Elite Forex Blog - www.eliteforexblog.com

Martingale Strategy

2012-01-30T13:56:00.004-05:00

Fear constitutes the strongest emotion facing any forex trader. Fear of losing, in particular, keeps many in bed with one eye on the monitor while the other rests. Martingale strategies theoretically remove that problem by ensuring that a strategy always comes out on top.

The idea is to bet more after a loss, usually twice the amount of a previous bet. Let's do an example where the value of winning and losing is identical. We either win $10 or we lose $10.

The first bet puts $10 at risk. We start out on a run of bad luck, resulting in a $10 loss. Now we double the risk. We either get paid $20 or will lose another $20. We lost again. So far we are down $30. We double the risk again, so now we're either going to make $40 or lose another $40.

So far the strategy doesn't seem that bad. 3 losses in a row only occurs 12.5% of the time (0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5). This is as bad as it gets the majority of the time. But, for the sake of the example, let's continue.

We lose again. Now we're down $70. Double the risk to either make or lose $80.
Another loss. The floating loss grows to $150. The risk grows to $160.

You're no doubt noticing that the risk numbers are getting a little more uncomfortable. For the sake of making it clear how quickly they can get out of hand, I created a small table below.

Consecutive losses	Floating loss
6	-$160
7	-$320
8	-$640
9	-$1,280
10	-$2,560

However, if tenth trade rescues the account, you earn back everything that you lost, plus the $10 that you originally attempted to earn. Although you sweat bullets during a cold streak, the strategy comes out on top the vast majority of the time.

Here is where the problems start to roll in. I did not say all of the time. In the real world, you do not have an infinite supply of money. If you have a $5,000 trading account and risk $10 on the first trade, then you can only withstand a maximum of 10 consecutive losses; you don't have enough money to make it to the 11th loss.

Measuring the payout of a Martingale strategy

Consider a game of coin flips where heads means that you win and tails means that you lose. The odds are 1:1, 50%, that you will win or lose on any given flip. Although the probability of winning remains constant at 50%, the actual distribution of those wins and losses will come in the form of hot and cold streaks. Tossing the coin ten times does not always result in 5 winners and 5 losers.

Throwing a coin 10 times will result in 10 consecutive wins 0.09% (0.5¹⁰)of the time. Conversely, 0.09% of the time also results in 10 consecutive losses. So, the coin flips results in behavior that looks anything like a random outcome 0.18% of the time. The scenario that keeps us up at night - fear in forex trading never goes away - is that that unlucky streak of 10 winners will actually come to pass. 0.09% of the time occurs once in every 1,111 trials.

The next question to consider is the number of wins required to make this worthwhile. Everyone's goal post is different, but it's safe to assume that doubling the account balance makes anyone a happy camper. Earning $10 for a total of $5,000 means that you must have a total of 500 winning Martingale sets. Each set is the group of trades required to earn that $10. Sometimes, the first trade wins and that finishes the set. Sometimes it takes 7 trades. Sometimes (gulp), it takes 20.

500 winning sets requires 1,000 total trades. We get this number by dividing the winning sets, 500, by the probability of winning, 0.5. If the closeness of that number to the scary threshold of 1,111 jumps out at you, it should.

Remember that the evil 10th consecutive losing trade could possibly occur at any point at or after 10 total trades. It could occur after 100 trades or, very rarely, after 10,000 trades. On the whole, it will occur 0.09% of the time, although it will randomly cluster. No method exists to predict where.

Think of the issue graphically. Our hurdle of 1,000 trades to double the account constitutes the danger zone, or the bad space. The safety zone is only the total trades at risk, 1,111, minus the benchmark of 1,000, which is a safety zone of 111.

As the sea of red danger zone relative to the green safety zone makes clear, the odds of coming out on top are not exactly in your favor. Specifically, you face a 90% chance of blowing up against a meager 10% chance of doubling your money.

Look for more fertile strategy strategy ideas and money management techniques. I like the simplicity behind Martingale, but that's about it. A simple mathematical analysis tells you that it's not going to end well the vast majority of the time. If you wish to continue a Martingale trading strategy, it only gets worse from this point forward.

Robust Expert Advisors

2012-01-26T09:38:00.002-05:00

When you want to program an Expert Advisor, it is important to consider how you are likely to use the file. The most common mistake that I see new MQL programmers make is that they rely too heavily on memory. Events like a power failure, a hard drive crash or weak internet connection can wreak havoc when trading with an Expert Advisor. The EA should ideally be able to pick up and run whenever you are able to restore conditions to normal.

Memory issues

Problems sometimes result from something mundane like changing the settings. I learned that the hard way when a client came to our Dallas office for two weeks to order a very complex EA. Everything worked perfectly in the backtester. The overnight tests, however, never lasted for more than a few hours before something went haywire. I instructed the client not to change the settings; just turn it on and leave it alone. For whatever reason, the importance of those instruction never sank in. It took me ages to realize that his definition of "leaving it alone" didn't quite mesh with mine. The little tweaks that he made during trading messed with the settings that I stored in memory.

I can instruct a client to use software in a certain manner. More often than not, they deviate from the instructions to some degree. It's human nature. I learned from those challenges, like any professional should. Our programming templates changed in structure to minimize the need for special instructions.

Global variables

Global variables are a common tool to avoid the issue of relying on memory. When an EA is removed from the chart, the global variables that it created are accessible for you, the EA or any other EA to read from anywhere inside of MetaTrader.

Although the use global variables sounds sophisticated, it's actually a very simplistic approach. MetaTrader maintains a hidden text file in its installation directory with the variable name, the value that it is storing and the time it was last modified. Whenever more than 6 weeks elapsed since the last time MQL used the global variable, MetaTrader automatically deletes it.

A Martingale system might opt to use a global variable to track a simple statistic. Martingales are wild with their approach to risk, so a trader could realistically want to know at a glance the maximum level traded. Global variables make a trivial task out of that need. If the next level to trade is greater than the global variable, then the MQL code should update the global variable.

The only item to remember is that the global variables expire after six weeks. The EA might need to refresh the information by resetting the global value to its current value. Doing so would keep the variable fresh from MetaTrader's perspective.

Read information instead of storing it

I prefer to rely on MQL's OrderSelect() command to recreate whatever information I need. Although it is more complex, the advantage is that the EA can function any time, any place, exactly as designed. If the hard drive crashes, it's not a problem from a recovery perspective. You are still in trouble during the down time, though. You can load the same EA on your MT4 account and have it immediately reconstruct the information.

Taking the above Martingale scenario, we could reconstruct the number of levels traded by comparing the open and close times of trades. If trade #1 has a close time of 2011 Dec. 5 00:00 and trade #2 also has a close time of 2011 Dec. 5 00:00, it tells us that they are part of the same trade group. So far, we have 2 levels traded. If trade #5 closed at 2011 Dec. 5 00:00 but no trades did thereafter, then we know that we traded 5 levels total. The EA can then loop through all possible combinations and pick out the highest number from that.

The approach of reading from the order history is a bit of overkill for this simple example, but it comes in handy when you need to calculate more complicated information dynamically and with a minimal risk of error.

How Backtests Simulate Ticks

2012-01-26T09:23:00.001-05:00

One common issue that comes up with backtestingis that it often does not match what happened in the real market. This isn't really a deficiency, at least from the perspective of your charting provider. It relates more to the data provided. Inaccurate historical backtests come up in any charting package, including NinjaTrader and MetaTrader.

Consider a typical bar. It has a high, low, open and close. That's only 4 data points. If you're looking at something like an H1 bar, there could be several thousand ticks - maybe tens of thousands of ticks - that comprise that entire bar. And you're trying to encapsulate it by only referencing 4 points.

MetaTrader brokers in particular do not want to provide tick data. The sheer volume of information would put a lot of strain on the servers. The brokers are the ones paying MetaQuotes for MT4. Their concerns go ahead of you as the trader. Thus, no tick data is available unless you go to a ton of extra effort.

That leaves the backtester guessing what should have happened at all of the points in between. Strategies that trade intrabar or EAs that place the stop and take profit so closely together that they might get hit on the same bar are particularly vulnerable to bad assumptions.

Example:

You placed an order to buy a forex pair at 100, which is also the open. You set the take profit at 105 and the stop loss at 97. The low of the bar is 96, the high of the bar is 110 and the close is 102. Is there any way to know whether the stop loss or take profit hit first?

No, you cannot tell. The price might have fell from 100 down to 96, climbed up to 110 and then fallen to 102. Alternatively, it may have climbed from 100 to 110, then fallen to 96, then climbed back to 102. More than likely, the price followed a complex path that vaguely resembles one of those paths.

MetaTrader and NinjaTrader have no way of knowing which answer is correct. They do their best to work around the gap in knowledge. NinjaTrader simply assumes the worst case scenario, which is probably the best policy to avoid false positives. If a stop or take profit both hit within a bar, then NinjaTrader assumes that the stop loss was hit first. There are no exceptions. The slightly good news is that if your NinjaTrader backtest looks abysmal and faces this issue, it may not be as bad as you first thought.

MetaTrader approaches the backtest assumptions differently. It tries to build the path of the bar by inferring from the relationship between the high and low and the open and close. If the bar closes up, I believe that MetaTrader assumes that the low comes first, then retraces up to the high of the bar before settling back down to the close. I don't have a theory on the algorithm that powers what happens in between; it's usually not relevant. If your stops and take profits are so close that the up/down bar assumption cannot sort it out, then no amount of backtesting will provide an accurate answer until you finally import tick data.

The spread at the time of entry, and thus the cost of trading, are also unknown. This can heavily distort the results. MetaTrader makes assumptions about the spread. Although it generally reflects the average spread, it's a safe bet that it does not reflect the actual spread at the time you traded. Whether or not the assumed spread works out in your favor over hundreds of trades varies from Expert Advisor to Expert Advisor.

NinjaTrader can work around the tick assumptions, but you must anticipate it within the strategy's programming. I plan to write a future blog post that will explain how to force NinjaTrader to use tick data for both the bid and ask to generate accurate backtests in NinjaTrader.

Iran's Ahmadinejad ups rates to stem money crisis

2012-01-25T15:38:00.000-05:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-iran-economy-rates-idUSTRE80O0V520120125 (Reuters) - Iran increased bank interest rates on Wednesday and indicated it would further restrict sales of foreign currency, hoping to halt a spiraling currency crisis after new Western sanctions accelerated a dash for dollars by Iranians worried about their economic future.

"The economy minister has announced that (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad has agreed with the approval of the Money and Credit Council to increase interest rates on bank deposits to up to 21 percent," the official IRNA news agency reported.

EES VPS for Forex Traders

2012-01-19T18:19:00.000-05:00

Elite E Services offers Virtual Private Server for Forex traders, close to our EES FX Trading Environment (in the same data center) as well as a CNS bundling package for premium accounts.

To learn more, visit: http://eesfx.com/portal/trading/vps

See bundling info at CNS: https://cp.commercialnetworkservices.net/announcements.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=31

http://helpdesk.commercialnetworkservices.net/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=195

EES also offers dedicated servers for professional traders at http://fxsystemhosting.com

Local currencies: 'In the U.S. we don't trust'

2012-01-18T16:13:00.002-05:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It may seem like Monopoly money to outsiders, but a growing number of communities across the U.S. are using homegrown local currencies to stimulate their economies and protect themselves from the nation's broader economic woes.
While there were only about 20 active community currencies in the United States in 2009, there has been a recent resurgence, with at least a dozen communities developing their own currencies in the past couple of years, estimates Loren Gatch, a professor of political science at the University of Central Oklahoma who researches these alternative currencies. In addition, currencies that have been around for years have seen a spike in interest, with membership doubling in some cases.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/pf/local_currency/index.htm

EES Article FX Trader Mag

2012-01-13T12:04:00.001-05:00

See Elite E Services recent article in FX Trader Mag - registration is free and you can download online.

