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Daily Options Wrap - September 8th 2008 The market had a very robust day to the upside on Monday and there was reason to believe that there are good things going on in the US corporate environment. However, the investor fear index was not as committed as stock index prices which means...

REVIEW: 8 September 2008 A runaway USD dominated the trends in the forex today including a major retracement across the commodity currencies from an oil price whipsaw. Traders seemed to respond positively to the acquisition of two large mortgage industry players in the US by the government...

The week ends with a strong trend in the market towards weak commodities and a stronger USD. These kinds of breakout trends are great profit opportunities and come along all too infrequently. At this point our job becomes less about forecasting and more about preparing for potential disruptors...

REVIEW: 4 September 2008 The ADP report and retail sales in the US rocked the equity markets to the tune of -74 points on the S&P 500. The move was reflected in a flight to quality with the 10-year note taking off and yields falling to 3.6%. The decline shows how fragile investor sentiment is...

Today's release from ADP showed a net decrease of 33K jobs from the US economy. While I have greater confidence that the ADP sample is more accurate than the same numbers from the BLS that will be released on Friday, this number is still too close to zero to have any level of confidence that...

Now that our oil troubles are over (hint: I am being ironic) we can start looking at stocks that are likely to see the most immediate bottom line benefit from lower energy prices. In order to do this I will typically start by doing an internet search on a good finance portal to find a stock that...

REVIEW: 3 September 2008 The Bank of Canada left rates alone at 3%, which was not necessarily a surprise but the statement was seen as surprisingly hawkish. Whether the Canadian economy is able to live up to expectations is a big question mark but the news may have helped push the CAD against...

by John Jagerson It is the last week of summer and the market seems to be on vacation in many ways. However, there were some interesting developments today that may lead to an opportunity in a cross. The EUR/USD jumped up a little today on some well placed verbal intervention from Axel Weber...

In the prior two segments we looked at the yield curve from a fundamental perspective. This is very useful and provides context for what drives short term and long term yields over time. However, we can also watch for changes in the yield curve on a shorter term basis using technical analysis...

In the last section I talked about what a normal yield curve is and what it usually looks like. However, the yield curve will change over time and these changes can be very important indications for what investors think about the market today and what they expect in the future. In this section...

Can you grade one level of support relative to another? Is a pause at a specific price point more important today than the same support level a month ago or 6 months ago? I think that there are ways to estimate one support level as more important than another. A good example is what is going on...

The yield curve is something that analysts and professionals will track but is rarely talked about by smaller individual traders. This is a very important topic right now as the market is hearing echoes of the credit crisis of July 2007. There are some important differences between now and then...

The Average True Range (ATR) indicator is, at its core, a volatility indicator. It tells you the average price swings, or trading "range," of the currency pair you are analyzing. If the currency pair you are watching is generally a volatile one, or is just going through a volatile period, the...

The Parabolic SAR is one of the most fascinating tools available for setting stop losses. The Parabolic SAR is plotted as a series of dots either above or below the current price of a currency pair, and these dots indicate where you should set your stop loss. SAR stands for "stop and...

This was a subject I addressed a few months ago following several questions about how crosses and their pip values work. I have been getting those questions again a lot lately. This is an important subject to understand if you are going to try to balance positions within a portfolio or just want...

dtrader - Thanks for the comment and compliment. I appreciate your question very much actually. If you are counting up periods versus down periods in the forex, the ratio is pretty darn close to 50/50 as you suggested. However, the trick is being able to trade that "randomness" with any...

This is an introductory article and video around the concept of using a fibonacci retracement to time entries into a stock. You can check it out here...

Small-cap stocks are the place to be right now as the stock market passes the one-year anniversary of the sub-prime meltdown and the beginning of the credit crisis. According to relative strength measurements during the past month, if you are looking for the best place to weather the storm in...

One of the comments on my last post made me think about confirming candlesticks. There are a number of ways to do that and I think it helps when the candlestick pattern itself if less reliable than others. This is an article in which I tested inverted hammers and how likely it was for them...

Time studies are one of my favorite forms of fibonacci analysis. It can be really wild how closely they coincide with periods of market volatility. I usually compare time studies to the fundamental equivalent of listening to and planning for an earnings call. Here is a video about what these...