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FTSE Trading Update - May 4th

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Our clients are short the miners and banks - are you?

Over the last few weeks our viewing of the Technical Analysis charts has seen us increasing our bearish slant on the FTSE, mainly citing Financials and Miners as the sectors looking most vulnerable.

Last week we issued short trade recommendations in BHP Billition at 2125, Xstrata at 1198, Barclays at 365 and the FTSE Index at 5632.

Incidentally some of our best results in April were trades in the Finance Sectors, where we were long. We are not just banging one drum. We use Technical Analysis to tell us which way the market’s heading, and we issue our trades accordingly.

We’re still running the short trades mentioned above, as are many of our clients who follow our service. In situations where trades start to make good money we cover half the position, usually for a 5-8% profit, then run the balance by adjusting stops and targets, allowing Technical Analysis to manage trades for maximum profit potential.

Our daily reports have been increasingly warning of a pullback and our next target for the FTSE is 5340.

Why would you not want to access this invaluable, independent analysis?

Futures Roll-over - How it works

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Our clients who trade Spread Bet and CFDs often seem rather perplexed around this time because the Futures are rolling over and all the talk is of “expiry”, “triple witching”, “quadruple witching”, “roll-over”, “new front month”, “rolling off the board”, “options expiry” and the like.

The Spread betting firms have simplified things over the years so you can trade something like the FTSE on a “rolling” basis; basically replicating the Index, or the “Cash” as it’s known in market parlance. So why do the Pro traders all trade the March, June, September or December Futures? What’s that all about?

By definition “Futures” are trade-able instruments that are priced depending on where the market thinks an instrument will be at some time in the future. The traditional set of expiry months for these sort of contracts has been March, June, September and December. You will find that Commodity markets are different. This is mainly to do with seasonal differences, so people can trade the crops that are about to be harvested or have just been harvested.  Saying that I’ve never understood the logic behind the Precious Metals expiry cycle so if anyone ever wants to enlighten me please feel free!

Anyway, as we write the March FTSE Futures are very close to expiring, getting to the end of their life. Futures traders who want to bet on or hedge future price movement therefore need to “move down the curve” and trade the June expiry, which is a bet on where the FTSE Index will be in mid June. The March contract is therefore “rolling off the board” and anyone who wants to keep their exposure to the market has to get out of the March position and move their interest into June. They are “rolling over” their position.

If you were to hold your Futures position into the expiry the exchange will demand that you do something to settle your contract. Many Financial Futures instruments are cash settled, so you just pay an amount of money, or (hopefully) receive an amount of money, depending on where you got in versus where the contract settled on the Expiry day. This is why there can be a big mash up in the minutes before the settlement of any contract. Futures exchanges have taken several measures over the years to calm the volatility at these times, as there have been lots of incidences of what could be described as market abuse during Futures expiries in the past.

So much so that the expiry days have taken on an almost mystical aura amongst market participants. The hour when everything expires has become known as the “Witching hour” and when you get expiry of more than one instrument it is called “Triple Witching” or even “Quadruple Witching”.

Triple Witching is when the Futures, Options, and the Single Stock Options all expire on the same day. It can cause havoc, but as I mentioned the exchanges have worked hard over the years to iron out any foibles thrown up, all in the name of keeping an orderly market. With the increased use of Single Stock Futures these can also be thrown into the equation to give you a “Quadruple Witching”.

Anyway I digress. Let’s get back to settlement of these instruments. As mentioned many contracts are “cash” settled, but some are settled with physical delivery. In Bond markets a holder of a Long Position in the Futures has to pay up the full price (forget margin at this point!!) to receive a lump of Bonds. In Commodity markets a holder of a short position in, say, Corn, would have to delivery a set number of bushells of Corn to a specified warehouse on a specified date in a certain condition. So speculators are usually pretty keen to “roll-over” their interest and not end up in this situation! I always remember working for a Broker on LIFFE and they were always very concerned on Expiry day that we didn’t have any errors that might result in having to physically delivery something they physically didn’t have!

So around mid morning on Friday if you see the markets wobble, pick up in volatility, or make a sudden unsuspected move, you now know why: Roll-over. The Witches at play!!! From this moment on the Futures traders are all looking at a new instrument; trading the June Futures, until the next roll-over.

