The great divergence

Right...so here we have it. An interesting phenomena contrary to what should normally happen. Traditionally EUR/USD and GBP/USD normally follow pretty similar patterns. On that basis, and given that the GBP pair is more volatile, typically we see both going green or red at the same time with the GBP pair showing a greater magnitude of change. Yet, here we see that the EUR pair far surpass the GBP pair and the 5 min charts differ.

So I really wonder if this is a sign to buy into GBP/USD. I'm gonna try anyway. To be absolutely honest, I still haven't found the time and discipline to ask what I want outta doing forex, or whether I shld continue. But like I told Firman, I'll be sure to do it before the end of the first week of 2007.

Meanwhile, I pray everyone has a meaningful 2007!

Awakening!

This day is pretty amazing I must say.

I found out that my Google Analytics finally started working! Thanks a whole lot to Cari on the Analytics Support Team.

I watched the movie "Night at the Museum" and was inspired after that. Well, how could someone learn something out of a comedy? And to be "inspired"?? I must be going a little mad.

In any case, I have read and reread Napolean Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" several times by now. And interestingly, there is this sophiscated method of influencing the subconscious in the one of the last few chapters in there. Well, it's actually not too sophiscated, but pretty hard to accept as a practice.

Ever had someone you were inspired by or regarded as very respectable? Say Warren Buffet if you're a fundamental investor. Have you ever felt that you want to be like the person you respect or are inspired by? Now, have you ever harnessed the power of actually being influenced by them?

To a certain extent, we're all influenced by those we are attached to, whether is it in a positive or negative light. And having a "hero" does inspire one to start becoming like them, maybe in small ways in the early stages. In Think and Grow Rich, they offered a conscious way to influence your subconscious. Napolean Hill used this method himself and found it very effective.

The basics are to imagine talking to your "hero(es)" in your mind. Ask them how to handle situations. Ask them to influence you. To mold you in character such that you become like them.
Napolean Hill actually conducted such "cabinet meetings" with his imaginary counsellors every night before he goes to bed. He found that the characters actually come to life after some time using this method, and he was positively influenced by them.

This method or technique is not limited to only worldly gains, but major religions all use this technique. It is usually combined with meditation. The effectiveness of the method can be proven by all who tried something similar.

And how does all this link to the comedy "Night at the Museum" one might ask. Well, in the movie, Theodore Roosevelt and a host of other exhibits came to life every night in the musuem. Pretty chaotic situation I must say. Roosevelt inspired the security guard Ben Stiller to take control of a chaotic situation then and moved every "live exhibit" to salvage a impossible situation.

The movie opened my eyes to how possible it is to actually have the imagination technique work and actually "talk" to one's imaginary heroes. I was inspired by how Ben Stiller united a divided people to work in unison towards a single goal. It's just a movie, yes, but I still have loads to learn even if it's just rehearsed acting. And I sure will look forward to studying the movie and characters again.

And one more thing, I'm gonna put aside some time tomorrow to figure out why I am on the route to conquer forex and to build the belief that I will win this battle.

Up and away of the USD

Met my friend Eusof yesterday, he's also a forex enthusiast. Well, we had a good time talking about some technical analysis skills, but on my end, I really find what I could say meagre in depth and amount. After all, I'm not quite a technical guy, so far my experiments are on whether the fundamentals affect the market directions, and that itself isn't quite going anywhere.

Like I said, I need to figure out my motivation and start believing I can be a forex pro someday. In fact, not just some day but a definitive date like by the time I end Year 1 in varsity or something. Think I better spend some time thinking about this.

Surprisingly to Firman, the USD actually appreciated. According to news, the Fed Reserve Board hinted that there would be little chances for rates hikes over the next few months. This was backed up the core inflation and consumer inflation data being negligible. Controlling inflation has been high on the priority of the current Board, so this ism really good news.

