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What is Spot or Cash FX (Foreign Exchange)?
The foreign exchange market or currency market, known informally as Forex, is an over-the-counter trading instrument where todays current cash value of one currency is traded for another. It is the most traded market in the world, with an average turnover of $3.2 trillion per day. (Source: Bank for International Settlements, September 2007). Forex offers you, the investor, unique and important opportunities: liquidity, leverage and the flexibility of capitalizing on ANY market condition real-time. Liquidity allows you to get in and out of the market with ease. Leverage allows you to participate in an investment using only a fraction of the cost (think: home mortgage). All investments allow you to buy the product first, but Forex makes it easy to sell first without owning and buy back lower at a later time. Forex provides you great control during strong or weak economic times. Note: We feel learning a strategy and trading real money live with $0.10 to $1.00 pips (available only on spot currency forex platforms) per contract in the beginning is a much more realistic way to learn and grow. Since most, if not all, traders make mistakes in the beginning, we want to help protect and conserve your resources in this crucial learning phase of your career. Our invaluable method and approach is built upon 30 years of combined experience and guarantees that you will learn about yourself as a money manager and the markets before stepping into the large tick values faced when trading commodity futures or currency futures forex markets.  What are FX Currency Futures or Commodity Futures? The most unique and important characteristic of Futures is that it offers you, the investor, the flexibility of capitalizing on ANY market condition. All investments allow you to buy the product first, but Futures is an investment tool that makes it easy to sell first without owning and buy back lower at a later time. Futures provides you great control during strong or weak economic times. A futures contract is a legally enforceable agreement to make delivery (a "short" position) or to take delivery (a "long" position) of a specific quantity and grade of a particular commodity during a designated delivery period (the contract "month"). Almost 97% of all futures positions are liquidated before delivery. If you are long or short you can close out your position before the expiration of the contract. Each commodity has different expiration months listed, but the most common is the March, June, September, December cycle. Most futures products do not trade every calendar month. Please note the cycle and expiration dates of your product before you execute your trades. Note: We feel that these markets are not for the beginner and should only be traded when you have a strategy that provides you with the confidence to trade professional money (Futures accounts $25,000 or greater highly recommended!).
Favorite Patterns...  Sprained Ankle Pattern?! Lets turn life's lemons into lemonade; shall we?! Steph and I just got under-way to put in a 10 mile run on Saturday and 2 blocks from home I stepped off the curb and unknowingly sunk my foot in a hole and rolled my ankle. Finding myself flat on my face as my water bottle and hands skidded across the street my thought was; "Down goes Frazier". We thought we would spare you the actual photo of my foot but if you are a gapers block kind of person in need of the gory details , feel free... As a bonus if you dare, we also left a chart of the eurjpy on 070611 paralleling the bearish outcome for my foot on 070311. I am now calling it the "Sprained Ankle Pattern"! Made some money on this trade!  My football day ankle sprains shot that memorable pain like a lightening bolt through my foot and inside my brain as I hobbled to the sidewalk. Even the most resilient consistent performers go through a bump in the road; well in my case a hole in the road leaving a nice colored purple foot and ankle. It kind of reminded me of a chalk outline and my version of CSI-LA. Its been a long time since I had to alter my work-out schedule. Push-ups and sit-ups are back in style while my foot heals, but I have soon found myself back on the LA road-ways with walk-runs the last couple of days. You just cant keep me sitting still. I bring this up because when you experience an obstacle a few key things happen to not only teach you a lesson but also help you get better at handling it the next time something slows you down. I knew just what to do from my football days with buckets of ice water and foot soaks and anti-inflammatory ointments to help the swelling. This knowledge has gotten me back on my feet and doing walk runs and if all goes well back to running again all within a week. It is not much different as to how I learned to be flexible with the financial markets. The government about 10 years ago pulled the rug from under my feet. They stopped issuing 30 Year Bonds one day (the market I traded at the time). At that very moment I should have been able to shift to the next hot like-minded market of interest, which at the time would have been the 10 Year Note. Initially I didn't budge as fear of change and fixing what I thought wasn't broke held me in place. The inner chatter in my head kept talking me into staying; "Even if they stop issuing the Long Bond, they still have open interest going well out into my retirement years. Trade just wasn't going to stop and I was doing great! But I found later that the world wasn't telling me to leave the 30 Years just then but it was actually telling me to begin preparing to trade other markets. Money and popularity of markets shifts constantly and flows to bonds or to stocks or to currencies or to gold or even to the crazy oil market. Well when I left