Spot Market

Currency spot trading is the most popular foreign currency instrument around the world, making up 37 percent of the total activity.

The fast-paced spot market is not for the faint hearted, as it features high volatility and quick profits (and losses). A spot deal consists of a bilateral contract whereby a party delivers a specified amount of a given currency against receipt of a specified amount of another currency from a counter party  based on an agreed exchange rate, within two business days of the deal date. The exception is the Canadian dollar, in which the spot delivery is executed next business day.

The name "spot" does not mean that the currency exchange occurs the same business day the deal is executed. Currency transactions that require same-day delivery are called cash transactions. The two-day spot delivery of currencies was developed long before technological breakthroughs in information processing.

This time period was necessary to check out all transaction details among counterparties. Although technologically feasible, the contemporary markets did not find it necessary to reduce the time to make payments. Human errors still occur and they need to be fixed before delivery. When currency deliveries are made to the wrong party, fines are imposed. In terms of volume, currencies around the world are traded mostly against the U.S. dollar, because the U.S. dollar is the currency of reference.

The other major currencies are the euro, followed by the Japanese yen, the British pound, and the Swiss franc. Other currencies with significant spot market shares are the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar. In addition, a significant share of trading takes place in the currency crosses, a non-dollar instrument whereby foreign currencies are quoted against other foreign currencies, such as the euro against the Japanese yen.

There are several reasons for the popularity of currency spot trading. Profits (or losses) are realized quickly in the spot market, due to market volatility. In addition, since spot deals mature in only two business days, the time exposure to credit risk is limited. Turnover in the spot market has been increasing dramatically, thanks to the combination of inherent profitability and reduced credit risk. The spot market is characterized by high liquidity and high volatility. Volatility is the degree to which the price of currency tends to fluctuate within a certain period of time. Free-floating currencies, such as the euro or the Japanese yen, tend to be volatile against the U.S. dollar.

In an active global trading day (24 hours), the euro/dollar exchange rate may change its value 18,000 times. An exchange rate may "fly" 200 pips in a matter of seconds if the market gets wind of a significant event. On the other hand, the exchange rate may remain quite static for extended periods of time, even in excess of an hour, when one market is almost finished trading and waiting for the next market to take over. This is a common occurrence toward the end of the New York trading day. Since California failed in the late 1980s to provide the link between the New York and Tokyo markets, there is a technical trading gap between around 4:30 pm and 6 pm EDT. In the United States spot market, the majority of deals is executed between 8 am and noon, when the New York and European markets overlap. The activity drops sharply in the afternoon, over 50 percent in fact, when New York loses the international trading support. Overnight trading is limited, as very few banks have overnight desks. Most of the banks send their overnight orders to branches or other banks that operate in the active time zones.

The major traders in the spot market are the commercial banks and the investment banks, followed by hedge funds and corporate customers. In the interbank market, the majority of the deals is international, reflecting worldwide exchange rate competition and advanced telecommunication systems. However, corporate customers tend to focus their foreign exchange activity domestically, or to trade through foreign banks operating in the same time zone. Although the hedge funds' and corporate customers' business in foreign exchange has been growing, banks remain the predominant trading force.

The bottom line is important in all financial markets, but in currency spot trading the antes always seem to be higher as a result of the demand from all around the world. The profit and loss can be either realized or unrealized. The realized profit and loss is a certain amount of money netted when a position is closed. The unrealized profit and loss consists of an uncertain amount of money that an outstanding position would roughly generate if it were closed at the current rate. The unrealized profit and loss changes continuously in tandem with the exchange rate.

Trading - Data

A determination of what works, and what does not, cannot be made in the realm of commodities trading without quality data for use in tests and simulations. Several types of data may be needed by the trader interested in developing a profitable commodities trading system. At the very least, the trader will require historical pricing data for the commodities of interest.

TYPES OF DATA

Commodities pricing data is available for individual or continuous contracts. Individual contract data consists of quotations for individual commodities contracts. At any given time, there may be several contracts actively trading. Most speculators trade the front-month contracts, those that are most liquid and closest to expiration, but are not yet past first notice date. As each contract nears expiration, or passes first notice date, the trader “rolls over” any open position into the next contract. Working with individual contracts, therefore, can add a great deal of complexity to simulations and tests. Not only must trades directly generated by the trading system be dealt with, but the system developer must also correctly handle rollovers and the selection of appropriate contracts.

To make system testing easier and more practical, the continuous contract was invented. A continuous contract consists of appropriate individual contracts strung together, end to end, to form a single, continuous data series. Some data massaging usually takes place when putting together a continuous contract; the purpose is to close the gaps that occur at rollover, when one contract ends and another begins, Simple back-adjustment appears to be the most reasonable and popular gap-closing method. Back-adjustment involves nothing more than the subtraction of constants, chosen to close the gaps, from all contracts in a series other than the most recent. Since the only operation performed on a contract’s prices is the subtraction of a constant, all linear price relationships (e.g., price changes over time, volatility levels, and ranges) are preserved. Account simulations performed using back-adjusted continuous contracts yield results that need correction only for rollover costs. Once corrected for rollover, simulated trades will produce profits and losses identical to those derived from simulations performed using individual contracts. However, if trading decisions depend upon information involving absolute levels, percentages, or ratios of prices, then additional data series (beyond backadjusted continuous contracts) will be required before tests can be conducted.