We always suggest to our Spread Bet or CFD clients that they trade the market that tracks the Futures. for starters this is what we are analysing on a daily basis, so it is the truest reflection of what’s actually going on. Also the Futures are open (in the case of the FTSE) from 8am til 9pm every day, so you always have a “real” market price to reference off.

If you haven’t had a Free Trial of our reports before why don’t you try us out? We have been used by Professional traders for 10 years now, having first started writing our reports when the LIFFE Floor closed its doors in 2000. In fact FuturesTechs is celebrating it’s 10th birthday at the start of April.

Click here to request a free trial.

Analyst or Trader? - My personal journey

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

We always welcome feedback from clients and free trialists here at FuturesTechs, so we can strive to provide the best possible service to aid your trading decisions.

I thought I’d use the Blog to answer publicly a few questions we have been asked of late, so here goes with one:

Dear Clive,

Re buying Technical Analysis, I always find myself thinking the same question: “If it were that easy/obvious……’we’ve been bullish almost right from the start of the recovery’……….’gearing up for a sell-off’…… why do analysts like yourself not just make loads of money trading futures or spreadbetting?

If I found it that easy/made so much money I wouldn’t bother selling my levels…

Regards,

RJ

This is a question I’m often asked, especially at Seminars. People are, quite rightly, confused that I appear to be so well equipped to trade the markets, yet I don’t.

I think there are several reasons why I don’t trade, so let’s try and go through a couple.

1. It could be argued that YOU wouldn’t want me trading, because then I would be skewing my comments and ideas around my own position. If the market was clearly going down but I’d been caught with a long position I might be trying to talk it up, convinced that my position was right, and the market was wrong. The problem with this is that the market’s never wrong! But I am a human being, so I am subject to emotions just like you, and fear of cutting a wrong or losing position is one of the most powerful (negative) emotions in trading. The flip side to this argument is also pretty valid, though. The idea that an analyst should be able to trade their views put their money where their mouth is has merit, sure. The problem I’ve found with this is that good analysts generally don’t make good traders. I’ll come back to this notion in point 4.

2. I don’t have time. I run a growing company that’s trying to reach out to all sorts of traders, through seminars, increasing product breadth, and finding new delivery methods to take the product to a wider audience. Not only that but the day-to-day analysis takes a good chunk of time each day as well, starting nice and early at 5.30am each morning (although I’m not on my own, it must be said!). So I don’t feel I have the proper amount of time to devote to trading. I don’t think this is something you can do properly with 20 minutes work a day, and if you believe in those ads that tell you this then maybe you should think about the old “if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is” rule.

3. I haven’t made (consistent) money before as a trader. I have had a go at trading a few times. In 2001 I worked in a Trading Room in the City for a year. It was a “Prop” room with a bunch of short term traders doing “high frequency” trading. These guys were happy to make a tick on a trade, and did at least 50 trades a day. Whenever I had a position on in the Bund Futures that was more than 5 ticks onside the rest of the guys couldn’t believe I was still in the trade. I wanted to run it for another 10 or 20 ticks, but found myself taking the smaller profit. In other words I allowed what was going on around me to affect my trading decisions - Bad mistake. The other problem was that my trading was fitted around writing the analysis. I would write the analysis from 5.30am to 8am, then trade until 10.30am, the write the analysis from 10.30am ‘til midday, then start trading again. - Oh dear! The result? I broke even, so lost money over the course of a year, when taking into account expenses like the cost of the desk and the professional trading software.

Then in 2005 I put some money into an account to have a go at trading UK Equity CFDs, all the while continuing with my daily analysis, as well as providing stock tips for a CFD firm. I lost most of my stake because I was long of a bunch of stocks one week in a nasty bear move, when my FuturesTechs FTSE report was as bearish as it could be… So I was bearish in my view, but bullish in my positions. Pretty dumb, huh?!

I closed this account down, deciding that trading wasn’t for me, which brings me on to my final point, because so far, re-reading what I’ve wrote, it sounds like a bunch of lame excuses. There is a much more important reason why I’m not a trader.

The main reason I don’t trade?

4. I don’t enjoy it, or maybe I’m just not cut out for it. I am an emotionally highly charged person. I am extremely passionate about what I do. I am also extremely self-critical. I hate it when I get the market wrong when I’m writing about them, and I’m 10 times worse when I’m trading. I turn into a total pain in the butt, and my wife likes me even less than usual! During the two stints when I was trading I found my mood swings to be unpredictable, I found my home life was affected; snapping at the kids, and finding a quiet corner of the house to have a sulk when my P&L wasn’t going the way I wanted to. I don’t like being this person. While I care passionately about the markets, about Technical Analysis, and the FuturesTechs product, I don’t wish to jeopardise things that are far more important.