And so how is the overnight interest rates inportant to the economy or speculators? From what I've learnt, interest rates(i/r) are linked to long term loan rates, which then becomes the cost of borrowing for both consumers and businesses. Given a possible drop in i/r, the cost of borrowing would drop and domestic consumption and investment would actually go up, giving a boost to the ailing US economy. That might be the reason why speculators pick up on this piece of news and bought into the USD. However, this piece of news was released on Monday, we still can't figure out how come it hit the market within a short 2 days. As Firman noticed, there where instances where the news took 2 weeks to affect the market.

I think this experiment has to change to find out what are the types of major news that affect speculators and the economy and how long does the effect take to occur.

In any case, I'm hoping I'll see some work done for my tuition flyers initiative. Maybe I'll go out and distribute some of those today.

Pay(and its effects) and doubt

Today I followed my friend-partner's advice of just putting a minimal amount on each currency pair I'm interested in to track its movement. Basically I was on EUR/GBP, EUR/USD and GBP/USD. That I'll leave as open positions to track over this week. Basically I'll try to establish the relationship these 3 pairs share since they are largely dependent on one another.

My current theory is that since the EUR/USD and GBP/USD tend to appreciate/depreciate in the same direction. The difference in the volatily of these 2 pairs would make a difference to the EUR/GBP. In general, the GBP/USD is alot more volatile than EUR/USD. To be very honest, I don't know what's the exact relationship, and therefore I'll need time to find out. As of now, I opened long positions on all 3 pairs at 11am this morning. Currently, there is almost no change for the EUR/USD. GBP/USD is down 56 pips. And EUR/GBP is up 21 pips. That still seems to make sense still as the value of GBP goes down, and EUR's value stays constant, EUR/GBP appreciates.

I received my pay from the job agency for my efforts at the starhub roadshows. I don't feel extremely elated to receive my pay, but it sure makes me less unsure of how I'm gonna survive the coming days with 70 bucks in my bank. And that gives me an indication of how I would feel when I get my paycheck if I choose to work in future. The sigh of relief that there are no more tight finances at the end of the pay cycle. But that's not what I desire, in fact, not anyone's desire at all. All of us hope to have good things in abundance. The only difference is who is willing to take the risk. I'm gonna take a risk soon using an alternative method of finding students for my tuition. Being alive is about running risks, someone said.

I'm sort of in a slump. I'm beginning to doubt I can make it to riches or wealth. Not that I've tried hard enough, but it's just a sentiment. Which I can recognise it is not supposed to be since I haven't even attempted to get rich. In any case, all things go through the cycles of ups and downs...so I shall sit this out and believe in what my friend tell me: "I'm sure you'll make it big."

And I want to tell everyone else who are trying and failing and facing difficulties the same thing, that if we all endure and continue working and learning along the way, I'm sure we'll all "make it big."

Back finally

Finally! I'm back from 2 weeks of Starhub roadshows and 1 week at a Buddhist camp. First, let me just briefly touch on my experience doing sales. From the depth of my being, I really enjoyed my time at the roadshows learning how to handle difficult situations and serving customers, albeit I would prefer having the luxury of serving each and every one of my customers to the max (which can't be accomplished at a roadshow). There were also embarassing moments when I make mistakes, but I managed to learn from them.

That aside, now on to the topic of my Buddhist camp. I must say it is utterly interesting since it served as a platform for me to rediscover Buddhism which I once was very involved in for about 3-4years during my secondary school days. The theme, doubtlessly, had to do with Buddha's teachings. However, I found the link to other non-Buddhist events extremely strong. Basically the idea is about the successful completion of objectives. In the Buddhist perspective, it is to attain enlightenment.

FAITH ---> EFFORT ---> MINDFULNESS ---> CONCENTRATION ---> WISDOM

I'm sure all these words look like they should only be used in the context of religion or spirituality. However, faith can be explained as interest/motivation. Essentially, when we want to achieve a certain goal, say have a harmonious family, we first have to possess the faith that such a goal is indeed possible.

