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Summarizing some free trading idea resources I've been using
I've been following many free resources on youtube and twitter to generate trading ideas. Some of them are suspicious; some are more like boasting their wining trades but never post any losing trades. I see many people ask about trading ideas/resources, so I want to briefly share some resources I find useful. Twitter resources:
@ TicTocTick
Instrument: Mostly SPX/SPY/ES
Technique: orderflow
Highlights: TicTocTick is amazingly good at levels, spotting sellers and buyers levels. Everyday he posts his plan for the next day of the following format: If open above X, long/short bias, target Y. If open below X, short/long bias, target Z. Intraday he sometimes send "warnings" of potential big sellers / buyers at certain level. His price target and long/short bias is often right in my experience. His levels are useful for day trades IMHO.
Notes: (1) even with his plan, one needs an actionable plan. (2) He sometimes delete his tweets. His day-by-day and intraday tweets are more actionable than his longer term view. (3) he sometimes tweets political and controversial non-stock related things.
Trade transparency: 0/5 (doesn't post any trades)
Live update in-time: 5/5 (updates very frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 1/5 (good at levels and price targets. need your own plan)
Live interaction: 0/5 (no interaction)
Educational: 2/5 (can learn the technique from other resources. TicTock doesn't teach you directly)
@ tradingwarz
Instrument: Mainly SPY/SPX/ES
Technique: candlestick patterns, Fib levels, support and resistance levels etc
Style: only day trading
Highlights: he diligently post daily plan and many educational resources, sometimes intraday updates. Had many good trades.
Notes: I haven't followed him long but so far so good. He also recently has educational youtube videos.
Trade transparency: X/5 (hard to measure)
Live update in-time: 2.5/5 (updates frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 3.5/5
Live interaction: X/5
Educational: 5/5 (youtube videos)
@ traderstewie
Instrument: Stocks
Technique: candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, trendlines, channels etc
Style: swing trade, 5min chart to find entry
Highlights: decent probability for picking explosive stocks. I have learned a lot about different trading set-ups from the free blog post: http://theimpatienttrader.blogspot.com/
Trade transparency: 1/5 (posting winning trades afterwards. Sometimes discuss stocks on watch)
Instrument: SPX/SPY, Forex, Cryptocurrency,, Gold and Silver.
Style: holding for a few hours for SPX/SPY, swing trade for all
Timeframe: 8H for analysis. Lower time frame for entry.
Trading frequency: 1-2 trades per week.
Highlights: For SPX, he rode the big drop down in March; rode the rally up, and rode some pullbacks down in April. Got chopped in May. Now he's positinoning long. He also did well in Gold and Silverthis month. He only uses candle sticks, support and resistance lines, trendlines, and sometimes true trend indicator. He doesn't use volume though.
Youtube style: 2 videos every trading day: (1) live at 9am ET for 1-2 hours and talk about his plan and market analysis. Sometimes he trades during the live session (enter / exit). (2) after market closes he summarizes the day, and talks about plans for the next day. (3) Every weekend he gives out his technical analysis for the next week.
What I like: His levels on the chart are very good. He is also very transparent about his trades no matter whether it's winning or losing. He also explains the general economic environment.
Trade transparency: 4/5 (not knowing trading size; but knowing entry/exit)
Real-time update: 2.5/5 (two times a day)
Actionable trading plan: 5/5
Live interaction: 3.5/5 (some interaction on youtube live; Jordan responses to youtube comments)
Timeframe: all time frames. Mostly 5min, 1H, 1D, 1W, 1M.
Trading frequency: very frequent. multiple trades per day.
Highlights: Justin is very good at seeing through market maker manipulation and highly manipulated stocks. He often explained his plan and his outlook (especially in OPEX days) in his YouTube channel. The stocks on their weekly watchlist tend to do very well. He does live Q&A on youtube as well everyday where one can ask him to look at a chart.
Youtube style: Three videos by his team every trading day: (1) live at 9:30am ET; does 1-2 live scalping trades. Explains what he thinks of the market. (might discontinue) (2) at noon: summarizes what happened and what he sees is happening later in the day. Some of his trading plans. (3) 4:15pm ET: summarizes today and looking forward to the rest of the week. Videos (1) and (2) include live Q&A. I've asked many questions on youtube. Every weekend has two videos talking about plans for the next week.
What I like: The Q&A and Justin's outlook of the market, his team's stock pick.
Other notes:
The scalping trades in the morning is not very suitable for small accounts since they will trade for example 100 shares of BA (~160) to scalp a few dollars per share.
Even though the stocks on their weekly watchlist does well very, one still need to come up with an actionable plan. Very often say they recommend stock A on Sunday, and on Monday it already gaps up big. They sometimes do YOLO options -- big risk big rewards-- options can go to 0.
Besides the free content, everyone can get a free one-week trial for their paid membership, or a 2-week free trial by winning a lottery game on their youtube ( what I did) or knowing someone in their group and get a referral. What I like about the group: (i) very frequently updates each day on SPY and stocks on the watchlist. (ii) all their positions, Profit / Loss are very transparent. I learned a lot about how to manage trades by observing their live trades. (iii) There are many very experienced traders in the group posting their trading ideas, plans, entry/exit, and there are many live discussions. (iv) There's a "helpdesk" in the group where members' questions will be answered in minutes. I often ask about my trading plan, entries/ targets.
Trade transparency: 0/5 (free content: not knowing entry/exit nor position size);5+/5 (membership\*)*
Live update in-time: 3.5/5 (free content: three times a day);5+/5 (membership\*)*
Highlights: I follow their free Shadow trader swing newsletter, where every few days they post some trading ideas and analysis with actionable plan. Their twitter account will also real-time update their entry/exit and trade management.
What I like: I enjoyed learning what they look at to find a good set-up and how to manage a trade. They also have a spreadsheet tracking all their positions and profit/loss. All the winning/losing trades are transparent.
Notes: Because of the current market volatility, during certain weeks the swing trading performance is quite shaky. Profits (per 100K account with no more than 30K invested each time): 2020YTD: +9K, 2019: +6K; 2018: +30K; 2017: +3K; 2016: +2.5K; 2015: -1.8K.
Trade transparency: 5/5
Live update in-time: 5/5 (updates frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 5/5
Live interaction: 0/5 (newsletter and twitter alerts only)
Educational: 4.5/5 (the newsletter explains set-ups, what sectors they are looking at)
I've spent much time looking for free contents, and I like the ones above. Also looking forward to hearing about other good/bad resources. I might also update this post if there are enough interests. NFA
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Get started today by signing up online or call us to learn more about investing at 312-600-2883. DISCLAIMER: Please consult your finance and tax professionals to learn more about investing and taxes. Back to top
I was going through old emails today and came across this one I sent out to family on January 4, 2018. It was a reflection on the 2017 crypto bull market and where I saw it heading, as well as some general advice on crypto, investment, and being safe about how you handle yourself in cryptoland. I feel that we are on the cusp of a new bull market right now, so I thought that I would put this out for at least a few people to see *before* the next bull run, not after. While the details have changed, I don't see a thing in this email that I fundamentally wouldn't say again, although I'd also probably insist that people get a Yubikey and use that for all 2FA where it is supported. Happy reading, and sorry for some of the formatting weirdness -- I cleaned it up pretty well from the original email formatting, but I love lists and indents and Reddit has limitations... :-/ Also, don't laught at my token picks from January 2018! It was a long time ago and (luckliy) I took my own advice about moving a bunch into USD shortly after I sent this. I didn't hit the top, and I came back in too early in the summer of 2018, but I got lucky in many respects. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan-4, 2018 Hey all! I woke up this morning to ETH at a solid $1000 and decided to put some thoughts together on what I think crypto has done and what I think it will do. *******, if you could share this to your kids I’d appreciate it -- I don’t have e-mail addresses, and it’s a bit unwieldy for FB Messenger… Hopefully they’ll at least find it thought-provoking. If not, they can use it as further evidence that I’m a nutjob. 😉 Some history before I head into the future. I first mined some BTC in 2011 or 2012 (Can’t remember exactly, but it was around the Christmas holidays when I started because I had time off from work to get it set up and running.) I kept it up through the start of summer in 2012, but stopped because it made my PC run hot and as it was no longer winter, ********** didn’t appreciate the sound of the fans blowing that hot air into the room any more. I’ve always said that the first BTC I mined was at $1, but looking back at it now, that’s not true – It was around $2. Here’s a link to BTC price history. In the summer of 2013 I got a new PC and moved my programs and files over before scrapping the old one. I hadn’t touched my BTC mining folder for a year then, and I didn’t even think about salvaging those wallet files. They are now gone forever, including the 9-10BTC that were in them. While I can intellectually justify the loss, it was sloppy and underlines a key thing about cryptocurrency that I believe will limit its widespread adoption by the general public until it is addressed and solved: In cryptoland, you are your own bank, and if you lose your password or account number, there is no person or organization that can help you reset it so that you can get access back. Your money is gone forever. On April 12, 2014 I bought my first BTC through Coinbase. BTC had spiked to $1000 and been in the news, at least in Japan. This made me remember my old wallet and freak out for a couple of months trying to find it and reclaim the coins. I then FOMO’d (Fear Of Missing Out”) and bought $100 worth of BTC. I was actually very lucky in my timing and bought at around $430. Even so, except for a brief 50% swing up almost immediately afterwards that made me check prices 5 times a day, BTC fell below my purchase price by the end of September and I didn’t get back to even until the end of 2015. In May 2015 I bought my first ETH at around $1. I sent some guy on bitcointalk ~$100 worth of BTC and he sent me 100 ETH – all on trust because the amounts were small and this was a small group of people. BTC was down in the $250 range at that point, so I had lost 30-40% of my initial investment. This was of the $100 invested, so not that much in real terms, but huge in percentages. It also meant that I had to buy another $100 of BTC on Coinbase to send to this guy. A few months after I purchased my ETH, BTC had doubled and ETH had gone down to $0.50, halving the value of my ETH holdings. I was even on the first BTC purchase finally, but was now down 50% on the ETH I had bought. The good news was that this made me start to look at things more seriously. Where I had skimmed white papers and gotten a superficial understanding of the technology before FOMO’ing, I started to act as an investor, not a speculator. Let me define how I see those two different types of activity:
Investors buy because the price is less than the value they see in the investment. Speculators buy because they think that someone will pay more in the future than they are paying now.
