FOREX EDUCATION | FOREX TRAINING

Major Indicators

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APICS Survey – Composite diffusion index of national manufacturing conditions. The APICS survey gives a detailed look at the manufacturing sector. This survey is less well known that the ISM, but can also indicate trends in production. The diffusion index does not move in tandem with the ISM index every month, but sometimes the two do move in the same direction. Since manufacturing is a major sector of economy, investors can get a feel for the general economic backdrop for various investments. An index level of 50 means no growth, but every 10 points signals gains of 4% in manufacturing.

Business Inventories – Dollar amount of inventories held by manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. The level of inventories in relation to sales is an important indicator of the near-term direction of production activity. Investors need to monitor the economy closely because it usually dictates how various types of investments will perform. Rising inventories can be an indication of business optimism that sales will be growing in the coming months. By looking at the ratio of inventories to sales, investors can see whether production demands will expand or contract in the near future. The business inventory data provide a valuable forward-looking tool for tracking the economy.

Chain Stores Sales – Monthly sales volumes from department, chain, discount and apparel stores. Sales are reported by the individual retailers. Chain store sales are an indicator of retail sales and consumer spending results. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the economy, so if you know what consumers are up to, you will have a pretty good handle on where the economy is headed. Sales are reported as a change from the same month a year ago. It is important to know how strong sales actually were a year ago to make sense of this year’s sales. In addition, sales are usually reported for “comparable stores” in case of company mergers.

Construction Spending – Dollar value of the new construction activity on residential, non-residential and public projects. Data are available in nominal and real (inflation-adjusted) dollars. Businesses only put money into construction of new factories or offices when they are confident that demand is strong enough to justify the expansion. The same goes for individuals making the investment in a home. That’s why construction spending is a good indicator of the economy’s momentum.

Consumer Confidence – Survey of consumer attitudes concerning both the present situation as well as expectations regarding economic conditions conducted by The Conference Board. Five thousand consumers across the country are surveyed each month. The level of consumer confidence is directly related to the strength of consumer spending. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the economy, so the markets are always dying to know what consumers are up to and how they might behave in the near future. The more confident consumers are about the economy and their own personal finances, the more likely they are to spend. With this in mind, it’s easy to see how this index of consumer attitudes gives insight to the direction of the economy. Changes in consumer confidence and retail sales don’t move in tandem month by month.

Consumer sentiment – Survey of consumer attitudes concerning both the present situation as well as expectations regarding economic conditions conducted by the University of Michigan. Five hundred consumers are surveyed each month. The level of consumer sentiment is directly related to the strength of consumer spending. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the economy, so the markets are always dying to know what consumers are up to and how they might behave in the near future. The more confident consumers are about the economy and their own personal finances, the more likely they are to spend. With this in mind, it’s easy to see how the index of consumer attitudes gives insight to the direction of the economy. Changes in consumer sentiment and retail sales don’t move in tandem month by month.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) – Measure of the average price level of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by consumers. Monthly changes in the CPI represent the rate of inflation. The CPI is the most followed indicator of inflation in the United States. Inflation is a general increase in the price of goods and services. The relationship between inflation and interest rates is the key to understanding how data like the CPI influence the markets. By tracking the trends in inflation, whether high or low, rising or falling, investors can anticipate how different types of investments will perform.

Current account – Measure of the country’s international trade balance in goods, services and unilateral transfers. The level of the current account, as well as the trends in exports and imports, are followed as indicators of trends in foreign trade. U.S. trade with foreign countries hold important clues to economic trends here and abroad. The data can directly impact all the financial markets, but especially the foreign exchange value of the dollar.

Types of Forex Orders

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Market Order – An order where you can buy or sell a currency pair at the market price the moment that the order is processed.
Example: If you are looking to place an order for JPY when the dealing price is 104.00/05, a market order will request to buy JPY at 104.00 or will request to sell JPY at 104.05.

Entry order – An order where you can buy or sell a currency pair when it reaches a certain price target. In theory, this can be any price. You can set an entry order for the low price of a time period or the high price of a time period.
“I want to buy this currency pair at a certain price, if it never reaches that price, I don’t want to purchase the pair”.
The entry order allows you to choose a price and place an order to buy at that price.

Stop Order - An order that becomes a market order when a particular price level is reached and broken. A stop order is placed below the current market value of that currency.
Example: If you have an open buy JPY position, which you bought at 104.00 and you want to set a stop order in case JPY’s value starts to depreciate (to stop your loss). Since the JPY’s currency appreciates when the dealing rate moves from 104.00 closer to parity with the USD (102 JPY/1USD), a movement in the opposite direction would necessitate a stop order. For instance, you could set a stop order rate to sell JPY at 103.50, thus closing your position at a 50-pip loss.

Limit Order - An order that becomes a market order when a particular price level is reached. A limit order is placed above the current market value of that currency.
Example: If you have an open buy JPY position, which you bought at 104.00, and you want to set a limit order to protect your profit, you would set a limit order at a number, which indicates that JPY has appreciated, such as 104.5. When the market reaches 104.5, your position will automatically be closed, resulting in a 50-pip gain.

OCO Order – One Cancels Other. An order placed so as to take advantage of price movement, which consists of both a Stop and a Limit price. Once one level is reached, one half of the order will be executed (either Stop or Limit) and the remaining order canceled (either Stop or Limit). This type of order would close your position if the market moved to either the stop rate or the limit rate, thereby closing your trade, and, at the same time, canceling the other entry order.
Example: If you have an open buy JPY position, which you bought at 104.00, and you want to set a limit and a stop order, you could place an OCO order. If your OCO limit rate was 103.5 and OCO stop rate was 104.50, once the market rate reaches 103.5, the original JPY position would be closed and the stop rate would be canceled.

If Done Order – If Done Orders are supplementary orders whose placement in the market is contingent upon the execution of the order to which it is associated.

Technical Definitions

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Trading Platform
A trading platform is, along with the charts, one of the most important tools that a trader will be using while trading on the Forex market. By definition, a trading platform is an exchange account where you can buy and sell a currency.

Entry Stop
An entry stop is executed when the exchange rate breaks through a specific level. The client placing a stop entry order believes that when the market’s momentum breaks through a specified level, the rate will continue in that direction. The execution of a stop entry order may involve a limited degree of slippage, usually two pips or less.

Entry Limit
An entry limit is executed when the exchange rate touches (not breaks) a specific level. The client placing a limit entry order believes that after touching a specific level, the rate will bounce in the opposite direction of its previous momentum. Limit entry orders are always executed at the specified level.

Definitions

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Pip
Price Interest point (Pip) is the term used in currency market to represent the smallest price increment in a currency. It is often referred to as ticks or points in the market. In EUR/USD, a movement from .9018 to .9019 is one pip. In USD/JPY, a movement from 128.50 to 128.51 is one pip.

Pip Values – according to your trading platform from $7.00 to $10.00 USD.

Pip Spreads – according to your trading platform from 3 to 20 pips.

Volume
The trading volume measures how much “money” is being traded. During some types of news breaks and when the New York’s exchange is open, the volume is obviously higher. The volume indicates us that more things can change. There no real strong correlation for volume, good trades is being developed even when the Forex volume is relatively low.

Buying and Selling short
Buying = term to use when buying a currency pair to open a trade.
Selling short = term to use when selling a currency pair to open a trade.

Both terms, refer to things we do to open a trade.

On the other hand, to exit a trade, you will have to use the terms “selling” and “buying-back”. The term “selling” refers to what we do to exit a trade that initially started by “buying”. The term “buying-back” refers to what we do to exit a trade that initially started by “selling-short”.

Basically the term, “selling-short” can be referred to the futures and commodities market. For instance the mentality of buying a field to plant vegetables that will grow in the future is the same thing than buying a currency and to predict that it will eventually go short.

Bid/Ask Spread
A spread is the difference between the bid and the ask price. The bid price is the price at which you may sell your currency pair for. The ask price is the price at which you must buy the currency pair. The ask price is always higher then the bid price. Profits in the market are made from charging the ask price for a currency pair and buying it from someone else at the bid price.

The bid/ask spread increases when there is uncertainty about what is going to happen in the market.

Major currencies

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US Dollar –The United States dollar is the world’s main currency – a universal measure to evaluate any other currency traded on Forex. All currencies are generally quoted in US dollar terms. Under conditions of international economic and political unrest, the US dollar is the main safe-haven currency, which was proven particularly well during the Southeast Asian crisis of 1997-1998.

As it was indicated, the US dollar became the leading currency toward the end of the Second World War along the Bretton Woods Accord, as the other currencies were virtually pegged against it. The introduction of the Euro in 1999 reduced the dollar’s importance only marginally.
The other major currencies traded against the US dollar are the Euro, Japanese Yen, British Pound and the Swiss Franc.

Euro – The Euro was designed to become the premier currency in trading by simply being quoted in American terms. Like the US dollar, the Euro has a strong international presence stemming from members of the European Monetary Union. The currency remains plagued by unequal growth, high unemployment, and government resistance to structural changes. The pair was also weighed in 1999 and 2000 by outflows from foreign investors, particularly Japanese, who were forced to liquidate their losing investments in euro-denominated assets. Moreover, European money managers rebalanced their portfolios and reduced their Euro exposure as their needs for hedging currency risk in Europe declined.

