The evening of Tuesday the 29th June 2021 will go down in the annals of English history. Not only were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Wembley, but eldest son George was dressed as a mini-me of his Dad, […]

You probably remember this expression from the film ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. This makes sense, because in those days Spanish coins were minted with silver mined in Latin America, based on a system of 8 ‘reales’ – as Brazil’s currency is known today (real). In 1537, after some debasement, Spain introduced the escudo (as Portugal’s currency was later called) gold coin, worth 16 reales. After further debasement, the gold doubloon (from the word double) was introduced and worth 32 reales. I remember trading and charting – on appropriate graph paper – gilts in thirty-seconds – as US Treasury bonds are still priced today.

A very brave Joshua Mahoney of the IG platform faces an incredibly tricky time explaining the carnage in all sorts of markets on the morning of Monday 9th March 2020 – plus, trying to forecast the next step. Well done, we say, as this is precisely the time and space when we need clear advice and cool heads.

As John Maynard Keynes famously said, ‘’the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent’’. Markets can also, unlike leopards, change their spots, moving from crushingly boring and lethargic for months to quite the raging tiger. This has […]

Gold bugs are probably a happy bunch this month, as suddenly the spot price of the precious metal on the wholesale markets has perked up considerably. Not surprising really, what with Trump tariffs, trade wars, sagging stock markets and shrivelling […]

Over the years, STA members and members of the public, will have seen television interviews with technical analysts on commercial and business TV channels. The society has agreed to a tie-up with IG TV, where we will post editions of […]

All technical analysts have their favourite ways of drawing charts and the indicators and oscillators they find the most useful; that’s only normal.  The trouble for those new to the discipline is that the same old charts, on the same […]

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 […]

Describing himself as a financial historian Russell Napier’s talk at the STA’s December meeting was thorough yet refreshing.  Willing to cut through jargon, slice and dice received wisdom, hack through complacency, and generally challenge the status quo, he certainly got […]

We all know that it takes opposing opinions to make a market; that prices will change as these shift, sometimes slowly, dramatically at other times.  Brexit was perhaps a good example of received wisdom taking a real hit.  Some suggest […]

According to Wikipedia: A fractal is a natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a repeating pattern that displays at every scale. If the replication is exactly the same at every scale, it is called a self-similar pattern. An example of this is the Menger Sponge. […]

Media wants attention and like any spoilt child, the beast will do anything to get it. So business headlines scream at us with emotive words like ‘slump’, ‘soar’, ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’. It’s difficult not to get swept up in it […]