Investors trade on information (The white paper was really well-written, had a clear technical advantage over other alternatives, and addresses a need that I can understand and value.) Speculators trade on sentiment. (Buy the rumor! Sell the news!)
Investors usually look at the investment and themselves and can describe why they purchase in those terms (ABC-Coin provides (service) that isn’t addressed yet and matches (requirements) for an investment.) Speculators usually describe why they bought something in terms of how other people think (I think that other people think that the price will rise, so I want to get ahead of that.)
Investors don’t necessarily check the price every day. The can, and very often I do, but it isn’t required because fundamentals don’t often change on a dime. Speculators need to be glued to a price feed, because sentiment very often changes on a dime.
Investors like ideas, people, business plans, and market opportunities. Good ones are like Spock. Speculators like trends. They are tribal.
Investors have a longer time horizon than speculators. In cryptoland, the notion of a “longer” time horizon is still laughably small (months) compared to traditional markets, but it certainly isn’t weeks or days or hours, which is whre speculators often live.
So what has been my experience as an investor? After sitting out the rest of 2015 because I needed to understand the market better, I bought into ETH quite heavily, with my initial big purchases being in March-April of 2016. Those purchases were in the $11-$14 range. ETH, of course, dropped immediately to under $10, then came back and bounced around my purchase range for a while until December of 2016, when I purchased a lot more at around $8. I also purchased my first ICO in August of 2016, HEAT. I bought 25ETH worth. Those tokens are now worth about half of their ICO price, so about 12.5ETH or $12500 instead of the $25000 they would be worth if I had just kept ETH. There are some other things with HEAT that mean I’ve done quite a bit better than those numbers would suggest, but the fact is that the single best thing I could have done is to hold ETH and not spend the effort/time/cost of working with HEAT. That holds true for about every top-25 token on the market when compared to ETH. It certainly holds true for the many, many tokens I tried to trade in Q1-Q2 of 2017. In almost every single case I would have done better and slept better had I just held ETH instead of trying to be smarter than Mr. Market. But, I made money on all of them except one because the crypto market went up more in USD terms than any individual coin went down in ETH or BTC terms. This underlines something that I read somewhere and that I take to heart: A rising market makes everyone seem like a genius. A monkey throwing darts at a list of the top 100 cryptocurrencies last year would have doubled his money. Here’s a chart from September that shows 2017 year-to-date returns for the top 10 cryptocurrencies, and all of them went up a *lot* more between then and December. A monkey throwing darts at this list there would have quintupled his money. When evaluating performance, then, you have to beat the monkey, and preferably you should try to beat a Wall Street monkey. I couldn’t, so I stopped trying around July 2017. My benchmark was the BLX, a DAA (Digital Asset Array – think fund like a Fidelity fund) created by ICONOMI. I wasn’t even close to beating the BLX returns, so I did several things.
I went from holding about 25 different tokens to holding 10 now. More on that in a bit.
I used those funds to buy ETH and BLX. ETH has done crazy-good since then and BLX has beaten BTC handily, although it hasn’t done as well as ETH.
I used some of those funds to set up an arbitrage operation.
The arbitrage operation is why I kept the 11 tokens that I have now. All but a couple are used in an ETH/token pair for arbitrage, and each one of them except for one special case is part of BLX. Why did I do that? I did that because ICONOMI did a better job of picking long-term holds than I did, and in arbitrage the only speculative thing you must do is pick the pairs to trade. My pairs are (No particular order):
ETH/XMR
ETH/ICN
ETH/DNT
ETH/QTUM
ETH/ZRX
ETH/CFI
ETH/OMG
I also hold PLU, PLBT, and ART. These two are multi-year holds for me. I have not purchased BTC once since my initial $200, except for a few cases where BTC was the only way to go to/from an altcoin that didn’t trade against ETH yet. Right now I hold about the same 0.3BTC that I held after my first $100 purchase, so I don’t really count it. Looking forward to this year, I am positioning myself as follows:
ETH will still be my core holding. It is the “deepest in the stack” crypto investment that I have. “Deep in the stack” is a programming term that gets at the idea that most software is built on other software. If you just think about your notebook, you have your OS, and programs run on that. But even inside the OS there is a stack. The bottom of your stack is the kernel, and on top of that are the drivers, protocols, and other layers that allow the programs to talk to the OS, the hard drive, the screen, the mouse, your printer, etc. You can change your mouse or printer easily. Changing things deeper in the stack becomes harder and harder. ETH is deep in the crypto stack, so is very hard to dislodge – Around 60 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap run on top of Ethereum, so getting rid of Ethereum is something that would take a long time to do.
DNT, QTUM, ZRX, and OMG are all, to varying degrees, “deep in the stack” tokens that, once established, will be very hard to dislodge.
That said, I am peeling away some of my holdings into USD right now, because big changes are afoot and they are going to cause market disruptions. I’m going to come right out and admit that this is speculative, but I’m also going to back it up with some non-speculative facts.
The SEC has been sending out hundreds of subpoenas to cryptocurrency organizations over the past 3-4 months. These subpoenas are simply asking for information and nobody has been charged with any crimes or misdoings, but it is clear that the SEC is getting together information so that they can begin to regulate cryptoland. When that happens, other countries will follow, and that means:
Some tokens will be deemed outright scams and people will be prosecuted.
Some tokens will be deemed securities and will be regulated.
Some tokens will not be deemed scams or securities and will continue as they have.
Looking at this, it is clear to me that the tokens that escape prosecution and regulation should do better, but the short-term impact will be brutal and ugly. It would not surprise me at all to see a 50% drop in overall market cap within Q1-Q2, with Q1 being more likely.
Cryptoland has always been a bit nuts, but it is more nuts now than I have ever seen it. Back in 2011-2014 it was a freaks-n-geeks show where people were all about the technology and I would sit around for a 3-day weekend installing a *nix VM on my Windows machine so that I could compile the most recent source and run a CUDA SHA-256 routine rather than thrash my CPU. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you wouldn’t have even thought about being involved.
Now, people see Bitcoin advertisements in their Facebook feed and think “I gotta get on the BTC train!” before going to Coinbase and buying some with a credit card. They don’t know anything about crypto, and they are getting eaten alive – It is no coincidence that BTC peaked after the Thanksgiving holidays when people sat around the table and Janice got Uncle Mike and Cousin Bob all excited as she talked about going to Cancun for Christmas because of her crypto winnings. Huge amounts of fiat got transferred from newbies to BTC whales during this period, and once the whales were done, BTC had dropped from $20,000 to $12,000. It’s now back at $15,000, but for people who bought at a higher level, this sucks. As a result many have moved from BTC to ETH, with the single biggest money flow in crypto in December being the BTC à ETH flow. As a result, it’s no coincidence that ETH is at all-time highs now. The thing is, though, that even most people that moved from BTC to ETH really have no idea what they are doing. They are acting on buzzwords and emotion. They are speculators and are going to get crushed.