Japanese Yen – The Japanese Yen is the third most traded currency in the world; it has a much smaller international presence than the US dollar or the Euro. The Yen is very liquid around the world, practically around the clock. The natural demand to trade the Yen concentrated mostly among the Japanese keiretsu, the economic and financial conglomerates. The Yen is much more sensitive to the fortunes of the Nikkei index, the Japanese stock market, and the real estate market.

British Pound – Until the end of the World War II, the Pound was the currency of reference. The currency is heavily traded against the Euro and the US dollar, but has a spotty presence against the other currencies. Prior to the introduction of the Euro, both the Pound benefited from any doubts about the currency convergence. After the introduction of the Euro, Bank of England is attempting to bring the high U.K. rates closer to the lower rates in the Euro zone. The Pound could join the Euro in the early 2000’s, provided that the U.K. referendum is positive.

Swiss Franc – The Swiss Franc is the only currency of a major European country that belongs neither to the European Monetary Union nor the G-7 countries. Although the Swiss economy is relatively small, the Swiss Franc is one of the four major currencies, closely resembling the strength and quality of the Swiss economy and finance. Switzerland had a very close economic relationship with Germany, and thus to the Euro zone. Therefore, in terms of political uncertainty in the East, the Swiss Franc is favored generally over the Euro.
Typically, it is believed that the Swiss Franc is a stable currency. Actually, from a foreign exchange point of view, the Swiss Franc closely resembles the patterns of the Euro, but lacks its liquidity. As the demand for it exceeds supply, the Swiss Franc can be more volatile than the Euro.
The Canadian Dollar and the Australian Dollar are also part of the currencies traded on the Forex market but do not count as being part of the major currencies due to their insufficient volume and circulation. They can only be traded against the US Dollar.

Canadian Dollar - Canada decided to use the dollar instead of a Pound Sterling system because of the ubiquity of Spanish dollars in North America in the 18th century and early 19th century and because of the standardization of the American dollar. The Province of Canada declared that all accounts would be kept in dollars as of January 1, 1858, and ordered the issue of the first official Canadian dollars in the same year. The colonies that would come together in Canadian Confederation progressively adopted a decimal system over the next few years.

Australian Dollar - The Australian Dollar was introduced in February 14, 1966, not only replacing the Australian Pound but also introducing a decimal system. Following the introduction of the Australian Dollar in 1966, the value of the national currency continued to be managed in accord with the Bretton Woods gold standard as it had been since 1954. Essentially the value of the Australian Dollar was managed with reference to gold, although in practice the US dollar was used. In 1983, the Australian government «floated» the Australian dollar, meaning that it no longer managed its value by reference to the US dollar or any other foreign currency. Today the value of the Australian Dollar is managed with almost exclusive reference to domestic measures of value such as the CPI (Consumer Price Index).

Symbol Currency
GBP British Pound
USD US Dollar
EUR Euro
JPY Japanese Yen
CAD Canadian Dollar
CHF Swiss Franc
AUD Australian Dollar

Currency pairs

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The currencies are always traded in pairs. For example, EUR/USD, which means Euro over US dollars, would be a typical pair. In this case, the Euro, being the first currency can be called the base currency. The second currency, by default USD, is called the counter or quote currency.

As mentioned, the first currency is the base, therefore in a pair you can refer the amount of that currency as being the amount required to purchase one unit of the second currency.

So, if you want to buy the currency pair, you have to buy the EURO and sell the USD simultaneously. On the other hand, if you are looking forward to sell the currency pair, you have to sell the EURO and buy the USD.

The most important thing to understand in a currency pair, or more precisely in a Forex transaction, is that you will be selling or buying the same currency.

Benefits of Forex Trading vs. Equity Trading

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Benefits of Forex Trading vs. Equity Trading
• 24 hour trading
• Liquidity
• 50:1 Leverage to 400:1 Leverage
• Lower transaction costs
• Equal access to market information
• Profit potential in both rising and falling markets

24-hour trading
The main advantage of the Forex market over the stock market and other exchange-traded instruments is that the Forex market is a true 24-hour market. Whether it’s 6pm or 6am, somewhere in the world there are always buyers and sellers actively trading Forex so that investors can respond to breaking news immediately. In the currency markets, your portfolio won’t be affected by after hours earning reports or analyst conference calls.
Recently, after hours trading has become available for US stocks - with several limitations. These ECNs (Electronic Communication Networks) exist to bring together buyers and sellers when possible. However, there is no guarantee that every trade will be executed, nor at a fair market price. Quite frequently, stock traders must wait until the market opens the following day in order to receive a tighter spread.

Liquidity
With a daily trading volume that is 50 times larger than the New York Stock Exchange, there are always broker/dealers willing to buy or sell currencies in the FX markets. The liquidity of this market, especially that of the major currencies, helps ensure price stability. Investors can always open or close a position, and more importantly, receive a fair market price.
Because of the lower trading volume, investors in the stock market and other exchange-traded markets are more vulnerable to liquidity risk, which results in a wider dealing spread or larger price movements in response to any relatively large transaction.

50:1 Leverage to 400:1 Leverage
Leveraged trading, also called margin trading, allows investors in the Forex market to execute trades up to $250,000 with an initial margin of only $5000. However, it is important to remember that while this type of leverage allows investors to maximize their profit potential, the potential for loss is equally great. A more pragmatic margin trade for someone new to the FX markets would be 5:1 or even 10:1, but ultimately depends on the investor’s appetite for risk. On the other hand, a 100:1 leverage would be the foremost suggested margin trading to use for the best risk and reward return.

Lower transaction costs
It is much more cost efficient to invest in the Forex market, in terms of both commissions and transaction fees.
Commissions for stock trades range from a low of $7.95-$29.95 per trade with on-line brokers to over $100 per trade with traditional brokers. Typically, stock commissions are directly related to the level of service offered by the broker. For instance, for $7.95, customers receive no access to market information, research or other relevant data. At the high end, traditional brokers offer full access to research, analyst stock recommendations, etc.
In contrast, on-line Forex brokers charge significantly lower commission and transaction fees. Some, like FCStone FX, charge LOW fees, while still offering traders access to all relevant market information.
In general, the width of the spread in a FX transaction is less than 1/10 as wide as a stock transaction, which typically includes a 1/8 wide bid/ask spread. For example, if a broker will buy a stock at $22 and sell at $22.125, the spread equals .006. For a FX trade with a 5 pip wide spread, where the dealer is willing to buy EUR/USD at .9030 and sell at .9035, the spread equals .0005.

Equal access to market information
Professional traders and analysts in the equity market have a definitive competitive advantage by virtue of that fact that they have first access to important corporate information, such as earning estimates and press releases, before it is released to the general public. In contrast, in the Forex market, pertinent information is equally accessible, ensuring that all market participants can take advantage of market-moving news as soon as it becomes available.

Profit potential in both rising and falling markets
In every open FX position, an investor is long in one currency and short the other. A short position is one in which the trader sells a currency in anticipation that it will depreciate. This means that potential exists in a rising as well as a falling FX market. The ability to sell currencies without any limitations is one distinct advantage over equity trading. It is much more difficult to establish a short position in the US equity markets, where the Uptick rule prevents investors from shorting stock unless the immediately preceding trade was equal to or lower than the price of the short sale.

Benefits of Online Investing & Trading FX on the Internet

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Benefits of Online Investing
Online trading has caused a major paradigm shift in investing. At the turn of the millennium, there are over 6 million online investment accounts, up from 1.5 million in 1997. As a result, start-up firms now compete directly with financial institutions to serve investors in the new Economy, and the clear winner is the customer. The competition between the brick and mortar institutions and the Internet-based companies has dramatically lowered the costs of investing, and empowered the individual investor to take control of their own investment strategy.
On-line trading will revolutionize the currency markets by making it accessible to the small and medium sized investor. For the first time, these investors have the ability to execute transactions of between $100,000 and $10,000,000 at the same prices the Interbank market offers for deals well over $10,000,000. This benefits both those who wish to speculate on the direction of the currency markets for profit, as well as the money manager or corporate treasurer looking to hedge against unwanted exposure to future price fluctuations in the currency markets.

Benefits of Trading FX on the Internet
• Deal directly from live price quotes
• Instantaneous trade execution and confirmation
• Fast and efficient execution of deals
• Lower transaction costs
• Real-time profit and loss analysis
• Full access to market information

Deal directly from live price quotes
Very few on-line brokers are able to offer their clients real-time bid/ask quotes, which facilitates instantaneous deal execution - no missed market opportunities. Real-time prices also allow investors to compare an on-line broker’s dealing spread with that of other pricing services, to ensure they are receiving the best possible price on all their Forex transactions.
Many on-line Forex brokers require their clients to request a price before dealing. This is disadvantageous for a number of reasons, primarily because it significantly lengthens the execution process from just a few seconds to possibly as long as a minute. In a fast paced market, this could make a significant difference in an investor’s profit potential. Also, some of the more unscrupulous brokers may use the opportunity to look at an investor’s current position. Once they have determined whether the investor is a buyer or a seller, they ‘shade’ the price to increase their own profit on the transaction.