"Expert Advisors and Retail Forex"

Also EES recently was published in Stocks & Commodities magazine (January, 2012) "A Practical Guide to Forex Arbitrage" see an excerpt here: http://www.traders.com/index.php/sac-magazine/current-contents/forex-focus

MetaTrader is more popular than NinjaTrader

2012-01-10T09:12:00.003-05:00

For all my gripes about MetaTrader, I must admit that they do the most important stuff very well. It's very easy to download and install. Clicking on the desktop icon results in MT4 loading near instantaneously. When you log into the platform, charts immediately appear. The buttons at the top of the screen are obvious to anyone with trading experience. In short, it's about as idiot proof as software gets.

Fumbling through NinjaTrader

All of the things that MetaTrader does well, NinjaTrader does very poorly. The first time that I downloaded the 42 MB installation file, NinjaTrader said that I couldn't use it because I didn't have the .NET 3.5 framework installed. That makes sense to me as a programmer. To people that do not program for a living (i.e., the people reading this blog), that error message is next to worthless. NinjaTrader ought to handle this type of issue automatically.

Once I installed the program, I tried to open a chart. Nothing happened. I messed with it for about 5 minutes until I finally gave up and decided that the program wasn't worth the effort.

I decided to try again a few months later, at which point I realized that NinjaTrader did not include a datafeed. So then I had to go through their list of 50+ vendors to figure out where I might find a decent forex feed to try using their platform. The feed that I happened to have, Interactive Brokers, required that I download a special version of their software. Naturally, I did not figure this out until I got endless error messages and had to contact NinjaTrader suppport. An hour and several handfuls of hair later, I finally was able to do what MetaTrader allows me to do in seconds - look at a forex chart.

My Windows XP machine with 2 GB RAM, which is pretty typical of your average software user, takes about 20 seconds to load NinjaTrader. I have the nasty habit of closing and opening applications repeatedly. It gets on my nerves when I close NinjaTrader because it takes so long to get it back up again. I would consider leaving the application open, but I usually have 5-6 windows open within their platform. The taskbar always looks so cluttered. Call me crazy, but I find it very difficult to work on the computer with so many window tabs showing at the same time. It feels like there is too much going on visually.

Whenever you have a question about MetaTrader, you simply pick up the phone and call any MetaTrader broker. They answer your question immediately. NinjaTrader, in spite of its excellent online support, largely takes the help yourself approach. You can figure out most problems eventually, but it requires digging through forums and reading a few articles before you stumble upon the one with the answer. That type of self-help approach requires patience. Most people, especially us Americans that expect answers on the spot, are not blessed with that particular virtue.

Products and Add Ons

MetaTrader is like Google Android and NinjaTrader is like Apple. MetaQuotes takes the Android style, hands-off approach. Anything that does not interfere with the MetaTrader itself is allowed. "Allow" isn't even the right word. MetaTrader is entirely removed from the process. The result is there are thousands of products available for sale that work exclusiely in MetaTrader. It's an accidental ecosystem for trading products that relates directly to the approach so prevalent in social media and mobile phones.

NinjaTrader takes the Apple, big brother approach; all products are screened and vetted. This does come with some advantages. You're a lot less likely to buy a total piece of garbage for NinjaTrader than you are for MetaTrader. That said, the centralized also stifles the products on offer. Maybe it's just because I'm Texan and resent anything that feels like authority making choices for me, but I think you see a lot more life and innovation when the people selling a related a product don't have to ask permission to do so.

What does Ninjatrader do, anyway?

You need to take a week's worth of online training to really get a sense for how to use the product. NinjaTrader, for some odd reason, does not offer YouTube videos or any friendly beginners guides to get up and running. They require that you attend online webinars, which are always scheduled in the middle of the work day, in order to thoroughly learn each of the product's main features.

When you open the software, it's not at all apparent what exactly it's supposed to do. Is it an automated trading platform? Is it a charting platform? Is it a tool for active traders? NinjaTrader does all of the above, but my opinion is that the software itself does a terrible job making this clear. Little things like a first-time walk after downloading through would help traders get over the steep learning curve and give the product a chance.

I actually love NinjaTrader, but it nearly takes a graduate degree to figure out how to use it. That's the only reason that I'm so hesistant to recommend it to my MetaTrader programming clients. Once you figure out how to use the tools, they are incredibly powerful. The built in trading analytics eliminate the need for MetaTrader related sites like MyFXBook and MT4Stats for viewing and studying my daily performance. Comparing MetaTrader and NinjaTrader in the backtester is not even worth doing: NinjaTrader is infinitely superior. It's too bad that NinjaTrader gets in its own way.

The features that NinjaTrader offers should make it way more popular than MetaTrader. I just don't see that happening any time soon with how long it takes to learn the software.

Forex Correlation

2012-01-10T09:08:00.002-05:00

Correlation strategies appeal to forex traders because removes the stress associated with picking market direction. When two correlated pairs diverge from one another, the idea is to simply buy one pair and sell the other.

What are correlated currency pairs?

Correlation offers a mathematical probability of two "time series" moving in the same direction. Applying the idea to forex, it means that we need to pick two currency pairs. EURUSD and USDCHF are two popular choices due to their extremely high correlation, so we'll use those.

Now we ask a simple question: "If the EURUSD rises, what is the probability of that the USDCHF will also rise"? Our calculations will pump out a simple a number between -1 and +1. +1 means that that if Currency A rose in value, then it is 100% certain that Currency B rose in value. -1 means that if Currency A increased in value, then it is 100% certain that Currency B decreased in value. A value of 0 means that the movement of Currency A exercises no effect at all on Currency B.

Traders generally consider a correlation significant whenever the number is greater than 70%. EURUSD and USDCHF are so popular because they hold the strongest correlation among the major currency pairs. When market volatility was very low a few years ago, it was around -93%. Today, the correlation tends to hang around -80%. The European debt problems and Swiss National Bank's intervention have a lot to do with the decrease in this number. Their trading relationships are far less stable.

Risks of correlation strategies

Let's move back into familiar territory with my favorite example, the moving average. If you take the average over the past 20 bars, you know from experience that the average will differ if you study a 50 period versus a 200 period average. If you look at the average on a 5 minute chart versus an hourly chart, the number will vary yet again.

The take-away here is that the correlations work the same way. The correlation between EURUSD and USDCHF might even be positive if you look at a short enough time scale. As you back away in time, you will notice that the further out you go, the more steady the correlation numbers look. If the weekly correlation of the EURUSD and USDCHF is -80%, you would expect the numbers to get more wild and erratic as you scale all the way down to a tick chart.

The same problem with the moving average also appears. Studying the correlation over 50 periods provides a responsive number, but it is also far less consistent than the 200 period correlation. What a short period gains in responsiveness, it loses in stability.

You should also consider whether the correlation that you're studying makes fundamental sense. Just because the temperature change in Mongolia predicted the direction of USDJPY for the past week does not make it a good idea to use in the future. The same goes with pair trading.

EURUSD and USDCHF should be highly correlated for two reasons. They both contain the same currency in the pair (USD), which half weights them with the same instrument. Additionally, the EUR and CHF both have strong trading relationships with the US. You would expect both the Euro Zone and Switzerland to share a need for buying and selling US dollars. They need them for buying oil, importing and exporting to the US, etc. Anyone with a cursory understanding of macroeconomics could explain why this relationship makes sense.

Correlation traders typically settle on pairs that share a common currency. The EURUSD and USDCHF trade both share the US dollar. When you buy EURUSD and buy USDCHF, you are really:
Buying EUR and ~~selling USD~~
~~Buying USD~~ and selling CHF

Notice that the USD cancels itself out. What you are really doing is buying EUR and selling CHF. This is commonly known as the EURCHF pair. Assuming that the spread is not outrageous, it makes more sense to simply buy or sell EURCHF directly rather than going through the convoluted process of managing two open trades.

If you decide to pursue the two pair approach in a MetaTrader expert advisor, you must consider the need to balance the trade sizes against each other. Using standard lots as the example, 100,000 EUR is 137,500 USD. 100,000 USD is 90,900 CHF. If you buy one standard lot of EURUSD, you are buying $137,500 of it. When you buy a standard lot of USDCHF, you are only buying $100,000.

$137,500 obviously does not equal $100,000. Unless you intentionally decided to trade different sizes, you may want to consider equalizing them.

Solve for x:
€100,000 / $137,500 = x * (₣90,900/$100,000)
x = €100,000 / ₣90,00 * $100,000 / $137,500 = 0.803
You would need your EURUSD trade to be 80% of the size of the USDCHF trade.

What correlation is not

Correlation only provides insight into the probability of direction. It says absolutely nothing about the strength of a particular move. A few months ago the USDCHF climbed 1,000 points in value within a single day. The EURUSD only moved a few hundred pips. The USDCHF moved dramatically further than the EURUSD both in terms of pips, but more importantly, as a percentage of price.

Consider if you were short EURUSD that day and short USDCHF. You lost a ton of money. On the flip side, if you were long EURUSD and long USDCHF, then you got lucky and earned the move. Regardless of what happened, correlation told you nothing about the outcome when they move in the same direction. For that reason, I prefer looking at a less intuitive method called cointegration.

Cointegration

Conintegration turns the problem on its head. Rather than asking whether or not two pairs move in the same direction, it asks how likely are they to remain a certain distance apart. Naturally, that distance tends to vary with time. What you want the cointegration formula to tell you is how likely two pairs are to come back to a standard distance. If you see two pairs spread unusually far apart and the numbers tell you that they usually come back together, then it makes sense to consider a pair trade.

Ernest Chan has a friendly introduction to cointegration that I highly recommend. A much uglier, math intensive introduction to the subject, albeit one that is also far more thorough, is in the book Pairs Trading by Ganapathy Vidyamurthy.

Euro drops to near 10 year low

2011-12-28T12:41:00.002-05:00

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-28/euro-drops-to-almost-10-year-low-versus-yen-on-ecb-loans-concern.html

Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The euro dropped against the yen to almost the lowest level since 2001 as the European Central Bank’s balance sheet soared to a record after it lent regional banks more money last week to keep credit flowing.

The 17-nation currency fell against the dollar to the lowest level since January as concern increased that the region’s sovereign-debt crisis will curb growth, even as rates fell at an Italian bill sale. The dollar gained as stocks dropped, boosting demand for haven assets. The yen gained on a safety bid after a U.S. Treasury report criticized Japan for intervening in the currency market and as economic reports signaled slowing economic growth.

S&P 500 Snaps 5-Day Rally Amid Europe Concern

2011-12-28T12:40:00.002-05:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/u-s-stock-index-futures-decline-before-italian-debt-auction.html

U.S. stocks declined, halting a five- day advance in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as the European Central Bank’s balance sheet increased to a record after a surge of bank lending to stem the region’s debt crisis.

All 10 groups in the S&P 500 fell as measures of commodity, financial and industrial shares slid at least 1.4 percent. Alcoa (AA) Inc. andCaterpillar Inc. (CAT) dropped more than 1.9 percent. Bank of America Corp. (BAC) sank 2.9 percent, extending yesterday’s slump.