The stock market is quite high right now, but people are starting to worry that it is too high and that we are going to enter into a period of inflation again. This has caused gold to go up a lot the last quarter and is likely also responsible a bit for the rise in cryptos. If this view is correct, then cryptos stay stronger than if that pressure wasn’t there. If wrong, then cryptos will swing down as money exits cryptoland for more traditional markets.
I am spending most of my time and money on the arbitrage effort. The nice thing about arbitrage is that it works as the markets go up, and it works as the markets go down. When markets are too volatile, however, arbitrage can get very messy and dangerous, with each trade generating a loss instead of a profit, so I am working right now to tune the algorithms to take into account rate-of-change and add in some circuit breaker triggers. Once this is done I will expand those operations.
I am getting much more serious about systems security.
I have a Nano Ledger and recommend that anyone with >$1000 of crypto have one. The Trezor is also supposed to be good, but I haven’t used it.
I will set up a dedicated *nix notebook that is used for nothing except my crypto work. All it takes is one keylogger to get on your PC/Mac and your crypto is gone. What is on your Nano Ledger will be OK, but they will sweep out your exchange account or Coinbase account faster than you can type. A standard Linux installation with Chrome and nothing else is as about as secure as you can get in the civilian world.
If you don’t use LastPass or a similar password manager yet, you need to do that. Your password to LastPass should be at least 16 characters long and should not have a recognizable English word in it. If you think that “Iluvu4evah” is a secure password, you’re wrong.
Hackers know that “4”=”for” and “u”=”you”. Writing a script to substitute those in is trivial if they want to write the script, but it’s much easier for them to download one of the many, many programs out there that already do this.
If your password contains any string of numbers from anything that can be associated with you at any time in your life, it is insecure. Take those numbers out of the character count because they are an insignificant barrier to cracking your account.
The good news is that you probably won’t be targeted, but if you ever mention online that you are doing anything significant in crypto, that chance increased enormously.
*Never* talk with *anyone* about how much you have in crypto. You’ll notice that I haven’t here. There is no reason to tell even a family member how much you have unless you are sharing a tax form. Sure, you may trust them, but all it takes if for someone to overhead someone else mention at a party that a relative got into crypto a long time ago and made a bunch of money. That person can also then be subjected to the $10 hack and force you to send all your crypto to them.
Your password to LastPass (Or equivalent.) should look something like this -> 6k0jQMoziX&D#4W8
Yes, it’s a headache. Imagine your headache, though, were you to open your account one day and find all of your money gone.
Looking at my notes, I have two other things that I wanted to work into this email that I didn’t get to, so here they are:
Just like with free apps and other software, if you are getting something of value and you didn’t pay anything for it, you need to ask why this is. With apps, the phrase is “If you didn’t pay for the product, you are the product”, and this works for things such as pump groups, tips, and even technical analysis. Here’s how I see it.
People don’t give tips on stocks or crypto that they don’t already own that stock or token. Why would they, since if they convince anyone to buy it, the price only goes up as a result, making it more expensive for them to buy in? Sure, you will have friends and family that may do this, but people in a crypto club, your local cryptocurrency meetup, or online are generally not your friends. They are there to make money, and if they can get you to help them make money, they will do it. Pump groups are the worst of these, and no matter how enticing it may look, stay as far away as possible from these scams. I even go so far as to report them when I see them advertise on FB or Twitter, because they are violating the terms of use.
Technical analysis (TA) is something that has been argued about for longer than I’ve been alive, but I think that it falls into the same boat. In short, TA argues that there are patterns in trading that can be read and acted upon to signal when one must buy or sell. It has been used forever in the stock and foreign exchange markets, and people use it in crypto as well. Let’s break down these assumptions a bit.
i. First, if crypto were like the stock or forex markets we’d all be happy with 5-7% gains per year rather than easily seeing that in a day. For TA to work the same way in crypto as it does in stocks and foreign exchange, the signals would have to be *much* stronger and faster-reacting than they work in the traditional market, but people use them in exactly the same way. ii. Another area where crypto is very different than the stock and forex markets centers around market efficiency theory. This theory says that markets are efficient and that the price reflects all the available information at any given time. This is why gold in New York is similar in price to gold in London or Shanghai, and why arbitrage margins are easily <0.1% in those markets compared to cryptoland where I can easily get 10x that. Crypto simply has too much speculation and not enough professional traders in it yet to operate as an efficient market. That fundamentally changes the way that the market behaves and should make any TA patterns from traditional markets irrelevant in crypto. iii. There are services, both free and paid that claim to put out signals based on TA for when one should buy and sell. If you think for even a second that they are not front-running (Placing orders ahead of yours to profit.) you and the other people using the service, you’re naïve. iv. Likewise, if you don’t think that there are people that have but together computerized systems to get ahead of people doing manual TA, you’re naïve. The guys that I have programming my arbitrage bots have offered to build me a TA bot and set up a service to sell signals once our position is taken. I said no, but I am sure that they will do it themselves or sell that to someone else. Basically they look at TA as a tip machine where when a certain pattern is seen, people act on that “tip”. They use software to see that “tip” faster and take a position on it so that when slower participants come in they either have to sell lower or buy higher than the TA bot did. Remember, if you are getting a tip for free, you’re the product. In TA I see a system when people are all acting on free preset “tips” and getting played by the more sophisticated market participants. Again, you have to beat that Wall Street monkey.
If you still don’t agree that TA is bogus, think about it this way: If TA was real, Wall Street would have figured it out decades ago and we would have TA funds that would be beating the market. We don’t.
If you still don’t agree that TA is bogus and that its real and well, proven, then you must think that all smart traders use them. Now follow that logic forward and think about what would happen if every smart trader pushing big money followed TA. The signals would only last for a split second and would then be overwhelmed by people acting on them, making them impossible to leverage. This is essentially what the efficient market theory postulates for all information, including TA.
OK, the one last item. Read this weekly newsletter – You can sign up at the bottom. It is free, so they’re selling something, right? 😉 From what I can tell, though, Evan is a straight-up guy who posts links and almost zero editorial comments. Happy 2018.
The Bloomberg Terminal (aka Bloomberg Professional Services) connects finance professionals to a dynamic network of information, people, and ideas. At the core of this network is the ability to deliver real-time data to finance professionals around the world. The main value added services provided by Bloomberg Terminal are:
Data
News
Analytics
These services are provided through innovative, proprietary technology, that quickly and accurately provides financial information to individuals and across enterprises around the world.
Financial analysts around the world use Bloomberg and the terminal to perform their financial analysis and financial modeling.
Sales & Trading professionals use Bloomberg extensively to help them execute trades and orders.
Investment banking professionals use it to look for information on historical M&A transactions and other pertinent information used in their pitch books.
Equity research analysts and associates use Bloomberg for preparing reports and conducting the coverage of public companies.
A world leader in providing market data information across the globe through its websites, apps and dedicated feeds and software products, Bloomberg offers a variety of tools available on free and paid basis, allowing finance professionals to use them in their research, analysis and related trading activities. Bloomberg’s coverage includes all possible financial securities ranging from equities, fixed income, derivatives, commodities, forex and OTC products, across the globe.
Bloomberg website:
The official Bloomberg website offers a wealth of free and subscription based tools and utilities, most offering customized views as per regions/markets.
News: News drives the market, and Bloomberg has a strong presence for publishing financial developments through its news section. Offering customized views across sections (Regions, Asset Classes, Industry, etc.), Bloomberg offers vast global coverage of market news. (Related: Top sites for Stock Market News)
Bloomberg Market Synopsis: Another useful tool for free access to global markets indicators; this is one of the most frequently visited webpages on Bloomberg site.
Personal Finance: A dedicated section mostly containing news items covering Real Estate, Retirement Planning, Taxes, etc. It finds use by individuals for expert opinions and info on the matters of personal finance.
Calculators: Bloomberg offers dedicated financial calculators for retirement planning, mortgage calculations, 401(K) savings and currency conversions based on timely forex rates
Portfolio Tracker: Personalized watchlist tool enables tracking of investment holdings, although this needs registration. It offers detailed views for charts, percentage changes, company fundamentals, earnings and news items for the holdings assets.
Radio Bulletins & Podcasts: The site also offers live streaming radio bulletins and podcasts tools, offering news details, along with expert opinions and recommendations. Quiet a useful application for people of the move.
Other tools: In addition to the above, Bloomberg site also has sections dedicated to US politics, natural resources, macros economic indicators and even specialized sections for property, billionaires, travel, etc.