Instantaneous trade execution and confirmation
Timing is everything in the fast-paced Forex market. On-line trades are executed and confirmed within seconds, which ensures that traders do not miss market opportunities. Even the incremental extra time it takes to complete a transaction over the phone can mean a big difference in profit potential.

Lower transaction costs
Simply, executing trades electronically reduces manual effort, thereby lowering the costs of doing business. On-line brokers are then able to pass along the savings to their client base.

Real-time profit and loss analysis
The fast-paced nature of the Forex market compels traders to execute multiple trades each day. It is vital for each client to have real-time information about their current position in order to make well-informed trading decisions.

Full access to market information
Access to timely and relevant information is critical. Professional traders pay thousands of dollars each month for access to major information providers. However, the very nature of the Internet affords users free access to reliable market information from a variety of sources, including real-time price quotes, international news, government-issued economic indicators and reports, as well as subjective information such as expert commentary and analysis, trader chat forums etc.

The Market Hours

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The trading begins once the markets are officially open in Tokyo, Japan at 7:00 PM Sunday, New York time.

Afterwards, at 9:00 PM EST, Singapore and Hong Kong opens followed by the European markets in Frankfurt at 2:00 AM and in London at 3:00 AM.

When the clock reaches 4:00 AM, the European markets are in the hot spot and Asia just concluded its trading day.

Around 8:00 AM on Monday, the US markets opens in New York while Europe is slowly going down. Australia will take the lead around 5:00 PM and when it is 7:00PM again, Tokyo is ready to reopen.

Factors Affecting the Market

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Currency prices are affected by a variety of economic and political conditions, most importantly interest rates, inflation and political stability. Moreover, governments sometimes participate in the Forex market to influence the value of their currencies, either by flooding the market with their domestic currency in an attempt to lower the price, or conversely buying in order to raise the price. This is known as Central Bank intervention. Any of these factors, as well as large market orders, can cause high volatility in currency prices. However, the size and volume of the Forex market makes it impossible for any one entity to «drive» the market for any length of time.
Another factor affecting the market, with an effect as important as the other factors mentioned above, is the news. Once released, the news have a direct outcome on the currency price as per news are always directly related to the economic stability of the market. Here’s a list of channels that will provide you useful information on currency news:

CNBC – USD News
Rob TV – CAD News
Bloomberg TV – EUR News

Daily or Position Trader, their strengths and weaknesses

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Day-trading overviewDay-trading, which was once the exclusive domain of the floor trader, is now fair game for all speculators. Inspired in part by large intraday price swings, instant availability of quotes, affordable high-powered computers and competitive commissions, the new wave of day-trading methods and systems has attracted thousands of traders in recent years. The undeniable thrill of trading within the time span of one day is, however, a double-edged sword: one that can hurt as well as heal. To be successful, a day-trader must have the discipline of a machine, the instincts of a fox, the emotions of a rock, the skills of a surgeon and the patience of a saint. (And a little luck wouldn’t hurt either.) The day trader works more with the emotions along with the fundamental analysis.
Definition
Very active currency trader who holds positions for a very short time and makes several trades each day. Day traders are individuals who are trying to make a career out of buying and selling stocks very quickly, often making dozens of trades in a single day and generally closing all positions at the end of each day. Day trading can be costly, since the commissions and the bid/ask spread add up when there are so many transactions.

Position Trading OverviewPosition Trader looks for occasional significant moves that may unfold quickly or over time. It patiently waits for ideal trade setups to occur during minor and major trend reversals in certain sectors, indexes or entire broad markets. Determination of these potential setups is derived from technical indicators, chart patterns, point and figure charts and fundamental news events. Once a move shows sign of development, hourly and intraday charts are monitored for optimum entry.
Definition
Currency trader who, unlike most traders, takes a long-term, buy and hold approach. In currency trading, «long-term» refers to holding until the delivery date is close, usually 5-7 months. Basically, a position trade approach is to enter the markets only during times of key reversal probability in order to capture large moves as they gradually or quickly unfold. It is designed for traders who favor a gradual, buy and hold approach when ideal trade conditions exist for high-odds success.

Players in the Forex Market

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Central Banks - The national central banks play an important role in the (FOREX) markets. Ultimately, central banks seek to control the money supply and often have official or unofficial target rates for their currencies. As many central banks have very substantial foreign exchange reserves, their intervention power is significant. Among the most important responsibilities of a central bank is the restoration of an orderly market in times of excessive exchange rate volatility and the control of the inflationary impact of a weakening currency.
Frequently, the mere expectation of central bank intervention is sufficient to stabilize a currency, but in case of aggressive intervention the actual impact on the short-term supply/demand balance can lead to the desired moves in exchange rates.
If a central bank does not achieve its objectives, the market participants can take on a central bank. The combined resources of the market participants could easily overwhelm any central bank. Several scenarios of this nature were seen in the 1992-93 with the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) collapse and 1997 throughout South East Asia.

Banks - The Interbank market caters to both the majority of commercial turnover as well as enormous amounts of speculative trading. It is not uncommon for a large bank to trade billions of dollars daily. Some of this trading activity is undertaken on behalf of corporate customers, but a banks treasury room also conducts a large amount of trading, where bank dealers are taking their own positions to make the bank profits.
The Interbank market has become increasingly competitive in the last couple of years and the god-like status of top foreign exchange traders has suffered as equity traders are again back in charge. A large part of the banks’ trading with each other is taking place on electronic booking systems that have negatively affected traditional foreign exchange brokers.

Interbank Brokers - Until recently, foreign exchange brokers were doing large amounts of business, facilitating Interbank trading and matching anonymous counterparts for comparatively small fees. With the increased use of the Internet, a lot of this business is moving onto more efficient electronic systems that are functioning as a closed circuit for banks only.
The traditional broker box, which lets bank traders and brokers hear market prices, is still seen in most trading rooms, but turnover is noticeably smaller than just a few years ago due to increased use of electronic booking systems.

Commercial Companies - The commercial companies’ international trade exposure is the backbone of the foreign exchange markets. A multinational company has exposure in accounts receivables and payables denominated in foreign currencies. They can be protected against unfavorable moves with foreign exchange. That is why these markets are in existence. Commercial companies often trade in sizes that are insignificant to short term market moves, however, as the main currency markets can quite easily absorb hundreds of millions of dollars without any big impact. It is also clear that one of the decisive factors determining the long-term direction of a currency’s exchange rate is the overall trade flow.
Some multinational companies, whose exposures are not commonly known to the majority of market, can have an unpredictable impact when very large positions are covered.

Retail Brokers - The arrival of the Internet has brought us a host of retail brokers. There is a numbered amount of these non-bank brokers offering foreign exchange dealing platforms, analysis, and strategic advice to retail customers. The fact is many banks do not undertake foreign exchange trading for retail customers at all, and do not have the necessary resources or inclination to support retail clients adequately. The services of such retail foreign exchange brokers are more similar in nature to stock and mutual fund brokers and typically provide a service-orientated approach to their clients.

Hedge Funds - Hedge funds have gained a reputation for aggressive currency speculation in recent years. There is no doubt that with the increasing amount of money some of these investment vehicles have under management, the size and liquidity of foreign exchange markets is very appealing. The leverage available in these markets also allows such a fund to speculate with tens of billions at a time. The herd instinct that is very apparent in hedge fund circles was seen in the early 1990’s with George Soros and others squeezing the GBP out of the European Monetary System.
It is unlikely, however, that such investments would be successful if the underlying investment strategy was not sound. It is also argued that hedge funds actually perform a beneficial service to foreign exchange markets. They are able to exploit economical weakness and to expose a countries unsustainable financial plight, thus forcing realignment to more realistic levels.

Investors and Speculators - In all efficient markets, the speculator has an important role taking over the risks that a commercial participant hedges. The boundaries of speculation in the foreign exchange market are unclear, because many of the above mentioned players also have speculative interests, even central banks. The foreign exchange market is popular with investors due to the large amount of leverage that can be obtained and the liquidity with which positions can be entered and exited. Taking advantage of two currencies interest rate differentials is another popular strategy that can be efficiently undertaken in a market with high leverage. We have all seen prices of 30 day forwards, 60 day forwards etc, that is the interest rate difference of the two currencies in exchange rate terms.

History of the Forex

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Money, in one form or another, has been used by man for centuries. At first it was mainly Gold or Silver coins. Goods were traded against other goods or against gold. So, the price of gold became a reference point. But as the trading of goods grew between nations, moving quantities of gold around places to settle payments of trade became cumbersome, risky and time consuming. Therefore, a system was sought by which the payment of trades could be settled in the seller’s local currency. But how much of buyer’s local currency should be equal to the seller’s local currency?The answer was simple. The strength of a country’s currency depended on the amount of gold reserves the country maintained. So, if country A’s gold reserves are double the gold reserves of country B, country A’s currency will be twice in value when exchanged with the currency of country B. This became to be known as The Gold Standard. Around 1880, The Gold Standard was accepted and used worldwide.

