Traders' Hub

Thursday, February 26, 2009

"WEB DESIGN FOR IDIOTS" - A "MUST SEE" DESIGN WEBSITE FOR NEWBIES

This is the website for 'idiots' like me, err, and you?.....wannabe bloggers designing their own sites...stringy newbies searching the web endlessly for free downloadable templates they can use....continually shifting from one design to another never really knowing what's best for them....stubbornly refusing to sign up for paid web design services, hoping they can finally put together the right design combination on their own...frustatingly watching their sites linger continually at the bottom of page rankings!

Well, we've got good news! "Web Design For Idiots" is now up and running! This is a design website that offers free tips and tricks for newbies. Authored by a 'girl hack' who has tremendous patience for upstarts and a comforting knowledge of what it is to be an 'idiot' blogger, Website Design For Idiots is remarkably a 'must see' site for both the experienced and the inexperienced !

The site has tons of information, tips, and tricks, free advice and how-to's! This site is a treasure trove of information for bloggers like us. Every single visit to the site is a wholesome tutorial experience by itself - you will never fail to learn something new or pick up a good pointer or two. Her tips on what bloggers should avoid doing with their blogs were remarkable, and even started me to realize that after almost half a year of blogging, I have not inched much as a newbie. Her advice on the use of freely available templates is truly revealing and made me review everything I have done as a blogger in the past.

Well, webdesignforidiots.net is really for idiots like me. Hard hitting, direct to the point, no frills! Just about anything about designing your blog is on this site! If you are a newbie like me, you must visit her site. (Yeah, that's her lovely picture on the right!) Webdesignforidiots.net is void of complicated, hard to follow blogging tips. Just simple tricks, common sensical tips, and a pile of links to important websites you wouldn't ordinarily be able to discover just surfing around.The girl-hack author is also offering free consultation services. She will analyse the layout and design of any site on request and even post the review on her site.

For a hack who claims she's has not undergone formal training on web design, she's a revelation 'coz her site is a treasure trove of information for newbie bloggers struggling to get noticed in the blogosphere.

So , if you are one of those growing number of 'idiots' in the blogosphere, go visit the site now..... you'd see me there too!

web design for idiots main page website tutorials

get your web design questions answered by web design for idiots

teach yourself oscommerce for newbies oscommerce file structure

Post?slot_id=32640&url=http%3a%2f%2fsocialspark

ECONOMIC CALENDAR FOR THE LAST TWO TRADING DAYS OF FEBRUARY

For the last two trading days for February, 2009 the flurry of economic data will be crucial in telling us whether the candlestick charts will show us -

if new positioning will occur in anticipation of a further dollar rise in the near term;
or, if a possible month end book squaring will take place should jitter bugs hit traders once more if the data proves to be worse than expected as will be published.

Thursday Feb 26 Friday Feb 27

US:Durable Goods Orders EMU:HICP

1:30 PM 10:00 AM

US:Jobless Claims EMU:Unemployment Rate

1:30 PM 10:00 AM

US:New Home Sales US:GDP

3:00 PM 1:30 PM

US:EIA Natural Gas Report US:NAPM-Chicago

3:30 PM 2:45 PM

US:Money Supply US:Consumer Sentiment

9:30 PM 2:55 PM

JP:CPI US:Farm Prices

11:30 PM 8:00 PM

JP:CPI Core

11:30 PM

JP:Household Spending

11:30 PM

JP:Unemployment Rate

11:30 PM

JP:Industrial Production

11:50 PM

JP:Retail Sales

11:50 PM

IZEA/KMART CAMPAIGN - A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Highly criticized, sometimes maligned, Izea's K Mart Shopping Spree Campaign turned out to be a huge marketing success and set new standards against which social media specialists worldwide will now have to gauge their own campaigns.

Izea's success can be attributed to the fact that it was done by bloggers for other bloggers...and, the key world for this successful campaign came in a five-letter word - TRUST!

Consumers tend to believe more what other consumers say about a product than what corporate advertising peddle to them. The sponsored bloggers who participated in Izea's K Mart campaign were K Mart shoppers themselves and what they wrote about just naturally spread like wildfire among other bloggers thus, giving K Mart an unprecedented exposure and increased patronage. Watch the slide below (Izea/K Mart Case Study) if you don't believe what I mean. See what some of the participating bloggers in this campaign had written. Review the metrics yourself. Then, you'll know what I mean.

The Izea/K Mart campaign definitely attracted more shoppers to patronize K Mart outlets but much more than that, the campaign made the shoppers become more aware of K Mart's other special offers like the 'Lay Away Plan' and "Gift Ideas Under $25" which otherwise they would not have paid much attention to.

With this campaign, Izea has again proven itself to be a force to reckon with when it comes to social media marketing! Take a closer look at Izea's Social Media Case Study and you'll know the metrics of the campaign serves as proof to this contention!

IZEA Kmart Social Media Marketing Campaign Casestudy

View more presentations from Ted Murphy. (tags: media social)

Social Media Case Study Post?slot_id=32665&url=http%3a%2f%2fsocialspark

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Distinguishing Online Forex Brokers from One Another

TOKYO - MARCH 17: Traders monitor stocks at G...

