So said Dr Ernest Chang on yesterday’s Zoom presentation at the STA’s monthly meeting. Known as Ernie among friends, he is charming, witty and speaks perfect English – albeit with a Chinese accent. With my very limited knowledge of all […]
Member's Blog
Category: Finance
‘Tail Hedging in the Age of Machine Learning’: and “don’t start with a new black box”
Tags: Machine learning. Deep Learning. Parameters
Confidence and the Corona Virus: What are consumers to make of it all?
The word ‘confidence’ has been bandied about a lot of late; more specifically, prefaced by ‘lack of’. Currently centre stage in Britain is the Secretary of State for Education, the Rt Hon Gavin Williamson CBE. He is merely one among […]
Tags: confidence, Hard Data, Opinion Surveys, Survey Data
How best to present technical analysis: Media formats and delivery systems
My daughter, an international news journalist, has been increasingly asked to do radio work. She does daily, weekly and monthly print offerings for mainstream media, as well as television coverage of breaking news, plus magazine features. She was the one […]
‘Too Much and Never Enough: My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’ – A tell-all memoir by Mary Trump
Unsurprisingly this book, published on the 14th July 2020 and which her uncle, the US President tried to ban, sold 1 million copies in its first day! From some of the brief book reviews I’ve read, Fred Trump Senior (Donald’s […]
Everyone hates a short seller: Forgetting they’re an important tool of discovery
In any business transaction, be it financial, real estate or retail therapy, for every buyer there must be a seller. One can either sell something one already owns, or sell ahead of delivery to lock in the price. The latter […]
Tags: hedge funds, Long/short
An economist’s lexicon: Alphabet soup to describe economic recovery
Nouriel Roubini @Nouriel · Jul 21 What the shape of the recovery? A V-shaped recovery with rapid return to strong growth? An anemic sub-par recovery that is U-shaped? A double-dip W recession as a second wave emerges? An L-shaped depression […]
Tags: retracements, Reversal patterns, targets
Tom DeMark sees the S&P hitting 3,486 before the rally ends
Click here to read ZeroHedge’s article about iconic technican, Tom deMark.
Mind over matter: Especially important under lockdown conditions
Anyone involved in the trading community will know of the plethora of classes, coaches, gurus and what not out there willing to turn you into an overnight success. Each has their special angle, be it motivation, risk control, discipline and […]
Tags: Behavioural finance, Space, Trading Coaches
The Five Modes of Mindful Investors: A special webinar by David Keller for the STA
Currently Chief Market Strategist at StockCharts.com in Seattle, I’ve known David from his Bloomberg days. He also has a blog called The Mindful Investor, on which this excellent webinar is broadly based. Interestingly, his first chart maps the high and […]
Tags: Behavioural finance, Checklist, Mindfulness
History of the Gartley Pattern: With thanks to Larry Pesavento and Leslie Jouflas
With precious little interesting to do in lockdown London – other than going for walks and enjoying the beautiful sunshine – I decided to attack paperwork at home. Not the utility bills, insurance policies and income tax, but the piles […]
Tags: Fibonacci, Retracement, Swing Trading
Twitter tips and other ideas: Etiquette on social media
Years ago disgruntled from Surrey would write a letter to the editor; pedantic fool complain about spelling and punctuation; ‘expert’ in the subject pick on the minutiae in an academic paper. Same old, same old as these issues exist today, […]
Tags: LinkedIn, Social media, Twitter, Webinar, Zoom
Q: When is an island not an island? A: No, the answer isn’t Brexit Britain
With lockdown being de rigueur this season, and all the talk of family bubbles, travel corridors, quarantining and social isolation, I happened to spot a few potential island reversals in the charts. Which then set me thinking about their validity, […]
Tags: Fibonacci Retracements, gaps, Island Reversals, moving averages
‘Critical Cycles’: What you need to know and how to take advantage
The rather dry title of this month’s STA webinar presented by Andrew Pancholi who promised us a ‘’40 minute whistle-stop tour of 30 years of work’’. He lived up to his threat and I urge all and sundry to watch […]
Tags: cycles, history, timing
‘Pieces of eight’: And the real value of money
You probably remember this expression from the film ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. This makes sense, because in those days Spanish coins were minted with silver mined in Latin America, based on a system of 8 ‘reales’ – as Brazil’s currency […]
‘Fake News’ in focus: Traders and investors, beware
In a week when even President Trump was called out for spreading dubious facts on social media, you know that the format has a big problem. The obvious scare-mongering is often easy to spot, and we all know that screaming […]
Tags: Falls versus rallies, Financial media, Record highs
‘Flash Crash’ in review: Were they looking for just anyone to blame?
