In some recent research by Danske Bank, it shows that China, Japan and Russia are the countries with the largest reserves and have increased since 2003. Head around to their site to read more about it along with sexy charts. Click on FX Crossroads 9 July report.

Some info on the missile

http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/militarysumfolder/shahab-3.html

The range of the missle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Shahab-3_Range.jpg

Price of oil by 5pm EU time has fallen since the release of the US oil stocks, strangely enough oil stocks came in even lower than expected @ -5.9 million barrels down (-1,5 predicted)… I’m sure later news will become apparent on why the fall.

Losses in Gold and Oil were gained back during NY hours to pretty much where they started their trip down in Asia. I noticed USD selling though when US’s Yellen started speaking and mentioned that the housing sector in the US should stay down till 2009.

Today Gold thrashed about like a shark in nets. Started early in Asia with wide selling of… well…mostly anythign that wasn’t a US Dollar.

Oil down over 2% sofar.

Institutional Investor has released their latest report ranking the 300 biggest managers…

http://www.iimagazine.com/Rankings/rankingsMoMaRankAmerica08.aspx

And currencies grow in popularity…

http://www.iimagazine.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1945497

Quite a dead day today, a hundred or so cents movement on Crude Oil but nothing to write home about, got very choppy near NY morning, clearly BBQ’s were getting more usage than trade tickets on oil from 8am EST.

The Human Security Gateway and Research resource were added to the Humanitarian link section. Very informative and I’ve subscribed to their newsletter for over a year, great briefings and reports.

Have a great Independance day.

Below is the link to the new Crisis Watch Report. Coverage ranging from Zimbabwe to Nigerian attacks on the offshore oil rigs.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5528&l=1

Recently added links were to the Research section, the World Gold Council and JP Morgan. Two hedge fund news links were removed after they proved to be useless as they weren’t being maintained anymore.

More links will be added when they prove themselves. The links you see here are from over 8 years of hand picked research and use. They reliable. Also what we do is scan through all of them and pick the pieces to take note of for our own strategies, it also gives us a good all around “big picture” of the market, we do not doubt at all that if you go through these links weekly you will have an edge over other traders that you know when it comes to fundamental and current market knowledge.

Todays numbers and especially from Trichets talk on ECB’s stance on future rate hikes made the EUR fall over 100 pips. Gold followed and has broken a 4HR support line and currently heading towards daily support of 918.45, possible 900 figure coming into view by next week after the 4th of July celebrations. I guess it’s a little Independance day present

Basically Trichet mentioned that the ECB has no bias and Q2’s numbers won’t be as flattering as the current first quarters, hinting that inflation should be under control and not calling for further hikes.

Gold is now currently at 928.50 and falling.

http://www.mees.com/postedarticles/oped/a47n33d01.htm