With such faith and interest in the goal, naturally effort would arise to move towards accomplishing the objective. The next step would naturally be mindfulness of all elements which can influence the success of accomplishing such an aim. The next stage would then be to focus on the process itself and with the experience and analysis of the stages in achieving the aim, one would be able to find the wisdom of how to achieve the goal in the most efficient and best possible way.

I think I'll remember to use this process to check on my efforts in future so as to see if I am on the right path. Of course, I'll still be looking out for other processes to base my progress on. Most importantly, Buddhist knowledge proved once again to be useful beyond spiritual practice itself.

As I've been really busy, I didn't do any forex trading for the past 3 weeks at all. I left many open positions using my virtual account and decided to start afresh today. So I closed all positions, of which mostly are in the reds. However, due to the right expectation of USD/CAD going north, I still gained a profit of 200 bucks from a 10000 account. In any case, I'm grateful I didn't lose too badly as I still need my virtual cash to learn.

I've been on this backslide from the current project of establishing the relationship between news and forex directions. Haven't read financial news for the past 2 to 3 weeks. So I think I really need to understand my motivations and restart the experiment.

Great Loss and Interesting Training

Today I was notified by my partner that due to some platform issues, he lost some 400 pips on a single trade. Apparently there is widely weak sentiment against the USD. Of course there are major reasons behind this event, but I believe it is really more due to speculation than anything else. While the US is facing a decline, and will continue to go downhill unless they align their economic pillars according to their comparative advantage in services.

As for myself, I've been in the Starhub Product and Services training for 2 days now...I must say there is so much to learn that I don't quite know if I am exactly prepared to do sales during SITEX itself. But I'll take it as a learning process and practise my sales abilities. Really tired. And I bet it would be worse for the next 4 days. I must think positive. In fact, I even visualised during the course that I served customers in the best possible attitude, being able to meet their needs and surpass expectations of what good service is.

I'll be back on monday or sunday evening (if I still have any energy left) to report on my very interesting experiences.

A startling beginning

Woah...last night I stayed up overnight to not only finish my most concise economic review/report to date, but to also witness the opening of the International Forex market at 5 am. Man, it sure was a shocking day. First of all there was no movement of the chart until suddenly there was a huge jump in values of pairs to the detriment the USD. That basically means I lost alot of money. Well, fortunately most of that were virtual trades. I held the ,what I believe were oversold, positions of the USD in the view that the US market would cause a realignment of the USD after the holidays. But no way would I have expected that USD was heavily sold the moment the market was opened.

Frankly I suspect the People's Bank of China is behind this sell off activity. It was only a stupid me that did not follow all the sentiments and articles that pointed to this move. Definitely I didn't expect the move to have occured over the weekend, but I should have at least believed in the weakness of the USD.

In any case, given the current situation, by 7pm today, I see the USD has recovered partially from the furious attack in the morning. I will continue holding my pro-USD positions and observe if my beliefs are true.

One thing I cannot figure out, however, is the movement of the JPY. Apparently, the JPY has been weakening against most currencies today. This doesn't quite make sense given the much needed Yen to reverse the carry trades in the market.

I'm gonna start work tomorrow, the next two days being training at the Starhub Centre, and then to the Roadshow at SITEX. I found out this is a no-commission job, but nevertheless I would do my best to gain all the sales experience possible. Also, this might be my chance to get into other starhub roadshows, and another item to add to my sales experience column of my CV.

Oh, we also made progress in the refining of the economic reporting method by introducing a summary table so as to easily see the relation between news and the forex directions. The following is an illustration.

Today will easily seem like an uneventful day but I managed to complete a brief proposal for a idea for an alternative method of attracting tuition assignments. Well, still not that impressive.

Of course I'm still in a rut since I don't seem to want to start on my financial article reporting. Considering if I should modify the way I report the stuff, because the way I am doing it now doesn't seem that useful to see the trends between news and forex directions.

