‘The song [written by Paul Simon when he was 21 years old] makes an allusion to the extreme capitalism and consumerism that is suffocating society – “the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made” (neon represents the […]

Published on the 10th April 2020 in the Financial Times newspaper, this wasn’t the first time Mr Coates had contributed an article. Acting on a hunch he had had when running a trading desk for Deutsche Bank, he then retrained in neuroscience and physiology at Cambridge University. He wanted to find out whether ‘the rollercoaster of physical sensations a person experiences while immersed in the markets alters their risk-taking’.

Quite by chance, about 10 days ago, someone put me on to a video available (to those who pay a television licence fee) on BBC iPlayer. Called ‘The Markets’, it was released in 1976 and is an interesting vignette of how things used to be in the City of London, and how the plumbing really works. I don’t go back that far, though I did study at the London School of Economics, but many of my work colleagues in the early 1980s were around then and regaled us with tales of the old days – not the ‘good old days’ mind you.

I must say, I don’t envy men these days; sartorial decisions are so very nuanced. IG TV host Jeremy Naylor this week invited Member of the Society of Technical Analysts’ Lee Sandford of tradingcollege.co.uk onto their regular slot, looking at […]

In this week’s Investors Chronicle column I’m writing about the very basics of approaching charts for technical analysis. My extensive reader-base is well above average age, has well above average income and assets, and often has well entrenched views. Not […]

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 […]

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 […]

The wild gyrations in global markets since the Brexit vote to leave the EU have brought out the best and the worst in markets and pundits.  Volatility in UK shares following the vote to leave the EU is “no reason […]

Approached by an STA member recently at a monthly meeting, he showed me a very interesting report by FTSE Russell, an organisation producing equity benchmarks and research on these, wholly owned by the London Stock Exchange Group.  Of the five […]

We all know that the prime mover of technical analysis is a time series analysis of market prices, sometimes labelled as ‘descriptive statistics’ by statisticians. They then call all further analysis based on this data ‘inductive statistics’ which include forecasts, generalisations, and extrapolations.

At November’s STA monthly meeting we were treated to a very interesting talk by motivational coach Steve Ward (do watch the video which is now on the STA website). But there was an added extra in store for me over […]

Since my last blog post regarding Fibonacci Extensions for profit targets, I have received some great feedback, so I would like to say thank you to everyone who took the time to read it. In this post I will be […]

Founder member of the STA Philip Gray treated us to a no-holds-barred look into manias and the madness of crowds last night. Warning us: ‘this lecture will seriously damage your wealth’ he regaled us with interesting, and many hilarious anecdotes […]

There are many rules of thumb involving market moves and the size of these; a ten per cent stock market decline is called a correction and 20 per cent drop a bear market. But what can we conclude when markets […]

How many roll up their sleeves in a hurry, study the price chart of their favourite financial instrument, using the same old methods and time frame, all the time. When questioned, the usual retort is that this is their preferred […]

This week the euro rallied five US cents in 65 hours, despite on-going Greek drama, and all too many financial analysts were stumped, slaughtered, and lost for words. I have been wondering whether technical analysis can help in predicting surprise, […]

You will have probably heard of the great new technological leap forward that is the ability to print in three dimensions. Not only will we eventually be able to make body part replacements, but I have been warned that the […]

Only economists use line charts.  We technical analysts have developed far more sophisticated methods, first bar charts, then bar charts with opening and closing levels which morphed into candlesticks, not forgetting those with no time scale along the bottom like Point & Figure, Renko, and the Japanese Three Line Break.