End-of-day pricing data, whether in the form of individual or continuous contracts, consists of a series of daily quotations. Each quotation, “bar,” or data point typically contains seven fields of information: date, open, high, low, close, volume, and open interest. Volume and open interest are normally unavailable until after the close of the following day; when testing trading methods, use only past values of these two variables or the outcome may be a fabulous, but essentially untradable, system! The open, high, low, and close (sometimes referred to as the settlement price) are available each day shortly after the market closes.

Intraday pricing data consists either of a series of fixed-interval bars or of individual ticks. The data fields for fixed-interval bars are date, time, open, high, low, close, and tick volume. Tick volume differs from the volume reported for end of-day data series: For intraday data, it is the number of ticks that occur in the period making up the bar, regardless of the number of contracts involved in the transactions reflected in those ticks. Only date, time, and price information are reported for individual ticks: volume is not. Intraday tick data is easily converted into data with fixed-interval bars using readily available software. Conversion software is frequently provided by the data vendor at no extra cost to the consumer.

In addition to commodities pricing data, other kinds of data may be of value. Temperature and rainfall data have a bearing on agricultural markets. Various economic time series that cover every aspect of the economy, from inflation to housing starts, may improve the odds of trading commodities successfully. Do not forget to examine reports and measures that reflect sentiment, such as the Commitment of Traders (COT) releases, bullish and bearish consensus surveys, and put-call ratios. Non-quantitative forms of sentiment data, such as news headlines,may also be acquired and quantified for use in systematic tests. Nothing should be ignored. Mining unusual data often uncovers interesting and profitable discoveries. It is often the case that the more esoteric or arcane the data, and the more difficult it is to obtain, the greater its value!

Investing

The theory of investing.

Diversification and liquidity are dandy, but they both vanish when we need them the most. As 2008 began, millions of investors owned short - term bond funds holding securities ranging in safety from plain - vanilla high - grade corporate debt to more exotic asset - backed vehicles; a small but soon - to - be - highly - visible minority of funds actually juiced their returns by writing credit default swaps. In normal times, these securities were highly liquid, that is, easily exchangeable for cold, hard cash. When push came to shove in the fall of that year, however, shareholders in need of cash suddenly found that they were worth less than they ever thought possible — in some cases, a lot less. Similarly, during the great bull market of 2002 – 2007, investors piled into mutual funds specializing in emerging markets and real estate investment trusts (REITs) — ostensibly because of their diversification value, but in reality because their recent performance had been red - hot. In the ensuing market collapse, the diversification value of these two asset classes disappeared faster than taco chips at a Super Bowl party, falling, in some cases, 60 to 70 percent. (In truth, REITs and emerging markets stocks do offer substantial diversification benefit, but only if held for the long term: during the 10 - year period from 1999 to 2008, these two asset classes provided investors with salutary returns, while the S & P 500 lost money.)

The history of investing.

The stock market is not as agreeable a place as many would have you believe. Forget the “stocks for the long run” bias inherent in both the pre - and post - 1926 databases used by almost all academics and practitioners. JASON ZWEIG, simply put, is the reigning gold medalist in the investing Olympics decathlon, investing demolishes this paradigm with an efficiency rarely seen this side of a Chuck Norris film: Stock markets do not become less risky with time, do not always return more than bonds, and do vanish, with alarming regularity, into the mists of history.

The psychology of investing.

Your own worst enemy is the image in the mirror; this goes double if you’re a guy. As I read Jason’s sections on the investing heart of darkness inside all of us, I trembled that they might fall into the wrong hands: a snappy ticker symbol, for example, is worth a several - percent stock price premium. Of course, when it comes to manic - depressive behavior, few can hold a candle to Mr. Market himself, and the sooner you stop becoming his anxious co-dependent and learn to administer to him the tough love he deserves, the wealthier you will be.

The business of investing.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts: Most financial innovation serves roughly the same purpose as the pickpocket’s decoy, the innocent - appearing chap who bumps into you or asks you the time while his deft accomplice relieves you of your wallet. In much the same way, over the past decade hedge funds, bond funds with clever options strategies, and structured investment vehicles have considerably lightened investor’s wallets.

Forex

Forex – What is it? The international currency market Forex is a special kind of the world financial market. Trader’s purpose on the Forex to get profit as the result of foreign currencies purchase and sale. The exchange rates of all currencies being in the market turnover are permanently changing under the action of the demand and supply alteration. The latter is a strong subject to the influence of any important for the human society event in the sphere of economy, politics and nature. Consequently current prices of foreign currencies, evaluated for instance in US dollars, fluctuate towards its higher and lower meanings.

Using these fluctuations in accordance with a known principle “buy cheaper – sell higher” traders obtain gains. Forex is different in compare to all other sectors of the world financial system thanks to his heightened sensibility to a large and continuously changing number of factors, accessibility to all individual and corporative traders, exclusively high trade turnover which creates an ensured liquidity of traded currencies and the round – the clock business hours which enable traders to deal after normal hours or during national holidays in their country finding markets abroad open. Just as on any other market the trading on Forex, along with an exclusively high potential profitability, is essentially risk - bearing one. It is possible to gain a success on it only after a certain training including a familiarization with the structure and kinds of Forex, the principles of currencies price formation, the factors affecting prices alterations and trading risks levels, sources of the information necessary to account all those factors, techniques of the analysis and prediction of the market movements as well as with the trading tools and rules.

An important role in the process of the preparation for trading Forex belongs to the demo-trading (that is to trade using a demo-account with some virtual money), which allows to testify all the theoretical knowledge and to obtain a required minimum of the trade experience not being subjected to a material damage.