For a nation which prides itself on prudence, saving and balancing the government budget, they are furious at the ECB’s never-ending ‘quantative easing’ and now a minus 50 basis point key ‘lending’ rate. Data published by the Bundesbank, and a very interesting article in the Financial Times, this week show that of the 220 lenders surveyed at the end of last month (September 2019) 58 per cent of banks were levying negative interest rates on some corporate deposits, and 23 per cent doing the same for retail deposits.

Introducing himself as an Essex boy who speaks very fast – which he does – and someone not used to giving professional lectures, he’s so engaging the talk went swimming along nicely. He started with a slide his compliance department insisted he must include; every salesman’s bane. Then followed a brief outline of his career since 1986, of which Instinet was the longest stint. It took him a little while to truly embrace technical analysis, he says, because he’d heard, ‘’every galleon at the bottom of the ocean has a chart room’’.

Recorded and broadcast live on Friday the 8th November, just ahead of Remembrance Sunday 2019, STA Committee member Eddie Tofpik appropriately decided to do a special educational show on the Andrews pitchfork. Church on Sunday reminded me that Isaiah 2:4 says: ‘’and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation’’.

On reading the Weekend FT last Saturday, I stumbled on a piece entitled ‘Algorithm for our times’ about a man I’d never heard of. It’s the American in the photo, taken in 2011, who looks like a grizzled and possibly grumpy old man (says this grumpy old bag). It’s no wonder I, and no doubt many others, are unfamiliar with his name and face as he shunned publicity. In a rare 2006 interview he says, quoting Orwell’s donkey in ‘Animal Farm’: ‘’God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I’d rather have had no tail and no flies’’.

One of the ‘advantages’ of being a journalist is the vast amounts of unsolicited email I receive. The other is that I spend a lot of time on social media and websites looking for information, finding what’s new, and what […]

Before reading on, take a close and careful look at the chart that goes with this piece. I’ve deliberately not told you what the financial instrument is, nor what it’s priced in, or where it’s traded. It looks, for all […]

Coinciding with his book launch – of the same title and published by Princeton University Press – I was invited, as a journalist for the Financial Times in London, to a presentation on the subject by the public relations firm […]

I must say, I don’t envy men these days; sartorial decisions are so very nuanced. IG TV host Jeremy Naylor this week invited Member of the Society of Technical Analysts’ Lee Sandford of tradingcollege.co.uk onto their regular slot, looking at […]

Invited by STA Executive Committee member David Watts to give this talk (who’d heard about him through the www.trade2win.com forum for active traders), I introduced myself and apologised for knowing nothing about his subject. Unfazed, William told me he was […]

Recorded yesterday, October 2nd 2019, and sent over to me today, I cannot believe Eddie described the chart of the Australian dollar versus the US as ‘’a very pretty chart’’ and that cable’s rally was a ‘’fly in the ointment’’. […]

Like it or not, we are closing in on the end of September and the third quarter of 2019. Some are scurrying around the Federal Reserve Bank of New York desperate for cash to tidy up their books coinciding with […]

IG TV host Jeremy Naylor this week invited Fellow of the Society of Technical Analysts, Nicole Elliott, onto IG’s regular slot looking at the week’s markets from a chartist’s perspective. Both agree that Brexit is dominating the headlines, Britain’s Supreme […]

For some time now, every year in early September the STA books the National Liberal Club for a formal sit-down 3-course dinner – because Liberal Party members are away for their annual conference – and we have the club pretty […]

Tim Parker MSTA is a veteran in the field of technical analysis and this was evident in his talk. Tim started the session by asking who in the room was optimistic about the state of the financial markets. Around 30% […]

IG TV host Jeremy Naylor this week invited in one of their clients, Adrian Rye, an independent technical analyst. Trained as a commercial financial analyst, he comes across well: honest, believable and clear. Better and better: his charts are superb. […]

Such a pity I couldn’t make it to the STA’s September 2019 monthly meeting at One Moorgate Place; events beyond my control. A member of our society for many years, Tim Parker is a top-flight technical analyst with a very […]

One of the problems of having my email address plastered all over the place, is that I get a lot of unsolicited mail. There is an upside though, as sometimes I get very nice letters from people I don’t know. […]

Just the man for the moment. Rather than throw his hands up and shout things like ‘unprecedented, uncharted and unfair’ as so many in the media do when confronted by the unusual, veteran Zak Mir of ZaksTradersCafe chose to cover […]

‘’A basic premise of the technical approach is that market action discounts everything: all that is known, or can be known, is ‘in the price’. Technical analysis is therefore not concerned with the underlying value of a security, but with […]

While teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is only half-way across the North Atlantic Ocean in her seriously carbon-neutral sailing yacht, central bankers from all over the world flew in yesterday – many in private jets – to Jackson Hole, Wyoming’s […]