Throughout my career I have placed an inordinate value on long term charts.  In this day and age of on-line information, where allegedly everything is available at the touch of a button, scratch a little and you’ll find this is […]

Earlier this year – mid-February to be precise – the Weekend FT’s Money section printed an article by John Dizard.  Considered one of their more serious commentators, the piece was entitled ‘Technical analysts have a pretty gloomy outlook for risk […]

Recent work of mine on Fibonacci, inspired in part by the mathematical garden at the Chelsea Flower Show (designed by silver gilt winner and head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden Nick Bailey), started me thinking about magical numbers.  These […]

Not the quickest route to the STA’s monthly meeting but the Bank of England’s blog for staff to share views.  http://bankunderground.co.uk/ When Dan Nixon of the Stakeholders Communications & Strategy division writes thus: Economic theory generally assumes that more consumption […]

Approached by an STA member recently at a monthly meeting, he showed me a very interesting report by FTSE Russell, an organisation producing equity benchmarks and research on these, wholly owned by the London Stock Exchange Group.  Of the five […]

Yesterday Thomas Anthonj of JP Morgan Securities, Ltd. was invited back to tell STA members more about his successful systematic trading method which is based on Elliott Wave theory and Fibonacci applications.  As a foreign exchange strategist for the firm […]

All of us would probably like to know what’ll happen next; it’d make life so much easier, knowing what to prepare for and when – no doubt leading to a more fulfilling, if not accepting/fatalistic existence.  Mind you, pity the […]

Very recently I came across this chart of the S&P 500 index.  It shows the major downturns it has seen four times since the 1970’s, where each one starts at a theoretical 1 (or 100 per cent).  Every one of […]

A colleague last week brought to my attention an article in the latest issue of Shares magazine and asked what I had thought of it.  Not only did I have to admit that I hadn’t seen it – ‘yet’ I […]

Describing himself as a coach and consultant who teaches on the STA’s Diploma course, veteran City trader Steven Goldstein (the punters’ magician) laid out his cards at yesterday’s STA monthly meeting.  Wowing members, one guest was overheard saying later that, […]

Oh not that old chestnut, you groan!  No chance, not here that’s for sure.  The arguments and discussions surrounding the relative merits of fundamental versus technical analysis are too old hat, blinkered and dreary and only for the bigoted.  But […]

Loved by the trading community and developed by Gerald Appel about forty years ago the Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD as it’s usually known) aims to drill down into trends – and when they begin to lose momentum.  Calculated by subtracting […]

To coincide with St Patrick’s Day last week Scientific American posted on social media a short video to help you spot a four-leaf clover. Presented by a self-confessed egg-head, the focus is on pattern recognition and how science can help […]

Looking at the beautiful photos taken by British astronaut Tim Peake from the International Space Station reminded me of how important distance and familiarity are to technical analysis.  When charting a new market or instrument I always insist on starting […]

As technical analysts we are all too aware of the sort of chart patterns we should look for at market tops.  Double and triple tops, quadruple ones even, the ubiquitous head and shoulders, islands, shooting or evening stars and hanging […]

Introduced by Guido Riolo, Bloomberg’s Head of Charting, as ‘a genius of the world of finance’ whose Sequential®, Combo®, and TD Lines® the terminal supplies, audience expectations were running high at the STA’s monthly meeting. A heavyweight in the world […]

Organised by Tom Hicks MENG MSTA MSCI, and more importantly the STA’s Head of Programmes, for many members it was an opportunity to scale new heights – if you could manage the rather complicated lifts to the 17th floor, that […]

An idea suggested by STA members, and one I wholeheartedly support, is not a ‘Book Club’ as such (way too bourgeois) but a forum to showcase and discuss books that are either new, useful, or beautiful (to paraphrase William Morris); […]

This month’s speaker, Riccardo Ronco of institutional equity brokerage Aviate Global, dashed in on a cold London evening looking just as dapper as you’d expect of an Italian.  Claiming his compatriots were no good at cracking jokes to break the […]

Rather than the usual monthly format of guest speaker presentation followed by a handful of questions, January’s get together encourages audience participation and debate between the speakers themselves. The STA was lucky to have a panel of three very different […]