Symbol Lookup Service:
Introduced couple of years back, Bloomberg Open Symbology tool offers Symbol lookup service and mapping of different symbols (SEDOL, CUSIP, ISIN, Stock exchange ticker, etc.) at global level. Individual traders as well as large investment firms having a need to consolidate data sourced from multiple sources with different symbols use this service. For e.g. a mutual fund company may take 2 different data feeds – one from Bloomberg containing Bloomberg symbol and other from Stock exchange containing local ticker. Symbology service enables cross referencing to validate data across two sources with different tickers. Apart from the generic Open Symbology service, the widely followed Bloomberg symbols can be accessed through its dedicated symbol search tool.
Bloomberg Professional Products & Services:
The paid professional products and tools available from Bloomberg offer coverage across 360+ exchanges, 24000+ companies, global currency markets, and includes recently launched bitcoin coverage. These products and tools today are used by more than 315,000 subscribers across 175 countries, demonstrating the depth and variety of offerings from Bloomberg. Bloomberg Market data terminal remains the most saleable product for both individual and enterprise use. A good 2 pager Getting Started Guide is available for introduction to financial analysis tools available within the Bloomberg Terminal. Apart from usual charts, graphs, technical indicators and market data coverage, one of the key selling points of Bloomberg Terminals is its instant messaging feature which enables easy communication across individuals, dedicated workgroups and even Bloomberg representatives for assistance. Bloomberg Briefs: A dedicated service in the form of digital newsletters for the global financial markets, Bloomberg Brief offers insights into sector or region specific areas in PDF format. Briefs for following categories are published daily – Bankruptcy & Restructuring, Economics, Economics Asia, Economics Europe, London, Municipal Market and Oil. Publication for other categories is weekly – China, Clean Energy & Carbon, Financial Regulation, Hedge Funds Europe, Hedge Funds, Leveraged Finance, Mergers, Private Equity, Structured Notes and Technical Strategies. Such wide varieties of tools offered by Bloomberg come with lots of portability. All website based functionality can be accessed through standard browsers on mobiles and tablets, and even professional products offer portability for mobile and remote access through desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Bloomberg Enterprise Solutions
At the enterprise level, Bloomberg offers dedicated data feeds, pricing, reference and market data, news and information services to meet the needs of large financial enterprises employing financial analysts, traders and researchers. The Bloomberg trading solutions, offer connectivity and integration for buy side and sell side institutional clients. These find usage in complementing the OMS (Order management system), and recent EMS (Execution management system), for trade execution. N L Dalmia has set up Mumbai’s first Bloomberg Finance Lab with 12 Bloomberg terminals, offering students extremely focused and high end knowledge programs with a high degree of practical learning and on-the-job applicability. Learning mba in mumbai from N L Dalmia is a step towards boosting one's career.
The Bloomberg Finance Lab Launched at N L Dalmia Campus Mumbai
The Bloomberg Terminal (aka Bloomberg Professional Services) connects finance professionals to a dynamic network of information, people, and ideas. At the core of this network is the ability to deliver real-time data to finance professionals around the world. The main value added services provided by Bloomberg Terminal are:
Data
News
Analytics
These services are provided through innovative, proprietary technology, that quickly and accurately provides financial information to individuals and across enterprises around the world.
Financial analysts around the world use Bloomberg and the terminal to perform their financial analysis and financial modeling.
Sales & Trading professionals use Bloomberg extensively to help them execute trades and orders.
Investment banking professionals use it to look for information on historical M&A transactions and other pertinent information used in their pitch books.
Equity research analysts and associates use Bloomberg for preparing reports and conducting the coverage of public companies.
A world leader in providing market data information across the globe through its websites, apps and dedicated feeds and software products, Bloomberg offers a variety of tools available on free and paid basis, allowing finance professionals to use them in their research, analysis and related trading activities. Bloomberg’s coverage includes all possible financial securities ranging from equities, fixed income, derivatives, commodities, forex and OTC products, across the globe.
Bloomberg website:
The official Bloomberg website offers a wealth of free and subscription based tools and utilities, most offering customized views as per regions/markets.
News: News drives the market, and Bloomberg has a strong presence for publishing financial developments through its news section. Offering customized views across sections (Regions, Asset Classes, Industry, etc.), Bloomberg offers vast global coverage of market news. (Related: Top sites for Stock Market News)
Bloomberg Market Synopsis: Another useful tool for free access to global markets indicators; this is one of the most frequently visited webpages on Bloomberg site.
Personal Finance: A dedicated section mostly containing news items covering Real Estate, Retirement Planning, Taxes, etc. It finds use by individuals for expert opinions and info on the matters of personal finance.
Calculators: Bloomberg offers dedicated financial calculators for retirement planning, mortgage calculations, 401(K) savings and currency conversions based on timely forex rates
Portfolio Tracker: Personalized watchlist tool enables tracking of investment holdings, although this needs registration. It offers detailed views for charts, percentage changes, company fundamentals, earnings and news items for the holdings assets.
Radio Bulletins & Podcasts: The site also offers live streaming radio bulletins and podcasts tools, offering news details, along with expert opinions and recommendations. Quiet a useful application for people of the move.
Other tools: In addition to the above, Bloomberg site also has sections dedicated to US politics, natural resources, macros economic indicators and even specialized sections for property, billionaires, travel, etc.
Symbol Lookup Service:
Introduced couple of years back, Bloomberg Open Symbology tool offers Symbol lookup service and mapping of different symbols (SEDOL, CUSIP, ISIN, Stock exchange ticker, etc.) at global level. Individual traders as well as large investment firms having a need to consolidate data sourced from multiple sources with different symbols use this service. For e.g. a mutual fund company may take 2 different data feeds – one from Bloomberg containing Bloomberg symbol and other from Stock exchange containing local ticker. Symbology service enables cross referencing to validate data across two sources with different tickers. Apart from the generic Open Symbology service, the widely followed Bloomberg symbols can be accessed through its dedicated symbol search tool.
Bloomberg Professional Products & Services:
The paid professional products and tools available from Bloomberg offer coverage across 360+ exchanges, 24000+ companies, global currency markets, and includes recently launched bitcoin coverage. These products and tools today are used by more than 315,000 subscribers across 175 countries, demonstrating the depth and variety of offerings from Bloomberg. Bloomberg Market data terminal remains the most saleable product for both individual and enterprise use. A good 2 pager Getting Started Guide is available for introduction to financial analysis tools available within the Bloomberg Terminal. Apart from usual charts, graphs, technical indicators and market data coverage, one of the key selling points of Bloomberg Terminals is its instant messaging feature which enables easy communication across individuals, dedicated workgroups and even Bloomberg representatives for assistance. Bloomberg Briefs: A dedicated service in the form of digital newsletters for the global financial markets, Bloomberg Brief offers insights into sector or region specific areas in PDF format. Briefs for following categories are published daily – Bankruptcy & Restructuring, Economics, Economics Asia, Economics Europe, London, Municipal Market and Oil. Publication for other categories is weekly – China, Clean Energy & Carbon, Financial Regulation, Hedge Funds Europe, Hedge Funds, Leveraged Finance, Mergers, Private Equity, Structured Notes and Technical Strategies. Such wide varieties of tools offered by Bloomberg come with lots of portability. All website based functionality can be accessed through standard browsers on mobiles and tablets, and even professional products offer portability for mobile and remote access through desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Bloomberg Enterprise Solutions
At the enterprise level, Bloomberg offers dedicated data feeds, pricing, reference and market data, news and information services to meet the needs of large financial enterprises employing financial analysts, traders and researchers. The Bloomberg trading solutions, offer connectivity and integration for buy side and sell side institutional clients. These find usage in complementing the OMS (Order management system), and recent EMS (Execution management system), for trade execution. NLDIMSR has set up Mumbai’s first Bloomberg Finance Lab with 12 Bloomberg terminals, offering students extremely focused and high end knowledge programs with a high degree of practical learning and on-the-job applicability.
Drone Strikes Are Escalating a Geopolitical Crisis—Which Could Help the Dollar
Investors rushing back to risk assets this month just got a reminder of the kind of simmering geopolitical threats out there. That could be good news for the dollar. The drone strike on one of the world’s biggest oil facilities over the weekend raises the specter of escalating tensions across the Middle East — exactly the kind of scenario that typically fuels demand for assets denominated in the world’s reserve currency. “Any retaliatory measures by Saudi Arabia would inevitably lead to an increased geopolitical risk scenario, i.e. the demand for safe-haven currencies can be expected to remain buoyant,” wrote Marc-André Fongern, strategist at MAF Global Forex. “From a fundamental perspective, there is still hardly any alternative to the dollar.” Throw in still-festering trade tensions, record policy uncertainty, weak growth in Europe — with no fiscal stimulus in sight — and the continued outperformance of American markets, and the stage may be set for a new phase of greenback strength if the bulls have it right. Even after a September pullback, the dollar is the best performing G-10 currency this quarter, and the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index remains close to levels notched two years ago. The latter gained 0.3% at 10:19 a.m. in New York on Monday as the drone strike in Saudi Arabia rippled through markets. The latest flow data underscore the kind of support the exchange rate is enjoying from global investors these days. Numbers from EPFR Global Data released last week show cash was piling into stocks amid the global bond sell-off, but beneath the surface it all headed one way: American equity funds attracted more than $17 billion in the week through Sept. 11. Shares in Europe, Japan and the emerging markets all recorded outflows.
