Big week for GBP/USD: what’s on?

With a new foreign exchange trading week now getting underway, it’s a good time to look ahead and see what is happening in the markets.

The GBP/USD currency pair will be under close scrutiny this week as sterling finds itself in the spotlight thanks to a number of planned data releases on Tuesday.

Gross domestic product figures for May, for example, are expected out at 6am GMT on that day.

Month on month, these are expected to shift from the pandemic-influenced last recorded position of -20.4% and up to a positive position of +5%.

The pair will be in the spotlight again later in the week when Britain’s consumer confidence figures for July are released late on Thursday evening.

These are expected to show a change from -27 to -26.

Elsewhere, the US dollar index is also likely to face some scrutiny on Thursday.

Data on initial jobless claims will be out at 12:30pm GMT for the dates around 10^th July.

These are expected to show a change from 1,314,000 to 1,250,000 in a sign that perhaps economic recovery from the pandemic is slowly breaking through in the world’s biggest economy.

Man fined after alleged forex fraud in the US

A man has been given a fine of over $1m following allegations that he ran a fraudulent foreign exchange scheme in the US state of Missouri.

Joshua Christian McDonald will face the fine along with his firm Perfection PR Firm LLC (PPR).

The level of fine overall has been set at around $1.3m – and has come from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

McDonald, who is from the state of Texas, allegedly carried out the crimes against at least 12 people.

Many of these people were concentrated in the state of Missouri, which is located in the Midwest.

In a statement, the CFTC accused McDonald of having “misappropriated customers’ funds” – and claimed that he failed to properly register.

“The CFTC charged that, in soliciting funds for and operating a pooled investment vehicle, PPR acted as an unregistered commodity pool operator and McDonald acted as an unregistered Associated Person of PPR,” it said.

“The defendants falsely represented to prospective customers that McDonald was profitably trading forex and promised customers that their accounts would grow in value 10 to 50 percent per month, among other things.”

However, according to the regulator, this was later demonstrated to not be true.

“In fact, McDonald did not trade forex as successfully as he claimed and actually lost money,” it said.

“Moreover, the defendants misappropriated customers’ funds by transferring funds into cryptocurrency accounts in McDonald’s name, paying McDonald’s personal expenses, and failing to return funds upon customers’ requests.”

“Customers lost most or all of their funds as a result of the defendants’ fraud and misappropriation,” it added.

Overall, McDonald and the firm will now have to pay $360,565 in restitution to those who lost their money.

However, the bulk of the fine will come from a civil monetary penalty of $935,907.

About the author: Justin Freeman

Justin is an active trader with more than 20-years’ industry experience of working for big banks and hedge funds. He has an inside knowledge of how the financial markets work, thanks to roles including trader on a $750m Event-Arbitrage desk and CRO and COO of hedge funds running a variety of strategies. From stat-arb and trend-following CTA to fixed-income relative value. Firm’s he has worked at include big banks like Citi, and prominent hedge funds including D. E. Shaw and Millennium Capital Management.

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