Tag Archives: fundamental analysis

Broken Piggy bank

Misjudging the Fed’s Tapering: The Importance of Fundamental Analysis

We always stress the importance of fundamental analysis on our main website and informative videos we produce for our traders and followers, but today’s news illustrates the importance of this aspect of binary options trading in a grand real-life paradigm of immense proportions.

One of the major market moving events of 2013 had been the Fed’s decision to taper its Quantitative Easing programme. The decision, as you probably remember, was preceded my rumours and false alarms and vague language of “more growth” and “stability” in the U.S. economy that kept investors and traders on their speculating toes.

When the decision finally did come last month, at the end of the December FOMC meeting, not everyone expected it, not even the “ol’ boys” of trading. Money manager Bill Gross, known as the “Bond King” misjudged the Fed’s intentions to begin scaling back the economic stimulus in 2013, causing the Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTRX) to decline the most in twenty years.
And the billionaire was not the only to commit the error. The biggest funds at Pacific Investment Management Co. also followed in the same footsteps including in offerings of non-traditional bonds that have been especially designed to protect investors from interest-rate fluctuations.

This is not to argue that you should heed the advice of professional traders and money managers. What we rather like to emphasize is that one should always follow the financial and world evens closely and come to his own conclusions and predicted aided by the advice of experts, but without blindly following them.

Not a Banc De Binary trader?

Sign In
morning-coffee

Financial Astrology: Can The Stars Affect Stocks?

In our previous post we asked whether stock market success is down to luck, magic or bravery? It seems fitting, therefore, to look at another ‘outside’ factor that could affect your success in the stock markets…astrology. Could there be some credibility in the planets? Financial astrologers believe so…

Stock Market Prediction by Donald Bradley is a well-known book on the subject of financial astrology. Bradley’s method of foreseeing changes in the market involves assigning a numerical value to the position of the planets and stars on any given day. He then plots the values on a graph. The peaks and troughs of that line should, in theory, plot “turns” in the fortunes of stocks, bonds and commodities. It sounds inconceivable, but the model has been described by market watcher Peter Eliades as “eerily accurate”.

According to the Financial Times, financial astrology is “growing in popularity and complexity”. It’s mysterious that so many individuals who you’d imagine would rely on mathematical rationality are resorting to the stars for assistance and traders keep coming back for more. Could there be something in it? Astrology is arguably, superstition and perhaps the intense pressure of jobs such as those of the Wall Street traders makes them more likely to hunt for patterns in the stars. Superstitions in general tend to increase when people are under stress. The very complexity of the movements in the heavens also makes it likely that patterns will be detected where there is none. It’s no coincidence that the same can be true for those who study stocks.

Wall Street’s best-known astrologer, Arch Crawford, nicknamed “Crash Crawford” when he predicted the “flash crash” of 1962, is unbowed in his conviction that his method works. He claims to have predicted the 2008 crash when he spotted “some pretty ugly aspects, squares and oppositions and 45-degree angles”. Astral bodies arranged in squares, he says, give “energy” and that might lead to bad events on Earth. The energy was to be at its worst on October 10 and he predicted that would be the worst day. On October 10, the Dow Jones opened down 800 points.

But the 2008 crash was caused not by energy from outer space, but by toxic mortgages that were sold by the banks over a number of years and then repackaged in such a way that their toxicity was hidden from investors. These supposedly solid loans then collapsed, en masse. Thus, the crash.

In any case, is there still a chance that stock market success could be ‘written’ in the stars? It’s an interesting and exciting prospect, but like the lottery, we’re not taking our chances preferring instead, to opt for the more traditional methods of fundamental and technical analysis!

Not a Banc De Binary trader?

Sign In