The S&P 500 lost 1.1 percent to 1,252.03 at 11:33 a.m. New York time, after rallying 5 percent over the previous five days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 120.41 points, or 1 percent, to 12,170.94. About 1.5 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, or 35 percent below the same time a week ago.

60 Minutes - High Frequency Trading

2011-12-21T19:35:00.002-05:00

Repainting Indicator

2011-12-19T14:00:00.002-05:00

Repainting indicators are one of the most common problems facing would-be EA designers. Sometimes it seems like an indicator really has its thumb on the market. It perfectly predicts when the market will go up or down. Making an EA run off of the indicator is a no-brainer.

If this sounds familiar, then you need to consider whether or not the indicator repaints.

What is a repainting indicator?

First consider a baseball analogy. Last week, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers to win the World Series. A repainting indicator is like asking you today, "Would you bet on the Cardinals or Rangers?," then pretending like you placed your bet 3 weeks ago and not today. You had no way of knowing for certain who would actually win.

How normal indicators work

If that sounds stupid, that's because it is. Repainting indicators use knowledge of the "historical future" to "predict" which way the market was going to go. Indicators typically start with old bars on the left side of the chart, then walk forward to the right side until they obtain enough information to make a decision. Say, for example, that you want to create the RSI indicator on a daily chart and you want to start on October 25. You start at October 25, and make decisions based on information from Oct. 24, 23, etc., until you've collected 14 bars worth of data or however long you set the period. You then say definitively that the RSI on October 25 is X.

Now you move on to October 26. You look back at October 25, 24, and so on, until you get the final RSI value for October 26. All of the examples move forward into the future, then look back into the past to get the current value.

A hypothetical repainting indicator

Now let's make a hypothetical RSI indicator that repaints. Say our first date under consideration is October 25. We might start by looking into the past, which is what we did last time. But for the sake of making the example obvious, let's look the other way - into the future.

We gather data from October 26, 27, and so on. Now, having learned the future, we jump back to October 25 and pretend that we knew the future all along. The RSI looks amazing.

A Real Example

I receive copies of the 3_Level_ZZ_Semafor every once in a while and it tends to cause problems. It's based on the same idea as the zig zag indicator, which helps it to pick perfect tops and bottoms. Trend traders love looking at it. The information seems like it would be so valuable.

Making an EA off of it, however, presents numerous problems. The trades that the Expert Advisor makes do not match up with what the indicator looks like a few hours later. What actually happens is that the indicator changes its mind. It doesn't leave behind any evidence of its incorrect prediction. The novice EA designer naturally concludes that the programming is all wrong and that we need to fix it.

The first image below shows the value of the semafor on a EURSUD M5 chart at 00:00 on October 10, 2011. You'll notice that a purple dot with the number 2 appears on that bar. The market is moving strongly upwards. The indicator at this point predicts that the move is likely overextended.

If we jump 2 bars into the future at 00:10, now magically a number 3 dot appears. What's worse is that the number 2 dot disappears entirely from the 00:00 bar! The indicator sees that the price jumped up, so it goes back in time and deletes the evidence of its incorrect prediction. If you weren't watching the indicator or taking screenshots, it is as though the number 2 dot was never there.

Test your indicator and look for repainting

No automated process exists to determine whether or not your indicator repaints. It's something that you have to do by staring at the chart during a backtest to see if the values change or not.

I like to do this by selecting an Expert Advisor without caring too much about which one I pick. If you don't have any installed, you can grab one from the free Expert Advisor page for the sake of testing.

You'll need to select settings to get the backtester to run. The options that you choose are not important, so long as you have selected something. I highlighted the required items in red below. I personally prefer to use M5 EURUSD charts. M5 is good because the backtester moves over the data quickly on full speed without going so fast that I cannot control the process. It strikes a nice balance between speed and following what's actually happening. I like EURUSD simply because I always have EURUSD data loaded. I don't have to worry about the tester not working, whereas that would likely be an issue if I selected an exotic currency like TRY/ZAR.

When the visual backtest chart pops up, the first thing to do is to load your indicator onto the chart. As the test progresses, watch how the indicator behaves. Some repainting indicators like the Semafor are completely obvious. They repaint on most bars, so it's easy to tell that it is not consistent. You can safely assume that it repaints.

Other indicators are more tricky. They only plot once every 50 bars and sometimes even less frequently. You have to watch closely to make sure that where plots appear, that they don't subsequently dance onto another bar. I like to use the same technique in the first screenshot that I posted with a vertical red line. Whenever the indicator plots something on the chart, mark it with a vertical line. Continue doing so for about a day's worth of data on the M5 chart. Stop the test, then scroll back through the chart. If 100% of the plotted values match the vertical lines, then your indicator does not repaint.

Time based orders in MetaTrader 4

2011-12-14T10:06:00.002-05:00

The short summary is that time based orders in MT4 are possible. You just need to keep in mind some of the technical limitations. MetaTrader 4 EAs work based off of incoming ticks. Whenever the bid/ask changes by a micro pip or more, that event triggers the EA to do something.

When the markets hum along at a rapid pace, this effect is not noticeable. When the quote flow slows down, however, it can cause the EA to sleep entirely through your trading window.

Many news traders want to bracket buy and sell stops around the price at 08:29 on NFP Friday. Everyone knows that a major news event is about to release. Trading slows down, as does the flow of quotes. The pending orders may not set in time if an incoming tick does not arrive in the 60 seconds between 08:29 and 08:30. This seems unlikely to many novice traders, but it happens frequently enough that we inevitably receive these types of questions whenever we program a time-based order placement EA.

The workaround typically satisfies most traders. EAs place an order at the first available tick within a certain time window. Using NFP as the example, the EA might seek to place bracket orders around the first tick between 08:29-08:32. The chances of making it 2 minutes past 08:30 without a single tick are low. And given that you are taking the first tick, the orders will succesfully bracket around the price the vast majority of the time. It is important to keep in mind how the backend works for those one-off events where the orders do not function as desired.

MetaTrader 5 addresses MT4′s time weakness by offering event driven programming. It is possible to rewrite MQL4 EAs into MQL5 and to demand an action at a precise moment in time. The MQL5 timer actively watches the clock. Regardless of what the markets do, the EA can know to wake up and do whatever action is needed. This is one of the few scenarios where converting from MQL4 into MQL5 comes with obvious advantages.

Automated Choice of Brokerage Company for an Efficient Operation of Expert Advisors

2011-12-07T13:17:00.000-05:00

http://articles.mql4.com/508

Introduction

Very often we face situations when an Expert Advisor successfully operates with one brokerage company and is not profitable or even lossmaking on the other one. The reasons may be different. Different brokerage companies have different settings:

Quotes. They slightly differ because of two factors - different data feeds and different filtration that smooths quotes. For some Expert Advisors this may be relevant. Situations may occur when an EA trades often with one brokerage company and rarely on another one.
Slippage. It may differ much in different brokerage companies. This also may lead to worse characteristics of an EA because of lower expected profit.
Requotes. In some brokerage companies they are oftener than in others. In this case an EA will miss successful entering points because of large number of requotes.

http://articles.mql4.com/508

Color Changing Indicators in MetaTrader

2011-12-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

Many custom indicators in MetaTrader use lines that change colors to indicate a change in trend or market condition. Those types of indicators are among the more common requests that we get for programming Expert Advisors. Unfortunately, these indicators often present problems. What you see on the chart is not necessarily what the indicator says.

Take a look at the image below or click the link to view it in full size. You'll notice that I included the data window for the indicator, which is SuperTrend. As we walk from left to right, the data window does not suddenly shift from Trend Up to Trend Down. Instead, it shifts with an in between period where the trend is both up and down.

While the visual effect is immediately obvious, the numbers do not clearly indicate the indicator's condition. In fact, it frequently happens where the indicator entirely misrepresents its true calculation. If the last bar was only green and the indicator says that the current bar is red-green, then we can safely assume that the indicator is switching from green to red.

When the indicator says it's red-green and the past bar was red-green, it gets more tricky. We are forced to keep looking back through time until a "clean" red or green value appears. This enables us to capture the indicator's real value.

It does not, however, make for a happy trader. Consider the case where the indicator plots red-green, red, red-green, red. Because of the way MetaTrader draws lines from point to point, the indicator actually appears as a solid red line - a long, beautiful sell signal, right?

In fact, its true calculated values are red, green, red, green. This glitch can make for some ugly surprises. This is especially so when traders expect to ride a down trend and the line appears as solid red, but the indicator (and thus EA) keeps flip flopping on the trade direction. You have to keep this in mind when building EAs around custom indicators.

Copyright Issues When Programming Expert Advisors

2011-12-06T10:14:00.000-05:00

People frequently discover indicators on forums, trading groups, etc. Although most are bad, occasionally an indicator looks promising enough to use if for programming an expert advisor. Are you allowed to use the indicator that you found in an Expert Advisor?

The crux of the matter is what you intend to do with it. Intellectual property (IP) law has a concept called public domain. If you create an indicator and then share it on a public web site, then the file is presumably free for all to use. Essentially, you give away the copyright when you share it for all to see. The only caveat would be if the file or hosting page places an explicit restriction on how the file may or may not be used.

Personal use of an Expert Advisor does not pose a problem. This includes indicators that you purchased. The only legal reason that prevents you from using a commercial indicator in a personal EA is if the purchasing agreement for the indicator forbids creating derivative products, such as using the indicator to build a new EA.

Writing a commercial EA with a public domain custom indicator also meets the hurdle. You cannot take someone else's work and pass it off as your own; you must substantially alter or improve it before the work becomes yours. Turning an indicator into an automated strategy qualifies as a substantial improvement.

The thorniest issue pops up when you want to use a commercial indicator to create a commercial EA without the permission of the indicator's owner. Most people, myself included, would call this theft. The only way that you can do this legally and ethically is to secure an agreement from the indicator's copyright owner.

I am a programmer. If you're deeply concerned about this issue and want to ensure this information truly reflects US law, then I strongly suggest that you speak with an intellectual property attorney. The information above is for general information purposes and should not be construed as legal advice.

Here's a quick summary:

private

public domain

private

commercial

public domain

commercial

Central Banks coordinated move - lower USD Swap lines by 50 bp

2011-12-01T13:02:00.000-05:00

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/global-markets/asian-shares-gain-on-central-banks-liquidity-move/articleshow/10939125.cms

TOKYO: Asian shares extended gains on Thursday after the world's six major central banks moved to tame a liquidity crunch for European banks by providing cheaper dollar funding.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan jumped 1.3 percent, after U.S. stocks rallied 4 percent and European equities rose 2 percent on Wednesday. Japan's Nikkei opened up 1.7 percent on Thursday.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland said on Wednesday they would lower the cost of existing dollar swap lines by 50 basis points from Dec. 5, and arrange bilateral swaps to provide liquidity for other currencies.

A move by China on Wednesday to cut the percentage of cash banks must keep as reserves also boosted sentiment.

The central banks' move aims to thaw severe funding strains for European banks as lenders had been extremely reluctant due to concerns over the eurozone's ability to quickly resolve its debt crisis, and could warm investor stance towards risk.

MF Global foreign branches to return funds

2011-11-28T18:58:00.000-05:00

MF Global customers abroad may see their frozen funds at least partially returned in the near future, according to several reports this weekend. In the UK, clients subject to the asset freeze may submit claims in two weeks, while in Canada, a court has ordered MF Global’s trustee to begin making cash payments.

