A Book Review – “Full of Bull: Do What Wall Street Does, Not What It Says, To Make Money in the Market” – by Stephen T. McClellan

Posted on July 6th, 2010 in famous investment authors, investing book reviews by RaduH

Two weeks ago, I was posted a review copy of the Stephen T. McClellan’s book: Full of Bull: Do What Wall Street Does, Not What It Says, To Make Money in the Market. Below you can find our doitinvest.com review…
I was quite curious about the book since it had a good press from other reviewers. Furthermore, the author was an investment analyst for quite a long time by then, so I thought it would be interesting to see the insider’s guide on how the big banks treat their investments.

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A Book Review – “Harmonic Trading – Profiting from the Natural Order of the Financial Markets” – volume 2 by Scott M. Carney

Posted on July 5th, 2010 in investing techniques by RaduH

Looking at the first volume of “Harmonic Trading” I already arrived at the conclusion that there was something special about it. Maybe the combination of technical analysis precise tools with some interesting applications of mass psychology to trading, maybe the quick and informal style of Scott Carney, who knows… Bottom line, I enjoyed the new twists on the old techniques of “wave trading” or pattern recognition on the tech analysis.

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Markets Plunging Yesterday With 2-3%

Posted on June 30th, 2010 in investing techniques by RaduH

…which is normal I guess, when the US consumer confidence index, the largest market in the world, plunges with 10 points in one session. Compounded with the worries regarding the Greek exposure of the European banks, this also drove down the most important EU indexes (FTSE100, DAX etc).

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Technical Analysis Dilemmas- Some Contemporary Thoughts

Posted on June 24th, 2010 in investing techniques by RaduH

Plane photo doitinvest.com

Plane photo doitinvest.com

I would like to think that by now I am an intermediate level MT4 user. And although I read 20+ books on technical analysis, I still feel like a child when I open the platform from my broker and I browse through the tons of indicators showed there.
Of course, we are all looking for the Holy Grail of the technical analsysis - that single one indicator which, used constantly, produces permanent profits. It doesn’t matter how big the profits are, if they are constant they will provide huge profits eventually through the magic power of compounding.

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What a Blow! - Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne Confirms U.K. Will Not Join Euro

Posted on June 22nd, 2010 in investing techniques by RaduH

…. and of course this pushes the pound lower immediately on the markets. This is the typeof market news where noone would know how to react and this is why most experienced forex traders advise to stay aside when such pieces of asteroids hit the news.

The British pound declined and gilts (the British bonds issued by government) advanced amidst speculation the government’s pledge to balance the budget by the end of its first term will damp the economic growth. Osborne said the government will cut the deficit to 20 billion pounds by 2015-2016 and will cut spending by 30 billion pounds annually.

Concern the U.K. would struggle to narrow the biggest budget deficit among the Group of Seven nations helped send the pound 9 percent lower against the dollar this year. Speculation the U.K. would lose its AAA rating helped the 10-year yield reach 4.3 percent on Feb. 22.Osborne, 39, the youngest chancellor since 1886, will outline plans to cut spending by the most in a generation to rein in the deficit, which amounts to 11.1 percent of gross domestic product. “We have set a brisk pace since taking office,” Osborne said while presenting the budget. “It has earned us credibility.”

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A Book Review – “Harmonic Trading – Profiting from the Natural Order of the Financial Markets” – volume 1 by Scott M. Carney

There are various opinion currents in the technical analysis. One of the recent ones appeals to the natural order of the markets and to uncovering patterns which appear from time to time. This approach to technical analysis does not try to find models where there is none. Rather the natural order trading is trying to catch patterns as they emerge and ride them for the benefit of the trader. These things said, “Harmonic Trading – Profiting from the Natural Order of the Financial Markets” is a book which uncovers several such patterns for the benefit of the trader.

Scott Carney, founder and president of a company called (surprise surprise) “Harmonic Trading”, has studied quite a long time these patterns. His experience started with the Fibonacci approach, a trading method which uses the Fibonacci numbers to predict the most probable incoming price levels. This is a probabilistic approach and, like all the methods based on probabilities, it chases patterns where over the long term you are more likely to offset losses with your gains (rather than the other way around).

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Freefall by Joseph Stiglitz - A Book Review

Posted on May 25th, 2010 in Investment banks, US economy news by RaduH

I must admit I was a bit impatient when I saw the book being postponed for publishing for February 2010. Not only because “Freefall - America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy” by the famous Joseph Stiglitz is a book which promissed to demistify the current prolonged global crisis in a more academic manner (read - with some stone hard economic analysis behind, not the small talk books written usually on the topic). I was expecting it with impatience also because Stiglitz is a non-compromises author - he does not fiddle around the topics, but shoots and moves ahead. And my expetations were actually a bit exceeded.
So, an “Freefall” is an economics book about the recent global crisis and how it spread from US to the rest of the world. I think that besides me, the first one thousand copies were bought by the following characters:
- president Obama and his financial advisors;
- ex- double president Bush, Alan Greenspan and all the economic advisors who accompanied him and
- the bankers who invented lots of arguments to get trillions of dollars in cheap loans from the US government to make even more profits.

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Tech Giants War - Google vs Apple

Posted on May 13th, 2010 in Stocks by RaduH

Yesterday a piece of news from the Wall Street Journal hit the markets - Google intends to launch a tablet simillar to the Apple IPad as functionalities. And of course, its stock increased a bit.
Whilst this is good news for Google and bad news for Apple, I wonder why people are surprised at the news. After all, Google is the larges internet player on the planet Earth and it should go on that direction. What surprises me is why Google is trying to launch such a device so late…
…which brings my thoughts to the idea that in gadget terms, Google is an Apple follower. But not in the bad sense of the word. Surprisingly enough, Google might have the ability to take a newly launched product and make it better than its no.1 competitors. It is the old strategy of the largest FMCG producer in the World, Procter & Gamble. But whilst |P&G does this since forever and has some associated risks, Google seems to have found a nice recipy to overcome the issues.

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“Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians” - by Julie R. Dahlquist (Book Review)

Posted on May 10th, 2010 in investing techniques by RaduH

Nothing is better than continuous education. And in this respect, we at doitinvest.com did read and review quite a lot of books in the technical analysis field lately. We don’t have any statistics readily availabel, but I suppose that doitinvest.com has become a top reviewer of the trading books and materials published since 2009… :)
Now back to work :). I recently got for review one of the books deemed to be a full encyclopedia of techical analysis techniques. So I got quite curious - was it so?

The first look at the book content was quite convincing. The book is very well organized and takes the reader from the basics to the most advanced techniques. It starts with the fundamental assumptions of the technical analysis field - is the random walk theory valid? Are the trends predictable? What is the blend between mass psychology and statistcis which allows you to make money from analysing the markets? What are the main assumptions behind technical analysis and how well do they stand the test of practice? and so on.

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Famous Investing Citations (25) - Emotions

Posted on May 1st, 2010 in investing techniques by RaduH

businessman Famous Investing Citations (25) - Emotions

“When emotions enter the markets, irrational things happen.”
(Forbes Magazine, 1998)

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