Do The Greek Debt Negotiations Present An Opportunity To Trade The EUR/USD Currency Pair?

Right now with the discussions going on in the European Union which include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) involving Greece and the massive amount of debt that this country is dealing with, there always seems to be an impact in the value of the EUR/USD currency pair whenever there is significant news that is announced regarding this situation. If you are a fundamental trader who like to take economic news into consideration when trading a currency pair, this is a story that you should follow because it presents a unique opportunity to predict whether the value of the EUR/USD will go up or down based on whether this news is positive or negative.

The situation that we are looking at is that the country of Greece right now has a massive amount of debt into the billions of dollars worth of loans that it has borrowed, and the country is now at risk of defaulting on these loans because they simply cannot pay it all back. What we saw recently was that the talks about restructuring the debt for Greece had hit a stalemate and the previous deadline that they had set had to be moved forward. This caused the EUR/USD to retreat from three-week highs rather quickly in a move over 100 pips over the course of the trading day, and this is an example of how news regarding the Greek debt negotiations can lead to forex trading opportunities.

As a basic rule regarding this situation, any news that seems positive or optimistic regarding the debt talks will make the EUR/USD go up, and negative or pessimistic news will make the EUR/USD go down just like we saw when the deadline had to be pushed back and the currency pair went down. The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s also said recently on CNBC that they are likely to downgrade Greece’s credit rating, and if this news ever breaks then you can bet it will be an opportunity to earn pips by selling the EUR/USD.

There are many traders that believe in using fundamental analysis to try and predict market behavior, and many of these fundamental forex trading strategies are based upon economic indicator values that are released on a regular schedule. It is not every day that a big international news story comes along that presents an opportunity for fundamental trading signals. By following the story regarding the Greece debt negotiations and remembering the basic rule that optimistic news will make the Euro go up and pessimistic news will make the Euro go down, you might be able to earn some extra pips in the forex market by trading the EUR/USD currency pair.

What Presenters Can Learn From Coaching

A major problem I see with a lot of business presentations is that they seem to be more geared to the needs of the presenter (or the organisation) than to the needs of the audience.

This is one reason why so many presentations can appear irrelevant or uninteresting, even when delivered by very capable speakers. (This is also a reason why more presentation skills courses should pay some attention to content and not focus entirely on delivery, but that’s another topic).

I’m coming to think that many presenters could learn a thing or two from the world of coaching.

Broadly speaking, coaching has the following characteristics:

  • it focuses on the person receiving the coaching, not on the coach
  • it focuses on a specific need
  • it leads towards action
  • it is based on a dialogue
  • it builds on the existing knowledge and experience of the person being coached
  • information is fed in, if needed, only after exploring what the person needs
  • the coach is seen, not as a subject specialist, but as someone with skills in helping others to learn and to bring about change
  • the coach is not seen as the one with all the knowledge or all the answers

Contrast this with a lot of presentations that take place. Many of these:

  • are very heavy on content and concerned mainly with passing on information
  • are not focused on helping people meet a specific need
  • place the emphasis on the presenter transferring his or her knowledge to the audience
  • are a monologue delivered by the presenter rather than an interactive discussion

In general, presentations tend to be much more content – driven. In fact, it’s quite possible (although it’s not the best idea) to put together a presentation on any given topic without reference to a specific audience at all – and, in my experience, this often happens. Someone prepares a presentation, on the assumption that someone will find it useful, then looks for an audience to deliver it to.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all presenters should become coaches. Presentations have a different function and, of course, they are delivered to groups of people rather than individuals. But presenters could at least take some of the effective aspects of coaching to make their talks more focused and useful.

At the very least, following a coaching model would help to make sure that a presentation was designed to meet a real need and it would help the presenter in choosing the most relevant content.

For example, many coaches follow the GROW model, created by Sir John Whitmore. This is based on four stages, which can be thought of as four basic questions:

G – Goals: what do you want to achieve?

R – Reality: what are you doing now? How well is that working?

O – Options: what other approaches could you try?

W – Way forward: what are you going to do now?

If presenters asked these questions about their prospective audiences before preparing their talks:

  • they would begin from the needs of the people they are speaking to
  • they could be more certain that what they say is relevant and
  • they could include content which is not there for its own sake but because it helps people to achieve a goal they are striving for.

And, in the end, if you’re not helping people to achieve something, why are you giving your presentation at all?

Top Three Xmas Present Ideas for Boys

The problem is with so many toys for boys out there, what do boys really want for Christmas?

Don’t worry we’re here to make your job of finding the ideal Xmas present just that little bit easier. We’ve done extensive research and are pleased to present to you the Top three Xmas present ideas for boys.

1) At the moment Toy story toys are a massive hit with children, mainly because of the release of the Toy story 3 movie earlier this year. The hottest toy to look out for based on the movie is the Jet Pack Buzz Light year action figure and we are not exaggerating in no small way here but we think around late November going on to December it’s going to be very hard to find this toy in stock from the biggest UK retailers. If your child has watched the movie and liked it then this just might be the perfect Xmas present.

2) The Bakugan Maxus Dragonoid comes in second on our Xmas present ideas for boys list and has to be one of the coolest toys around at the moment. Just hearing the name tells you this toy is going to be awesome. The Bakugan Maxus is basically seven miniature battle Bakugan robots which can all be attached together to make one bigger more powerful Bakugan robot know as Maxus Dragonoid. Confused? Don’t worry all you need to know is that this is extremely popular amongst boys and he’ll absolutely love this as a Xmas present.

3) Third but not least we feel the Ben 10 Mark 10 car will be a massive hit this Christmas and for parents that have little boys that watch Ben 10 you’ll know how much they enjoy the programme. When you make a toy car based on a massively popular kids TV show and give it cool features like the ability to transform into different vehicles such as an air craft then you know you’ve got a winner and looking at early sales of the Mark 10 car we can tell it will make an ideal Xmas present for many little boys.