KPMG, the firm now responsible for MF Global’s UK branch, says that customers may submit claims beginning December 8. “This helps to create certainty around the number and size of claims with the intention of allowing a return of a proportion of client funds before March 30 2012,” explained Richard Heis, joint special administrator of MF Global UK. The amount clients can expect to recover will depend in turn on what KPMG receives from banks, exchanges, and other institutions. Approved claims will be paid within 14 days. This announcement comes on the heels of a US court order granting American trustees access to company funds. While MF Global’s American operations have been plagued by reports of missing millions (if not billions), these shortfalls are not expected to affect clients in the UK.

http://www.cftclaw.com/2011/11/mf-global-international-branches-return-funds/

Europeans prepare for Euro breakup, riots

2011-11-27T13:44:00.000-05:00

REPORT: FRANCE, GERMANY PREPARE TO TAKE DRASTIC MEASURES...

Banks brace for breakup of euro...

RIOTS WARNED...

Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns

British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expats through the collapse of the single currency, amid new fears for Italy and Spain.

EES offers MAM software for Signal Providers and Money Managers

2011-11-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

The EES FX Trading Environment offers money managers and signal providers a Multi-Account Manager (MAM) to trade multiple client accounts as one. There is an unlimited amount of clients that can be placed into the MAM. From the manager perspective, there is no difference between trading the MAM vs. a normal trading account. All allocations are handled in the backoffice and transparent to the manager. For example, if 10 clients with $10,000 each are in the MAM, the manager will login and see a master account balance of $100,000.

http://eesfx.com/portal/component/content/article/56-trading-signals/81-ees-fx-te-mam

EES Hardware Development Survey

2011-11-26T13:32:00.000-05:00

EES is developing a trading hardware appliance for traders and would like your feedback:

http://eesfx.com/portal/ees-fx/surveys?survey=1

Understanding RAM Timings

2011-11-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Understanding-RAM-Timings/26

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_timings

Memory timings (or RAM timings) refer collectively to a set of four numerical parameters called CL, tRCD, tRP, and tRAS, commonly represented as a series of four numbers separated with dashes, in that respective order (e.g. 5-5-5-15). However, it is not unusual for tRAS to be omitted, or for a fifth value, the Command rate, to be added on. It also remains a common practice to advertise only CL. These parameters define, in clock cycles, the various forms of latency (responsiveness to random requests) that affect fundamental performance metrics of random access memory. Lower numbers indicate fewer clock cycles are needed, implying faster performance.

Moody's cuts Hungary to junk HUF down 1.8%

2011-11-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/11/25/idINIndia-60726220111125

(Reuters) - Credit rating agency Moody's cut Hungary's debt to "junk" grade late on Thursday, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban's unorthodox economic policies and prompting his government to denounce the move as a "financial attack".

Moody's lowered Hungary's sovereign rating by one notch to Ba1, just below investment-grade, with a negative outlook, only hours after rival Standard & Poor's held fire on a flagged downgrade after Budapest said it would seek international aid.

Germany, Euro on death watch

2011-11-23T15:44:00.000-05:00

Investors began to fear the worst for the euro after unusually weak demand at an auction for bonds from Germany, the region’s largest economy. One analyst went so far as to put the currency on a “death watch.”

Germany sold just 60 percent of the 6 billion euros in 10-year bunds it brought to auction, about the weakest demand seen for the country’s debt in the currency’s 16-year history, economists said. The rejection of debt from Europe’s safe harbor marks a new stage for the crisis.

“No bunds wanted equals no Euros wanted equals the Euro death watch,” wrote Mark Steele, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets. “We have seen many poor German auctions. This is not the issue. The issue is how badly the euro is doing after the weak auction.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45418399/print/1/displaymode/1098/

"Disastrous" bond sale shakes confidence in Germany

2011-11-23T13:50:00.000-05:00

(Reuters) - A "disastrous" German bond sale on Wednesday sparked fears that Europe's debt crisis was even starting to threaten Berlin, with the leaders of the euro zone's two biggest economies still firmly at odds over a longer-term structural solution.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/23/us-eurozone-idUSTRE7AM0VR20111123

Soil is the hot commodity

2011-11-21T13:29:00.002-05:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-farmland-idUSTRE7AK0EA20111121

(Reuters) - It took just 31 minutes for Donald Ellingson's family to end an agrarian tradition that had survived more than a half-century, by auctioning off 153 acres of rich Iowa farmland.

Five years after their father's death, Ellingson's three children had grown weary of the demands of running a farm. Their tenant farmer had retired, and finding a new one was tough. The youngest of them was 60 -- too old, they agreed, to return to a life of risky finances and long work days.

EES Partner - ADVFN Free financial news & data services

2011-11-20T17:10:00.002-05:00

GERMANS TRY TO KILL OFF POUND

2011-11-20T12:01:00.002-05:00

BRITAIN will soon be forced to scrap the pound and join the euro, one of Germany’s most senior figures said yesterday.

In a chilling threat to UK sovereignty, German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble predicted that all Europe would one day use the single currency. “It will happen perhaps faster than some in the British Isles currently believe,” he said.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/284656/Germans-try-to-kill-off-pound

Stamford and the World's Largest Trading Floor

2011-11-15T13:37:00.000-05:00

Washington Boulevard at Interstate 95 is Connecticut’s version of Wall Street at Broad.

This is where UBS, aka the Union Bank of Switzerland, sits on one side of the street, a short walk from the Stamford train station into Manhattan. On the other side is RBS, aka the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The trading capital of Connecticut is now all up in arms, it seems, because UBS is talking about moving out.

UBS' 103,000-square-foot trading floor in Stamford.

Denizens are warning that the city will “become a ghost town,” if the Swiss bank moves its operations – including its 103,000-square-foot trading floor – into New York City.

Merkel’s CDU Votes to Allow Exits From Euro Area

2011-11-14T14:30:00.002-05:00

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party voted to offer euro states a“voluntary” means of leaving the currency area.

CDU delegates meeting in the eastern German city of Leipzig for their annual party congress today backed a motion on the euro that included a clause permitting euro exits without exclusion from the European Union. They rejected an amendment that would have sought to change voting at the European Central Bank so that it is weighted according to economic size.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14/merkel-s-cdu-votes-to-allow-exits-from-euro-area.html

CIA following tweets

2011-11-04T15:27:00.002-04:00

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

At the agency's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the "vengeful librarians" also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-cia-following-twitter-facebook-081055316.html

Oakland rally turns violent

2011-11-03T11:33:00.002-04:00

CHAOS IN CALI...

'Occupy' Rallies Turn Violent...

Police Tear Gas Oakland Protesters...

Mob Runs Wild in City Streets...

Shut Down Port, Attack WHOLE FOODS, ATMs...

Cops, Protesters Clash in Seattle...

FBI interested in regulatory probe of MF Global

2011-11-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

(Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is interested in the investigation of MF Global Holdings Ltd, a person briefed on the matter said on Tuesday.

The person declined to give details. Regulators said on Monday that the company reported possible "deficiencies" in customer futures segregated accounts.

MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, is the biggest U.S. casualty of Europe's debt crisis, and the seventh-largest bankruptcy by assets in U.S. history.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-mfglobal-fbi-idUSTRE7A076720111102

MF Global near collapse - IB most likely suitor

2011-10-31T09:28:00.002-04:00

MF Global Holdings Ltd., the futures broker run by Jon Corzine, was suspended from conducting new business with the New York Federal Reserve today after posting a record loss.

The firm’s board met through the weekend in New York to consider options including a sale to avert failure, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. It was stopped from doing new business with the New York Fed until it shows it’s able to fulfill its responsibilities as a primary dealer, according to a statement on the regulator’s website. Trading in MF Global’s stock was also halted.

Pressure is mounting on Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey and U.S. senator, after MF Global declined 67 percent last week and its bonds started trading at distressed levels amid its disclosures of bets on European sovereign-debt. MF Global was in discussions with five potential buyers for all or parts of the company, including banks, private-equity firms and brokers, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

“While the pieces are attractive, figuring out potential buyers is a lot harder,” Robert Rutschow, an analyst with CLSA Credit Agricole Securities in New York, said in an Oct. 28 note to clients. “In the current environment, banks can’t even go to the bathroom without permission from their regulator, let alone buy a brokerage firm that was looking to grow proprietary trading and expand risk-taking activities.”

Interactive Brokers

The most attractive part of the New York-based firm is its retail futures brokerage, which could fetch $500 million to $600 million, he said. MF Global hired Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP for a London affiliate, a person said. The law firm currently represents Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which in 2008 filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

MF Global may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as today and sell assets to Interactive Brokers Group Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported on its website, citing a person familiar with the matter it did not identify. Interactive Brokers would likely make an initial bid of about $1 billion during a court-supervised auction after the company files for Chapter 11, the newspaper cited the person as saying.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-30/corzine-s-mf-global-faces-pivotal-days-as-firm-considers-sale-bankruptcy.html

Yen Falls Versus Dollar Amid Speculation Japan Intervened in Markets

2011-10-31T09:26:00.002-04:00

The yen plunged against the dollar and euro amid speculation Japan intervened in markets to weaken its currency.

The yen sank 3.2 percent to 78.30 per dollar as of 10:34 a.m. in Tokyo. It lost 2.8 percent to 110.38 per euro.

Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi said earlier today he’s ready to take “determined” steps in the currency market if needed after the yen rose to a fresh post-World War II high against the dollar.

He told reporters in Tokyo today that speculative activity is strong in the currency market, adding that the yen’s moves don’t reflect Japan’s economic fundamentals.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-31/yen-falls-versus-dollar-amid-speculation-japan-intervened-in-markets.html

EES FX listed on CNS Latency chart

2011-10-29T14:19:00.000-04:00

See EES FX on CNS Latency chart - 1ms to trading server

EES FX Partners with Forex VPS

2011-10-29T12:36:00.000-04:00

Click here to order Forex VPS

Hedge funds a super gamble

2011-10-28T14:26:00.002-04:00

Philip Falcone grew up in the mining town of Chisholm, Minnesota, population 4976. The youngest of nine children who lived in a three-bedroom house, Falcone excelled at ice hockey and played for Harvard.

After college, a burgeoning career as a professional hockey player was cut short by injury and he then cut his teeth in the markets as a trader at Barclays Capital.

Now, Falcone is best-known as a "billionaire New York hedge fund manager". Geared to the gills like most hedge funds, his Harbinger Capital Partners made a poultice in the bull market; in Australia, too. Falcone's most notable play being a 16 per cent stake in Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Metals which reaped him hundreds of millions in profit when he sold down two years ago.

Greeks move €228billion into Swiss banks

2011-10-19T18:37:00.000-04:00

Greece in flames over cuts (while fat-cats secretly shift €228billion into Swiss banks accounts)

Wealthy are moving euros through foreign subsidiaries in Cyprus
50,000 people descend on Athens as 48-hour general strike begins
Hundreds of flights and ferries cancelled as workers walk out
Greek parliament will vote on fresh austerity measures tomorrow

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050895/Greek-fat-cats-secretly-shifted-200bn-euros-Swiss-bank-accounts.html

Greek protesters clashed with police in central Athens after Prime Minister George Papandreou vowed to push through a further round of austerity and appealed to Europe to cut Greece’s debt load at an Oct. 23 summit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/papandreou-presses-austerity-as-strikes-hold-greece-hostage-.html

Multiple Time Frames or Pairs in an Expert Advisor

2011-10-13T18:54:00.000-04:00

Many strategies incorporate multi-timeframe analysis in their decision making process. Consider the example of a moving average cross strategy. The most basic version says to buy when a fast moving average crosses above a slow moving average. Multi-timeframe analysis involves jumping to a chart of a longer period to consider the setup there, as well.

