One of the negatives of blogging these days, especially if you have any kind of following at all, is spamming in the comment section. I delete a number of them each day. Almost all of them are caught by the spam filter. Drugs and sexual enhancement seem to be the favorite subjects these days. Now, normally I don’t give the spam comments much though, a few have come through of late with a bit of a humorous twist. Here’s what they look like – with the links and such removed, of course. HELP! I’m currently being...

The idea of the seven deadly sins of trading was tossed my way last week. After giving it a bit of thought, I came up with what I think is a pretty good group. The list below is the seven which came to mind as the ones most likely to do real damage to a trader. 1) Thinking that trading is a path to quick, easy money One of the questions that’s part of the list answered in New Trader FAQs is “How much money can I make trading?” because it’s one that comes up frequently and it reflects the mindset of...

I’ve posted on the subject of the Commitment of Traders report a few times on this blog as being a useful tool (Commitment of Traders – A Weekly Report Worth Viewing). As part of a general move toward more market transparency, the CFTC, which produces the weekly report, has been working on making it more useful. To that end, they are coming out with a more detailed report for the financials starting this week. Here’s the story from Reuters.    By Nick Olivari and Christopher Doering    NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, July...

In September I’m heading to Vegas for the Futures & Forex Expo. I’ll be speaking there on the subject of Improving Your Trading Performance Using Forex Calendar Patterns on morning of Saturday the 25th. The content of the presentation will be similar to what I presented based on my research report Opportunities in Forex Calendar Trading Patterns in London to a room full of professional analysts, strategists, and traders at the European Conference 2010 back in May. And like at that conference, John Bollinger...

OK, I don’t normally make old television references, but in this case I couldn’t help myself. A reader of my Trader FAQs book just sent me this: “I’m sitting reading your book and I just have to tell you that SO far it’s REALLY good.  It’s invaluable really (and even after all this time spent there are things that are being made clearer to me simply by virtue of the fact that they’re being CLEARLY explained by people who KNOW what they’re talking about)!!!  It’s ‘Gold’...

It’s coming up on four and a half years since I did my first post on this blog back in January 2006. That was First of all, know thyself. It’s a post which in some ways introduced me, but is also one which introduces a big portion of what I try to get at in what I write here and what I tried to make come through in my book, The Essentials of Trading. The blog now has well over 600 posts, a few of which have some value. One of the posts I most enjoyed writing was The Secret to Trading Success. I must have done something...

I got this (slightly edited) private message inquiry from a Trade2Win member yesterday. It gives me a chance to reiterate something which has new forex traders minds spinning regularly for nothing. … wondered if you could assist me in working out my position sizing for different currency pairs? Be great if you could as im a bit stumped… Say i have an account of £10,000 I want to risk 1% which = £100 I’d like to buy usd/chf @ 10500, with a stop of 20 pips @ 10480. How do i go about working this out if i...

I am reading an outlook for the US Economy from a well known forecaster, and he claims that one of the reasons for the ongoing contraction in private sector bank lending (and therefore M2 growth) is that “there are $176 billion of commercial real estate loans of questionable value on banks’ books”. Thus, the banks fear they might not be adequately capitalized should they need to write these loans off down the road, and as a result they are reluctant to extend credit. While I agree completely with this analysis,...

A question came up during the recent Swingers, Scalpers, Holders panel discussion I did for Currensee which we didn’t have time to address at that time. It is something a great many traders think about, though, so I decided to put something together here in response. The question was: I’m at the point I’ve exhausted books, etc. and have a good sense of what I need…what sources/people are available to find a 1:1 coach? I have written several previous blog posts on this subject in the past. Here are some of...

Earlier this year I was asked by the editors at The Technical Analyst magazine if I’d be willing to contribute a “chapter” to a new book they were developing on the subject of technical analysis in the forex market. My chapter comprised of my answers to a series of questions they provided to me. It was joined up with contributions from a dozen others into the recently released book Technical Analysis of the FX Markets. It is available most readily from the publishers, but I’ve also seen listings on both...

I want to share something with you that I recieved today in my email from one of my co-workers. He actually works on the rates side of things, focusing particularly on the US Treasury market. The content of the email, though, has clear forex market implications. I offer it up as an example of the sorts of things that market professionals look at and talk about that the vast majority of retail traders would never even think about. The ECB’s money market operations have effectively delivered a significant tightening of monetary...