Author: STA Office

The High-Performance Trader Learning Programme: Elevating Trading Excellence

During the December meeting, Steve Goldstein gave an introductory talk about a new joint venture between AlphaMind and the STA – the High-Performance Trader Learning Programme: Elevating Trading Excellence Steve is a former trader turned performance coach and a familiar […]

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Developments in Technical Analysis: Incremental improvements

Reading through my newly purchased book, Atlas of Finance compiled by Dariusz Wójcik and published by Yale University Press, I came across these candlestick charts profiling recoveries post the 2008 stock market crash. Labelled ‘advanced’, ‘emerging’ and ‘frontier’ markets, nothing […]

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Seasonality, Cyclicals and Statistics: Probability rules!

Tuesday 12th November was the eagerly awaited STA monthly meeting with Dimitry Speck, creator and founder of Seasonax, presenting his ideas and software system. Unfortunately the poor man got Covid but had, at very short notice, managed to rope in […]

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Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money

I recently read a book review by Jonathan Guthrie in the FT Weekend about this book. He starts: ‘In pirate fiction, maps disclose the location of hidden riches’ and continues ‘a good chart is often worth a thousand words or […]

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Have Central Banks tamed inflation? Or are they to blame for the whole fiasco?

Within the last few days the European Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China trimmed their key interest rates once again. In Britain annualised consumer price inflation suddenly dropped from 2.2% in August to 1.7% in September 2024, below […]

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STA & Commodity Club Joint Panel Debate: Commodities going into 2024 and beyond

Thank goodness they added the ‘and beyond’ to the presentation as it took place on the 8th October 2024. Each speaker was strictly allocated 10 or so minutes to present a broad outline of their outlook for their chosen commodities […]

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STA Annual Celebration 2024: Good turnout, good food and good fun

The STA has for some years been using the National Liberal Club on the Embankment at Charing Cross for special events. A members-only striking venue in an excellent location, I think all members look forward to these get-togethers. In September, […]

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Fireside Chat with Tom Basso: Calm and collected in Arizona

First nicknamed Mr Serenity by Jack Schwager (while conducting the in-depth interview with Tom over the telephone) Tom says: ‘’Jack, it’s your book [Market Wizards], you can call it whatever you want’’. In turn Tom’s book is called All Weather […]

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Bond Vigilantes Front and Centre: August can be such a cruel month

Paraphrasing T. S. Eliot’s lines from The Wasteland: ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain’. The poet believed the season gave false hope of what […]

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Technical Analysts Tackle Volatility: Economists Fiddle with Percentages

So far this summer markets have had a fairly torrid time, some stock indices setting new all-time highs in July, then peaking without warning and dropping by fairly large amounts over the last three or four weeks. Overlaid on this […]

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Living in a land of large numbers: How to get a grip

This year, as we are bombarded by politicians’ promises ahead of important elections worldwide, I hear ever larger monetary values bandied about. How they will fix what they hadn’t bothered to do when in post; improve ‘the ordinary person’s’ (a […]

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Debate with ACI UK, The Broker Club & The Commodities Trading Club: Forecasts for the second half – plus marks for first half

This semi-annual debate mixes technical and fundamental analysts who outline their views on major markets for the coming six months and, better still, review the predictions delivered at the beginning of this calendar year. Once again the event was very […]

Retail traders embrace volatility: Zero-day options and penny stocks on today’s menu

Early this month the London-based Financial Times newspaper brought to my attention two important trends happening in the main stock markets of India and the USA. There are many reasons being put forward for the surge in volume in specialist […]

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STA members and their guests get a dose of hypnotherapy

Ms Darbar has many talents. A trader since 2007, co-founder of Rfactory in 2017, a performance coach, certified hypnotherapist, plus two law degrees under her belt, to boot. Despite this she admits she’s ‘’spent an inordinate time on psychology’’. The […]

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‘And it’s a goal! Again’ Rectangles, corsets and straightjackets

I’m not a proper football fan, but as scores and rankings come part and parcel with all news these days, I noticed that matches seemed to be managing a lot more goals than they used to. My attention was drawn […]

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An old friend tells how the STA mapped out his career: From Personal Trainer to Trading Coach

Rajan Dhall MSTA, one of the three founding members of DND Capital (North and Dance the other two) gave a lovely presentation at an in-person monthly meeting for the STA Tuesday 14th May; well attended, with more than average young […]

Variations using Volatility: Virtual IFTA meeting with Alex Spiroglou CFTe, DipTA(ATAA)

Alex likes his titles and awards, as evidenced by the framed certificates on the bookshelf behind him. He is also a very professional speaker, describing himself as ‘a quasi-systematic, cross asset proprietary futures trader’, with especially nice slides prepared for […]

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Annual STA Fellows’ Lunch: Not a Board meeting, just for fun

There are four levels of STA membership: Associate for those with an interest in technical analysis but who have no formal qualifications; Full Member for those who have passed the STA Diploma course and can use the letters MSTA after […]

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Irritating expressions of today: Be aware, avoid and distrust

For some obscure reason the media this week has been focusing on just how old is ‘old’. Apart from the vacuous response: you’re as old as you feel, others have been more succinct. Like, when you reach 90, or anyone […]

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Karen Jones FSTA’s blog on her experience at our second ‘Technicals to Trading Systems’ Conference

What a stellar conference! It’s incredible how it managed to surpass last year’s event. With so many outstanding speakers and a wealth of information shared, condensing it into a blog will be quite the challenge, but here’s my attempt. Stephen […]

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