Example:
The 20 period SMA (fast) crosses above the 50 period SMA (slow) on the M15 chart.
Now jump to the H1 chart. Is the fast SMA greater than the slow SMA on that chart, too? If so, then the trade is allowed. If not, the EA skips the signal and waits for another one.

The technique has the potential to work if your strategy offers some type of statistical advantage. Moving averages sometimes work when applied using a trader's discretion of general market volatility. If you leave an MA cross strategy on a chart unattended, however, my expectation is that you would have no better chance than trading at random. Adding another layer of analysis will not change the fact that the basic premise offers no advantage.

MetaTrader does not restrict Expert Advisors to reading information from the applied chart. When you program an EA to trade on EURGBP M5 chart, you may also read price information from the EURGBP M1, EURGBP H1 or any other chart available. You can even read information on multiple pairs.

Some traders like to watch correlated currency pairs. EUR/USD and USD/CHF typically share a -90% correlation. When EURUSD goes up, USDCHF typically goes down. Exceptions do occur, and those traders tend to look for exceptions on the expectation of them ironing themselves out. Expert Advisors make this fairly simple to handle. You just program the question, "What's the last closed price of EUR/USD M5 and USD/CHF M5?" The code gives you the answer, then the EA can make decisions with it.

EES Hybrid Trading Model (video)

2011-10-13T13:55:00.001-04:00

Video explaining the "Hybrid" trading concept
http://eesfx.com/portal/support/support-videos/72-hybrid-trading-model

Violence necessary to achieve protesters goals: journalist

2011-10-12T18:17:00.002-04:00

Occupy L.A. Speaker: Violence will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals

Citizen journalist Ringo captured this speaker at the Occupy Los Angeles camp a few days ago letting the cat out of the bag: After dismissing nonviolence as a dead end, he admits that for the Occupiers to achieve their goals, violence and bloodshed will be necessary:

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/11/occupy-l-a-speaker-violence-will-be-necessary-to-achieve-our-goals/

Occupy New York chant:“You Can Have Sex With Animals.”

Also read: “Occupy Wall Street and the Delusions of the Left”

How to Flush your Windows DNS Cache

2011-10-11T16:39:00.000-04:00

Click start and run, type command.

Then type: ipconfig /flushdns

http://www.whatsmydns.net/flush-dns.html

Computer Deal of the Day

2011-10-11T14:40:00.000-04:00

Wall St. Protests continue

2011-10-06T12:08:00.002-04:00

Wall St protest expected to swell...

Unions lend muscle...

College Walk Out Planned; 'Anonymous' Releases Threat Against NYSE...

Occupy Wall Street 'Stands In Solidarity' With Obama Front Group...

BIDEN: 'The bargain has been breached with the American people'...

Herman Cain to protesters: If you're not rich 'blame yourself'...

Senate to Vote on China Currency Manipulation Bill

2011-10-06T11:58:00.000-04:00

While China has purposely devalued it’s currency, hurting the value of the U.S. dollar over the last decade, neither the Obama or G.W. Bush administrations have actually taken the step to formally designate China as a currency manipulator in any annual reports in the past decade. Failure to designate China as a currency manipulator prevents the U. S. government from being able to apply tariffs on Chinese imports or start investigations into currency manipulation. Senate Democrats will now introduce a bill on Monday that will try to push the issue of China’s currency manipulation, and supposedly open the door for U.S. companies to seek tariffs against Chinese imports if they are found to be artificially keeping their products cheap through keeping it’s currency devalued. Considering our current recession, provoking a trade war with China is a very dangerous thing according to many political insiders, including Jon Huntsman, the former ambassador to China and current presidential candidate who told Fox news, " You take action against China, you can expect them to rebut that action with commensurate tariffs," he said. "During a recession, you don’t want a trade war."

http://conservativedailynews.com/2011/10/senate-to-vote-on-china-currency-manipulation-bill-monday/

China expressed strong objections on Tuesday to a bill in the United States Senate that would threaten higher tariffs on some Chinese goods in response to what the bill’s sponsors call China’s policy of keeping its currency artificially depressed to give its exports a price advantage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/world/asia/china-criticizes-senates-currency-manipulation-bill.html

BIS report: High Frequency Trading in the FX market

2011-09-28T16:43:00.004-04:00

High-frequency trading (HFT) has increased its presence in the foreign exchange (FX) market in recent years. A discussion is emerging about its benefits and risks, though the assessment is often hampered by difficulties in identifying and quantifying HFT as distinct from other forms of automated trading. It is crucial to have a clearer understanding of what HFT is (and is not) and what it does (and does not do) before assessing its implications from a policymaker's point of view.

This report examines the facts about HFT in FX, including its definition, effect on other market participants, behaviour in normal and stressed times, and key differences with HFT in equities. It also identifies issues pertaining to market functioning, systemic risks, and market integrity and competition that may warrant further investigation. This report was prepared by a study group chaired by Guy Debelle, Assistant Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

JEL classification: F31, G14, G15

http://www.bis.org/publ/mktc05.pdf

BIS Report HFT Trading Systems

Trader Rastani tells BBC collapse is imminent, Goldman rules the world, be prepared

2011-09-28T13:50:00.000-04:00

EES FX adds social functionality

2011-09-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

EES FX portal now has a social function - click 'social' on the top right menu to see.

Also, users can now login or register with their Facebook profiles.

Common Money Management Formulas

2011-09-19T14:20:00.003-04:00

All of the EAs that we program at OneStepRemoved.com generally use one of three types of money management. I don’t really like that term, though. I believe that position sizing formula is generally more accurate.

The options are:

Fixed Lot Size

Use a percentage of available margin

Lose a certain percentage of the account balance whenever the stop loss is hit.

Most MetaTrader users are accustomed to using fixed lots. It’s far and away the most common method found in commercial EAs. If you’ve watched any of the videos on this site or spoken with me, you know that I generally have a low opinion of most commercial EAs. Just because everyone does it does not mean that it’s a good idea!

Whenever a customer order mentions the idea of using a Risk input to control the lot size, it typically means to use a selected percentage of the available margin. Say, for example, that you trade a $10,000 account on 1% margin (100:1 leverage) and want to use 2% of available margin on any given trade. If you have no open positions, then the margin to use is $10,000 * 2% = $200.

The lot size is the outcome of the following formula:
Lots = Margin to Use / Margin Required per standard lot

Going back to our example, you simply plug in the numbers:
$200 / $1000 per standard lot (100:1 margin) = 0.2 lots, which is 2 mini lots.

The MQL4 code for this is
double lots = (AccountFreeMargin() * Risk) / MarketInfo( Symbol(), MODE_MARGINREQUIRED);

The advantage to this method is that the lot size remains consistent barring a dramatic change in available margin. I don’t actually see that as an advantage, but many traders like seeing the same lot size on most trades.

The disadvantages are numerous. If you like to trade on high leverage and trade many different instruments, you can easily get yourself into a margin call. If your strategy calls for placing a stop based on price action, the amount lost will vary depending on where the stop is placed. Some trades might lose $20 while others lose $100.

double lots = Risk * AccountEquity() / MarketInfo(Symbol(), MODE_TICKVALUE) / Stop;

My favorite method is to select my lot size based on the equity loss if my stop is hit. If I risk 0.5% on a $10,000 account and my stop loss is 20 pips away, then desired lot size is
lots = 0.5% * $10,000 / $10 per tick per standard lot / 20 pips = 0.25 lots, or 2.5 mini lots

The lot size decreases whenever the stop loss distance increases, and vice versa. A 60 pip stop loss would require a lot size of
lots = 0.5% * $10,000 / $10 per tick per standard lot / 60 pips = 0.083 lots, or 0.8 micro lots after accounting for rounding.

The varying lot size drives most traders crazy. I believe such rationale ignores the logic of trading. Trading is a statistical outcome, a distribution of events that theoretically returns a net result greater than zero. We call this profit in daily life.

If your trading system is x% accurate and you know the profit factor is greater than 1, why on earth a trader would haphazardly bet different dollars amount on every trade is beyond me. The effect is no different than randomly choosing to bet $10 on this trade and $100 on the next. The random, system-less method of choosing position sizes for your trading system would overwhelm the nice, even distribution that you’re expecting from the signals.

Wall Street Protest Begins, With Demonstrators Blocked

2011-09-18T17:35:00.000-04:00

Wall Street Protest Begins, With Demonstrators Blocked

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

Robert Stolarik for The New York TimesProtestors gathered in Lower Manhattan for what some called the United States Day of Rage.

For months the protesters had planned to descend on Wall Street on a Saturday and occupy parts of it as an expression of anger over a financial system that they say favors the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary citizens.

As it turned out, the demonstrators found much of their target off limits on Saturday as the city shut down sections of Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall well before their arrival.

By 10 a.m., metal barricades manned by police officers ringed the blocks of Wall Street between Broadway and William Street to the east. (In a statement, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman said, “A protest area was established on Broad Street at Exchange Street, next to the stock exchange, but protesters elected not to use it.”)

Organizers, promoters and supporters called the day, which had been widely discussed on Twitter and other social media sites, simply September 17. Some referred to it as the United States Day of Rage, an apparent reference to a series of disruptive protests against the Vietnam War held in Chicago in 1969.

The idea, according to some organizers, was to camp out for weeks or even months to replicate the kind, if not the scale, of protests that erupted earlier this year in places as varied as Egypt, Spain and Israel.

Bill Steyert, 68, who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, stood near the barricades at Wall Street and Broadway and shouted, “Shut down Wall Street, 12 noon, you’re all invited,” as tourists gazed quizzically at him.
Talking to a reporter, he elaborated, “You need a scorecard to keep track of all the things that corporations have done that are bad for this country.”

Nearby, Micah Chamberlain, 23, a line cook from Columbus, Ohio, held up a sign reading “End the Oligarchy” and said he had hitchhiked to New York. “There are millions of people in this county without jobs,” he said. “And 1 percent of the people have 99 percent of the money.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/wall-street-protest-begins-with-demonstrators-blocked/?pagemode=print

A Breakthrough in Algorithm Design

2011-09-16T23:43:00.001-04:00

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have devised an algorithm that might be able to solve a certain class of linear systems much more quickly than today's fastest solvers.

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/9/122799-a-breakthrough-in-algorithm-design/fulltext

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ninamf/papers/md_ml_jcss.pdf

http://theory.cs.cmu.edu/

CM Rwanda?

http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2011/september/sept15_rwanda.html

Quantitative Analysis of Real-Time Systems Using Priced Timed Automata

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/9/122806-quantitative-analysis-of-real-time-systems-using-priced-timed-automata/fulltext

World's central banks flood market with dollars

2011-09-15T14:45:00.002-04:00

LONDON (AP) -- Five of the world's top central banks acted jointly Thursday to provide unlimited dollar loans to banks, a move aimed at easing the growing tensions in the eurozone's financial sector and shielding the global economy from its jitters.

The European Central Bank said it will coordinate with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank to offer three-month dollar loans to banks through the end of this year. There was no separate statement from the Fed.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=CAOAK&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Computer-based attacks emerge as threat of future, general says

2011-09-13T23:45:00.000-04:00

The general in charge of U.S. cyberwarfare forces said Tuesday that future computer-based combat likely will involve electronic strikes that cause widespread power outages and even physical destruction of thousand-ton machines.

Army Gen. Keith Alexander, commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command, also said that massive losses of private and public data in recent years to computer criminals and spies represent the largest theft in history.

Threats posed by cyber-attacks on computer networks and the Internet are escalating from large-scale theft of data and strikes designed to disrupt computer operations to more lethal attacks that destroy entire systems and physical equipment.

