Richard Donchian, no longer with us, was the devisor of several trend-following systems, not least the Turtle Trading system, which is still with us.
Donchian channels are a measure of market volatility, much the same as Bollinger bands
and are about as simple as you can get:-
Continue reading »
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.
The anti-Martingale is exactly as the name suggests, the Martingale in reverse, and again it comes out of roulette ‘theory’ – any game where there’s roughly a 50/50 win/lose. Instead of doubling up on your lot size following a losing trade, you double on a successful trade. Continue the doubling and watch the money mount up.
Continue reading »
Housing starts data measure the number of residential units on which construction is begun. These, taken with related figures, (Pending Home Sales, Construction Spending m/m) go a long way to make up the economic backdrop that affects
USD.
In the UK, other indices, for example, Mortgage Approvals, the Halifax House Price Index m/m also play a major part in the fundamental strength of
GBP.
Continue reading »
You’ve just bought, for a reasonable amount of cash, an expert advisor to run your MetaTrader – it’s going to give you cast-iron signals about when to open and close trades, it’ll run automated, it may make you $10,000 in 100 days of forex trading, or so they say…
But, as it so happens, unless you’ve been the first one to buy a very unpopular piece of software – a few other copies of this EA have been sold.
Continue reading »
Here’s a forex market movement for our times:-
Despite forecasts for a depreciation of the Dollar, many economists are now saying that the negative housing data released from the United States yesterday may actually bolster the USD.
Let’s state the effect in the simplest possible terms.
Bad news for the US economy, lower jobs, lower GDP, leads to lack of confidence
Which leads to a rush towards safe haven currencies…
Which leads to buying
USD – because
USD is in itself, considered a safe-haven currency…
So bad US news leads to USD going up.
This rush to a safe haven, any safe haven, after every news announcement is creating some weird effects. It flies in the face of logic, well, simple logic anyway – and is a sign of the present dominance of
USD
No, I don’t know of any name for this upsidedown, wrong-way-round, echo, reverb effect – but it certainly ought to have a name…
Continue reading »
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 – well, to be honest, the math involved is more simple arithmetic than anything else.
8 levels, 4 of resistance, 4 of support, are produced, using High, Low and Close data for a preceding time period.
R4 = (H – L) x 1.1 / 2 + C
R3 = (H – L) x 1.1 / 4 + C
R2 = (H – L) x 1.1 / 6 + C
R1 = (H – L) x 1.1 / 12 + C
Continue reading »
Balance of trade figures are another important facet of fundamental economic analysis. The trade balance compares exports versus imports for a given economy – sometimes the figures are broken into separate balances covering goods and services
Positive
A positive balance of trade = exports higher than imports. Exports good – money coming into an economy, a trade surplus.
Negative
The opposite of this is a trade deficit, or trade gap – more goods are being imported the exported. Imports bad – money going out an economy to pay for them.
Balance of trade has historically been a critical issue in the Japanese economy, which is heavily based on exports. The financial management of the economy is geared towards stimulating exports wherever possible – keeping the value of the Yen low, low interest rates etc. – so
JPY tends to be more sensitive to good/bad balance of trade figures than other currencies – on average…
Japan is a good example of a mature economy and these always tend to run a trade surplus – other examples include Germany and Canada, (sometimes unfairly referred to as stagnant economies), running generally at a lower expectation of growth. But the strong growth economies eg. United States, Australia run regular trade deficits, simply to fuel this growth.
When it comes to pure economic theory – as usual, economists are divided. Some say that trade deficits have to be tackled as they will inevitably bring an economy down, others say it’s a necessary evil to stimulate some growth, and a few even reckon a trade deficit matters not at all…
The markets, however – and it’s always the markets we’re interested in when it comes to forex trading – will tend to go classic picture, trade surplus good, trade deficit bad.
“It’s the interest rate banks charge each other.”
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.
It is essentially similar to the US Federal funds rate – the interest rate at which private depository institutions lend balances at the Federal Reserve to other depository institutions.
Continue reading »