Trade War
As the trade war drags on, haven demand for the U.S. currency is likely to continue, according to Ned Rumpeltin, the European head of G-10 currency strategy at Toronto Dominion Bank. He points out there have been several false dawns in the protectionist spat, and says it’ll be no surprise if that happens again. “The dollar remains the best house in a very bad neighborhood,” he said. “There are few places in the G-10 where the dollar can underperform.” Analysis from JPMorgan Chase& Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. shows the dollar is getting a lift from weakness in developing nations spurred by fears of a slowdown in China. Absent a significant pick-up in risk appetite that diminishes the dollar’s flight-to-quality credentials, even fresh U.S. monetary easing would struggle to materially undercut the currency, according to Jane Foley, Rabobank’s head of currency strategy.
Bear Hunt
There remains plenty of ammo for dollar bears. The U.S. has twin deficits and the greenback is the most expensive G-10 currency based on the Bank for International Settlement’s real effective exchange rate. One of the biggest bulls — HSBC Holdings Plc — acknowledges risks are rising to its strong-dollar call issued in April 2018. In a recent note, it stress-tested the potential impact of three scenarios: fiscal stimulus outside America, thawing trade relations, and U.S. intervention to weaken the currency. They all pose “serious negative consequences” for the greenback, HSBC said. But nominal rate differentials matter in a world where more than $13 trillion of bonds globally yield below zero. Around 60 trillion yen ($560 billion) Japanese government bonds with a coupon of over 1% will mature within three years and that money is likely to be reinvested in U.S. bonds where the whole curve is still positive, said Naoya Oshikubo, a senior economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management. The company is one of the managers of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, the world’s largest. “The dollar will be well supported because of these flows,” Oshikubo said. Japanese investors bought 2.47 trillion yen of U.S. government bonds in July, the most since 2016, according to the latest data. “The dollar is still ticking a lot of boxes for a currency to be long: high liquidity, high security, high yield. Its economic situation still better than others,” said Andreas Koenig, head of global foreign exchange at Amundi Asset Management. “It’s difficult to find attractive alternatives.”
Apple Card Review: A (Mostly) Rewarding Way to Pay
I spent a few days hopping around New York City last week, trying to keep my wallet in my pocket. It wasn’t that I was on a tight budget. But I was testing the Apple Card, the new credit card from Apple, and according to its reward program, that’s the most lucrative way to shop. Introduced back in March, the Apple Card is now generally available to anyone with an Apple mobile device who wants to apply. If you use the Apple Card via the wireless, contactless Apple Pay system that is becoming increasingly popular with iPhone owners and businesses alike, you get a fairly generous return on every purchase of 2% cash back, no strings attached. That’s a bonus which lines up with the best credit cards around, from major issuers like JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. So when I grabbed a cup of coffee and a cookie at a cute bakery on the Upper West Side, for example, paying with the Apple Card through my iPhone earned me an almost immediate refund of 11 cents on my $5.63 purchase. (The cookie was good, too.) Later, after traipsing around on a hot summer day, I picked up a $2.87 bottle of water at CVS, also using wireless Apple Pay. Along with the hydration, I scored 6 cents cash back. A big difference between this credit card and its competition is that unlike other rebate cards, the Apple Card’s cash reward appears almost immediately after the purchase is processed. To access these funds, you simply open the Wallet app on your iPhone, which is the home of Apple Card itself, showing your current balance, recent transactions, and other info updated in almost real time. The Wallet app also displays your “Daily Cash Balance.” These funds can be spent like a debit card on purchases using the digital Apple Pay Cash card, sent to a friend via Apple Pay, or even used to partially pay off the balance on your Apple Card. There’s another, better benefit to using the Apple Card: Paying for purchases from Apple using the digital credit card earns 3% cash back. For example, my family’s $5 per month _New York Times_cooking app subscription now brings back 15 cents each month. And the $120 a year I pay for a family iCloud storage plan earns $3.60 in rewards. And if I decide finally to upgrade my aging MacBook Pro with the rumored 16-inch model coming later this year (please revamp the keyboard, Apple!), the cash back perk will be even more substantial—$90 on a $3,000 purchase, for example. There’s no other way to get such high rebates on purchases directly from Apple (though some cards affiliated with retailers like Target and Amazon will give 5%, if you’re buying Apple hardware sold at those outlets).
Taking a swipe at other cards
When using the Apple Card at establishments that aren’t set up for app-enabled, contactless payments, things get markedly less magical. To start, you have to pull the (admittedly cool looking white, titanium) Apple Card out of your wallet—and that can be a drag. Then, the rebates drop to just 1%, lagging competing cards. A fair counterpoint, however, to the meager 1% cash back on physical card swipes is that Apple also forgoes fees that other cards charge. Apple Card has no annual, over-limit, late, or foreign exchange fees. And that’s great, because those can add up. For instance, imagine if I spent $1,000 over the course of a month on a competing card to get $20 cash back, instead of the $10 I’d get from swiping my Apple Card. Every other credit card I know of charges late fees—and one $35 late fee would quickly wipe out that $20 cash back reward, and then some. Foreign exchange fees can also add up quickly (though there are other credit cards, particularly those affiliated with airline rewards programs, that also forgo forex fees). Assessing whether the Apple Card makes financial sense for you, therefore, requires making assumptions about how much you spend with Apple (including all your iTunes purchases and subscriptions), how often you’re able to use mobile payments, and how often you typically trigger the fees that Apple doesn’t charge. For me, it certainly makes sense for all my Apple purchases and when I’m paying via mobile. But Apple also just added Uber as 3% rebate partner—a perk for its cardholders—and future partnerships like this could make the Apple Card more attractive at more businesses. Even when you’re not rebate hunting or avoiding fees, the Apple Card feels like a futuristic, if long overdue upgrade to spending on plastic in the 21st century. The application process, within the Wallet app on an iPhone or iPad, takes just a few minutes and, if you’re approved, the card is added as an option in Apple Pay immediately. The white, titanium physical card is optional, but came via FedEx within a few days after I requested one. Activating the card was as simple as holding it near my phone with the Wallet app open. Every transaction quickly appears listed in the Wallet app on my iPhone, with a categorization (like “transportation” or “food and drink”) along with the rate of cash back I received (3% for spending with Apple, 2% for mobile payments, and 1% for everything else). Tap on any transaction, and Apple shows on a map exactly where you made the purchase. For some stores, like that CVS where I got the water, there’s even a deeper link, with all kinds of info about the business, like the phone number, hours of operation, and customer reviews. Apps for my other credit and bank cards aren’t nearly so nimble. With a couple of teenagers out in the wild using our family credit card, it can be hard to identify who spent what where, with the typically meager information provided by the credit card company, so the geo-location info is fantastic. Of course, I can’t yet opt to switch the whole family to the Apple card—there’s no option yet to add additional cardholders to my account (a feature available with every other card I’m aware of). Another potential perk: Apple has committed to not share cardholders’ spending data with marketers, a promise partner Goldman Sachs has also agreed to. But there is a downside to that privacy policy. As a result of refusing to share data, information that goes into the Apple Card doesn’t come out. That means there’s no way to see it on the web or share it with other financial apps, like Mint or Personal Capital, that can help you budget and track spending across multiple bank and credit card accounts. There also doesn’t appear to be any way to generate an annual report, a helpful tool for tax preparation, though Apple could always add that feature later. Another thing that could be added to the Apple Card later is discoloration, apparently. A close reading of the card’s care instructions has prompted concern that its white, titanium material may lose its luster when housed in leather wallets, or after rubbing against other cards. But after my initial week of Apple Card use—mostly through the app, which provides the best incentives—I can report that my “plastic” remains pristine. With version 1.0 of the Apple Card, it’s a little hard to square the product with Apple CEO Tim Cook’s assertion of “the most significant change in the credit card experience in 50 years.” But for people who spend a lot with Apple, it’s a solid addition to your wallet—at least your mobile one.