“That’s our concern about what’s coming in cyberspace - a destructive element,” Gen. Alexander, who is also the director of the National Security Agency, the electronic spying agency, said in a speech at a conference on cyberwarfare.

Returning Greece to the Drachma

2011-09-11T22:23:00.000-04:00

To the Drachma

The standard of living reached in Greece since it joined the European Union means austerity will be inadequate to rebalance the economy. Returning Greece’s currency to the drachma, on the other hand, would allow market forces to set the country’s wage levels, induce other indebted European Union members to reform without Continental prodding and thus solidify the euro.

Greece’s gross domestic product per capita of $30,400 in 2008 was close to the European Union average. It was caused not by an exceptional surge in productivity, but mostly by huge subsidies and extensive borrowing. Greece’s continuing current account deficit, estimated by The Economist at 8.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 despite a severe recession, indicates that it remains deeply uncompetitive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/business/returning-greece-to-the-drachma.html

From Spiegel, with the article recreated in its entirety as the implications for the EUR, the eurozone, and crony communism as massive:

German Finance Minister Prepares for Possible Greek Bankruptcy

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who is reportedly doubtful that the country can be saved from bankruptcy, is preparing for the possibility of Greek insolvency. Officials in his ministry are currently reviewing scenarios for handling such a situation, exploring what it might mean for the rest of the euro zone. Under the first scenario for a Greek bankruptcy, the country would remain in the euro zone. Under the other, Athens would abandon the common currency and reintroduce the drachma.

The European bailout mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), is playing a key role in those considerations. Soon the EFSF is expected to be given new powers agreed to by European leaders at a special euro crisis summit in late July. Two instruments at the EFSF's disposal are at the forefront of the Finance Ministry's scenarios.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/goodbye-euro-hello-drachma

Jing free screen recording tool

2011-09-10T12:40:00.000-04:00

Take a picture or make a short video of what you see on your computer monitor.
Share it instantly via web, email, IM, Twitter or your blog.
Simple and free, Jing is the perfect way to enhance your fast-paced online conversations.

http://www.techsmith.com/jing/

EES announces opening of registration at eesfx.com

2011-09-10T12:21:00.001-04:00

EES FX is now accepting new registrations with a secured, encrypted login at http://eesfx.com/portal - See the login / register module on the bottom right of the home page. Login / Register will be available only at the homepage for the time being. If you navigate away from the hompage, click "Home" in the upper left top menu to go home.

During the coming weeks, eesfx.com will be undergoing changes to facilitate a social environment for Forex traders.

In the meantime, you may now register for the site and participate in the forums http://eesfx.com/portal/ees-fx/forum

SUPERCOMPUTER PREDICTS CIVIL UNREST

2011-09-09T22:16:00.000-04:00

In Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, the future of masses of people can be predicted with "psychohistory," a method of predicting future political and social trends, using a device called the "Prime Radiant." In the 1950s, there wasn't the math or the computational power available to make such a thing reality. Now there might be.

Supercomputers, such as the Nautilus at the University of Tennessee's Center for Remote Data Analysis and Visualization, may have brought the world closer to Asimov's vision, though it is still early days. The key is seeking patterns in massive amounts of data and being able to visualize them. Kalev Leetaru, assistant director for text and digital media analytics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, did just that.

BLOG: The Pursuit of Intelligence in Computer Science

Leetaru used a database of 100 million news articles spanning the period from 1979 to early 2011. The data is from the Open Source Center and Summary of World Broadcasts, both set up by the U.S. and British intelligence agencies to monitor what amounts to nearly every news source in the world and translate them into nuanced English. By analyzing the text in the news stories and the tone -- whether they were largely positive or negative -- Leetaru found patterns emerging that seemed to line up with major periods of unrest. For example, in Egypt, the tone of news articles about Mubarak grew increasingly negative as the protests grew, until eventually Mubarak resigned.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/supercomputer-predicts-civil-unrest-110908.html

CFTC Sues 11 More Forex Companies

2011-09-09T13:29:00.000-04:00

The companies are sued under the 2008 Farm Bill, the Dodd-Frank Act and the CFTC’s regulations. The 11 new lawsuits join 14 previous ones, making the total number 25.
Some of the firms are based in the US, while others are from the British Virgin Islands, Belize, the UK, Australia and Cyprus. Here are their names:

1st Investment Management, LLC, a Wyoming LLC;
City Credit Capital, (UK) Ltd., a United Kingdom company;
Enfinium Pty Ltd., an Australian company;
GBFX, LLC, a New York LLC;
Gold & Bennett, LLC, a New York LLC;
InterForex, Inc., a British Virgin Islands company;
Lucid Financial, Inc., a Utah corporation;
MF Financial, Ltd., a Belize company with offices in New York City;
O.C.M. Online Capital Markets Limited, a British Virgin Islands company
Trading Point of Financial Instruments Ltd. a Cyprus company; and
Windsor Brokers, Ltd., a Cyprus company.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110908-710711.html

http://www.forexcrunch.com/cftc-sues-11-more-forex-companies/

North Anna Nuke Plant paid $32,000 fine for definition of 'safe' - no earthquake plan in place

2011-09-09T02:56:00.000-04:00

It is North Anna’s second serious brush with quake issues. The first was in 1973, when the company was digging a hole for the foundation of a third reactor that was later abandoned. A visiting geology professor told an executive of the plant operator, then called the Virginia Electric & Power Company, that there was a geologic fault.

The executive let the comment drop, and Virginia Electric told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that there was no evidence of faults. Eventually it paid a fine of $32,000 for failing to alert regulators promptly; the five-member commission also reprimanded its own staff for moving slowly to bring the information to the attention of the administrative law judges hearing the company’s application for an operating license. The commission ultimately decided that the reactor would be safe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/science/earth/08nuclear.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3

JPMorgan explains crisis with Legos

2011-09-07T16:21:00.002-04:00

Michael Cembalest, the chief investment officer for JPMorgan's private bank, included a Lego diorama in his research note today in order to explain the ongoing euro zone crisis as seen by a 9-year-old. [via Felix Salmon]

If you're having trouble reading it, don't worry, there's a key that includes plenty of European stereotypes.

For example, the toreador in a floppy hat, and the F1 driver in the upper left-hand corner represent Spain and Italy. The sailor represents Finland and the artists are France. Felix Salmon points out that he forgot about Iceland.

If playing with Legos to explain economics seems bizarre to you, here's what Cembalest has to say to that:

"If today’s diorama analysis borders on the absurd, so does maintaining the fiction that accumulation of massive public and private sector claims in Europe can somehow be engineered away."

Image: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/09/06/jp-morgan-explains-the-euro-crisis-with-lego/

Euro break-up – the consequences by UBS

2011-09-07T11:37:00.000-04:00

The Euro should not exist.

More specifically, the Euro as it is currently constituted – with its current
structure and current membership – should not exist. This Euro creates more
economic costs than benefits for at least some of its members – a fact that has
become painfully obvious to some of its participants in recent years.

The Global Economic Perspectives draws on the research UBS has published
over the past fifteen years looking at the issues surrounding the Euro and its
existence. If the Euro does not work (and it does not), then either the current
structure needs to change, or the current membership needs to change. Rather
than go through the options for keeping the Euro together (fiscal confederation
being the central idea, and our base case), we look at the consequences of
attempting to break up the Euro.

http://www.americanfuture.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-06-UBS-Euro-break-up-the-consequences.pdf

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article30286.html

European banks make large cash transfers to US

2011-09-05T14:20:00.000-04:00

Cash transfers

Bank shares have taken the brunt of the latest stock market sell-off.
Royal Bank of Scotland fell 12.3%, Deutsche Bank 8.9% and Societe Generale 8.6%.
Most major banks in the US and Europe have lost about half of their value over the last six months.
Fears began to mount again that the eurozone may not be able to contain its debt crisis, and a government default could in turn lead to a European banking crisis.

Deutsche Bank's outgoing chief executive, Josef Ackermann, said on Monday that some European banks would go bust if they were forced to recognise in their accounts the existing losses on government debts they own, based on current market prices for government bonds.

Banks also face the prospect of being sued by US government mortgage agencies for mis-selling home loans during the housing boom, while the Financial Times reported on Monday that Deutsche Bank headed a list of banks being investigated in the Serious Fraud Office for similar mis-selling in the UK.

Meanwhile, evidence emerged that some analysts suggest shows European banks have been transferring large amounts of cash across the Atlantic in a bid to escape an emerging European banking crisis.

Data released by the US Federal Reserve on Friday indicated that unnamed foreign banks transferred cash into the country's banking system over the summer, while separate data from the ECB that shows that European banks have been withdrawing their cash from the European banking system.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14785694

The College Conspiracy: The next debt bubble

2011-09-04T21:51:00.002-04:00

Company makes tiny, 65 sq ft build-it-yourself homes

2011-09-02T01:58:00.003-04:00

All this can be yours for just $99! Company makes tiny, 65 sq ft build-it-yourself homes

By RACHEL QUIGLEY

or those who are too broke to get on the housing ladder, an American firm is here to help.

Jay Shafer's Tumbleweed Tiny House Company makes cute little homes that start from the bargain price of $99.

The cheapest home is a flat-pack to be built by the owner but, if you're not very handy, there are ready-made versions for $38,997.

Cute: For those who are too broke to get on the housing ladder an American firm Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is here to help with homes that start at the bargain price of $99

Bargain: The cheapest home is a flat-pack to be built by the owner but, if you're not very handy, there are ready-made versions for $38,997

All necessities: The homes all have fully functioning kitchens, bathrooms and sleeping areas

The teeny homes, which start at just 65 square feet are kitted out with fully functioning kitchens, bathrooms complete with composting toilets and sleeping areas.

Some models even come on wheels.

As well as being environmentally friendly the homes are affordable for people on meagre incomes.

As the debt problem in the U.S. reaches tipping point Mr Shafer, who lives in one of his houses in Sebastapol, California, says that less can be more.

'People are starting to get a clue I think,' he said.

'People are starting to understand that excess is not necessarily a luxury. It can be a burden, a liability. People are living in 4,000 and 6,000 square foot debtors prisons.'

Convenient: A lot of the homes have wheels, so you can move any time your heart desires

Mobile: The teeny homes, which start at just 65 square feet, are kitted out with fully-functioning kitchens, bathrooms and sleeping areas - some models even come on wheels

He said that having less belongings is also a pleasure.

'People spend 30 years or more paying for all this space and stuff that they don't really need.'

But one of the main reasons he likes to live small - less cleaning.

'I grew up in a 4,000 square foot home,' he said.

'And my sister and I were in charge of cleaning the house. But my main reason for building such a little home was nothing so grandiose as saving the world, or so pragmatic as saving money.

'Truth be known, I simply do not have the time or patience for a large home. I’ve found that, like anything else that’s superfluous, extra space merely gets in the way of my contentment, for it requires maintenance and heating and ultimately demands that I exchange a portion of my life for the money to pay for these luxuries.

'I wanted a place that would maintain my serene lifestyle, not a place that I would spend the rest of my life maintaining. I find nothing demanding about Tumbleweed. Everything’s within arm’s reach and nothing’s in the way–not even space itself.'

