Hungary has gone to the IMF – bad news in the long run for the forint, and another example of an emerging currency (patronizing phrase) running into problems with local derivatives and other instruments now struggling due to the collapse of the local currency.
Warren Buffet described derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction,” as I recall back in 2003 – not wrong…
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A lot of us are perfectionists, some of us are forex perfectionists – yep, probably fall into that category myself.
And where does our perfectionism get us? – we tend to be the ones slow into a trend. We don’t lose so often, we don’t get close to maximizing our trades.

So what to do?
There’s no point in going wild and completely throwing away all the caution that has kept us in the game up to now, that would be even sillier. It’s not simply a matter of a bit more courage and everything comes right – I’d rather have a bit of discipline than courage any day.
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Not really an indicator of pivot points, I think it would be fair to say – more a generic recipe for predicting high and low in the coming period.

Where H = previous high, L = previous low, O = open, and C = close

(if C > O_new) x = 2H + L + C
(if C < O_new) x = H + 2L + C

New High = x / 2 – L
New Low = x / 2 – H

Simple enough, and nobody would suggest its use in isolation – what analytical tool could be used in isolation? – and probably a consensus opinion is that it has a better record in a ranging market and definitely over a longer periodicity as opposed to shorter.

In many ways, Canada is the odd one out at the moment – still posting good figures, banks not weakened by the sub-prime difficulties down in the hot south (or even the poor mortgage strategy of UK lenders), another federal budget surplus due this fiscal year – but CAD is still generally on the slide.
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Already this morning, Japan’s Nikkei up 14%, another record apparently, although with a holiday pause in trading on Monday.
The FTSE was up 8% yesterday, the Dow up 11% – fears of global recession, yes – but perhaps the necessary readjustment from last week’s headless chicken behavior.
Which seems to signal watch and wait – react rather than predict.

This is the first serious test of EUR. While the going was good – and let’s face it was good for a relatively long time – any disagreements could be papered over and a quiet accomodation reached.
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In retail forex, there’s no such thing as a forex broker, although often referred to as such. The sites we drop in on to get rid of our hard-earned cash are run by dealers, not brokers.

So what’s the difference?
In other markets, stocks, precious metals, futures etc., an investor uses the services of an agent acting on their behalf – a broker – who goes off to an exchange with their customers’ instructions and executes the trade. When the tradable instrument, to use a very posh term, is bought and/or sold, they take a commission, flat or percentage.
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