Articles for: Technical Analysis

Most traders are familiar with CFDs and the concept of paying interest on long positions and receiving interest on short positions.

Top Down Analysis involves determining which stocks have the particular combination of factors – technical, fundamental, economic or political – that constitute a profitable trading opportunity.

I would like to digress this week from my mission to cover world markets.

When you first decided to start trading the financial markets, were you thinking, “I want to be able to forecast so I can impress my friends”, or did you think “I want to make money and be financially free”?

It has been a dramatic few weeks on global stock markets. The impact of the credit crunch and years of easy debt, that is simply not available now, is really starting to hit home.

It is times like this when many traders are apt to ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’. Or in another manner of speech they ‘throw’ in the towel.

To paraphrase the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote with which W.D. Gann opens his first book, The Truth of the Stock Tape, no man can learn what he has not prepared himself to learn.

Well much has happened in the last week and if I was writing as I did last week on the mother of all share indices – the DOW – I would probably have taken an even harsher view.

And yes, I might add, we would like it to get better. So true – but we do have to take what the market dishes out.

As the New Year gets under way, uncertainty continues to hold sway throughout the asset classes.