Deals on wheels: As well as being environmentally friendly the homes are affordable for people on meagre incomes and can be wheeled anywhere

Mobile: The teeny homes designed by Jay Shafer, right, which start at just 65 square feet, are kitted out with fully-functioning kitchens, bathrooms and sleeping areas - some models even come on wheels

Quantum Entanglements by Leonard Susskind (Stanford)

2011-09-02T00:19:00.002-04:00

Roubini - we're heading into recession and running out of policy tools

2011-09-01T16:04:00.000-04:00

Social Engineering in the 20th Century

2011-08-30T21:05:00.002-04:00

Euro bail-out in doubt as 'hysteria' sweeps Germany

2011-08-29T15:00:00.000-04:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8728628/Euro-bail-out-in-doubt-as-hysteria-sweeps-Germany.html

Mrs Merkel has cancelled a high-profile trip to Russia on September 7, the crucial day when the package goes to the Bundestag and the country's constitutional court rules on the legality of the EU's bail-out machinery.

If the court rules that the €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) breaches Treaty law or undermines German fiscal sovereignty, it risks setting off an instant brushfire across monetary union.

The seething discontent in Germany over Europe's debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions of the state. "Hysteria is sweeping Germany " said Klaus Regling, the EFSF's director.

German media reported that the latest tally of votes in the Bundestag shows that 23 members from Mrs Merkel's own coalition plan to vote against the package, including twelve of the 44 members of Bavaria's Social Christians (CSU). This may force the Chancellor to rely on opposition votes, risking a government collapse.

Heaven and Hell

2011-08-24T16:17:00.002-04:00

Heaven is where the police are British,
the chefs Italian,
the mechanics German,
the lovers French,
and it's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German,
the chefs are British,
the mechanics French,
the lovers Swiss,
and it is all organized by the Italians.

Chavez to move 12 Billion in Gold to Venezuela

2011-08-23T10:02:00.002-04:00

MELISSA BLOCK, host: With gold trading at record prices, here's a new challenge for what's called the bullion logistics industry. That is, the people who move gold around. The challenge is how to send and insure a really big shipment.

Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez has announced that he wants all of the country's holdings in gold to be physically transferred to his country. That's more than $12 billion worth of gold. And the prospects for shipping it fill our heads with all kinds of James Bond-ish ideas.

Well, Jack Farchy wrote about this for the Financial Times. And, Jack, we're talking about 211 tons of Venezuelan gold. Where is it exactly?

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/22/139859316/chavez-wants-gold-holdings-transferred-to-venezuela

ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD | OFFICIAL RELEASE | 2011

2011-08-19T22:34:00.002-04:00

Khan Academy - Salman Khan

2011-08-18T22:10:00.002-04:00

DOW down 400

2011-08-18T16:15:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44188136

Stocks closed off their worst levels Thursday, but were still down sharply, following a handful of disappointing economic news and over continuing worries over the stability of euro zone banks.

For the week, the Dow is lower by over 2 percent, while the S&P and Nasdaq are down by more than 3 and 5 percent, respectively.

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

2011-08-16T23:53:00.002-04:00

British high-street banks, including two institutions that were bailed out by taxpayers, are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in companies that manufacture cluster bombs – despite a growing global ban outlawing the production and trade of the weapons.

How cluster bombs work: click here to download graphic (71k)

The Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC have all provided funding to the makers of cluster bombs, even as international opinion turns against a weapons system that is inherently indiscriminate and

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-banks-fund-deadly-clusterbomb-industry-2338168.html

The advantages of Pessimism

2011-08-16T11:21:00.000-04:00

Incompatibility between our big aspirations and the reality of life is bound to disappoint unless we learn to be a bit more gloomy, says Alain de Botton.

Today I want to advance the unusual idea that we'd be a great deal more cheerful if we learnt to be a little more pessimistic.
And, from a completely secular point of view, I'd like to suggest that in the passages before they go on to promise us salvation, religions are rather good at being pessimistic. For example, Christianity has spent much of its history emphasising the darker side of earthly existence.
Yet even within this sombre tradition, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal stands out for the exceptionally merciless nature of his pessimism. In his book the Pensees, Pascal misses no opportunities to confront his readers with evidence of mankind's resolutely deviant, pitiful and unworthy nature.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14506129

A pessimistic world view does not have to entail a life stripped of joy. Pessimists can have a far greater capacity for appreciation than their opposite numbers, for they never expect things to turn out well and so may be amazed by the modest successes which occasionally break out across their darkened horizons.

EES Project Management

2011-08-15T17:55:00.002-04:00

EES Project Management

EES Custom Programming & Strategy Analysis

2011-08-15T14:29:00.001-04:00

EES FX Offers custom programming of your trading system or custom indicator.

This is a service, such as any other service, we quote based on the project request and charge by the hour, depending on the type of work involved, anywhere from $25 - $150/hr. The average Expert Advisor costs between $800 - $2500 to develop. There are no refunds on services.

Custom programming service can include for an additional fee:

Optimization of parameters
Validation and certification at preferred broker
Logical testing and analysis
Money Management analysis

Any information disclosed about your trading methods will be kept confidential, an NDA can be signed if requested (although in FX it would be difficult if not impossible to enforce).

Click here to submit a request for custom programming

http://eesfx.com/portal/general-support/custom-programming

United we Fall - Nafta & Banking

2011-08-13T23:22:00.003-04:00

Who is Herb Grubel

2011-08-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Grubel

Herbert G. (Herb) Grubel (born February 26, 1934 in Frankfurt, Germany) is a former Canadian politician. He represented the electoral district of Capilano—Howe Sound in the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 to 1997.

As a member of the Reform Party, Grubel defeated former federal cabinet minister Mary Collins in the 1993 election. He served as the party's finance critic from 1995 to 1997, and was controversial for his outspoken support of Canada moving toward a flat tax system.

Grubel did not run in the 1997 election. As of 2011 he is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University and senior fellow of the Fraser Institute. He has also worked at the economic faculties of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.

Grubel has published 27 books and more than 130 professional articles in economics, dealing with international trade and finance and a wide range of economic policy issues. One of his most important contributions to international economics is the Grubel–Lloyd index, which measures intra-industry trade of a particular product. While at the Fraser Institute Herbert published a paper titled: "The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union"[1], in which he proposed that Canada and the USA adopt a shared currency called the 'amero'.

NFA levies $2,000,000 monetary sanction against FXCM and orders refunds to customers

2011-08-12T19:07:00.002-04:00

NFA levies $2,000,000 monetary sanction against FXCM and orders refunds to customers

August 12, Chicago - National Futures Association (NFA) has issued a Decision imposing a $2,000,000 monetary sanction against Forex Capital Markets LLC (FXCM) in settlement of a Complaint issued by NFA's Business Conduct Committee on August 12, 2011. The Complaint cited FXCM for retaining gains derived from asymmetrical positive price slippage; failing to adopt or carry out adequate procedures to ensure the efficient execution of all customer orders; failing to treat all customers equally when giving price adjustments; failing to adequately investigate suspicious activity in several customers' accounts; and - together with its principal Dror Niv - failing to supervise. FXCM is a Futures Commission Merchant, Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer, and Forex Dealer Member located in New York, New York.
In addition to the $2,000,000 monetary sanction, FXCM must credit the accounts of its customers the amount of asymmetrical positive slippage which its customers experienced on their trades from and after June 18, 2008 and provide verification to NFA of these credits. In the future, FXCM is prohibited from engaging in price slippage or margin liquidation practices, as described in the Complaint. FXCM must also enhance existing procedures to ensure efficient execution of customer orders and compliance with NFA's anti-money laundering requirements.

The complete text of the Complaint and Decision can be found on NFA's website (www.nfa.futures.org).

London Riots

2011-08-09T16:28:00.001-04:00

Police lose control of London's streets for THIRD night... Riots spread across UK... MAP... Rioters rob people on street, force them to strip naked... 'Showing the rich people we can do what we want'... 'These riots were about race'... Residents asked to patrol streets... Gloves to come off, water cannons to come out... COPS: May use plastic bullets... American Baseball Bats Selling Fast in UK... IOC frets about 2012 Olympics... GUARDIAN LIVE...

Investor makes nearly 1000% on 850 Million on US Downgrade in 1 day

2011-08-08T19:02:00.001-04:00

A mystery investor or hedge fund reportedly made a bet of almost $1billion at odds of 10/1 last month that the U.S. would lose its AAA credit rating.

Now questions are being asked of whether the trader had inside information before placing the $850million bet in the futures market.

There were mounting rumours that investor George Soros, 80, famously known as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’, could be involved.

Dow Skids 600, Worst Day Since Credit Crisis

2011-08-08T16:27:00.002-04:00

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44058141 The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged well-below the psychologically-significant 11,000 mark, led by BofA [BAC 6.51 -1.66 (-20.32%) ] and Alcoa[AA 11.33 -1.46 (-11.42%) ].

The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq finished down more than 6 percent each. August is already on track to be the worst month for both indexes since Oct. 2008.

The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, spiked above 40 to touch its highest level since Mar. 2009.

All 10 S&P sectors were lower, led by banks, energy and materials. Financials have plunged more than 20 percent this year.

US Downgraded

2011-08-07T13:05:00.000-04:00

CHINA: US downgrade 'sounds alarm bell'...

S&P Action Clouds Obama Re-Election Bid...

The Downgrade Blues...

CHINA: Dollar to Be 'Discarded' by World... Tel Aviv stocks fall 7% after USA debt downgrade... Asian Markets Prepare to Open... World leaders race against fresh market turmoil... S&P: 1 in 3 chance USA will fall ANOTHER notch!

Goldman Revises All FX Pair Forecasts With Emphasis On USDJPY and USDCHF: Complete List Inside

2011-08-05T15:21:00.000-04:00

Since our EUR/$ forecast tends to receive a lot of attention, we think it is worth noting that our unchanged forecast of 1.45, 1.50, 1.55 in 3, 6 and 12 months implies a EUR TWI appreciation of 2.7%, so that our EUR/$ forecast is to a significant degree a reflection of our view of broad USD weakness. That said, while additional policy steps in Europe are clearly and urgently needed in Europe at the current juncture, as pointed out by Dominic Wilson in the latest Global Market Views published earlier today, we believe that these will ultimately be taken, reinforcing our view that the 12-month direction for EUR/$ is in line with our forecast.

In the case of $/JPY, three factors drive our forecast change:
We expect Japan’s trade balance to improve as supply-chain disruptions continue to fade. When we looked at the empirical links between the Yen and Japanese BBoP flows in the 2009 Foreign Exchange Market, we found that the trade flows were important drivers of the Yen. Thus, the improvement in the Japanese trade position is likely to be positive for the Yen.
Our examination of Japanese portfolio flows shows stronger than usual inflows relative to history. This suggests that the earthquake has changed Japanese appetite for foreign assets. On the assumption that a small proportion of these flows are unhedged, this does point to Yen strength. Less appetite for foreign bonds/repatriation could be a reflection of the need to keep funds at home for the rebuilding effort; therefore, outflows are only likely to increase again once the rebuilding effort is complete. Again, we see this as JPY-positive on our forecast horizon.
Lastly, a key element of our global forecast changes is the downward revision in our US 10-year Treasury yield forecast, which brings our forecasts for December 2011 and December 2012 to 3.00% and 3.50% from 3.75% and 4.25% previously. We see this as reinforcing our Dollar-bearish bias, also in line with this forecast change. Of course, it is also the case that—as part of all this—the probability of intervention has increased, as highlighted this week by Japan’s first intervention since March. However, the fact that the intervention was unilateral and found little policy support among the G-7 suggests to us that it will not be sufficient to reverse the $/JPY down trend. Fiona Lake has discussed the JPY dynamics in detail in a Global Markets Daily this week.
With respect to our EUR/CHF forecast, we have argued extensively for CHF appreciation but the recent rally has gone beyond our original
expectations. Given the significant appreciation pressures, we recognize the potential for the CHF to rally further in the near term to 1.05. And, of course, if Euro-zone tensions escalate further, parity should not be excluded. This is, however, not our baseline view. Ultimately, we think that European policymakers will take needed policy steps to meaningfully reduce the Euro-zone risk premium weighing on the EUR. As a result, we see the risk premium that weighs on EUR/CHF fading somewhat on a one-year horizon. This will allow EUR/CHF to head somewhat closer towards its ‘fair value’, which our GSDEER model currently puts at 1.44.