On the 24th January 2018 I published my first blog post. Inspired by a few on here, I decided to tell the story of my first 1.5 months. My blog is about trading financial markets (stocks, forex, crypto), as this is my full-time job. I wouldn't say that it's an oversaturated niche, but it certainly isn't empty. I have somewhat of a sub-niche, in that I have a maths degree and am known for being very statistics oriented. Statistics:
6306 Pageviews:
Google Analytics (Wasn't connected for the first few days so the stats don't show): https://imgur.com/a/4mMVW
Mailchimp - email list building (more on this later)
Yoast SEO - great SEO plugin which tells you if your article need tinkering. Also tells you how good your readability is
WP Super Cache - caching
Redirection - to manage broken links
Really Simple SSL - makes the site secure and SSL proof
JM Twitter Cards - to preview what a twitter share will look like
Insert Headers and Footers - for google search console code
Google Analytics - analytics and statistics
Front Page Category - so that my from page feed only shows certain post categories. (I do minor daily posts and don't want to ruin social proof of my more evergreen topics)
Featured Images in RSS - to make sure my images are correctly sized in email newsletter
Content Generation: This is the base of the blogging pyramid for me. If you don't have content, you don't have blog. Here is how I generate ideas:
Original ideas: topics I've thought of, on my own. These have come from my general observations about markets and trading.
Quora: this is a huge resource for any blogger. It allows you to answer questions from others, simultaneously providing you with ideas and letting you know what people want to read about. Probably slightly more useful for informational based bloggers rather than lifestyle, but I'm sure there are plenty of questions for all. Doubles up as a traffic source (more on this later).
Skyscraper technique: u/ThisOnlineWorldBlog put a name on it for me. This is where you find the most viewed/shared posts from your niche, and write a better version. You already know the idea is popular, which is a huge advantage. Youtube is a great resource for this - simply go onto biggest channels in your niche and filter their most viewed videos. You need to be aware of what the original post/video was missing and make sure it is better than theirs.
Debunking myths/clichés: if there are annoying clichés in your niche which have serious drawbacks, write about them. Go against the grain and challenge the standard thinking. People will enjoy reading fresh perspectives and it will encourage conversation.
Daily Charts: Quite specific to trading, but I post one chart per day of what I believe to be the best trade. This is a way of showing that I don't just write about the subject and put my money where my mouth is.
Traffic Generation
My main source of traffic is Twitter: I have over 1700 followers and post all of my blog links there. I ask for RT's on my evergreen content, which helps to get quite a few impressions from people in and around my niche.
Second source of traffic is Quora: in just over a month I have 3.5k views, all of whom have seen my website URL in my name/profile. This can really help you grow your authority and drive traffic towards your blog.
I have been cross-posting to Instagram - my following has grown from around 60 to 200 in just over a month. Not a huge traffic generator but good to be building a profile on there.
All of my articles have been cross-posted to Medium too - had hardly any views on there as I haven't promoted at all nor got involved in the community. I simply don't have the time between all other avenues and my day job.
I haven't set up a Facebook as it would be real ground floor - again I don't have time and feel that Quora is more suited to my niche.
I have applied for an account on SteemIt, where I plan to cross-post to and add more daily content. This is a very new social media / blogging platform, so I hope to be getting in near the ground floor. The community upvote you and you get paid depending on votes/likes.
Made 3 YouTube videos which have around 90 views between them - I plan to make more YouTube content, however, it's very time-consuming to make slides, transcript and record. All of this on top my work and blog posts means it will take time.
Not yet gaining much search traffic - possibly because there isn't yet too much SEO on the site. Should increase as I publish more long form evergreen content.
Subscription Generation:
A full-screen pop-up on my landing page, which you need to click around to read articles
Standard subscription form in the sidebar
Recently added a floating footer - made this a bright colour to gain attention and make it more obvious
Will potentially add a subscription lock to some content in future, but want more traffic before I start to do this
Going Forward:
I have 22 drafts currently, all at various stages of being written - some finished, some aren't even started
Plenty of ideas written in my notepad (50+)
Will continue posting one long-form article per week - gives time for social proof + writing + not appearing spammy
Have written the first two posts of a 10-part beginners series - extremely long form. Not sure whether to put this behind a free subscription wall yet or not
Link to more external sources - realised it seems to generate views even if they don't backlink to you + probably helps with Google search
I will probably do another update in a couple of months. For now, I'm really happy with how it is going. My main takeaway is that I have discovered how cathartic writing can be, in amongst my incredibly stressful job. I hope you enjoyed the write-up! Feel free to ask any questions and any critiques!
EUUSD: Let’s check EuUsd the most tradable forex pair. Weekly perspective: Last week pair moves from the high 1.1815 to the low 1.1570 so in the range of 240 pips. At the and of the week we have formed BEOB candle as strong signals for more bearish trend for this week. Daily perspective: As we already said that we have BEOB on weekly chart we also have, BEOB on four days ago on the daily chart, so we have a really strong downside trend. For the next target, we can have a support at 1.1530 (60 pips). Areas of consideration: We can look for a short position on the first two resistance mentioned below: Resistance 1: 1.1620 Resistance 2: 1.1650 For the targets we can use the first two supports mentioned below: Support 1: 1.1570 Support 2: 1.1530 Today’s data points: German retail sales m/m; FOMC member Bostic speaks; US ISM manufacturing PMI. More on: https://www.groundstoneholdings.com/2018/10/01/morning-technical-newsletter-2/ https://preview.redd.it/4c19l1ig1ip11.png?width=1560&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd2b1c6a5770a3aca693d18cf65da2199eb294ab
Hey everyone. A while back I made the decision to moderate this subreddit because I was once in your shoes. I honestly did not know where to begin. I would type in “daytrading” in google and come up with so many companies trying to sell me the dream. “Make $$$ while you sleep!” “Look at how much I made today!!” etc. I wanted to make this post to first give new people a place where to start and to even offer some resources that can get you started in the right direction. If I have anything else to add I will add it here.
Open up a papertrading account with Think or Swim. It is free and you can get live data just by requesting it from support. All you have to do is ask them to add live data to your papertrading account. Do not pay monthly for any papertrading account. There are a lot of free videos out there that can help you get started with Think or Swim. The program looks complicated at first but it is very powerful. I spent a few days with the program and at the end of the week I was fairly comfortable with understanding where everything was. I have never had a 60-day limit with my papertrading account by the way. https://www.thinkorswim.com/t/pm-registration.html Start here and start taking trades! It is all fake money and will give you some insight into how the program works as well as how the markets move.
One other tip for setting up your papertrading account is to only set it up with a reasonable amount of money. I know a lot of papertrading accounts give you 100k right off the bat but realistically, how many of us are going to have that much money to start out with? Set it to something more reasonable like 10-20k if you are trading forex (or even less if all you have is 1-5k to trade with) or 25k+ if you are going to daytrade stocks only because the regulations require you to have at least 25k in your account at all times to daytrade (In this case, I would probably give yourself 30k just to be safe). If you are looking for a stock screener, ThinkorSwim has a pretty good one. A personal favorite of mine is www.FINVIZ.com which has an awesome screener for finding different chart patterns and conditions (such as prices crossing above 20 bar EMA, trending up, etc) Think or Swim has stocks, forex, futures, and options. Options are an entirely different beast all together but stocks, forex, and futures are all "yes-no" type of trading while options give you a little more leeway with your mistakes. If you are interested in learning about options, message me and I can help guide you with the right direction and best resources I used to learn options. EDIT: Due to the amount of PM's I was getting, I have decided to post the options course I started with here https://www.udemy.com/learn-options-trading-courses/ You shouldn't pay more than 10 bucks for it as Udemy does a ton of sales throughout the year. You can also just do a "Udemy coupon" search on google and see what you pull up. Its about 10 hours worth of content and in my opinion it is worth every penny if you are wanting to learn more about options. There are a ton of other great classes on Udemy as well for learning just about anything. Just make sure to read the reviews! Stocks is kind of the well known market for new comers but I would argue that Forex can also just as easily be traded by a newcomer. Also the benefit of trading Forex is that there is no commission off the bat. Most brokers will charge what is called a spread of some number of pips that you are essentially paying back. Futures trade in ticks and each tick nets you a gain of some amount or a loss of some amount so I do not suggest any new person to jump into futures until you understand the way markets work. Futures charge commission on each contract you buy or sell. It can be sort of related to Forex since a tick and a pip are essentially the same. The huge benefit to trading Futures and Forex is that there is NO pattern day trading rule. This means you can buy and sell as many times as you want without being flagged for not having 25k in your account.
