Traders love patterns. We trade chart patterns, oscillator patterns, historical patterns, cyclical patterns—you name the pattern, chances are there’s someone trading it. Much of trading boils down to patternrecognition and the ability to quickly identify and act upon profitable patterns as they occur. This is particularly challenging for active futures and options traders, who must read the patterns, make their decisions,and place their...

Just what does it really take to become a successful trader in today's markets? To answer that question adequately one must first understand the mind of a successful trader and what his/her thought processes are. Today's markets have changed dramatically just in the past few years and those changes are due to a variety of different factors. For one, our technology has increased dramatically allowing the once insolated trader to have the very same...

The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

There is a huge difference between talking and acting in the foreign exchange world. Actually, it takes some naturally built-in guts to pick up the telephone and conclude a transaction. And it is true that «either you 've got it or you ain't got it». Traders agree that «once a trader always a trader». Even the best market analyst is not necessarily a born trader...

People generally believe that currency exchange rates are something totally irrelevant to their daily affairs. A dollar is always a dollar they say. Funny enough, the very same people are very sensitive to words like inflation rate, interest rates, etc. and almost all of them keep a portion of their money in bonds and stocks in order to preserve the value of their portfolio--a different mix of cash, treasuries and securities...

Technical analysis has been very widely used in the last 20 years to forecast future price changes in all kinds of markets. There have been long debates as to which one is more useful, fundamental or technical analysis (more on this in our article Fundamentals or Techs? A third view in Forex). Technical analysts are not interested in the cause of a fact but on the fact itself.

Before we move on to account statements I just want to touch on segregation of funds. In times past there was a danger that traders who deposited money with their broker who did not segregate their clients money from their own companies...