

    www.CentralBankNews.info

London Gold Market Report
from Adrian Ash
BullionVault
Thurs 28 Mar, 08:50 EST

The GOLD PRICE slipped back to $1600 per ounce Thursday morning in London, heading into the 4-day Easter weekend 1.3% higher from the start of March.

Silver bullion was flat for the month at $28.65 after recovering yesterday’s sharp 2.3% drop.

European stock markets shrugged off overnight falls in Asia to trade 0.5% higher by lunchtime, while commodities ticked lower.

The Euro currency meantime crept back above $1.28 – a four-month low when broken on Wednesday.

North Korea today kept open a key border crossing despite cutting the last of 3 telephone “hotlines” to the South, citing “hostilie action” by Seoul and Washington, on Wednesday.

“Gold lived up to its status as a safe haven again after all yesterday afternoon,” says Eugen Weinberg’s team at Commerzbank in Frankfurt, noting the two-month high at €1260 per ounce hit by gold in Euro terms.

“The uncertainty over the Cyprus crisis…should lend support to gold demand.”

Queues at Cyprus’s banks were reportedly “calm and orderly” today as a near 2-week bank holiday was replaced by the first exchange controls in a Eurozone state since the single currency was launched in 1999.

Daily ATM withdrawals are limited to €300, with check-cashing banned, overseas transfers restricted to €5,000 per month, and a limit of €1,000 on cash carried out of the country.

Overseas customers withdrew 18% of their Cyprus bank deposits last month, new data showed today.

Germany’s Spiegel magazine yesterday reported that “suspicious transactions” involving Cyprus government and central-bank personnel on the eve of the first, disastrous bail-out proposal are now being investigated.

Gold’s failure to break above $1620 per ounce – now seen by several chart analysts as where a downtrend in Dollar gold prices now comes – is “a little concerning” says a note from Swiss refiner and finance group MKS, “especially considering the uncertainty surrounding Cyprus last week.”

But although Cyprus “will likely fade from the headlines” counters the latest note from brokers INTL FCStone, “the unusual circumstances behind the country’s rescue will likely linger.

“In addition, the Italian situation should come back to unsettle the markets further, offering yet another prop for gold.”

Center-left politician Pier Luigi Bersani, who won the largest share of votes in Italy’s inconclusive election last month, was due today to update President Napolitano today on his failed attempts to build a coalition government.

Exchange-traded gold trust funds will meantime end March with their largest quarterly outflow since such products were launched a decade ago, according to Reuters data, down 7.2% to 2197 tonnes.

Those holdings hit an all-time record of 2366 tonnes in early December.

Gold prices in the first quarter of 2013 were heading today for a 3.5% drop in Dollars, a rise of 3.2% in Sterling, and no change from the end of December in Euro terms.

US Treasury bonds today eased back but kept 10-year yields beneath 1.90%.

Ten-year UK gilt yields continued to hold below that level, offering investors a 4-month low of 1.76%.

So-called “junk bonds” saw record new issuance in the first 3 months of 2013, according to the Dealogic consultancy, with higher-risk borrowers raising $148.6 billion from investors seeking higher yields – up by one quarter from Jan. to March last year.

Adrian Ash

BullionVault

Gold price chart, no delay   |   Buy gold online

Adrian Ash is head of research at BullionVault, the secure, low-cost gold and silver market for private investors online, where you can buy gold and silver in Zurich, Switzerland for just 0.5% commission.

(c) BullionVault 2013

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.