So my own personal journey of discovery has led me to make the firm decision that trading’s not for me, and that I am far better cut out to analyse the markets, and continue to aid real traders (who can manage their emotions!!) to trade the markets using Technical Analysis, one of the most powerful tools available to anyone who wishes to make a success of trading.

I’m happy to admit that I’m not a good trader then, which is possibly why I’m doing okay as an analyst, because there is a school of thought that a good trader will never be a good analyst, and vice-versa, just because we’re all “wired up” differently.

Next time I’m going to talk about some more technical stuff; we’ve had a few questions from readers about gaps, and how to trade them.

In the meantime if you are a FuturesTechs member and have any questions that you think would be suitable for a “public” answer then feel free to ask away!! (Click here).

If you wish to have a look at our service please click here to request a free trial.

Training Courses for Traders

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Hi All,

Just a quick note to those who are looking for educational courses and training related to trading.

A word of warning: There are a lot of courses on offer that are long on sales pitch but short on useful content once you sit down on the day. I have come across many clients who have been on these sort of courses and came out more confused than when they went in.

If you read that someone has read loads of books on trading would that encourage you to listen to what they’re saying? I didn’t think so, especially where trading is concerned. and this is one of the biggest problems with seminars/training course on trading: They’re not run by successful traders. In fact many of them are run by successful motivational speakers who make you feel great, but teach you little about the realities of trading the markets, and the swings and roundabouts you will inevitably experience as a trader, however much experience you have!

They’re not run by successful traders, because succesful traders don’t need the money, quite simply because they’re successful traders, and they wouldn’t want to waste time training people when they could be using that time trading, and making more money!

So that presents a problem if you’re looking for a training course. What can be done then?

The best advice I can give is get to know a network of people who are trading or interested in trading. Go to the message boards (like Trade2win) and attend the conferences (like the IX Investor Show or the World Money Show), and create your own network of people who have been through this process. They will tell you there’s no “quick fix” and no fast money to be made in the markets.

Remember the old adage “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”. Adverts that suggest you can become a Millionaire with just 20 minutes work a day surely come into that category.

But you can make money trading, and a decent start, in the shape of a decent training course from a decent provider, can save you much more money than just wading in, losing you money to the markets. There will be plenty of time to learn trading lessons with real money, and trust me these are often the most valuable lessons!

The point of this Blog post is to put forward one of my suggestions if you want to learn the ropes with a trusted, professional provider of trader training. David Norman at the Trader Training Company has been doing this for many years, and has put together a really decent programme that helps you understand all aspects of trading.

I would strongly suggest you GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE to make money in the markets before you start to trade heavily.

Click here to go to the link on our website for the up-coming “Boot Camp” at the end of April. I am doing the Technical Analysis module, around 6 hours of Technical Analysis training over two afternoons, covering basic principles, different chart types, Candlestick analysis, momentum indicators, and practical application.

Cheers,

Clive.

PS. The book got a review on Page 73 of this week’s Investors Chronicle. Here’s the link: Three winning traders’ guides

FTSE Trading using Levels

Monday, January 19th, 2009

We often get asked “How can I use your product?”

FuturesTechs provides support and resistance levels to professional traders across a range of different Futures markets. They use our levels as the basis of their day trading.

Unfortunately I often come across traders using them in different ways, so it’s tough to give a definitive answer to that question. We are all different, and do things in different ways, and the individual’s interpretation of the levels we produce is no exception.

Let me make something clear right now. A lot of what we do here at FuturesTechs is basic common sense. We are almost “reporting” the technical news.

Take today’s FTSE Futures price action as an example. In our report this morning we talked about how important resistance at 4220 was, and we made this a bold level to make sure our readers got the message!

It was a VERY obvious level, being Friday’s high: Quite simple, unless you decided to ignore the simple and obvious.

It gave us the high this morning, not once but twice.

The low between these two highs was 4174, so we got a sell signal (Double Top) on the short term (eg 10 minute) charts once this gave way. We had 4163 posted as our first support, so on the way back down (if you hadn’t sold at the bold resistance at 4220) there were two more opportunities to sell; once we broke 4174, or even safer once we sold off through 4163.

