Recent content by Kathleen Brooks

When you start as an analyst in a retail FX shop and your background has largely been fundamental analysis you can quickly find yourself being ostracised, worse even ridiculed for your “old fashioned” view of the market. Yep, you’ve guessed it, I’m writing from personal experience. But soon...

This is one of the most frustrating situations for a trader. You think you understand the economic back-drop and you have a brilliant case for why a currency or a stock should move in a particular direction and then they move exactly the opposite way. The summer rally is a prime example. Who...

As we end 2011 the Eurozone debt crisis has taken centre stage. Even for the most hardened technical trader it has been difficult to ignore the fundamental noise emanating from Brussels. This reached fever pitch after the EU summit on 8-9th December was deemed a massive failure. So as we enter...

Europe may be in calmer waters after the currency bloc’s leaders hashed out a EUR 1 trillion plan to save the currency bloc and pull Greece out of the way of default, but the last few weeks have taught us valuable lessons that we would be wise not to forget. Trading is always risky and there are...

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague recently. He used a good analogy for recent market action: imagine if you had been away from a trading screen for the last three months, you then came back and were asked where you thought EURUSD would be. What would you say? Probably 1.1000/...

In previous articles we have spoken about our preference for combining technical analysis with macro factors and the benefits of keeping up-to-date with economic data, central bank speak and interest rate decisions. In our view this is one of the best ways to create winning trading strategies...

Choosing what currency to invest in can be a daunting prospect. If you want to invest in a company you can check out its latest accounting statement to get the basic information you need: whether it is making or losing money, how much debt is held on the balance sheet etc. But there is no...

Over-trading is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in financial markets. Having a great idea and acting upon it before the time is right can lead to losses, even if the idea behind the trade is truly fantastic. Take EURUSD. Ever since the European Central Bank’s January meeting ECB...

Information is integral for trading and markets wouldn’t run without it, but sometimes keeping on top of the constant flow of news, economic data, numbers and central bank speakers can seem overwhelming. Trying to read every piece of investment research can have a detrimental effect on traders...