the trading floor near the end of 2004 to trade 100% in an office on the computer I found the 30 Year Bonds only moving in tight 4 tick range. Learning how to move from market to market when I was getting the sign would have come in handy at this point. There was no movement in the 30 Years back then and as a trader you need price movement to gain opportunity. I'm not saying at the time that the 10 year note would have been a better choice as it wasn't moving either, but just the mere sign that what the world was telling me earlier was to be prepared to move from market to market. Well now I had no choice; if I wanted to survive and thrive in this business it was time to be a true trader, which is one who can take their game to any market. I did the work and I did just that. Well fast forward to present tense and in this case I was prepared on both accounts. Experience taught me to treat my ankle to ensure a speedy recovery just as trading other markets got me in on the right side of the "Sprained Ankle Pattern". You will see by clicking on the link that the EURJPY market fell hard and limped along with an appropriate retrace to short (sell) it. If you missed the first wave, price action gave you another chance to short just below the original ankle formation as prices toppled to new lows. In our book it was equivalent to a 5 rule trade anyway but the real story was the fact that these days I now trade markets that weren't even close to being on my radar in my early days. I didnt even care what the EURJPY was doing back then. Yeah, I knew it existed and I watched currencies from time to time to help my bond trading decisions but trading something other than 30 Years was not in my vocabulary. Well, now it pays dividends to be able to use the computer and the internet for what it was designed to do, which is to help you shop the best market of the time (one that is moving) with ease and seize the opportunity. Remember that pain is temporary but learning from it and acting the next time with experience will pay life long dividends! 
Flipping the Bird
BY MICHAEL RADKAY
Did you ever read something in a book and it seemed to make sense when you read it, but you didn't truly understand the lesson until you lived it? Sometimes it happens in reverse where you lived the lesson first and later find it in a book. With a shrug of confidence you say under your breath "Been There", "Done That". I wanted to share with you a lesson that I learned trading the 30 Year Bonds early in my career about price action only to later read about it. Often times I laugh and joke about this lesson with my colleagues as we call we call it "Flipping the Bird" but officially it is called a "Head and Shoulders" pattern. Reliving the moment during my first experience I remember the pit noise roared to life as everybody starting bidding or trying to buy turning prices sharply higher. I happened to already be long (bought) the market. Man, What a rush!! Up $200, Up $500, Up $1000 all in the matter of moments. I started to feel the greed consume me. Up $1500 and still letting it ride...Awesome!! and then all of a sudden some news hit and all the bids dried up and the whole pit now started selling the prices down. At first I was saying under my breath, What's wrong with you guys?!! Up $1000 and didn't believe the new direction..First mistake.... Up only $500 and now I tried to sell with the sellers....Second mistake....Break Even $0....I said to myself, the market owes me $1500....Third mistake...Final tally, I puked down $1000 as prices continued to nose dive. The funny part is this all happened within a 2 minute stretch. The feeling I had in my gut was the market just #%^@'d me or as we now laughingly call the "Head and Shoulders" pattern "Flipping the Bird". The real lesson learned in fast market conditions was that when you decide to get out, don't join the crowd and try selling where everybody else is selling (equivalent to a resting sell limit order) as there isn't time to hesitate. Sell a price where somebody wants to buy it (equivalent to a sell market order) even if it is one you don't like. Get in front of the crowd to exit the position!! Head and Shoulder chart patterns generally signify a reversal and help confirm the shift when it appears in uptrends or downtrends as the example shows. Draw your trend line from the beginning neckline to the ending neckline. As prices break this key neckline a move to test the extremes of the starting point of this pattern and beyond is likely. I don't want anyone to lose money, but when the "Flipping the Bird" pattern develops, it will teach you so much about price behavior. Think of this pattern as a hand and, to me, it looks like the market is giving you the "finger". You will begin to understand when you get involved in the direction of the break-out in the head portion, that you initially feel like a champ and retirement is around the corner. If you discover a sharp reversal in direction, a substantial loss could occur if you hold on hesitating in disbelief. Remember the next time when prices shift violently in the opposite direction, don't hesitate to act and realize the new direction in price is likely to take over and control the action for some time to come. You can't win, if you don't play!! Prosperity is at your fingertips! All you have to do is grab it!!
Futures, Foreign exchange (Forex) and contract for difference (CFD) trading carries a high level of risk to your capital with the possibility of losing more than your initial investment and may not be suitable for all investors. Ensure you fully understand the risks involved and seek independent advice if necessary. The material on this website is intended for educational purposes only. 6038 Carlton Way Unit 107 Hollywood, CA 90028 213-784-0887 
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