FTSE 10 minute Chart

Where to get out? We had a bold “area” of support at S5 in today’s report, between 4051.5 and 4064.5. The lunchtime low was 4066.5, where we suddenly started posting reversal candlestick on our trusty 10 minute chart - time to cash in.

Hopefully this gives some insight into how one can use technical levels to help decide where you put on trades, and where you get out.

Ideally you should aim to create trades with a basic set of criteria.

  • Trade in the direction of the overall trend.

In other words In a downtrend sell ahead of an important resistance with a tight stop if it breaks.

Buy ahead of a key support level in a rising market.

  • Targets should be acheivable, especially considering the current market conditions. It is Martin Luther King Day in the US today, so large swings of volatility are unlikely.
  • Targets should also not be “blocked” by large resistance or support levels. For example if you decide to buy a Stock at £1.03 with a stop at 99p then you want to have a target of at least £1.11, to give a 2:1 reward to risk ratio: You are planning to make twice as much as you’re willing to lose - the way it should always be.

But if £1.10 is an old high on several occasions it is hopeful at best to ask the market to trade £1.11, so you have set a target that’s going to be tough to achieve.

Whenever you’re looking for trades to put on you want to try and skew things so that it’s going to be tough to get stopped out, but much easier to head to your target.

This doesn’t mean you’re not ever going to get stopped out, it just means you’re stacking the odds in your favour. This is what Technical Analysis does, and what we hope to help YOU to do when you use our service for YOUR trading decisions.

And one last thing while we’re talking about stops. RESPECT YOUR STOP. It is very easy to move a stop further away if a market’s getting near to triggering your loss. If you have set a stop, then LEAVE IT WHERE IT IS!

So far 2009 has been a tough year to call. Volatility has dropped, but we haven’t gained any firm directional traction yet in most anything. Although it goes against our usual mode of operation to give longer term calls we are still happy with our overall view for Equity markets for 2009; that we will make a new low in the early part of this year, but end the year quite a bit higher than where we are now…

Saying goodbye to 2008 - With a bit of trader psychology

Friday, December 19th, 2008

For this blog post we welcome a guest writer, Stephen Desborough, who has worked in the Futures industry for many years as a trader and is now a Performance Coach. He has helped many traders with his in depth knowledge of methods like NLP, approached from a traders point of view.

stephen@performance-coach.co.uk is his e-mail address if you wish to contact him.

Thanks for your contribution, Steve, and Season Greetings to you all!

Cheers,

Clive.

_____________________________________________________________

As the nights and the year draw in, it is a perfect time to reflect back on 2008. As you look back, hopefully you will be able to relish in your accomplishments and the growth that you have made both professionally and personally.

Did you set any goals for 2008? Did you achieve all of the goals that you set for yourself? If for some reason you’ve fallen short, then ask yourself, “why?”. Is there something that you could have done differently, or is there something that you should have done, but for whatever reason you didn’t?

During this special time of festivities, and a well deserved break, spend some time brainstorming the past year and the year ahead. What do you want to achieve in 2009? What is important to you? What are your goals? How are you going to achieve them?

In 1953, researchers surveyed Yale’s graduating seniors to determine how many of them had specific, written goals for their future. The answer: 3%. Twenty years later, researchers polled the surviving members of the Class of 1953 — and found that the 3% with goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined.

Some of the reasons that many of us do not set goals:

  • Not being serious about your goals. Until you become completely serious about your goals, your chances of success are limited.
  • I don’t know how to clearly set out my goals. “As I don’t know how to do it or what I really want. I wont bother”
  • The fear of failure. “What happens if I do not achieve my goals?”
  • The fear of success. “How will I cope with success and will other peoples perception of me change”

If you have no goals, you are not going anywhere. This is a key reason why people do not achieve their full potential.

So it is important to GAIN DIRECTION IN YOUR LIFE AND DEFINE YOUR DESTINATION.

Even people who do set goals, do not always get the result that they intended. Here is a technique that will help you towards setting and achieving your goals. The SMART criteria.