During the first WORLD WAR, in order to fulfill the enormous financing needs, paper money was created in quantities that far exceeded the gold reserves. The currencies lost their standard parities and caused a gross distortion in the country’s standing in terms of its foreign liabilities and assets.
After the end of the second WORLD WAR the western allied powers attempted to solve the problem at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire in 1944. In the first three weeks of July 1944, delegates from 45 nations gathered at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The delegates met to discuss the postwar recovery of Europe as well as a number of monetary issues, such as unstable exchange rates and protectionist trade policies.
During the 1930s, many of the world’s major economies had unstable currency exchange rates. As well, many nations used restrictive trade policies. In the early 1940s, the United States and Great Britain developed proposals for the creation of new international financial institutions that would stabilize exchange rates and boost international trade. There was also a recognized need to organize a recovery of Europe in the hopes of avoiding the problems that arose after the First World War.
The delegates at Bretton Woods reached an agreement known as the Bretton Woods Agreement to establish a postwar international monetary system of convertible currencies, fixed exchange rates and free trade. To facilitate these objectives, the agreement created two international institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). The intention was to provide economic aid for reconstruction of postwar Europe. An initial loan of $250 million to France in 1947 was the World Bank’s first act.
Under the Bretton Woods Exchange System, the currencies of participating nations could be converted into the US dollar at a fixed rate, and foreign central banks could convert the US dollar into gold at a fixed rate. In other words, the US dollar replaced the then dominant British Pound and the parities of the world’s leading currencies were pegged against the US Dollar.
The Bretton Woods Agreement was also aimed at preventing currency competition and promoting monetary co-operation among nations. Under the Bretton Woods system, the IMF member countries agreed to a system of exchange rates that could be adjusted within defined parities with the US dollar or, with the agreement of the IMF, changed to correct a fundamental disequilibrium in the balance of payments. The per value system remained in use from 1946 until the early 1970s.
The United States, under President Nixon, retaliated in 1971 by devaluing the dollar and forcing realignment of currencies with the dollar. The leading European economies tried to counter the US move by aligning their currencies in narrow band and then float collectively against the US dollar.

Attention All Forex Beginners!!!

2009-12-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

If you searching for simple & effective guidance to start Forex Trading,then you are on the right way.The series of latest information about Forex Trading for forex beginners is staring from today i.e. from 11 Dec. 2009. Why are you waiting for?Bookmark this blog & read a new article everyday about beginning of Forex Trading in a proper sequence.Learn the best from this blog. As I really care about my readers the posts on my blog are very decent & useful & are also tested by professional forex traders.Be the follower of my blog & get the best knowledge about Foreign Exchange.Also there are topics about Forex Softwares & Online Trading for grow more knowledge about Forex.
Let us start by introduction about FOREX.

Description of the Forex

The Forex market, established in 1971, was created when floating exchange rates began to materialize. The Forex market is not centralized, like in currency futures or stock markets. Trading occurs over computers and telephones at thousands of locations worldwide.
The Foreign Exchange market, commonly referred as FOREX, is where banks, investors and speculators exchange one currency to another. The largest foreign exchange activity retains the spot exchange (i.e.., immediate) between five major currencies: US Dollar, British Pound, Japanese Yen, Eurodollar and the Swiss Franc. It is also the largest financial market in the world. In comparison, the US stock market may trade $10 billion in one day, whereas the Forex market will trade up to $2 trillion in one single day. The Forex market is an opened 24 hours a day market where the primary market for currencies is the 24-hour Interbank market. This market follows the sun around the world, moving from the major banking centres of the United States to Australia and New Zealand to the Far East, to Europe and finally back to the Unites States.
Until now, professional traders from major international commercial and investment banks have dominated the FX market. Other market participants range from large multinational corporations, global money managers, registered dealers, international money brokers, and futures and options traders, to private speculators.
There are three main reasons to participate in the FX market. One is to facilitate an actual transaction, whereby international corporations convert profits made in foreign currencies into their domestic currency. Corporate treasurers and money managers also enter the FX market in order to hedge against unwanted exposure to future price movements in the currency market. The third and more popular reason is speculation for profit. In fact, today it is estimated that less than 5% of all trading on the FX market is actually facilitating a true commercial transaction.
The FX market is considered an Over The Counter (OTC) or ‘Interbank’ market, due to the fact that transactions are conducted between two counterparts over the telephone or via an electronic network. Trading is not centralized on an exchange, as with the stock and futures markets. A true 24-hour market, Forex trading begins each day in Sydney, and moves around the globe as the business day begins in each financial center, first to Tokyo, London, and New York. Unlike any other financial market, investors can respond to currency fluctuations caused by economic, social and political events at the time they occur - day or night.

What is real importance of trading?

2009-12-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

Almost every successful investor that I have encountered has realized the lesson of the Holy Grail metaphor-that success in the markets comes from internal control. This is a radical change for most investors. Internal control is not that difficult to achieve, but it is difficult for most people to realize how important it is. For example, most investors believe that markets are living entities that create victims. If you believe that statement, then it is true for you. But markets do not create victims; investors turn themselves into victims. Each trader controls his or her own destiny. No trader will find success without understanding this important principle atleast subconsciously Let’s look at some facts:

Most successful market professionals achieve success by controlling risk. Controlling risk goes against our natural tendencies. Risk control requires tremendous internal control. Most successful speculators have success rates of 35 to 50 percent. They are not successful because they predict prices well. They are successful because the size of their profitable trades far exceeds the size of their losses. This requires tremendous internal control. Most successful conservative investors are contrarians. They do what everyone else is afraid to do. They have patience and are willing to wait for the right opportunity.

This also requires internal control. Investment success requires internal control more than any other factor. This is the first step toward trading success. People who dedicate themselves to developing that control are the ones who will ultimately succeed.

What is money management?

2009-12-08T19:26:00.000-08:00

Money management is changing the number of contracts you trade as your

account size increases or decreases. There are several ways to mathematically
define money management strategies. Here are a few of the more commonly
accepted approaches.
Percent risked
Adjust the lot size so the total amount risked (stop loss) on each trade is a fixed
fraction of your trading equity.
LotSize = RiskFraction * Equity / TradeRisk
This model can skip trades or stop trading if the risk fraction of equity shrinks
smaller than the risk or initial stop loss one must endure to enter a trade. If your
risk input contains a constant value for risk (as you would input if you didn’t have
risk data on a per-trade basis), then this model becomes what’s called the fixed
fractional model. Its power derives from having the risk, or initial stop loss size, of
each individual trade.
Percent volatility
Adjust the lot size so that the market volatility in dollars per lot, often measured
as the average true range of the last 10 to 20 bars, is no more than a fixed fraction
of your equity.
LotSize = VolatilityFraction * Equity / Volatility
This model can skip trades or stop trading if the volatility fraction of equity
shrinks smaller than the market’s volatility. This model also converts to a fixedfractional
model if you have a constant value in the volatility input.
Optimal f — An overview
Optimal f is a fixed factional money management method. In 1956, J.L. Kelly Jr.
published a paper called “A New Interpretation of Information Rate.”
Professional blackjack players realized the application of this work and began
using it in their gaming efforts. The basic concept was to use the probability of
winning and the ratio of wins to losses to calculate the optimal bet size.
Larry Williams popularized this concept for traders in 1987 during the Robbins’
World Cup trading competition. Money management is a powerful tool when an
individual has an edge. Roulette will not work with money management because
you cannot get a theoretical edge in that game. However, in backgammon or
blackjack an expert player can get a small edge on the casino and use Kelly’s formulas
to supercharge their returns. The Kelly formula is:
F = ((B + 1) * P - 1) / B
Where:
P is the probability of a winning bet
B is the ratio of the amount won vs. the amount loss
If there is a 60% chance of winning $1.50 or a 40% chance of losing $1.00, the
optimal bet size can be calculated as:
f = (1.5 + 1) * 0.60 - 1) / 1.5 F = 0.33
We would conclude that betting 33% of our stake on each bet would produce
the best or optimal results.
Another researcher, Ralph Vince, discovered the problem with the Kelly formula
in 1987 while working with Larry Williams. He found that the formula was
not valid if the amount won or lost on each event was different. Vince developed
his own set of equations to solve this problem based on the concept of a Holding
Period Return (HPR). The Holding Period Return is the rate of return on any given
trade plus 1.00. So, a 10% return equals 1.10 and a 25% loss equals 0.75. Because percentage returns are being calculated based on a fixed fraction of the account
size, we can define HPR as:
HPR = 1 + f * (-T / BL)
Where:
f is the fixed fraction of the account to trade
T is the profit/loss of an individual trade
BL is the largest losing trade of an entire sequence of trades
The HPR formula is applied to each trade. By multiplying HPR for each trade, we
can obtain a multiple of our original stake, the Terminal Wealth Relative (TWR):
TWR = Product (1 + f * (-T / BL))
We maximize the TWR function by changing the values of “f” to find the value
that produces the highest TWR, which is called optimal f. After calculating optimal
f and TWR, we need to calculate how much equity is required to trade one unit:
U = (ML / - f)
Where:
U is the trading units in dollar
ML is the maximum loss in dollars
f is the optimal value for f
Using the trading units in dollars, starting account size and trade history, we can
run a simulation of the equity curve for any trading system using optimal f. These
simulations often yield astronomical results after 50 or 100 trades. The problem is
optimal f quickly can require trading more contracts than is realistic for a given market.
Another problem is that optimal f returns are also based on trading fractional
contracts. For example, if U is $4,000 and our account equity is $10,000, optimal f
would call for 2.5 contracts to be traded. In real life, we would round the number of
contracts down to the nearest whole number, which would be two contracts.
Because the largest losing trade is used to calculate TWR, it has a major effect
on optimal f. This is not a problem when working with historical simulations, but
when we are using optimal f on a real system where protective stops are based on
volatility or channel size, we cannot define optimal f.
The distribution of trades greatly affects the value of optimal f.
We can have two trading systems that make $100,000 on 1,000 trades for an
average profit of $1,000 per trade. The optimal f values for these two systems can
vary widely based on the distribution of the returns on the trades. It is dangerous
to trade anywhere near optimal f because the distribution of trades in real time
can change. For illustration’s sake, say, in testing you had 500 straight winners and
500 straight losers, while real life may deliver any mix of winners and losers to
achieve the same results.
The problem is that when an account is in a run up, the number of contracts
being traded can increase rapidly and when the system goes into a drawdown, the
account takes a hit that takes it below the level before the run up. This happens
because lot numbers can double within a few trades.
Professional money managers also trade a fixed percentage of an account on a
given trade. The standard for professional money managers is to risk 1% to 3% of
trading capital on a given trade. We will call this term RiskFraction, so it is between
0.01 and 0.03. The number of units to be traded can depend on market conditions
as well as the system.