Tradimo is a great resource for getting your feet wet with technical analysis. It is free and shows you the ropes with how you can start looking at prices and charts: https://learn.tradimo.com/courses
If there is ever a company you want to pay to help you learn, please do your research first. Type in the company’s name along with “review” at the end of your search and make your educated decision off of that. A lot of these companies have amazing advertising but will never teach you the right way to trade. A lot of them are scams too. I read that there was one trading system which the guy had the secrets of the “code of trading” and only he knew the code but would sell it to you for hundreds of dollars. So many people come into trading with high expectations that if I just pay this company to teach me, I can be like them when in reality that may never happen. Always look at their testimonials with a grain of salt. Read the reviews just like you would on amazon for buying a product. I also like to type in the company's name and add "scam" at the end to see if I get any hits on that. Read the good reviews but also the bad to understand the bigger picture here. Very few will actually teach you how to trade. Also, Reddit is a great place to read up on things like this too. Just add "Reddit" at the end of your search and read up on other users reviews.
Investimonials is also a good place to use as well (but do not use it as your only review source!!! Fake reviews are everywhere) http://www.investimonials.com So before you drop that 1-2k on a course, make sure you do your homework. Don't be fooled by smooth advertising.
A high probability indicator or a holy grail strategy is not out there. If it was, everyone would be using it and making money. And if there does happen to be one, do you really think anyone will want to share it? The only way to get good at trading is to be able to read the charts and read where prices are going. This is through support and resistance and understanding channels. I cannot recommend Mack’s price action YouTube channel enough. https://www.youtube.com/usePATsTrading I am a firm believer that price action is the basis for understanding price movement. Reading an indicator may help but you should not rely on solely indicators to guide you with trading as they may give you a signal to buy when you are at a major resistance level or sell when you are at a major support, both of which could burn you.
My only other advice is to look into markets that let you maximize profits. For some, it is not possible to buy 1000 shares of Apple. While trading low priced stocks lets you buy hundreds and maybe even thousands of shares at once, those stocks are too unpredictable because they can be influenced by individuals who do what is called a "pump and dump" schemes. Plus they can be difficult to read as far as what they are going to be doing next (going up or going down). My recommendation (and it is only my recommendation so only use this as guidance to make your own decision) would be to look into trading forex if you do not have a lot to start out with as some brokers (like FXCM) allow you to buy "micro" lots which let you invest as little as 100 dollars in some cases and have a much better chance of working in your favor due to the amount of people trading the same instrument. Note: There are some discussions about forex market makers adjusting the markets so you get stopped out prematurely. While I have not experienced this, it could theoretically happen? So if you do decide to trade Forex make sure you pick your broker carefully and again read the reviews!
EDIT: I have read that what I mentioned above about Forex is outdated and the brokers are under stricter regulations. Do your own investigation and do not let what I said steer you away from trading forex if you really want to. The big Forex brokers you are able to open an account with in the US are FXCM, Oanda, and Forex.com. You have a lot more options if you are in another country. EDIT 2: Well it looks like FXCM may get banned from having clients in the US. Apparently they took some trades against their clients to profit on their end and have been using clients accounts to fund their extra expenses. Tread on your own risk.
Above all, do not invest money that you are not willing to lose. I cannot emphasize this enough. Work on a simulator until you feel that your strategy works. This means putting in the time to sit down and analyze every trade you took which worked as well as the ones that didn't work. You need to go back over your mistakes and review why your trade did not work the way you thought it would. Was it because you bought at a high and sold at a low? Was it because you bought at a major resistance level thinking the stock would still go up? Was it because you were impulsive and entered in too early? Was it because you were too slow and entered in too late? This is the most important part about learning how to trade. Putting in the time and work to analyze what you did right and what you did wrong. You will never get better if you do not do this.
Consider subscribing to a free daily financial newsletter such as The Morning Brew. It’s a free subscription that is delivered Monday through Friday to your email before the markets open around 5-6 am central time. It summarizes the big financial topics of the morning in short easy to read sections that you can read over a cup of brew.
I wouldn’t say this is essential for daytrading but it’s nice to read if you are wanting to stay up to date on the financial markets as they will write about companies and stocks to look out for. It’s also not spammy or filled with ads though there are one or two that are listed as “sponsored”. They don’t typically put out a weekend read but instead send it M-F. https://www.morningbrew.com/?kid=08944ba0 I want to make this subreddit not only as a resource for newcomers but also for those who wish to improve their skills with learning how to day trade. I do not want this subreddit to become spam and companies trying to sell dreams. We all need to keep a realistic vision on what learning the market entails because this is a journey. No one becomes a doctor in a day or even a week and you should expect the same becoming a trader. Making consistent money in the markets can be very challenging and most wont ever make it, but it can be very satisfying once things start to click and you can live a very different life if this ever happens.
I thought this bearish commentary was particularly relevant to this week..
"Picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer" comes to mind when viewing the current situation, where many stocks have rallied after breaking through primary support. Markets find short-term support and the temptation is to snap up bargains. But probabilities have inverted. Buying on the dips is no longer the profitable strategy that it was in the bull market — with high probability of substantial gains outweighing the low probability of material losses. We are now in a bear market where we face low probability of material gains versus high probability of substantial losses. Why have probabilities inverted? There are two types of sellers active during a crash: astute investors seeking to reduce their market exposure; and traders seeking to profit from the fall by selling stocks short. The first group are likely to sit on the sidelines after they have sold, waiting for the turmoil to pass. But short-sellers tend to take profits when the initial spurt of selling slows, their purchases encouraging a few brave souls to venture into the market, picking up pennies in front of the bulldozer. There are two forces ranged against these buyers. First, short-covering will fade as the market rises and short sales are likely to again rise. Second, there is a large group of investors sitting on stocks who missed the opportunity to reduce their exposure during the initial sell-off. Their confidence now shaken after the sharp fall, the group forms a large block of resistance. As stocks rise, they enter the market in increasing numbers, causing the rally to falter. When the rally falters, the number of sellers swells alarmingly, initiating a second decline. The cycle may repeat several times until eventually new buyers enter the market. The market in times like this is driven by sentiment. Gauging reaction to good and bad news is the best measure of investor resilience.
Pretty good explanation of market dynamics in this situation - of course only right if we continue down, which won't happen if QE is announced. For anyone wanting to see the original here it is (no connection to me except I get the newsletter)
1) Do you remember the B2BX Roadmap? Of course you do! Our company reputation, White Paper and Roadmap are the aspects most ICO participants pay attention to. The roadmap for the B2BX ICO included options for action depending on the amount of funds collected. 🔥 Now it's time to present the actual B2BX development plan! The B2BX Roadmap:https://medium.com/@b2brokeb2broker-past-present-future-f2876c406a7c We marked on the map the most important events for the company, not just plans for 2018-2019, but a short review of the past. The most important events of the future, of course, are obtaining licenses, developing our own technologies and opening offices in strategically important locations on the financial map of the world. All this brings us closer to the moment when B2BX becomes Prime Broker in the market of cryptocurrency liquidity! Full version on Medium. 2) Integration with ONEZERO We ordered the placement on servers of Equinix - LD4. This data center hosts the largest European banks and brokers. Given that B2BX will have a cross-connect with liquidity providers, the speed of obtaining prices from providers and the speed of execution of orders will be as high as possible! New working conditions with OneZero will reduce the cost of services for our customers and increase our attractiveness for new customers. Recall that in B2BX will be able to nominate margin accounts in any currency, including cryptocurrencies. 3) CRYPTOCURRENCY PAYMENT GATEWAY There is also the possibility of accepting a B2B coin with zero commission. We have started integration with 10 merchants and have begun to develop a site for B2B coin, which will accumulate information about all crypto-brokers, exchanges and other customers that will start to accept the B2B coin for payment. As we launch each merchant, we will send out a newsletter. We have also implemented the support of tokens based on Ethereum standard ERC20. Now every merchant can start receiving any token/coin issued on the Ethereum platform. Please note that if you have a website, an online store, a broker company, crypto-exchange or a marketplace, and you want to expand payment methods you should connect B2Broker crypto gateway. To do this, you just need to select the cryptocurrencies from the list that you want to accept (BTC, BCC, ETH, LTC, DASH, XMR, B2B, BTG (bitcoin gold) and hundreds of tokens released on the Ethereum platform), provide purse addresses and make an easy integration with your site. In just an hour your customers will be able to pay for goods or services using cryptocurrency with low commission rates every day, free installation, no monthly fee, no freeze period, no banks and no any third intermediaries. 4) INVESTMENT PLATFORM To date, this product is used by 11 brokers, two of which have become our customers this year. The investment platform allows brokers to popularize cryptocurrency trading products while customers have the opportunity to subscribe to the signals of professional traders and earn. Also for professional traders it is possible to create PAMM accounts or portfolios of cryptocurrencies. The IT department has redesigned the back-end platform to make the MT5 work more stable. 5) Work with clients The B2Broker account department adjusts business processes to improve operational efficiency. For example, improving the interaction with the development department will positively affect the speed of working with customers. Of course, the number of our employees is growing, but we understand that without optimizing business processes, we can not build an effective company! We are expanding the product line and preparing knowledge bases to quickly train employees. Our clients comprise 72 companies, 25 of which use B2Broker’s cryptocurrency solutions! The team is also developing new standards of service which will correspond to the status of Prime Broker. 6) PLATFORM FOR ICO To date, our platform for ICO has benefited 4 companies. Of course, all payments go through our crypto gateway leaving these companies to concentrate on their marketing. Such a collaboration has proved its effectiveness. Large ICOs prefer this model, choosing a solution that is ready, tested and constantly updated. A demo version is available by clicking on the link. Oh, and by the way! This week in Finance Magnates there was a press release about the opening of office in Malaysia. https://www.financemagnates.com/forex/technology/b2broker-extends-asian-expansion-malaysian-office/ 🔜 In mid-May, a summit on blockchain technology will take place in New York. https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2018/sponsors/
QM (CL) futures bounced yesterday and are flat today. It is apparently due to the US inventory decreasing. Phil pointed this out in his dec newsletter; he showed how 300000 contracts on nymex had dissapeared. This is where the smart money cashes out and the bag holders come in (unless there is fundamental change). I closed out my RIG puts for 30% gain while my TZA calls netted me 0%. Definitely going to be a short term bull until oil picks a trend (which, as i said before, is the only major market catalyst at the moment). I have been polishing rules to help me stay profitable:
stop FOREX @ 7:30. This is because I am consistently losing my trades after this time, around 70-90% loss rate. Instead of changing my strategy mid day it is probably more profitable to just trade half the day.
