Forex Trading Mind

Markets were intrigued on Friday when reports emerged of President Trump having promised that he would shortly unveil a “phenomenal” tax plan during a meeting with business executives. The report was widely seen to have caused a rise in the value of the U.S. Doll and stocks which has at least partly persisted into the open of this week’s trading.

I have written a few times about how stock markets are excitingly bullish when they are making new all-time high prices. For “all-time”, there is a consensus that 5 years is OK. In any case, the U.S. stock market is literally making new all-time highs: both the broader S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrials 30 Index made new all-time high prices last Thursday and Friday, just when the markets in general were getting so boring that I had nothing to blog about!

The market right now is not a great place for trend traders. Everyone has their preferred method of defining trends, and I’ve shown that judging the quality of trends over periods of 3 months or longer produced the best track record historically. No matter what precise method you use, it is hard to find trends now, except in stocks with the S&P 500 Index, for example, being just shy of an all-time high.

The big news today in the world of Forex is that the broker FXCM – one of the largest brokers in the world – is withdrawing from servicing U.S. clients after reaching a settlement with regulators in the U.S. From the regulator’s website: “The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued an Order filing and settling charges against Forex Capital Markets, LLC (FXCM) , its parent company, FXCM Holdings, LLC (FXCM Holdings), and two founding partners, Dror (“Drew”) Niv, and William Ahdout…” FXCM has been permanently banned from operating in the U.S.A. and fined $7 million.

At the end of last week,

Yesterday the British legal system gave its final verdict on the issue of how Brexit may be implemented The process cannot begin (i.e. Article 50 cannot be triggered) without a vote to do so by the British Parliament. In practice, this will mean a vote must be won in the democratically elected House of Commons. The devolved British Parliaments/Assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have no right to a vote.

In a private meeting yesterday, President Donald Trump apparently repeated an allegation he has already made publicly:

Last Friday, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. His inaugural speech made on the spot painted a gritty picture of the American reality – grittier than any inaugural speech since the 1930s, perhaps even the 1860s.