US Market

The second quarter earnings season was very good with over 80% of S&P 500 companies reporting an earnings surprise. Moreover, stock indexes performed strongly with FXCM's SPX500 up 8.25%, the NAS100 up 11.5% and the US2000 coming in at 4.3% During the pandemic period, growth companies have outperformed their value counterparts. This is largely due to the benefit that these companies have received from the lower rate environment as central…

The Fed is currently injecting $120bn into the economy every month via its quantitative easing programme. It is doing this by buying $80bn of Treasuries and $40bn of agency mortgage-backed securities and is committed to this until it has achieved "substantial further progress" on meeting its mandates of price stability and full employment. However, substantial progress does seem to have been made in this regard. The payrolls number for July…

NVIDIA stock has doubled in the past 12 months but why is the stock so highly valued and what has been driving the growth? NVIDIA Corporation operates a worldwide visual computing company comprised of two segments, Graphics and Compute & Networking. The Graphics segment is perhaps the most well-known, providing GeForce GPUs (Graphics processing units) for PCs & Gaming, the GeForce NOW game streaming service & related infrastructure, and solutions…

Robinhood is a mobile trading app with a massive following in the US. As its name suggests, its mission is to make Wall Street available to everyone not just the wealthy. The company has made global headlines in 2021, mainly around the Gamestop short squeeze, and is a driving factor of the growing influence social media is having recently on financial markets. The IPO has been long awaited and finally…

Backed by the robust nature of the U.S. economy, the U.S. dollar is the global reserve currency. The U.S. dollar (USD), or "greenback," is the most widely accepted currency in the world, as it accounts for more than 60% of all known foreign exchange reserves held by central banks. The euro is the next-largest global currency and it accounts for 20% of these reserves, making it a distant second to…

The S&P 500 is probably the most widely followed index that tracks the performance of large-cap American stocks. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, which owns and manages the index, nearly US$10 trillion of stocks is indexed or benchmarked to the index, which includes 500 of the largest American publicly traded companies and captures about 80% of the total value of the U.S. stock market. The 500 stocks in the…

The U.S. government shutdown of 2018-19 was the longest in history, illustrating a growing division in American politics. The product of a budgetary impasse, issues such as immigration reform and federal spending spurred the closure.

Learn about the largest options trading exchange in the United States, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe), in this article from FXCM Insights.

2018 has been an active year on the geopolitical front, led by a developing U.S.-China trade war. Escalating tariffs between the two nations threaten to disrupt the US$640 billion in annual two-way trade, but how would this impact the USD?

The Canadian dollar (CAD) has a storied history throughout the development of North America, world wars and international financial challenges. Existing as a pegged or floating currency, the CAD has shown resilience in the face of global economic chaos.

The CAC 40 Index is regarded as the benchmark index for the performance of the Paris Stock Exchange and the index is managed by the Euronext exchange group.