  • S. The more SPECIFIC, that you make your goals the more chance you have of it happening.
  • M. What has to happen ? what do you have to see, feel, to know, so that you can MEASURE your success ? Make sure that your goals are MEANINGFUL to you.
  • A. State your goal in the present tense. AS IF you are already living the ACHIEVEMENT of the goal.
  • R. Make sure that your goal is REALISTIC to you. What degree of certainty do you have to make this goal happen.
  • T. Have a precise TIME of when you will have achieved the goal. Make sure that your goal is what you do want as opposed to what you don’t want. eg. “I don’t want my business to struggle next year”. change to “I want my business to flourish next year”. This is stating your goal TOWARD what you want to achieve.As your coach, it is my goal to help you achieve your goals. If you are serious about what you want in 2009 please contact me. stephen@performance-coach.co.uk

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - A must read

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

It never ceases to amaze me how many people cite Edwin Lefevre’s 1922 book “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” as one of their all time favourite books on investing and trading the markets.

I am one of those people. I read this book at least once a year. However busy I am (and I’m pretty bloody busy right now!) I make time to re-read this classic tome.

So what’s all the fuss about? This book was written, as mentioned, in 1922. The author, Edwin Leferve, never traded a stock in his life. It is believed that he based the book upon interviews he did for a newspaper column with the legendary Wall Street trader Jesse Livermore, although Livermore isn’t named in the book. The central character is known as Larry Livingstone, and the book is his story, from rags to riches and back again, several times.

So it’s a story about a trader who made and lost loads of money almost 100 years ago. So what’s the relevance?

I’ve wanted to make this a blog subject for a while now, so when I re-read the book this time around I highlighted the “gems” that I considered were totally relevant to today’s markets. Here’s a few:

On the second page: “…there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again”.

If you look at our previous Blog article on the sentiment cycle you will see that we firmly subscribe to this view; that what we’re going through right now is NOTHING NEW.

We need the market to stop trying to pick bottoms and for those same bottom pickers to give up and turn outright bearish before we can make a bottom. The market needs to feel discouragement; tired of trying to find the bottom, resigned to the fact that we can head lower to who knows where. Then we’ll start to rally!!

How about this one; “…I never argue with the tape. Getting sore at the market doesn’t get you anywhere.”

Or this; “…there is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side”

How about “..in losing money I have gained experience and accumulated a lot of valuable don’ts”

Gems, all of them. New traders: You have to realise that you will make mistakes. Just make sure they don’t cost you your account. And learn from these mistakes. And “don’t” make the same mistakes over and over.

A classic problem traders of all levels of experience encounter is running losses but not running profits.

“They say you never grow poor taking profits. No you don’t. But neither do you grow rich taking a four point profit in a bull market”.

“It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight.”

One of the hardest things to do is to run a winning trade, beleive it or not, but when you’ve got trends akin to the sort of thing we’ve seen in Oil this year the real money has been made by staying short all the way back down from $147 (or $135, which is where we turned bearish).

I could go on and on, but I’m going to tie things up with a quote that is poetically relevant in the current climate, and adds weight to my loudest recurring rant of 2008: “Stop trying to pick bottoms”.

“One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eights in the world”.

Thank you Mr Livermore/Livingston. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

As usual, keep safe in these markets,

Cheers,

Clive.

How to Spread Bet with Technical Analysis - IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LEVELS!

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Technical Analysis is an essential tool if you are going to trade using CFDs or Spread Betting.

The vast majority of professional day traders use technical analysis in some way shape or form during their trading day. They are aware what the important technical levels are for the markets that they trade. some do this work themselves, some rely upon services like FuturesTechs, knowing that we’ve got an 8 year track record of providing this information to the bulk of the UK Pro trading community.

Many newbies to trading struggle with how to “structure” a trade. Hopefully we’ll shed some light on this with today’s blog post.

It’s all about the levels, and that’s what we do here at FuturesTechs each day: We look at the levels that the market may be looking at, where things may change, where the buyers may return after a sell-off, where the sellers may wake up if the market starts to rise. These are commonly known as support and resistance.

Support is the name given to downside levels; prices below here the buyers may have returned previously, or where they may return today. If we fail to hold support levels the bears are obviously dominating; not giving the buyers the chance to defend these key price levels.

Resistance is the name given to price levels above the market where there may be some”action”. Either we’re going to get to these levels and fall over, or the market should see a strong reaction if we break above them.

These levels are quite often something as simple as old highs and lows, however old they are. We have found markets reacting to levels from over 20 years ago. The market has a long memory, and with charts readily available to all and sundry there’s no excuse not to be armed with the important lines in the sand as you head into each trading day.

