PUBLIC MARKS from polyxena with tag finance

If the Martingale system is a joke - then the anti-Martingale is a seriously bad joke. As risk-management it leaves something to be desired.

Let’s just run through this scenario: 20,000 trades get placed simultaneously - or 20,000 attempts are made to get the same trade placed. Online brokers do tend to notice these things,

Camarilla Pivot Points are (unfortunately) covered in the same mystique as Fibonacci retracement - involving higher mathematics to produce a magic formula that somehow the markets are bound to follow

The London Interbank Offered Rate is a daily reference rate based on the interest rates at which an institution (ie. a bank) can borrow unsecured funds from other institutions in the London wholesale money (or interbank) market.

ETFs retain the valuation feature of a unit trust, which can be purchased/redeemed at the end of each day for its net value - but you’re not limited to trading at the close price. An ETF is continually priced through market trading hours and so intra-day trading becomes possible. (Not something that ever went on with unit trusts or mutual funds).

The slightly frenzied attempts of day-traders to talk up the penny stocks they’ve just loaded into are amusing - for a while. As are the races to get as many off-topic followers as possible, just for the kudos of the numbers.

CFDs are to be avoided, on stocks, equities, anything and everything - it’s one small step away from spread betting and if you want to end up like those dumbasses who spreadbet on the FTSE opening every morning, fine, go ahead…

Golfers get the yips - darts player get dartitis…

It’s easy to include add-ons into MetaTrader - indicators, expert advisors (EAs), and other scripts, customising it to your particular requirements

I know this may seem fairly obvious to most, but news events aren’t what they’re talking about on the television financial news networks right now. That’s journalism, reportage, call it what ever you like. As useful information for placing trades in the retail forex market, it’s dead.

Bollinger bands are a great way of understanding market movements if you’re new to the forex game. Everybody uses them, and overall, the concept is relatively easy to understand.

The boring stuff that you should probably know to be a successful trader - but never find the time to get round to reading

This is an old-style picture of the economy - the manufacturing sector. Maybe the markets pay too much attention to it, for old times sake - but if traders pay attention, it becomes important in itself.

It’s what I feel works for me, it’s been formed from my experiences, opinions, prejudices etc. You, on the other hand, may - hopefully will - have a completely different outlook and personality which is going to suit a different style of trading

In very simple terms, volumes can be a good indication of who’s doing the buying and selling - is it large volume professional money going into the market, or is it just the smaller traders twitching the currencies around a little at the moment?

Thursday will have a similar deal - the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England announce their interest rates. The ECB is forecast - only forecast - to keep things the same, resisting any pressure to cut - which the larger members of the EU, France, Germany, would prefer - but others, Portugal, for example are dead against it.

The first 2 letters of the code are the ISO 2-character country code and the third is (usually) the initial of the currency itself.

When you’re learning your way in the forex trade, regulation is something in the small print to be glossed over.

opinion is divided, or even against, using MA crossovers in forex as a general rule. As with all trend-following systems, it’s going to work well enough if the market is subject to a strong trend, but will be less effective when the market is range-bound.

Or ‘no interest’ accounts - more common nowadays across the internet are spot forex accounts that do not levy or pay swap interest. These are often referred to as an “Islamic Account” - because Islam prohibits the levying or paying out loan interest, which a forex trade is taken to be

Instructive to look back a couple of years to an interview given by J Welles Wilder - in which he states the unpalatable facts about market-making - although it should be remembered he’s talking in regard to general investment, not specifically about the forex market.

Consider the situation if you’re dumb enough to think about letting someone else handle your investments. Yes, I’m thinking towards Bernard Madoff - crazy name, crazy guy - and Ponzi schemes. I had an interesting chat with a guy who knows about these things and his opinion was that these funds never started out as a Ponzi scheme, but due to structural weakness that’s exactly what they had to turn into in order to keep afloat.

The principle of the martingale system involves a single initial bet - every time the bet loses, the wager has to be doubled up so that, given the time and opportunity, a single winning trade will recoup all previous losses and put you back into profit. An apparently 100% forex system.

It’s never long when you’re starting out in forex before you come across a site offering an automatic forex trading tool. Avoid!

When you take a loss on a forex trade, the plain fact is you’re making an admission that you were plain wrong. And that’s uncomfortable - and that’s when all the avoidance mechanisms kick in.