Money Management in Forex

2009-12-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

Money management is like

sex: Everyone does it,
one way or another, but
not many like to talk
about it and some do it better than others.
But there’s a big difference: Sex sites
on the Web proliferate, while sites devoted
to the art and science of money management
are somewhat difficult to find.
There are many, many financial sites
on the Web that let you track a portfolio
of stocks on a glorified watch list. You
enter in your open positions and you get
a snapshot, or better yet a live, real-time
update, of the status of your stocks
based on the site’s most recently available
prices. Some sites, like Fidelity’s,
provide tools that tell you how your
portfolio is allocated among various asset classes such as stocks, mutual funds, bonds and cash.
While such sites get at the idea of money or portfolio management, the overwhelming majority fail to provide the tools required to answer the central question of money management: “When I make a trade, how much do I trade?” (Try and find the topic of money management on the Motley Fool site.) We’ll discuss how to measure and manage trade risk and where to find the tools to help do it in a responsible and profitable manner. The key underlying concept is to limit how much money you are willing to let the market extract from your wallet when you make losing.When any trader makes a decision to buy or sel (short), they must also decide at that time how many shares or contracts to buy or sell — the order form on every brokerage page has a blank spot where the size of the order is specified. The essence of risk management is mak - ing a logical decision about how much to buy or sell when you fill in this blank. This decision determines the risk of the trade. Accept too much risk and you increase the odds that you will go bust; take too little risk and you will not be rewarded in sufficient quantity to beat the transaction costs and the overhead of your efforts. Good money management practice is about finding the sweet spot between these undesirable extremes.

Yen Reaches Eight-Month High on View Japan May Permit Gains

2009-09-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The yen rose against all of its 16 most-traded counterparts tracked by Bloomberg and touched the highest level in eight months against the dollar on speculation Japan’s new government will allow its currency to appreciate.

The dollar fell below 89 yen for the first time since February after Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said the Japanese currency’s moves aren’t excessive. The greenback pared losses after Fujii said people misinterpreted his comments as an endorsement for a strong currency.

“The Japanese finance minister talked down the risk of currency intervention, and that is a red flag to the bulls,” said Paul Robson, a currency strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “I expect the yen to move stronger against the dollar.”

The yen advanced 0.4 percent to 89.27 per dollar at 10:21 a.m. in New York, from 89.64 on Sept. 25. It earlier touched 88.24, the strongest level since Jan. 23. The yen appreciated 0.3 percent to 131.31 per euro, from 131.70, after reaching 129.83, the strongest since July 14. The dollar climbed 0.3 percent to $1.4650 per euro, from $1.4689.

The pound dropped for a fourth day against the dollar, falling as much as 1.1 percent to $1.5771, the lowest level since May 22. Sterling dropped 5.5 percent since Aug. 6, when the Bank of England expanded its program of asset purchases designed to keep borrowing costs low by 50 billion pounds ($79 billion) to 175 billion pounds.

The yen strengthened 1.9 versus the dollar last week after Fujii said at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 that he has been questioning the idea of “easy intervention.”

Fujii’s Stance

Fujii said on Sept. 16 he doesn’t support a “weak yen,” fueling speculation the government won’t act to curb the currency’s 19 percent appreciation versus the dollar in the past year. Central banks intervene in foreign-exchange markets by selling and buying currencies.

Speaking today at a forum co-hosted by Bloomberg, Fujii said he “never said I will leave the yen to strengthen” and that he didn’t necessarily accept gains in the currency. Fujii’s Democratic Party of Japan swept to power in elections on a platform of boosting public consumption.

The yen will be among the best-performing currencies in the fourth quarter as the dollar replaces it as the funding asset of choice and strengthens as stock markets rise, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Japan’s currency may appreciate to 85 per dollar by year- end, John Normand, global head of foreign-exchange strategy in London at JPMorgan, said in an interview.

JPMorgan on Yen

“The yen is no longer the best funding currency globally,” Normand said. “The yen no longer weakens reflexively when growth accelerates and equities rally.”

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for three- month yen loans stayed at almost a 16-year high relative to comparable-maturity dollar Libor, with the spread at 0.06 percentage point.

The Japanese currency’s level of about 90 per dollar is “painful,” Toyota Motor Corp. Executive Vice President Yukitoshi Funo said on Sept. 25.

The Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey will probably show this week that the economic recovery is too weak to persuade companies to invest. Large firms plan to cut capital spending by 9 percent this year, little changed from estimates made three months ago as the nation was emerging from a recession, economists predict the Oct. 1 report will show.

“I don’t think a strong yen is the trend,” said Hidetoshi Yanagihara, senior currency trader at Mizuho Corporate Bank in New York. “The Japanese economy is not in a good shape. The yen strength will be short-lived.”

Profit Repatriation

Japan’s currency also gained versus the dollar today on expectation exporters are taking advantage of an April 1 rule change that waives taxes on repatriated profits. Under previous laws, companies had to pay a combined 40 percent tax on overseas earnings. The first half of Japan’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

“Japanese firms are continuing to bring home profits,” said Tsutomu Soma, a bond and currency dealer at Okasan Securities Co. in Tokyo.

The yen climbed to 87.13 per dollar on Jan. 21, the strongest since July 1995. The median forecast among securities companies is for the currency to trade at 96 per dollar at year- end and 98 at the end of the first quarter of 2010.

The Norwegian krone, Swedish krona and New Zealand dollar gained about 10 percent against the U.S. dollar since June 30, making them the best performers among the 16 major currencies. Rising oil prices helped Norway. New Zealand benefited from accelerating growth in Australia, its biggest market. The international bailout of Latvia staved off defaults on Swedish bank loans.

The krone dropped 0.3 percent to 5.8205 per dollar today, while the krona slid 0.3 percent to 6.9713. The New Zealand dollar fell 0.6 percent to 71.51 U.S. cents.

Forex Business Starting with Usefull Strategies

2009-08-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

If you’re a potential investment player who’d like to make it big in the business and financial world, then you go for forex trading. The FOREX, also known as the foreign exchange market is one of the largest financial markets in the world with and estimate of $1.5 trillion turn-overs every day. Here are a few strategies on how to make it big in the forex market.

Know your market

The best way to get advantage, earn profit and minimize losses is to familiarize yourself with the market and how the whole system works. In the forex market, the players are usually commercial banks, central banks and firms involved in foreign trade, investment funds, broker companies and other private individuals with large capital. With the speed and high liquidity of asset, most companies engage in this business than in any other trading venture. Transactions are done in a jiffy; there are no membership fees and there is always the allure and promise of big, big profit.

Trading is done in pairs

The most commonly traded currencies are usually the US Dollar, Japanese Yen, Euro, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar and the Swiss Franc. The more commonly traded currency pairs are the US Dollar and the Japanese Yen, the Euro and the US Dollar, the Swiss Franc and the US Dollar. In Forex trading, everything is speculative and virtual. There is no actual product being sold or bought. The activity mostly consists of computed entries made on the value of one currency against another. Say for example, you can buy Euros with US Dollar, hoping that the Euro will increase it value. Once its value rises, you can sell the Euro again, thus earning you profit.

