FT has been trading full time from home for two years, with nothing but four kids and a beach to distract him .
He fills his spare time with weight training and rugby, though more coaching than playing these days.
FT mostly trades the forex markets and although he plays FTSE on occasions his bread and butter market is £$.
He likes to think that his technique is evolving but still hasn’t the temperament or money to back the big calls. He prefers to trade between 1 and 3 times a day, aiming to take regular small gains, but feels part of the evolution is in not dealing if the conditions don’t feel right.
Manipulation Or Stupidity?
Let’s be honest, it’s hard to accuse the Fed of either of these, though that might depend on whether you’ve done your conkers over the past hour.
The Fed must have known that its announcement of immediate plans to tackle the liquidity problem would send markets better. Equally, it must have had an inkling that the drop in payrolls would send the market back down again. So why the hell did it make the funding announcement 10 minutes before the payrolls data?
This isn’t a rant from a bitter and broken trader; I watched the market rise, then I watched it fall. Now I’m watching it rise again. It just seemed crazy timing. I guess the Fed’s defence would be that the announcement was made before the US markets opened. But hey, there’s a futures market and a bit of land off the coast of America called Europe that’s open and trading.
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Anyone confused by the US payrolls report? There was a fall of 63,000 jobs last month; there was also a fall in the percentage of people unemployed. Hold on Harry, how can that be right?
Simple, amazingly the two numbers are taken from completely different sources. It’s Friday afternoon so I’ll skip the detail, but the source that provides the unemployment rate said that the workforce fell by 450,000 in February. The bearish version is that these people have just given up looking for work so are no longer registered. The alternative view is that they’re either providing Pete Doherty with his recreational fixes or selling condoms with a free demonstration.
Either way, that’s more off the big figure (workforce) than off the little figure (workers) so the unemployment rate fell. Crystal?
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Equities are currently bouncing, and they might even squeeze into the weekend as traders take profits on their short positions. But there’s a lot of ugly stuff out there. US mortgage firm, Thornburg, has been hit with a default notice from JP Morgan, Carlyle Capital shares have been suspended and monoline insurer CIFG Guaranty has been downgraded from AAA to A1. I’ve just posted a new blog on some of the new crunchy areas like margin calls and monolines, so why not check out Crunching Like A Hungry Bear.
But on to more pressing matters; can England survive the re-instatement of Ian Balshaw and still beat the Scots? And should I put my money on David Wallace and the boys to take the Welsh down a peg or two?
Enjoy The Rugby
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