Online brokers may be categorized into "Market Makers", "ECN" or Electronics Communication Network Brokers, or "NDD" or No Dealing Desk Brokers. For a neophyte trader, it will be hard to distinguish one from the other. Besides, very few of these online brokers describe their services in detail and more often than not, they make themselves appear as if they are all market makers.

What is a market maker?

A market maker provides pricing and liquidity for a particular currency pair and stands ready to buy or sell that currency at the quoted price. The market maker has the volume and the liquidity to take the opposite side of your trade. He has the option of either holding that position or partially or fully offsetting it with other market participants, managing their aggregate exposure to their clients.

Each market maker has a "dealing desk," which is the traditional method that most banks and financial institutions use. Market makers provide two-way pricing to customers throughout the day. These prices sometimes are quoted on a "fixed" basis, meaning that they do not move throughout the day, while other firms use a dynamic spread system, which means the prices change as the liquidity in certain pairs change. The market maker interacts with other market makers banks to manage their global FX positions/risk. Each market maker offers a slightly different price in a particular currency pair based on their global FX book. Banks, investments banks, broker/dealers, and FCMs make up the majority of this category. Market makers are compensated by their ability to manage their global FX risk. This may include spread revenue, netting revenue, and revenue on swaps and conversions of residual profits or losses.

A market maker may choose to keep the trader's position without offsetting it in the market. This will mean that the trader's profit is the market maker's loss and vice versa, and may lead to a possible conflict of interest between the trader and his market maker. A market maker earns their commission from the spread between the bid and offer price and because of this, the trader may at times be at the mercy of the market maker who has the power to increase the spread to minimize his own loss or shave off profits from the traders' position.

What is an NDD broker?

A no-dealing desk broker does not have a dealing desk but instead uses external liquidity providers to provide pricing and liquidity for its clients. The liquidity providers may include banks and other brokers they have networked with. Usually, they have their own proprietary trading platforms which connect to participating banks and brokers (liquidity providers) in their own network. The liquidity providers send in competing bids and offers into the platform, resulting in the best bid and offer being displayed to the client. A no-dealing desk broker may increase the spread to earn its commission.

An NDD broker acts as a conduit between a customer and a market maker. The broker sends the customer's order to another party to be executed by the dealing desk of the market maker. The spreads that the customer receives are dependant on the market maker or dealer that the broker routes the customer's transactions through, and either a fixed or dynamic system can be used. Brokers generally charge fees for this service and/or are compensated by the market maker for the transactions that they route to the market maker/dealing desk.

What is an ECN broker?

A Forex ECN broker does not have a dealing desk but instead provides a subscription to a trading platform where multiple market makers, banks and traders can enter in competing bids and offers into the platform either inside or outside the spread, allowing traders to be market makers and have their trades filled by multiple liquidity providers. A trader might have their buy order filled by liquidity provider "A", and close the same order against liquidity provider "B", or have their trade matched internally by the bid or offer of another trader. The best bid and offer is displayed to the trader along with the market book depth and combined available volume at each price. The ECN broker has a wider base of marketplace participants providing pricing which results to smaller spreads. An ECN earns by charging a small fee for each transaction.
The ECN is not responsible for execution, only the transmission of the order to the dealing desk from which the price was taken. In this system, spreads are determined by the difference between the best bid and the best offer at a particular point in time on the ECN. In this model, the ECN is compensated by fees charged to the customer plus a "kick-back" or "rebate" from the dealing desk based on the amount of volume or order flow that it is given from the ECN.

Offhand, it will really be hard to distinguish which broker is of what type since practically everyone is electronically linked with each other one way or the other. A market maker may have one or two clients who are NDD brokers who in turn provide services to other ECN brokers.

What we need to distinguish is who is a legitimate broker and who is not? On this matter, it is always important to know if the broker you are dealing with is regulated by an acceptable regulatory body. By an acceptable regulatory body, it must be one which is internationally recognized and not just a made up regulatory organization from some obscure country.

As part of Samurai Daddy's commitment to help weed out the scammers among the lot of online brokers, this blog will be regularly featuring its choice of online forex brokers.

Samurai Daddy's First Five Choice of Online Brokers

Image	Broker	Broker Category	Regulatory Body	Pip Spread
	Capital Market Services	MM	NFA(US), FSAuthority(UK), CFTC(US)	3-4 pip
	Advanced Currency Markets SA	STP	SFDF(CH)	1 pip
	Global Forex Trading	MM	NFA(US), FSAuthority(UK), CFTC(US), ASIC(AU), FSAgency(JP)	1 pip
	Forex Capital Markets, LLC	ECN	NFA(US), FSAuthority(UK), CFTC(US), BCSC(CA), SFC(HK)	1 pip
	MG Financial Group	MM	NFA(US), CFTC(US)	3-5 pip

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

SAMURAI DADDY'S FOREX UPDATES

Yup! Call me' Samurai Daddy' from now on as I give you daily updates on my forex outlook based on the Japanese Candlestick charts.Samurai Daddy will be your daily trading companion and I will share with you my insights, opinions, and trading strategies (free o charge). For those, who wants personalized trading advice, or wants my help to get out of nasty trading situations, please feel free to use the yahoo messenger at the side bar of this blog. Don't worry, the exchange of instant messages are visible only to the user and me so much unlike the other online chatting platforms. So, you can discuss trading issues with Samurai Daddy confidentialy using Yahoo Messenger. I will look forward to having confidential chats wth you soon. Just catch me online!

