Late last month the Commodity Trading Futures Commission, the US’ main derivatives regulator, decided not to allow exchange traded bets on American political parties. They said: ‘the contracts involve gaming and activity that is unlawful under state law and are […]

Even some economists will admit that when it comes to timing, technical analysts have the upper hand. This was rammed home to me when, post-holiday, I turned to read my March 2023 copy of our magazine, the Market Technician issue […]

For an experienced market technician who prefers to stick with the trend, Mr Kaufman’s timing was impeccable. ‘’Today [10th May 2022] I bailed out of everything’’. This was because, as per his trading rules, when annualised volatility rises above 32% […]

Thursday 23rd March 2022 Alessio gave an excellent webinar for the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA) entitled ‘Crypto Markets and the Wyckoff Method: A Top-Down Approach’. He’s a teaching instructor @WyckoffAnalysis whose website is www.wyckoffanalytics.com. Not being exactly au-fait […]

US equity indices kicked off 2022 with an anxiety-driven down draft – not downward dog. This week they faced a two-day Federal Reserve meeting, one which had been threatening ‘gradual’ interest rate rises; Wednesday evening financial markets were told that […]

A famous quote I love is this one from Eleanor Roosevelt: ‘I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.’ A firm […]

I had high hopes for this latest in the STA’s International Speaker virtual tour; the session was clear, lively, and better than I had thought possible. STA members are urged to view and review it as soon as the video […]

Released Wednesday 20th October 2021 at 07:00 BST For months, nay years, inflation has not been a talking point of the chattering classes; now suddenly it is. From retail prices growing negligibly – or even negatively – for the best […]

Released Wednesday 11th August 12:30 GMT With inflation being the financial markets’ biggest worry since February, and acres of print being given over to discussions as to whether central banks are correct in labelling it ‘transitory’, no wonder this data […]

‘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 […]