Author: Kristian Fiskerstrand

Bearish on EURUSD

While having an underweight view on equities other asset classes are worth a look. In addition to credits, one of the more interesting to follow, in my opinion, is foreign exchange speculation.

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EURUSD is currently trading below the option barrier around 1.45 after having enjoyed a revival over the past two weeks (circled), as the sentiment towards the Greek situation has improved. In my opinion, however, the peripheral EUR situation is still so vulnerable (Portugal avaiting a general election shortly isn't exactly helping) that I expect a reversal of the past few week's gain, down towards the 1.40 - 1.41 area (38.20 fibb level at 1.4144 and 100 dma at 1.4061).

Still underweight equities

The 11th of March (OSEBX close 435) I expected a correction to OSEBX, which reached an intraday low over the past few months of 409 the 15th. This was less of a correction than expected (but still down 6% within a few days). Since then the index has returned to trading in the narrow tunnel of 430 to 445, having difficulties breaching the barrier of the 76.40 fibb levels. Closing today at 436, virtually unchanged since the last update (and as such a better return for being allocated elsewhere).

The uncertainties regarding the peripherals in the eurozone, as well as increasing signals of weaker growth in the economies still support an underweight in equities. This is further supported by expectations of rate hikes which should make bonds increasingly attractive, and could reduce liquidity flowing into equities. In the current yield environment, however, the credit spreads found for higher rated debt instruments supports investments in Floating Rate Notes rather than bonds or equities.

In support of buying OSEBX we have a rising 200 daily moving average, currently at 417 (roughly 4.5 per. cent. down from today's close) which could prove a resistance level. But the risks in the economy in my opinion still provide a poor Risk/Reward.

Updated technical analysis of OSEBX:

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Source for sks-keyservers.net released as open source

Due to popular demand, and what I hope will result as good contributions to the further development of sks-keyservers.net I decided to release the sourcecode under the GNU General Public License v3 in a subversion repository available at code.google.com

For those who haven't gotten to know this project, yet, I started it in 2006 when the former random.sks.keyserver.penguin.de round-robin pool by Bjoern Buerger went offline. The SKS Keyservers provide the public key component / certificates in the Web of Trust of which OpenPGP ("Pretty Good Privacy") is based on. The whole framework is used in order to facilitate digitally signed and encrypted email messages.

In an environment where the governments implement schemes such as the Data Retention Directive (EU), and documentation shows that US used its Echelon surveillance network to promote Boeing's business (in 1994), one can't stress the importance of encryption enough. But even for those who don't feel this need, email is becoming an increasingly important method of communication - and without digital signatures, anyone can spoof an email address. Despite this, surprisingly few have decided to invest any time or effort into securing their digital communication.

That was also the reason for me starting to write my still un-published book in 2008, Sending Emails The Safe Way. I started this with the intention of convincing more people about the necessity and teaching them about the various elements related to proper security. The more I wrote, however, I noticed that my writing got more technical and in the end I concluded that the book was not suitable for the intended task, but was rather aimed at system administrators. Realizing this I never got around to finished the book. However, the parts I wrote during a couple very interesting weeks can nevertheless be downloaded in PDF format. By now all but the cryptography theory and history is outdated, including quite a few of the references found in the footnotes, so any new effort at writing something on the subject would be from scratch. Based on the adoption rate of the technology, it sure seems necessary.