Here now is my latest update:

The monthly candlestick chart has so far maintained its dollar-bullish bias. The 'Bullish Ladder Bottom' reversal pattern is turning out true to form for the USDJPY with the February Candle emerging out to be the confirmation candle.

The daily USDJPY candlestick chart is also reflecting this bullish bias. So far, the price has remained above the 93.55 level which is our reference point to confirm the reversal pattern. USDJPY just have to close at or above this level by the end of February to maintain a dolar-bullish outlook. USDJPY is set to test the 95.46 level which is the next consolidation area and a breakof this warrants a test of the 97.00 area and on to its ultimate reversal objective of 99.86. Current fundamentals are favoring this scenario.

Even the EURUSD monthly candlestick is showing a slight bullish-dollar outlook wth the January candle forming a bearish dark cloud cover by the January, 2009 candle which significantly breached the midpoint of the December, 2008 upward candle. EURUSD is consolidating at the current levels but has not shown any attempt to pull down the dollar once more. Samurai Daddy still favors a dollar bullish bias with a break of the 1.27 level paving the way for are-test of 1.20.

The USDCHF monthly candlestick chart is also confirming the market's slightly dollar-bullish bias. The January candle has formed a bullish piercing pattern and the February candle needs to confirm this. USDCHF may enter a consolidation phase though, as the GBPUSD current levels may stall further declines of the European currencies. GBP has continually declined against the dollar since August, 2008. It seems to have reached equilibrium at the current levels and in the process has stalled the dollar's rise against the Euro and CHF. The market is looking for fresh fundamentals to push the dollar higher against the European currencies.

Over-all, however, Samurai Daddy maintains a strong dollar bullish outlook, specially for the Japanese Yen which I am expecting to knock at the 100.00 level in the near term.

Happy trading!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Market Brief From ACM

Image used to convey the idea of currency conv...

Image via Wikipedia

By Advanced Currency Markets
(Asian session snapshot)

The Usd bullish momentum was tempered slightly in the Asian session and we expect this theme to continue thru the day. The EurUsd traded back up to 1.2595, after trading to a 1.2529 session low, while the USDJPY has also come off its 93.96 high to trade around 93.40. Asian indexes are continuing their US lead, with Nikkei currently up 0.33%. The Gold surge carries on, with prices breaking previous resistance levels and holding at $975oz. ETF buying provided strong momentum to the upside, putting the $1000oz closer in sight. Despite the temporary pullback in FX themes today we expect the Usd will continue to appreciate mid term.

In US news, within yesterday’s FOMC minutes was the Fed announcement of new longer-term economic projections, which included a long-term inflation goal of 1.7 - 2.0%.The inflation goal is a clear move towards inflation targeting.

Yesterday’s BoE minutes revealed that the BoE decision to cut rates by 50bp at its February meeting was approved by a vote of 8 - 1. Again, the lone dissenter, Blanchflower, who is expected to retire in May, voted in favor of a 100bp cut.

As expected, the BoJ held rates steady at 0.10%. The Jpy continues to lose ground against the Usd, as political instability threatens market perception of the government’s ability to navigate in this challenging global and domestic economic environment. Ex-Finance Minister Nakagawa's resignation following the G7 debacle, was just another confidence eroding event in Prime Minister Aso troubled tenure. We are cautious in pursuing recent Jpy weakness due to historical safe have status. However we will be watching for any opportunity to build short Jpy positions.

Trading Update: $3,800 Profit On A $5,000 Capital In Just 7 Days!

Image by Mr Wabu via Flickr

Yes, this is the kind of profit you can gain from trading currencies on line - $3,800 profit on an initial capital of only $5,000 in just 7 days! (And, this is still conservative compared to the trading records of some experienced traders!

In my instructional demo trading using the Japanese Candlestick Charts, I bought 1 lot (worth $100,000) of Japanese Yen at 90.11 last February 11, 2009. (How this is possible will be the topic of my next blog!)

Our objective of 93.55 has been reached and so I will liquidate my position at this level before the U.S. market closes today. I will publish the actual profit I made on my next update tomorrow. (At the price levels of USD-JPY as of this writing (93.60), my profit stands at $3,600!)

This is how effective the Japanese Candlestick charting technique is on spot currency trading. Although, the candlestick chart has not shown me any sign that the dollar may pullback, I will just the same square off my position and actualize profit for now.

The dollar may pull back a little in tomorrow's early Asian trading so, I look forward to re-establishing my buy position then. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to post it below. Just click on the 'comments' text link at the bottom of this post and a comment form will pop up for your use. Or, you may use my yahoo messenger at the side bar if I happen to be available at the time you read this post! Watch out for more of my instructional trading updates.