Learn the language

There are three concepts you need to know in the currency market. Pips refer to the increase of one hundredth of a percent of the value of the currency pair you are trading. Usually each pip has a value of $10 or $1. Volume is the quantity or amount of money being traded at one particular time in the market. Buying is the acquisition of a particular currency. A trader buys with the hopes that the price of the currency will increase. Selling is putting a currency up for grabs in the market because of a potential or possibility of a decrease in its value. There are also two techniques of analysis usually used in this business – the fundamental and the technical analysis. Technical analysis is usually used by small and medium players. Here, the primary point of analysis revolves on the price. Fundamental analysis, on the other hand, is used by bigger companies and players with higher capital as it involves looking at the other factors affecting the value of a particular currency. In this type of analysis, the player also looks at the situation of the country, particularly issues like political stability, inflation rate, unemployment rate, and tax policies as these are seen to have an effect on the currency’s value.

Develop a sound trading strategy

Your trading strategy would depend on what kind of trader you are. The basic thing with developing a trading strategy is to identify what kind of forex trader you are. A good trading strategy should lessen, if not, eliminate losses. Plan also the size of your transactions. It is better to conduct many different trades than one huge transaction. Not only does it develop discipline, but it also lessens any possible loss as only a fraction of the capital is affected. Part of a trading strategy is developing the values of discipline and proper money management.

Practice

Try paper trading, a great way to practice your skills, see how the market works and get acquainted with the software and tools being used. There are online brokers who allow free paper trades, which allows practice and experience before doing it with real money.

Choose the right forex dealer

Make sure that they are regulated by the law. Take not of dealers with investment schemes that give out too-good-to-be-true-just-false-hopes promises. Look at investment offers before getting started.

Forex trading may seem easy and manageable. But the emotional stress, the demands and challenges of being a forex trader requires more than just the knowledge of the market. It requires more than just a keen and sensible head for business. It’s all about a gameplan, a strategy.

Forex Tools

2009-06-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

The presented Forex tools can assist you both in technical analysis and money management which will greatly enhance your trading results. All these online Forex tools are totally free and can be used at no cost:
MT4 Expert Advisors — Download free expert advisors for a Metatrader 4 trading platform. Test and use these EAs to empower your automated Forex trading and also to help the developing of your own Metatrader expert advisor or Forex strategy.
MT4 Forex Indicators — Free downloads of the MetaTrader indicators for a Metatrader 4 trading platform. You can use these indicators to improve your Forex trading strategy or develop your own MetaTrader 4 expert advisors.
Pivot Points Calculator — Four online web based pivot points calculators will help you to generate pivot points for any given time period. Pivot points are used to as the most important market trend points, where trend can meet support or resistance and actually change its course. Floor, Tom Demark's, Woodie's and Camarilla pivot points building rules are available with this free calculator. You don't need to download any software, just fill the form and get instant pivot point, resistance and support levels.
Pip Value Calculator — How much is one pip? How about EUR/CHF or CAD/JPY? With this free and fast online tool you can find out the value of 1 pip in USD for any lot size and any major or cross currency pair. Fill the form and get the pip value in one moment. No need to download any software!
Fibonacci Calculator — The web based Fibonacci retracement calculator will help you to generate basic Fibonacci retracement values for any given trend. These retracement values can be used as the most natural points of support and resistance for a given trend for any currency pair. On the currency trading market, the use of Fibonacci retracement levels to set orders and targets is one of the best ways to organize trader's portfolio.
Risk and Reward Forex Calculator — online calculator that will help you to find out the risks and rewards associated with your possible position's targets and stop-losses based on the Fibonacci retracement levels of the current market wave.
MetaTrader VPS hosting — special dedicated hosting for your MetaTrader (and usually any other) Forex platform and expert advisors. A good way to keep your strategy always active independently on your home or work PC.

Forex Market Snapshot

2009-05-14T06:14:00.000-07:00

Introduction

The following facts and figures relate to the foreign exchange market. Much of the information is drawn from the 2007 Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity conducted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in April 2007. 54 central banks and monetary authorities participated in the survey, collecting information from approximately 1280 market participants.

Excerpt from the BIS:

"The 2007 survey shows an unprecedented rise in activity in traditional foreign exchange markets compared to 2004. Average daily turnover rose to $3.2 trillion in April 2007, an increase of 71% at current exchange rates and 65% at constant exchange rates...Against the background of low levels of financial market volatility and risk aversion, market participants point to a significant expansion in the activity of investor groups including hedge funds, which was partly facilitated by substantial growth in the use of prime brokerage, and retail investors...A marked increase in the levels of technical trading – most notably algorithmic trading – is also likely to have boosted turnover in the spot market...Transactions between reporting dealers and non-reporting financial institutions, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies, more than doubled between April 2004 and April 2007 and contributed more than half of the increase in aggregate turnover." - BIS

Structure

* Decentralised 'interbank' market
* Main participants: Central Banks, commercial and investment banks, hedge funds, corporations & private speculators
* The free-floating currency system arose from the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971
* Online trading began in the mid to late 1990's

Source: BIS Triennial Survey 2007

2009-05-14T06:11:00.000-07:00

Forex Market participants

2009-05-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

Unlike a stock market, where all participants have access to the same prices, the foreign exchange market is divided into levels of access. At the top is the inter-bank market, which is made up of the largest investment banking firms. Within the inter-bank market, spreads, which are the difference between the bid and ask prices, are razor sharp and usually unavailable, and not known to players outside the inner circle. The difference between the bid and ask prices widens (from 0-1 pip to 1-2 pips for some currencies such as the EUR). This is due to volume. If a trader can guarantee large numbers of transactions for large amounts, they can demand a smaller difference between the bid and ask price, which is referred to as a better spread. The levels of access that make up the foreign exchange market are determined by the size of the “line” (the amount of money with which they are trading). The top-tier inter-bank market accounts for 53% of all transactions. After that there are usually smaller investment banks, followed by large multi-national corporations (which need to hedge risk and pay employees in different countries), large hedge funds, and even some of the retail FX-metal market makers. According to Galati and Melvin, “Pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and other institutional investors have played an increasingly important role in financial markets in general, and in FX markets in particular, since the early 2000s.” (2004) In addition, he notes, “Hedge funds have grown markedly over the 2001–2004 period in terms of both number and overall size” Central banks also participate in the foreign exchange market to align currencies to their economic needs.

The Perfect Forex Trading System

2009-05-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Trading the Forex market has became very popular in the last few years. But how difficult is it to achieve success in the Forex trading arena? Or let me rephrase this question, how many traders achieve consistent profitable results trading the Forex market? Unfortunately very few, only 5% of traders achieve this goal. One of the main reasons of this is because Forex traders focus in the wrong information to make their trading decisions and totally forget about the most important factor: Price behavior.

Most Forex trading systems are made off technical indicators (a moving average (MA) crossover, overbought/oversold conditions in an oscillator, etc.) But what are technical indicators? They are just a series of data points plotted in a chart; these points are derived from a mathematical formula applied to the price of any given currency pair. In other words, it is a chart of price plotted in a different way that helps us see other aspects of price.

There is an important implication on this definition of technical indicators. The fact that the readings obtained from them are based on price action. Take for instance a long MA crossover signal, the price has gone up enough to make the short period MA crossover the long period MA generating a long signal. Most traders see it as “the MA crossover made the price go up,” but it happened the other way around, the MA crossover signal occurred because the price went up. Where I’m trying to get here is that at the end, price behavior dictates how an indicator will act, and this should be taken into consideration on any trading decision made.

Trading decisions based on technical indicators without taking price action into consideration will give us less accurate results. For example, again a long signal generated by a MA crossover as the market approaches an important resistance level. If the price suddenly starts to bounce back off that important level there is no point on taking this signal, price action is telling us the market doesn’t want to go up. Most of the time, under this circumstances, the market will continue to fall down, disregarding the MA crossover.

Don’t get me wrong here, technical indicators are a very important aspect of trading. They help us see certain conditions that are otherwise difficult to see by watching pure price action. But when it comes to pull the trigger, price action incorporation into our Forex trading system will definitely put the odds in our favor, it will generate higher probability trades.

So, how to create a perfect Forex trading system?

First of all, you need to make sure your trading system fits your trading personality; otherwise you will find it hard to follow it. Every trader has different needs and goals, thus there is no system that perfectly fits all traders. You need to make your own research on various trading styles and technical indicators until you find a concept that perfectly works for you. Make sure you know the nature of whatever technical indicator used.

Secondly, incorporate price action into your system. So you only take long signals if the price behavior tells you the market wants to go up, and short signals if the market gives you indication that it will go down.

Third, and most importantly, you need to have the discipline to follow your Forex trading system rigorously. Try it first on a demo account, then move on to a small account and finally when feeling comfortably and being consistent profitable apply your system in a regular account.

