Search results

Except for the part where the Fed doesn't calculate the CPI, PPI, or Price Deflator studies that most folks point to as inflation indicators.

The Fed has not driven T-Bill rates down. In order to do that, the Fed would have to be buying Bills, which they have not been doing. The decline in Bill rates is caused by institutions being too freaked out to want to put their money anywhere else.

The downward trajectory in US Treasuries is almost exclusively due to flight to quality buying. It has nothing to do with economic fundamentals. This is purely a demand move specific to US sovereign debt. If you look at corporate debt, the story is very different. Spreads in corporates to...

Taking the definition of a recessiong as consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, then the odds are definitely against it. There are only three ways it could happen: Q3 and Q4 are negative Q4 and Q1 are negative Q1 and Q2 are negative Given the relatively strong Q3 forecasts I've...

What timeframe are we talking about here?

Spot on. If you don't have a good understanding of trading and what it's all about, the market you trade isn't going to matter a bit - unless you luckily stubble in to a market in a strong trend (like stocks in the late 90s). The advantage forex trading offers is ready access to literally...

When you find a major market that isn't primarily driven by flows and news, please let me know. Seriously. What market isn't? My own experience with forex - going back to the mid 90s - is that the forex market is the psychological market. Trends persist because market participants expect them...

Being simultaneously short and long the same stock (or anything else, for that matter) is just an offset. You don't make money if it goes up and you don't make money if it goes down as long as both positions remain open. Actually, you lose because you've paid a commission. As for buying puts...

If your trade risk is declining on a points per positions basis then there's certainly no reason not to trade larger size to basically take the same amount of net risk. Got to say, though, that upon first reading your question I couldn't help but flash back to one of the forex trader...

Not quite. Reverse the analysis - as in look for poor fundamentals to identify possible short prospects.

Since TA, at its core, is based on mass human behavior, until that changes (and I don't see it happening any time soon), the tried and true classic methods will keep working.

Forex, no doubt. Despite the increased access to the commodities market through ETFs and mini contracts, a lot of small traders still shy away from commodities. Forex, on the other hand, has exploded the last five years or so.

Not sure what you mean by "just backtesting". You should be making every effort in your system evaluation to have it replicate what actual trading implementation will be like.

Check Oanda's weekend spreads. I think they are a bit narrower than the 20 pips you have seen. Why are you looking to trade on the weekends, though? There's zero activity. Are you just looking at that timeframe for position entry/exit?

A healthy debate could be started over the difference between trading and investing, and has in other places. I'm pretty sure, though, that there aren't any folks in that discussion who would differentiate the two by saying trading is scalping and investing is swing trading. The very term itself...

You are correct to say that the increasing trade size implied by fixed ratio will create bigger drawdowns as profits increase, though they will also narrow drawdowns when losing because of decreased trade size. Fixed ratios produces higher returns in good times than fixed lots, but is also...

If poor stock performance means the CEO and board are feeling pressure from the sharedholders and at risk of getting ousted you can be quite sure that they are bothered. :p

I'm a bit reluctant to tell you what I use for the simple reason that it will just perpetuate your indicator cycle. Do a search on "Identifying Budding Trends with Bollinger Bands" in Google or your search engine of choice, though, and you'll get the jist of what I do with volatility. As for...

I actually went through that myself. For a while I was a real indicator geek. Over time, though, I just got focused and got better and better at reading charts and evaluating volatility.

That's exactly what it sounds like. Seems like you don't really want to be an indicator trader at heart based on your comments about them. Why not stick with candles and volume? As you spend more time using them you will just keep getting better at it. You really need to start by figuring...