Almost exactly 10 years ago – 6 May 2010 at 14:32 US Eastern Time – the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its second worst ever intra-day loss of 998 points – in just 5 minutes; it then took half an […]
Do you really understand technical analysis? Do you know someone who wants to learn?
Sometimes in today’s ‘’instant knowledge at the touch of a smartphone’’ world, it’s very easy to become overconfident. Or assume that everyone, and anyone, could know what they need with a quick Google search. Being rather more rigorous than this, […]
Tags: Books, Career, Teaching, Technical Analysis Courses
‘How to Determine Bearish and Bullish Markets!’: Speaker’s capitalisation and exclamation mark
The STA’s May monthly meeting was, unfortunately, conducted via webinar because of the Corona-19 virus; a pity as veteran (3rd time) invitee Zaheer Anwari is someone I look forward to catching up with over networking and drinks at our regular […]
Tags: Indices, moving averages, Portfolio, Technical Analysis Courses, time frames
The world’s most and least expensive cities: Where is the relative value?
Very recently the 2020 Cost of Living Report was published covering 133 cities around the globe, listing which were the most expensive to live in. Tied in top spot were Singapore, Hong Kong and Osaka, with New York in 4th […]
Tags: Drama, Proportion, Size
Art is anything and everywhere: The skill is in the interpretation
Artist and prize-winning potter, Grayson Perry, has been busy during the lock-down. A social butterfly by nature, oft-spotted at Royal Academy parties sporting a little girl Alice in Wonderland look, last night he and his wife hosted an hour-long TV […]
Tags: Interpretation, Language, Symbols
When is parabolic too much? Answer: when it suddenly reverses
Charts for this piece: Tesla, Virgin Galactic (Zero Hedge), palladium, Argentine new bond prices as IMF negotiates, Lebanese bond yields 1000%. Media outlets – and not just financial ones – have been getting terribly excited about the share price of […]
Tags: Excess, momentum
Volatile markets can make you sick – literally: John Coates on viruses and volatility
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 […]
Tags: Information, risk appetite, Stress, Technical Analysis Courses, volatility
‘Beware the Ides of March’: Remembering to keep a sense of proportion
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar came to a sticky end on the 15th of March, lending the phrase negative connotations ever since. In fact, an Ide is a very ancient word for certain dates in the calendar, the first full moon of […]
Tags: Bear, Bull, percentage, Proportion, Technical Analysis Courses
Tuesday’s meetings turned on their heads: But we still get to see them
I’m a regular presence at Tuesday’s monthly meetings of the Society of Technical Analysts at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales’ lovely premises at One Moorgate Place, City of London. Partly because I so enjoy catching up […]
Tags: Backtesting, Habits, Home Study Course, Video, Working from Home
How the markets worked a long time ago: And how staff dressed for work
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 […]
Tags: Banking, Jobber, Stockbroker, volatility
Charting the markets with IG TV: Safe havens ahoy! But do you know where they are?
A very brave Joshua Mahoney of the IG platform faces an incredibly tricky time explaining the carnage in all sorts of markets on the morning of Monday 9th March 2020 – plus, trying to forecast the next step. Well done, […]
Tags: Crashing stock indices, gold, oil, Safe-havens
That was the Week that Was: And then the client asks: ’’how are you left?’’
A phrase dreaded by market makers in all areas of finance who, because they are obliged to make two-way prices for existing clients throughout the business day, means there are more difficult orders on the way and the most recent […]
Tags: Equities, percentage, Relative Performance, Start Point
Book review: ‘Unchartered: How to map the future together’ by Margaret Heffernan, published by Simon & Schuster
The Weekend FT is strong on book reviews, generally well-written, some good, rarely bad, and never indifferent. Mercifully, they cover a lot more than fiction because, as my friend the Supreme Court judge says: ‘’when you have to read a […]
Tags: forecasting, Received Wisdom, Unchartered
Robin Griffiths, who has pedigree, overviews the last 50 years: Because the STA also has 50 years under its belt
Well, we’ll have to give it to him, he’s done 53 years as a professional technical analyst/strategist, despite a BA in economics from Nottingham University. His first City job was at stockbrokers Phillips and Drew – one of the many […]
Tags: Asset classes, cycles, demographics
‘Harbingers of failure’ versus ‘lead customers’: Notes from Tim Harford provoke contrarian thinking
Earlier this month Tim Harford, a Financial Times (TimHarford@nullft.com) writer and author of best-selling books ‘The Undercover Economist’ and ‘Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy’ – who I rate highly, published an article about losers – in which category […]
Tags: Contrarian, divergence, Market Signals, Technical Analysis Courses
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