Benefits of Forex Trading

2009-05-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

The benefits of forex trading are:

1. It is conducted in an extremely liquid market. Thus, you are unlikely to get stuck in a trade. You can open and close any position at your desired level.

2. Traders can benefit in both rising and falling markets. You can take a short position (selling the currency pair and buying it back at a lower price) or long position (buying the currency pair and selling it later at a higher price).

3. Provides traders the option of trading in small lots. If you are a novice trader, you can opt to open small accounts and start trading with small lots. This allows you to begin with little capital and limit your risks.

4. Traders do not have to pay commissions to brokers. The cost of the transactions is built into the currency price and is known as the spread, which is the difference between the buying and selling price at any given time.

Drawbacks of Forex Trading

2009-05-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

Forex trading can lead to huge losses if the trader is a novice. The lack of prompt action can also lead to substantial losses.

Lesson from MindTree’s forex losses

2009-02-24T05:08:00.000-08:00

MindTree provided a revenue and profit growth guidance for the year to March 2009, based on a rupee-dollar rate of 39.4

The June quarter results of MindTree Ltd make an interesting point. The rupee may have depreciated sharply since end-April, but none of the gains from this will flow into the net results of information technology companies which were overtly aggressive with their forex hedges.

On 16 April, MindTree provided a revenue and profit growth guidance for the year to March 2009, based on a rupee-dollar rate of 39.4. The domestic currency has depreciated by nearly 9% since, but the company has maintained its guidance. This should normally have led to a sharp rise in the profit guidance, since operating profit margin inches up by roughly 50 basis points for every 1% depreciation in the rupee.

It turns out that MindTree had large hedges taken at a rate of 40.97 to a dollar, and has booked mark-to-market losses worth $12 million (Rs51.8 crore) on them in the June quarter. In one sense, the losses are notional, because the company hasn’t unwound the derivatives positions and hasn’t actually booked the losses.

But the right way to look at it is that a large chunk of the company’s foreign currency revenues and receivables this year will be converted into domestic currency at a rate of 40.97 to a dollar, and not at the ruling rate of 43.07. In other words, it will be a while before the benefits of the rupee depreciation flows to the bottom line of MindTree. A similar story will play out in some other IT firms with large hedge positions, although in varying degrees.

Throwing Cash Like Monopoly Money

2009-02-24T05:07:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase senator Dirksen a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you are talking real money. This week's expansion of the Fed's balance sheet by another $800 Billion was good example of that well worn maxim. Certainly the currency markets did not look kindly on the news, as the EUR /USD soared more than 300 points post announcement.

As we noted that day,”The trade in the dollar therefore has shifted from seeing the greenback as the safe haven asset and the ultimate reserve currency in a credit crunch world, to one where concern over the inflationary implications of so much debt being backstopped by the Fed and the US Treasury could make the buck vulnerable as we approach the end of the calendar year.”

But the rally EUR/USD did not last. The pair ran into massive supply at the 1.30's as month end fixes overwhelmed any immediate fears about dollar's inflationary collapse. For the time being range continues to be the dominant theme as every breakout turns into a fake-out crushing the hopes of both bulls and bears.

Next week the focus will turn to the US Non-Farm payroll report as trader steel themselves for a possible -300K number. Given the 500K+ weekly jobless claims this month a large loss of jobs is almost assured but unless the print is woefully worse than the -285K expected it is unlikely to trigger much of a move in EUR/USD.

With Obama Administration still two months away from taking office, technical factors such as end of year fixes are more likely to dominate flows. As dollar repatriation picks up pace in December, the greenback may see one more round of buying, but on a longer term time frame the salad days of the dollar rally appear to be over and consolidation continues to be the dominant play inn FX

Bad Selection

The 8:00 AM Thanksgiving train from New York to Boston was full of self satisfied New Yorkers including myself, smug in their knowledge that they they were able to circumvent the maddening crowds at the airports and the bumper to bumper traffic on the highways during the busiest travel day of the year in US. Indeed, as the train sailed smoothly towards Boston's Route 128 station, the majority of the passengers began to gather by the exit smiling at the fact that the whole journey took a scant three hours to complete. Suddenly, however, the train lurched to screeching halt and a sickening smell of burnt rubber enveloped the car.

We were no more than four minutes away from the train station but now found ourselves dead still in the middle of suburban Massachusetts wilderness surrounded only ominous looking trees and and a track full of twigs. A grim faced conductor rushed by and said, “Go back to your seats. We are not going anywhere for a while.”

What happened? After a few minutes of frantic cell phone calling to friends and relatives at the train station we pieced together the basic facts of the story. A man had apparently wandered on to the track and was unfortunately struck by our train. Although injured, he was not dead and by now the whole rescue apparatus of the state of Massachusetts was involved in the incident.

The moment the outline of the story became known, a hundred Iphones and as many Blackberries lit up in frantic attempt to find out how soon the whole mess would be resolved. As i watched my fellow passengers armed with the latest gadgets of the information age struggle vainly with getting an answer I smiled ruefully knowing how pointless it was.

By now, the accident triggered a long and complicated bureaucratic protocol and no matter how many times my fellow travelers refreshed the tiny screens of their web-enabled cellphones they weren't going to expedite the process. So as ten minutes turned into a half an hour and half hour turned into an hour and an hour turned into two, we watched the Amtrak local train which left New York an hour after us and was supposed to arrive two hours later pass us by as we remained trapped less than a mile away from our final destination.

Sitting in a cafe car nursing a cold cup of coffee, I realized how this little unexpected and unfortunate adventure was similar to trading. I saw clearly how even the best laid plans, accompanied by the latest information technology can still fall victim to fate. All of our clever travel planning, all of gadgets could not help us on this Thanksgiving day. We were simply subject to forces outside our control.

As traders of course we see this phenomena all the time. No matter the trade plan, no matter the analytics, no matter the money management, sometimes we simply make a Bad Selection. The good news for the passengers is that we finally arrived to Boston safe and sound and enjoyed a great Thanksgiving with our families . A point to keep in mind next time a trade blows up in your face. Bad Selection is part of life as it is part of trading we should take it all in stride.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American subscribers. No video this week due to holiday shortened trading,

Keeping China’s Forex Safe: The State Administration of Foreign Exchange

2009-02-24T05:03:00.000-08:00

July 23 - Long held at an artificially low rate by the Chinese government, the RMB has been allowed to slowing appreciate in recent years, helping to ease a growing trade imbalance with the United States and the EU. The rising value is just one example of how Beijing has maneuvered tools in place to deal with the macro economic fall out from China’s surging economy. In a time of rising inflation and calls from the West to allow the currency to appreciate faster, one government department’s involvement with China’s foreign exchange reserves places it at the center of China’s future economic outlook. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s main task is to draft rules and regulations that govern foreign exchange market activities in China and manage the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

SAFE was founded in Beijing in March, 1979, by the State Council, and since August, 1982, it has been governed by the state central bank, the People’s Bank of China. SAFE is headquartered in Beijing with an additional 36 administrative offices and 298 central sub-branches located throughout the country. SAFE also has offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, London and New York.

Most business people in China have heard of SAFE, and if they haven’t personally dealt with them, their account surely has. Several Chinese audit requirements necessitate submission of documents to the authority: an Audited Financial Report, a Foreign Exchange Audit Report, and an Annual Report. These reports need to be prepared and submitted to seven different government departments, namely the Bureau of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation, the Financial Bureau, Customs and Excise, the State Administration of Taxation, the local tax bureau, the Administration of Industry and Commerce, and SAFE.

Besides these annual legal requirements, SAFE plays also an important role when a foreign-invested enterprise is setting up. If an FIE needs to open a foreign settlement account—most companies need such an account to receive foreign currency—then an FIE must register the details with SAFE, regardless if the FIE is a representative office, a FICE or a WFOE. Registration takes about one to two days if it is handled by a professional firm. Only when this registration is completed can the invested company set up bank accounts in their chosen bank.

At Dezan Shira & Associates we deal on a regular basis with client questions concerning new SAFE regulations. As matter of fact, SAFE contributes quite frequently to the ever changing regulatory environment in China. The latest being the new SAFE regulations on July 14, 2008 on the registration of external loans.

Export and import
If your business is related to export and import you will always be in relation with the SAFE. In a typical export scenario a company based in China will export goods overseas and the money should be paid and received in a bank account in China. When this happens, the client’s bank will then inform SAFE about the money transfer and SAFE will then authorize the bank whether the money can be released to the foreign bank. This decision is based on the e-customs system, computerized network system which links SAFE, Customs, the foreign trade department and the Administration of Industry and Commerce together. SAFE has the ability to audit all exports and imports through this computerized system. All the goods which have left China and all the payments received can be traced. For the import a similar system is in place. Once the money is remitted out and the FIE has paid the goods, the SAFE will have the possibility to check if the goods were delivered in China or not.

FIEs and SAFE issues
SAFE is as well the eye of the needle to repatriate the profits of an FIE. Usually this is done after the annual audit and the tax clearance. Once all the relevant taxes are paid, the FIE can apply for profit repatriation. After approval, the investor can remit its profits via its bank, unless the SAFE disapprove.