No overnight weekly options. Not only do they lose huge value overnight from time decay, but this is also pure gambling since short term volatility is unknown. Too many ways to lose.
Ask risk manager. I have gone through one blowout, so now I use trailing stops and ask my friend if I am thinking of opening a large position.
Patience, wait. Bored? Do something else. Boredom/tired mistakes cost a lot.
If I slip up I will end up paying for it, these rules have redundancies and fail safes to catch me when I inevitably do. I now know why some guys at prop shops came in for 30min-1hour then left. They were perfect for that amount of time and any more would let in mistakes. I should look into making an algo of myself.
Dear noobs, if you ask for investment advice, people will tell you to invest in what they hold, even if it makes you poor. by backforwardlow (258 points, 46 comments)
107 points: undystains's comment in Ripple was 100% premined. Stellar was 97% premined.
103 points: imonlyherefortheeths's comment in Since I got into cryptocurrencies a week ago, that's my crypto app folder on iPhone - am I missing something?
97 points: madhattared's comment in I hate to be this guy but... we are in a huge bubble, hear me out
That is not true. Opinion is very much split within the investment banks and there is no right or wrong answer. I personally don't believe at all that the crisis was caused by 'poor people' - and I don't like that sort of categorization of people in the first place. There are perhaps 15/20 different institutions you could blame for the crisis, there's no way of isolating individuals. I'm not sure what exactly you think GS's hand in the Greece affair was. Of course it's a sad story and I feel remorseful - I recently donated £50,000 at a charity ball to help rebuild one of the islands which has almost been burned to the ground. But ultimately Greece employed GS at the time because they wanted to fudge their finances so as to meet entry requirements for the Euro i.e. the greek government was knowingly employing GS to help perform an extremely risky task - GS didn't force anything upon them. If the experiment explodes 10 years later (as it did), should GS really be the party to blame?
Whatever your breakdown between modules is, you need a 2.1 overall. Even if your average is 60% or 61%, that's enough to get you past the minimum requirements and through to interviews. After that it's up to you - they'll take someone with a good business mind and strong communications skills irrespective of whether they average 60 or 78 or 92. I disagree with him. My job is extremely rewarding and i wouldn't swap it for any other industry at the moment. If you want evidence of people enjoying their jobs look at the number of years they spend at their respective firms. Most of the partners at GS are 'home-grown' and have spent 20/30 years sweating away but don't regret it for a second.
LIBOR scandal is way too complicated to explain at 2.30 am after a few beers. Many active players are implicated and i think he will be seen in the wrong eventually like many others.
Resources will always be scarce so someone will have to ensure an optimal allocation. There will always be a market of some kind whether it be a public market or an internal government one.
Regulatory capture is a seriously problem not just in banking e.g. also in the energy business. How do you reduce it? It won't happen unless the public demand it, as everyone with power tends to benefit from it and so they won't make meaningful steps to change anything, i.e. its a win win situation for government and business. However it needs more than just 'occupy movements' but rather i am talking the mass voter population.
Haha yes i have seen it and no its not legit, well at least i think its not. Seriously though the elevator chats can be quite entertaining and revealing.
100 duck sized horses every time. Basic risk management theory - don't put all your eggs in one basket. If that 1 horse sized duck isn't exceptional, your business is going down the tubes.
I work in the energy field in Europe but don't want to get too specific. Day to day we advise natural resource companies on all things financial such as m&a and financing strategy and then execute on their behalf. So I am on the corporate finance side rather than sales and trading. However I work closely with the syndication and sales guys such as if we are executing an IPO or a follow-on share offering.
Bottom 5% is more accurate. 7-8% in a bad year, 3-4% in a good year. It's a fine line between 'cut throat' and having a 'healthy competitive atmosphere'. But we'd be out of business very quickly if we kept firing half of our staff every year...
Short term- African Barrick Gold. The chinese walked away and so the share price plunged and despite serious operational issues, the massive drop has presented a golden buying opportunity.
Long term- anything to avoid inflation, inflation scares the crap out of me and is going to be a big problem in the Uk and elsewhere in the future.
Also buy into soft commodity boom e.g. meat in africa, think zambeef etc if you can find an attractive entry point.
Read WSO, the forums are full of useful hints and tips especially for non target guys. Depending on what area you are applying for, make sure you know some really good examples and stock pitches as it is amazing how many candidates lack knowledge e.g. if applying for ECM for god sakes know some of the recent IPO's and likewise for equity research have good stock pitches and have conviction when presenting. Best of luck!
Undergrad course choice is not that important for IBD but obviously for more quant roles you need maths skills Again i am sorry but i am not very clued up on GPA Ok i give you money but first you have to register yourself as a charity so that you can gift aid it and get much more!
I find what i do at the front end of the energy sector fascinating. If your interested in business or globalisation or other similiar areas then IBD is pretty much at the cutting edge of it.
I'd say during my first 3 years as an analyst the 'balance' was almost non-existent i.e. i was regularly working 100+ hours/week. Since then it's become easier year by year and i think that's true for most. And yes certainly i would encourage my children to pursue it - not that i have any yet.
It works two ways. Some bankers have their fingers in politics in a way they perhaps shouldn't. But equally many politicians have their fingers in banking and can force our hands.
Difficult to answer - you can trade forex in a million different ways - some ways are more interesting than others. I don't personally trade it, but others forge a very successful career out of it.
And by the way all of us are tax payers too. The top 5% contribute approx. 50% of the government's taxation revenue. So if losses are being 'carried by tax-payers' - that doesn't exclude people in the banking industry by any means.
Depends on what entry point - if you do an mba then you apply for associate entry whereas b.comm is an undergrad degree and so you apply for analyst roles. If you do a b.comm at a top university/college and get some internships then you should be well placed. Good luck!
What you choose to study doesn't necessarily determine the industry you'll end up in. We have guys in the office who studied history, languages, even medicine. Just go for what interests you the most and focus on getting high marks.
With regards to backpage.com, the guys on the deal did not do their KYC checks properly. KYC checks are crucial for banks- your reputation and future success is more important than any single customer. Look up riggs bank and the Obiang family and then you'll see!
Yes, apologies. I think some of our deals have been morally reprehensible in the past. The same goes for any major investment bank. But i think we've done a very good job in 'cleaning up our act' over the past few years and the public has played a large part in that. With any luck we will see a much healthier banking industry soon.
Hmm there are many on energy market but not too sure about rentier specific ones. Will have a think. I did my university thesis on Saudi and so will have a dig around.
There's no typical working day - some days are 18 hours and others are 12. Depends entirely what stage of a deal we are at. Generally I work 5/6 days a week, but keep in email contact with the office 24/7.
Yes, entirely project based. But if we are doing our jobs properly there's not much 'time off' in between.
Your university grades are definitely more important. If you do well in a mathematical module at uni that will allay any fears they have about an A-level grade.
Interns in front office at GS in london get circa £42k pro rata. So not bad for a summer job and remember no tax as they are below threshold across the year!
The industry is always evolving, that's what makes it an exciting industry to be in. I imagine it will take us a good few years to fully regain the trust of certain clients, but ultimately if this whole saga causes us to readdress our methods and practices to improve our service then in the long run it's a positive outcome.
PS. Do you not think people should be fed up with the governments too, as well as the banks?
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