Elsewhere, our forecast revisions reflect a combination of weaker growth and a marking-to-market. Notable changes are for the TRY, which we revise weaker on a 12-month horizon ($/TRY from 1.55 to 1.63), reflecting the results of the newly introduced monetary easing by the CBRT.
In Latam, the notable forecast change is for the MXN, which we revise weaker on a 12-month horizon ($/MXN to 11.90 from 11.50) on the back of our downgrading of Mexico’s growth from 4.4% to 4.1% this year and from 4.5% to 3.9% in 2012.

Finally, in non-Japan Asia, our forecast changes generally reflect a marking-to-market in the near term. The exception is India, where we are upgrading our forecast to 44.00, 43.70, 43.00 in 3, 6 and 12 months from 46.00, 46.20 and 47.00 previously, on a more favourable balance of payments, and in particular a pick-up in FDI inflows.

And the summary table:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/goldman-revises-all-fx-pair-forecasts-emphasis-usdjpy-and-usdchf-complete-list-inside

Market panic spreads

2011-08-05T11:12:00.000-04:00

Dow rallies, then fades quickly...

CARNEY: 'The White House Doesn't Create Jobs'...

Just 58% of work-age Americans have jobs, lowest since July 1983...

Food stamp use rises to record 45.8 million...

FANNIE MAE seeks $5.1 billion more from taxpayers...

MARKET PANIC SPREADS ACROSS GLOBE...

Rolling toward 'total collapse'...

NYT: 'Time to say it -- double dip'...

Violent crime increases as economy collapses

2011-08-05T11:11:00.000-04:00

'Mob' beatings at WI state fair...

'Hundreds of young black people beating white people'...

Fairgoers 'pulled out of cars'...

'They were just going after white people'...

Men Open Fire on Crowded Philadelphia Bus...

VIDEO...

Woman dies from heat after AC stolen...

RENTER STEALS AC, SELLS FOR GAS MONEY...

Bronze Dog Statue Stolen From Humane Society...

Thieves steal school's bleachers!

Mom Arrested For Robbing Girl At Gunpoint -- For Bike...

10-Year-Old Boys Held Up For Sneakers At Summer Camp...

EES FX now offers VPS located in same data center as the EES FX ECN

2011-08-01T19:30:00.001-04:00

Click here to request a VPS

House passes debt bill

2011-08-01T19:27:00.002-04:00

Romney opposes debt deal... BACHMANN: WE ARE GREECE! LARGEST DEBT HIKE IN HISTORY... $32.4B per page... PHANTOM CUTS... White House takes victory lap... GOP Sen: Filibuster! S&P under pressure over US credit rating... Vote Breaks GOP Pledge To Post Online For 3 Days...

VOTE: DEBT LIMIT RAISED

WSJ Live Blog

2011-07-31T20:00:00.000-04:00

Live Blog: The U.S. Debt Battle

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/07/31/live-blog-the-u-s-debt-battle-2/#

Debt Deal Done?

2011-07-31T19:01:00.000-04:00

Just $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years... Balanced budget amendment still alive... MOODY'S: Nobody's plan will work...

DEAL?

Banks invest in Bulldozers to demolish foreclosed homes

2011-07-29T13:57:00.000-04:00

Bank of America Corp., faced with a glut of foreclosed and abandoned houses it can't sell, has a new tool to get rid of the most decrepit ones: a bulldozer.
The biggest U.S. mortgage servicer will donate 100 foreclosed houses in the Cleveland area and in some cases contribute to their demolition in partnership with a local agency that manages blighted property. The bank has similar plans in Detroit and Chicago, with more cities to come, and Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Fannie Mae are conducting or considering their own programs.
Disposing of repossessed homes is one of the biggest headaches for lenders in the United States, where 1,679,125 houses, or 1 in every 77, were in some stage of foreclosure as of June, according to research firm RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine. The prospect of those properties flooding the market has depressed prices and driven off buyers concerned that housing values will keep dropping.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/28/BUBG1KFN1U.DTL#ixzz1TWC14al9

Debt bill debated in Congress

2011-07-28T12:38:00.000-04:00

CHAOS... CLOCK TICKING...NO PANIC...

Where's Obama?

NAIL-BITER...

Boehner bill vote after markets close...

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Worthless Currency Art Collection

2011-07-27T17:34:00.002-04:00

Jeff Clark of Casey Research has created a wonderful historical "art" album which addresses the number one question which most people living in the US right now are unable to fathom: how can one's currency go from X to 0. It is impossible. It certainly can not happen to the dollar. Right? Well, as Jeff says: "History has a message for us: No fiat currency has lasted forever. Eventually, they all fail. You might suspect this happened only to third world countries. You’d be wrong. There was no discrimination as to the size or perceived stability of a nation’s economy; if the leaders abused their currency, the country paid the price." We may add one other thing: no country in the history of the world has imploded from hyperdeflation. Not one. At the point where the debt load was insurmountable and not enough cash flow was being generated to sustain it, the authorities would always find a way to step in and be the terminal source of dilutive fiat demand: from ancient Rome, to Weimar, to the collapse of the Soviet Block, to, inevitably, the unwind of the failed (neo) Keynesian model, where we are right about now. Sure, we can all come up with goalseeked theories that validate our perspective but they are all meaningless at the end. Past a given threshold debt money ceases to function as backed by the full "faith and credit" of the backstopper and is nothing but paper. Yes. Even the abstract concept of so-called "reserve" currencies. Quote Clark: "As you scroll through the currencies below, you’ll see some long-ago casualties. What’s shocking, though, is how many have occurred in our lifetime. You might count how many currencies have failed since you’ve been born." There are many more where these came from. Thousands in fact. Which brings us to the title of this post. What are all these images, which is really all they are now - fancy paperweights (no pun intended) from near and far history, worth now? Precisely.

Yugoslavia – 10 billion dinar, 1993

Zaire – 5 million zaires, 1992

Venezuela – 10,000 bolívares, 2002

Ukraine – 10,000 karbovantsiv, 1995

Turkey – 5 million lira, 1997

Russia – 10,000 rubles, 1992

Romania – 50,000 lei, 2001

Central Bank of China – 10,000 CGU, 1947

Peru – 100,000 intis, 1989

Nicaragua – 10 million córdobas, 1990

Hungary – 10 million pengo, 1945

Greece – 25,000 drachmas, 1943

Germany – 1 billion mark, 1923

Georgia – 1 million laris, 1994

France – 5 livres, 1793

Chile – 10,000 pesos, 1975

Brazil – 500 cruzeiros reais, 1993

Bosnia – 100 million dinar, 1993

Bolivia – 5 million pesos bolivianos, 1985

Belarus – 100,000 rubles, 1996

Argentina – 10,000 pesos argentinos, 1985

Angola – 500,000 kwanzas reajustados, 1995

Zimbabwe – 100 trillion dollars, 2006

Clark concludes:

So, will a similar fate befall the U.S. dollar? The common denominator that led to the downfall of each currency above was the two big Ds: Debts and Deficits.

With that in mind, consider the following:

Morgan Stanley reported in 2009 that there’s “no historical precedent” for an economy that exceeds a 250% debt-to-GDP ratio without experiencing some sort of financial crisis or high inflation. Our total debt now exceeds GDP by roughly 400%.

Investment legend Marc Faber reports that once a country’s payments on debt exceed 30% of tax revenue, the currency is “done for.” On our current path, analyst Michael Murphy projects we’ll hit that figure by October.

Peter Bernholz, the leading expert on hyperinflation, states unequivocally that “hyperinflation is caused by government budget deficits.” This year’s U.S. budget deficit will end up being $1.5 trillion, an amount never before seen in history.

Since the Federal Reserve’s creation in 1913, the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power. Our government leaders clearly don’t know how – or don’t wish – to keep the currency strong.

Whether the dollar goes to zero or merely becomes a second-class currency in the global arena, the possibility of the greenback being added to the above list grows every day. And this will lead to serious and painful consequences in our standard of living. While money is only one of many problems we’ll have to deal with, you can protect your assets with the one currency that can’t be debased, devalued, or destroyed by irresponsible leaders.

Because when it comes to money, worthless is not a fun word.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/thousand-pictures-worth-one-word-worthless

BBG: Singapore surpassed Tokyo as the busiest market for currency trading in Asia

2011-07-25T04:08:00.002-04:00

More active trading of USD/Asians and selling of Major/Asians? And more trades done in Singapore now? BBG: Singapore surpassed Tokyo as the busiest market for currency trading in Asia, spurred by growth in the region's emerging markets that has led FX traders to shift more of their top staff to the city state. Singapore FX Market Committee rose to $314.2 billion in April, according to a survey published today. Average volumes in Japan's capital the same month were $277.9 billion, a survey by the Tokyo FX Market Committee showed. Banks in Singapore accounted for 5% of the global $4 trillion-a-day FX market in April 2010. On FX, GBP/USD back down below 1.6300, vs 5-wk highs above 1.6340, with EUR back near day lows, weighed by ongoing concerns in eurozone despite the deal. GBP/SGD at 1.9700-10, focus still on all time lows of 1.9400, as USD/SGD hit new lows of 1.4079 despite talks of aggressive MAS interest. Key 1.20.WL

Fed planning for potential default

2011-07-24T14:24:00.002-04:00

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-usa-debt-fed-idUKTRE76J6IT20110720

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve is actively preparing for the possibility that the United States could default as a deadline for raising the government's $14.3 trillion borrowing limit looms, a top Fed policymaker said on Wednesday.

Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, said the U.S. central bank has for the past few months been working closely with Treasury, ironing out what to do if the world's biggest economy runs out of cash on August 2.

"We are in contingency planning mode," Plosser told Reuters in an interview at the regional central bank's headquarters in Philadelphia. "We are all engaged. ... It's a very active process."

Plosser said his "gut feeling" was that President Barack Obama and Congress will come to an agreement to increase the Treasury's borrowing authority in time to avert a default on government obligations.

Wall St. Prostitution Ring involves NY's wealthiest

2011-07-24T14:04:00.000-04:00

After 17 people were busted yesterday for running a prostitution ring that catered mostly to Wall Street clients, word is that the Brooklyn DA is considering charging the "Johns," the clients who ordered the ladies, too.

So far, only 30 people total have been charged.

But everyone expects more people to be arrested, because basically, besides how the prostitution ring worked, all the Brooklyn DA (Charles Hynes) spoke about at a press conference covered by NBC is how this case involves some of "New York's "wealthiest," most "sophisticated" and "high class" people on Wall Street.

It seems like he's dying to tell us some of these names. In a press conference yesterday, he said:

"For people like that, money is irrelevant."

"Everything was about people who have unlimited money. Instead of paying $20 for cocaine, they were paying $170 for cocaine."

Those who used credit cards - many charging $10,000 per night - are at risk. So was it worth it?

Who owns US Government Debt?

2011-07-24T14:00:00.000-04:00

Percentage of total U.S. debt, according to Business Insider:

Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

So America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion.

Elite Forex Blog - www.eliteforexblog.com

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