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 […]

Late last month the Commodity Trading Futures Commission, the US’ main derivatives regulator, decided not to allow exchange traded bets on American political parties. They said: ‘the contracts involve gaming and activity that is unlawful under state law and are […]

The STA’s May monthly meeting yesterday, 9th, saw a slick web-based presentation by Matt Cowart, founder and CEO of Rocket Scooter (‘’a nod to made in my garage’’). From an engineering background, his interest in trading US stocks started in […]

Waking up yesterday in Queensland at some unhinged time that he calls ‘convict hours’, Nick Radge (head of trading and research at The Chartist, Australia) admitted he had a bad cold. Nevertheless he soldiered on with what proved to be […]

Many novice traders think that options are a great idea: You buy unlimited potential to profit and a guaranteed stop-loss which you can quantify right from the very beginning.  What’s not to like?  But as my daughter found out on […]

The Vix index, originally developed by Menachem Brenner and Dan Galai in 1986, was launched as a futures contract in 2004 on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (then options on this future introduced in 2006).  It followed the stock market […]

Anne Whitby FSTA kicks off our series of interviews with leading technical analysts. As part of our social media programme, and in an effort to help and educate budding professional and amateur chartists, this series aims at giving a light-hearted […]

Only economists use line charts.  We technical analysts have developed far more sophisticated methods, first bar charts, then bar charts with opening and closing levels which morphed into candlesticks, not forgetting those with no time scale along the bottom like Point & Figure, Renko, and the Japanese Three Line Break.