As usual the STA Annual Dinner was timed to coincide with the Liberal Party’s annual conference, this year in sunny Bournemouth – as billed on their web site.  This means that we had the whole of their gorgeous club pretty […]

I don’t know about you but my email use is fairly chaotic.  Not only do I have two Gmail accounts – I could of course have more but I struggle as it is – but as well as my mobile […]

A familiar face at STA monthly meetings, on Tuesday 12th September (the first chance members had to catch up after the summer holiday) it was Trevor Neil’s turn to stand at the podium.  Bravely admitting to 40 years’ experience trading […]

Considering how long I’ve been working in financial services, you’d think that one way or another I will have, at some point, covered most internationally traded commodities, stocks, bonds and derivatives.  Yet every now and then something or someone alerts […]

Michael Peel, writing in the Financial Times this month, certainly got my taste buds going, telling us about the growing foodie movement spreading through this long isolated country following the end of military rule in 2011.  A firm breakfast favourite […]

The Vix index, originally developed by Menachem Brenner and Dan Galai in 1986, was launched as a futures contract in 2004 on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (then options on this future introduced in 2006).  It followed the stock market […]

Since the great financial crisis started a decade ago the Bank of England has slashed its key Bank Rate to a record low 25 basis points.  To keep people on their toes all along they have been promising that any […]

Like most investors in the Stock Markets when I started investing back in 1999 I was an amateur. I got caught up in the DotCom hype and after losing money after the bust, I stayed away from the markets for […]

As technical analysts we are used to working with ratios.  Perhaps the most famous are the ones devised by Fibonacci, the Italian mathematician called Leonardo Pisano who was born about 1170.  Picking up the Hindu-Arabic numeral system by living in […]

Recent comments, comings, and goings at the US White House have been really too extraordinary for words.  Vowing to clean up the Washington ‘swamp’, Donald Trump has collected a coterie of unusual candidates in his inner circle.  So rather than […]

Donald Trump won the US Presidential election promising to ‘make America great again’.  Markets and investors took him at his word, hoovering up the US dollar and selling the most vulnerable – the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso – hard.  […]

This Friday, the 21st July 2017, the latest issue of Investors Chronicle magazine will hit the news stands and I think will be of interest to STA members and their friends.  Part of the Financial Times stable of publications, and […]

This week’s meeting was dedicated to the new MSTA’s who had recently qualified from the STA exams. It was apparent we had some excellent graduates from some of the conversations I had at the drinks portion of the evening. However, […]

Now called the J. P. Morgan Corporate Challenge this annual race was first organised by Manufacturers Hanover (Manny Hanny to older readers) in New York in 1977.  The idea was to encourage fitness, camaraderie, and teamwork among work colleagues.  Today […]

This month my focus has been on sovereign bonds.  I am not alone here and one of the salient and frightening things is just how few people understand this investment vehicle.  Because of this most retail investors have missed out […]

A few weeks ago an email dropped into my inbox talking about this method and saying: The Wyckoff Method Richard D. Wyckoff started his trading career in 1888. He was an eternal student of the subject. He was a successful trader […]

Zaheer Anwari is a determined young man – and a confident one too.  A degree in software engineering under his belt but bored with it, he ditched that to teach English and travel around Asia.  Moving into photography, he says […]

When I get invited to attend or speak at seminars and conferences on markets, technical analysis, and how to teach yourself trading, I am invariably dismayed by the sea of male faces.  Not necessarily pale and grey, just an awful […]

Some weeks ago Paul McLaren came to the STA’s monthly meeting to talk to us about how he uses volume at price.  He kindly brought with him some question and answer sheets and a few text books he was hoping […]

About thirty years ago I first met technical analyst Bob Prechter.  I hadn’t heard of him at the time but he must’ve been well known by then because the UK commodity broking outfit I was working for had invited him […]