Earlier, my partner scientist suggested I inform him the moment I get wind of a major news that could hugely impact the forex trends. But for now, that isn't working too well since I don't always read the papers the day I purchase it.

However, that is set to change for the next few days, because now I am personally involved in the investing, I am deeply motivated to read for all the latest news. Also, next week should prove exciting. I will keep my eyes open for news, especially those concerning the USD.

One more thing, partner told me he missed the darn exciting thursday and friday tradings because his trading account got cancelled. Haha, he tried accessing it from his friend's house. Wonder what's wrong with that...shouldn't one be able to access their account as long as they have an internet connection? Would a difference in IP from the regularly used computer cause the cancellation? I'll figure it out later when support starts again.

One more thing: I declare I'll consciously seperate news and analysis in my report.

A non-forex day

Ok, I didn't quite do anything concerning forex this saturday. But I did manage to work out a proposal on another initiative I am looking into with a partner in the tuition industry. And my own flyers to promote my own tuition for 'A' levels economics students.

And I'm supposed to look at how to streamline my newspaper summary/report to make it useful for my purpose of researching on the link between news and forex directions. And that would save me some time on the report too, because the time taken to complete the length is pretty bad. I used some 5 hours to complete my 12 pages the last week.

I think my report this week will be focused on what is the possible direction for the USD, GBP, EUR and JPY markets. The USD is hugely oversold by closing last week. So it would be interesting to see what is gonna happen in the coming week.

Enter the forex market!

Today's pretty exciting too, because I managed to settle all the administrative problems and started using a platform called Marketiva to trade.

Now, they offer USD10,000 in a virtual account to play with. And I treated it as that, money to gamble, since it is my first day at handling the forex market. I found it really easy to use and I don't have to strain my eyes to read any graphs or data.

However, there's the downside. I stretched myself out and tested the market using simple technical method of support and resistance levels by looking at the past performance of the pairs. And put simply, that didn't work. Overall, all my trades lost 100+ pips each. So I currently, nearing the market close, would have chalked up some 1000+ pips loss. But thank goodness all these are in virtual amounts.

But considering what I did today, I thought it would be really scary to see so much red in a day. And I realised what I heard at some forex pre-seminars I attended is pretty true. It take mental strength to be a big player or investor, whichever one believes a person involved in the forex market to be.

I shall wait for a rebound next week, when the US markets get more active again.

Happenings

Today several new things happened.

One. I went for my first sales interview. That was for SITEX with Starhub. Not sure if I'll get in, but I believe I did fairly well during the interview. This is to serve as my platform to sales training and effective p2p interaction, both of which are essentials to any biz i start later.

Two. I started my forex account on Marketiva. This would be a fresh start to being able to meddle in the market myself. I'm getting this feeling that news isn't that impt to the directions in the market, but that is pure speculation which I should ignore for now. For my first few trades, they are simply gambles, to familiarise myself with the functions and such.

Three. I managed to work out a theoretical model for how interest rates affect the state of the economy and thus the forex rates. However, I am facing a gap in information as to the links between overnight interest rates (set by Central Banks) and those reflected in long term consumer and investment loans.

First day, Fresh beginning

OK...here goes...so I've finally gotten down to starting a blog to record my progress along this path of discovering my financial destiny. It hasn't been that long but I sure had a good time knowing people and discussing ridiculous ideas.

All these started with the now-famous "Rich Dad Poor Dad." From there I got to know of many ways to make money, and quite a few friends who would like to make money too.

Basically I'm down to Forex now. And I'm conducting an experiment on the relationship between news and the forex directions of the major currencies now. So far the progress has been haphazard. Really need a better way to gather news. Currently, I do a daily review of important news in Business Times (Singapore) and send the report weekly to my partner who settles the (technical) trading part.

Haven't really had time to observe patterns since there is simply too much info on my report vs his. Wonder where this will all lead us to...