By Sean Hyman

As an FX trader, I know how difficult it is to sort through all the economic news and find key trading themes for currencies.

After all, you can flip on your computer screen at any time 24 hours a day and constantly monitor news coming from Indonesia, Australia, Mexico and everywhere in between.

In fact, some traders call it “analysis paralysis” because if you watch too much news, you actually won’t be able to move forward and actually place trades.

You’ll be paralyzed by information overload.

To help fight this, I have a quick three-step checklist to help you refine your research…

1. Scan through www.dailyfx.com’s economic calendar so that you’re not blindsided by a news announcement that you didn’t know was coming. This way, you’ll not only be ready for the news but you will also be aware if there could be more volatility in that particular currency around the time of the news announcement.

2. Scan through the news on www.bloomberg.com so that you will know how financial markets are acting in general: stocks, commodities, etc. You will get a good grip on the “investor sentiment” quickly at that site. You’ll realize if investors are acting out of fear or if they are acting on their trades because of the confidence that they have in the fundamentals.

3. Go to tradingeconmics.com to find the specifics on a currency and note how each currency ranked in important categories like: Interest rates (currencies flourish as rates are high and heading higher), CPI (inflation), GDP growth (how the country is growing) and the jobless rates (what % of the country is unemployed).

I’ll be back soon with more trading tips. Till then…

Happy Trading!
Sean Hyman, aka Professor FX