Fed's forward guidance

 Macro Intelligence 2 Partners is no fan of the Fed's forward guidance and fears the strategy could fuel a "meltdown" in the front end of the bond market "that would be both vicious and ultimately damaging to the Fed's credibility." Firm thinks forward guidance is "a con trip, which only works if markets can be persuaded to act like a frog in boiling water, accepting artificially low rates in the face of higher inflation and growth." Mi2 thinks the unemployment rate "will continue to fall far faster than the Fed's forecasts," and "trend in wages has decisively turned" higher. "Are we really meant to assume that Fed officials will be willing to stick with Janet's plan for slow rate hikes in this environment?"

Canadian dollar

The diverging economic outlooks of Canada and the U.S. suggest continued pressure on the Canadian dollar, they said. "We think the low domestic inflation/sluggish growth outlook for Canada will continue to contrast somewhat at least with the improving underlying fundamentals in the USD and keep a firm bid under USD/CAD," TD's strategists said.
With the U.S. dollar finding solid support in the upper C$1.1100s, TD looks for gains toward the mid-C$1.1300 area from here.
There are, however, some countervailing forces at play, TD says.
The narrowing of U.S./Canadian yield spreads in the middle section of the yield curve seems to have become "bogged down," and data on the positions of speculative accounts in futures contracts from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission shows they ramped up their negative positioning in the Canadian dollar, TD says.
"The short CAD trade is popular and while not yet necessarily 'over-populated,' it may make downside progress harder to achieve without a solid reason," TD said.

insider buying

Notable Purchases:
The diversified holding company Leucadia National (NYSE:LUK) bought 23,000,000 shares of branded consumer products company Harbinger (NYSE:HRG) for $253,000,000.
Mallika Srinivasan, a director at agricultural equipment company Agco (NYSE:AGCO), bought 155,592 shares of company stock for $8,081,449.
Willem Mesdaq, a director at big and tall men's apparel retailer Destination XL Group (NASDAQ:DXLG), bought 1,086,200 shares of company stock for $5,976,941.
The Omaha, Nebraska-based financial investment advisory firm 402 Capital bought 112,561 shares of online personals services provider Spark Networks (NYSEMKT:LOV) for $556,746.

Charting demand levels in trading

 The reality is that the stock or Forex markets throw off plenty of warning signs before they start falling in earnest.  The problem is that most traders and investors, either don't see or dismiss these warning signs altogether.  Only after it’s too late traders  tend to take action,that’s just human mind at work. Traders must remember that their natural human tendencies always get them in trouble when it comes to trading. What this tells us is that we need to change the way we think in order to change our results, and part of  that change in mindset is to be  possitive instead of negative when looking at the stock markets.  This sometimes involves going against the grain of mainstream thinking.  This can be hard for many traders to understand. Thus it’s not easy being different, but it can be rewarding, and more importantly, profitable.

Charting demand levels in trading

job market

While the job market has started to show signs of strength, it hasn't recovered fully from the recession. Employers increased payrolls at a slower pace in December and January but stepped up hiring in February. Still, they aren't creating jobs as quickly as they were in the middle of last year, a separate Labor Department report showed.
The gains have been enough to reassure Federal Reserve officials that the recovery remains on track, allowing them to gradually pull back on a bond-buying program meant to spur the economy. On Wednesday, the central bank's policy committee said it would reduce its monthly bond purchases to $55 billion in April from $85 billion last year.
"For some time, the level of unemployment claims has been consistent with an acceptable pace of job losses," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities. "The root problem is that throughout the recovery, the economy has never been able to generate an explosive pace of hiring. And that remains the case."

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen

The Fed on Wednesday announced another $10 billion reduction to its monthly bond-buying program, which was expected. But an accompanying set of policy-rate projections caused a bit of a stir when it showed some Fed officials pulling forward their forecasts for higher rates.
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, in her post-meeting press conference, rattled bond investors further when she said, in somewhat of an off-hand manner, that the first rate hike could come about six months after the bond-buying program ends.
With investors widely expecting the purchase program to end in the fall, that meant a rate increase could be in the cards as early as next spring -- a bit sooner than the mid-2015 many market participants had in mind.

GBP/JPY Daily

 GBP/JPY  Daily
14::30 GMT - Modest rise holding just above Tues' mid, but GBP is stillwell inside yesterday's range & sitting just off last week's low. A   breakdown here (Thurs?) has scope for a fast trade down to 165.