The best traders in the world react to a bunch of different things to put on their trades: They wait patiently for a piece of news to come out, or for a technical level to break or hold, or for the market to do a certain thing that they’ve been expecting. They wait patiently. Lots of money can be lost doing trades for the sake of it. Boredom or the need to be involved is a dangerous emotion that a trader has to deal with.

There is little point in trading in between technical levels. The levels are created because they are the prices where things changed previously. They are the “action areas”. Why mess around trying to put trades on in “no mans land”? If you want to buy the market, chose a support level and put your buy order at or above there.

If you need somewhere to put a stop order you can again use a technical level.

Here’s an example: We were bearish of the Eurostoxx 50 Futures today despite Friday’s gains. We had a bold resistance level at 2704. Our bold levels are the important ones. So if we’re bearish and the market rallies to a bold resistance we would suggest selling before the level with a stop above it. The high this morning was 2698….

If you had sold at 2690 with a stop ay 2710 (or our next resistance level at 2728, if you want to give it a bit more “breathing space”) you would have got short and never been far offside.

On the same report we have bold supports at 2640 (the overnight gap) then right down at 2467 and 2418.

So this is the bit that isn’t “harry hindsdight”, just in case you want to jump on the idea that I’m writing this after the event: I will look to cover the short trade at 2470, but if we hold 2640 today I would just get out and cover the trade for either a small profit or at worse nothing. I think we need to break 2640 today to give this trade credibility. In other words we are using another bold level (this time a support) to add weight to our trade. If we don’t break below 2640 then maybe the bears aren’t ready to push us lower just now.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LEVELS.

So If you’re just starting out trading, whether it be with a Spread bet account, or CFD’s, or DMA (Direct market access) I would urge you to make technical analysis part of your daily process, AND TO TRADE THE LEVELS.

Be Careful!

More tips for new traders - What month is it?!

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Whether you’re trading direct market futures, or CFDs or Spread Betting, the lessons you need to learn to become a successful trader are the same, and they’ve been learnt, usually the hard way, by the best traders in the world. The reason they make money trading isn’t anything to do with the type of product they trade, it’s to do with the lessons they’ve learnt, and their day to day disciplined application of those lessons.

Why have I started today’s blog posting along this line? Because it’s the beginning of September, and we’ve just come out of a tough month. August can often be a tough month for traders, as I suggest in the “PS” from my last blog posting. The other reason I’m talking about this is because we’ve lost a few of our newer “individual” customers this month (which is unusual), and the main theme seems to be that they have lost money in August.

Why is August such a tough month? Because half the market participants go on holiday, and the lack of volume can wreak havoc. There are two very different conditions that can ensue:

The market can suddenly become extremely volatile, with moves making little sense. Moves also tend not to last too long, which can be a real problem for analysts like us and traders like you, who rely on sustainable trends unfolding.

Or the market can just go very very quiet and crab sideways with very little interest shown either way. Again this is problematical for many traders, as there are no big moves to get on.

We find it frustrating to talk about these sort of markets as we feel people don’t want to hear “the market not really going anywhere”. But if that’s what’s happening, then that’s what’s happening! This introduces a use for the FuturesTechs service that I’m not sure our newer customers are fully utilising. We will do our best to get you on the right trends at the right time and keep you in a solid move by sticking with the trend, but if things become messy and confused then we will tell you, and if you’re looking for a solid trend it’s time to step away from the screen. Either look at a different market, or catch up with that pile of paperwork that you’ve been meaning to deal with.

The best traders in the world abide by one word more than anything; and I’ve already mentioned it once today: DISCIPLINE. One very important discipline is to make sure you don’t over-trade, you don’t trade because you’re bored, you don’t trade because you need to make X amount by the end of the month. If there’s no clear trend then you are only going to give your money to the market, and there’s plenty of willing takers of your hard earned lolly.

So always be aware of market conditions, and on this note be aware that we are now entering a very interesting period of the year. The run it to Christmas is usually a time when there are strong moves in the market. Between now and November I’m sure we’ll identify plenty of big moves that can be jumped upon and provide profitable trading opportunities.

We may already have the first of these, with Oil selling off through key support (around $110 in Brent Crude) first thing this morning, and Gold Futures failing at key resistance (850) towards the end of last week.

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Cheers,

Clive.

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