There are also unpleasant moments when an FIE has to deal with SAFE. From our experience, most of the time the problems are linked to registered capital issues. Some foreign-invested enterprises try to keep their profits outside of China and have declared a very low registered capital amount. Most of the time, the foreign investor doesn’t realize that he is under capitalized. The cash accounts are kept afloat via technical agreements and cash in advance payments for goods which will be delivered in the future. All this is in an ideal world and keeps the FIE financially viable.

However, when SAFE inspects the enterprise the problem appears. As described above, it is quite simple for SAFE to check the advance payments and services invoiced against the value of the exported goods which have left China and the supplied services. According to Chinese foreign exchange regulations, money received from aboard should not exceed 110 percent of the export amount. If the advanced payments and the actual exported goods reach a certain “unhealthy” quota, SAFE will seek appropriate action.

The foreign investor normally will not be always being aware when their company is dealing with SAFE because, most likely, the bank will serve as a buffer. However, when SAFE directly approaches the FIE for an inspection or a verification, the FIE should pay attention to the details.

Forex Trading Price Action Support and Resistance

2009-02-24T04:59:00.000-08:00

When you study Forex trading you need to take advantage of all the forex online courses, forex systems, forex loan online trading, currency forex online trading, and any online free training course for that matter. The more experience and knowledge you gain in this highly liquefiable and profit driven market, the better chance you have to succeed. The first thing you need to do when coming to the forex market is participate in a "mock scenario" with real life examples on how to trade in this market.

These real life examples let you experience first hand what it is like trading and earning money with currency trading. If you can start making a lot of money right away with "play money" you might want to consider investing some real money into this market. I highly do not recommend doing this until you are 100% comfortable and have a complete understanding of this market. It is the best feeling in the world though once you see your "play money" account rising and rising and when you jump into real money it does the same thing.

Let me give you a quick background on forex trading in case you have not heard of it before. The forex trading market has been around for decades. The only competition in this market decades ago was multi-national corporations and large financial institutions. These industries were making an absolute killing off this market. The times have quickly changed. It is now the consumer's turn or the single investors turn to become rich. Your account forex managed by a single individual will no doubt give you the greatest opportunity of succeeding.

Until recently, the forex market had a lot of scammers in it. These scammers pried on the uneducated people that liked to jump into this market with no background. In today's world and society even though this industry is not quite regulated there have been numerous amounts of preventative measures taken to prevent this type of fraud. You really need to be cautious signing up with a brokerage firm if you decide to go this route, I recommend not doing this you are completely capable of making a lot of money in this industry on your own. People get this confused with forex stock trading. This has nothing to do with the stock market at all. The only relations forex trading has to the stock market is that they are both investing wheels.

A major difference between the stock market and the forex market is that one is that unlike the stock market the forex market is open 24 hours a day! In the forex market also your money is never tied up and 100% liquidated. You can sell your currency at any point in time and convert it to real money at any point in time. You do not have to pay outrageous penalties.

The biggest factor into learning how to succeed in this market is to educate yourself. You should seek as much free or paid for education as possible and look for as many systems as you can and try to find out a forex trading system that works for you.

Courses

2009-02-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

AT 263
FLUID POWER SYSTEMS
Prerequisite:MA 153 Corequisite:Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
An analysis of design, construction, and operation of the fluid power systems. Topics range from fluids and hardware through individual component analysis to diagnosis and repair of complex systems.

CGT

CGT 101
INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
This course provides an introduction to and a survey of the discipline of computer graphics. As an introductory course for incoming freshmen, its topics include a survey of the applications of computer graphics, the knowledge base and history of computer graphics, an examination of computer graphic technologies and careers in this rapidly emerging and evolving field, as well as an overview of available resources for study and research in computer graphics.

CGT 110
COMPUTER GRAPHICS COMMUNICATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
This course is an introduction to the graphic language used to communicate design ideas using CAD. Topics include: sketching multiview drawings, auxiliary views, pictorial views, working drawings, dimensioning practices, and section views.

CGT 111
DESIGN FOR VISUALIZATION & COMMUNICATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
An introductory design course for computer graphics majors. Students develop an understanding of the basic design elements and principles, composition and typography through exercises and projects. The focus is on visual thinking, exploring the relationship between type and image, and developing multiple solutions to a given problem.

CGT 112
SKETCHING FOR VISUALIZATION & COMMUNICATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
This course applies fundamental computer graphics concepts of visualization, communication and creativity within a sketching metaphor. Exercises and projects in graphic theory, problem solving and sketching skill development provide students with activities that focus on further development within the discipline. A variety of sketching techniques are used to gather critical information and transform data into effective communication instruments.

CGT 116
GEOMETRIC MODELING FOR VISUALIZATION & COMMUNICATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
Core introductory computer graphics course that provides entry-level experiences in geometric modeling. Students develop geometric analysis and modeling construction techniques and processes to produce accurate computer models for graphic visualization and communication.

CGT 117
ILLUSTRATING FOR VISUALIZATION AND COMMUNICATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
This foundation course stresses the use of pictorial illustration for visualization and communication. Various projection systems are introduced, with discussion focusing on the appropriate use of view and system utilized to accentuate and provide clear communication. A variety of digital tools are used to construct, extract, and render pictorial views using vector and raster tools.

CGT 211
RASTER IMAGING FOR COMPUTER GRAPHICS
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
Digital images are produced using a variety of computer technologies. Advanced color theory, surface rendering, and light control are emphasized in relation to technical illustration, hardware characteristics, and software capabilities.

CGT 216
VECTOR IMAGING FOR COMPUTER GRAPHICS Prerequisite:CGT 211 Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
Full-color vector illustrations for a variety of uses are produced using computer methods. Color theory, surface analysis, and rendering techniques are emphasized as they apply to vector based illustrations.

CGT 242
COMPUTER GRAPHICS FOR SUPERVISION
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 2 Class Hrs.:1 Lab Hrs.:2
An introduction to commonly encountered technical drawing practices; multiview representation, isometric pictorial, reading drawings, dimensioning practices, and working drawings. Emphasis is on computer graphics as technical communication through freehand sketching.

MFET

MFET 300
APPLICATIONS OF AUTOMATION IN MANUFACTURING
Prerequisite:MET 242, ECET 214. DOES NOT CARRY CREDIT TOWARD GRADUATION IN MFET. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
Basic introduction to automation applications in manufacturing and the impact of computer-based systems on a manufacturing company. Coverage includes practices and the various issues related to the application of computer-integrated manufacturing. Emphasis placed on CAD, CAM, CNC, robotics, industrial control elements, PLCs, and computer-based process controls.

CIT

CPT 105
INTRODUCTION TO C PROGRAMMING
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This course is an introduction to computer programming using the "C" language. The emphasis is on structured programming principles, and understanding the basic concepts that apply to engineering problems. Among topics covered in this are: Problem solving using top down design, using flowcharts to explain the program logic, selection structure, repetition structure, bitwise operations, arrays, pointers, strings, passing arguments, and sequential files. The assignments in this course are appropriate for ECET students. Not available for credit to Computer Technology majors.

CPT 136
PERSONAL COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:1 Lab Hrs.:4
This course provides an intermediate coverage of PC technology and problem solving. Topics include computer hardware, operations and ethics, and operating systems and environments. Students will gain hands-on skills with applications such as desktop and file management, word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, electronic mail, personal information management, and Internet browsing, searching, and publishing.

CPT 141
INTERNET FOUNDATIONS, TECHNOLOGIES, AND DEVELOPMENT
Prerequisite: PC LITERACY Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
This course explores the history, architecture, and development of the World Wide Web. Current tagging and scripting languages are covered in a tool-independent environment. Topics also include authoring tools, design, graphics and multimedia formats, and commerce, implementation, and security issues.

CPT 155
INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT PROGRAMMING
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This course introduces fundamental computer programming concepts. Topics include problem solving and algorithm development, programming standards, variables, data types, operators, decisions, repetitive structures, modularity, arrays, sequential files, programming with objects, user interface construction, and software testing and debugging. The concepts and skills learned in this course are transferable to a wide variety of contemporary programming languages and software development tools.

CPT 172
INTRODUCTION TO APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
Prerequisite: Corequisite: redits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
This course introduces the development of information systems through the use of a database. Topics include business information systems, system and application development, database management systems, problem solving, logic, data types, and programming using database technology. Given a database design and application requirements, students design, construct, and test a personal computer information system.

CPT 175
VISUAL PROGRAMMING
Prerequisite:MA 163 & PERSONAL COMPUTING EXPERIENCE Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Not available for credit to computer technology majors. This course introduces event-driven application development and programming using a visual programming environment. Topics include problem solving and program design, control structures, objects and events, user interface construction, documentation, and program testing.

CPT 176
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURES
Prerequisite: CPT 172 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
A conceptual and technological survey of information technology architectures inclusive of: operating systems, network operating systems, distributed systems architectures and distributed application architectures. Interoperability between these architectural components is explored. Current technology and trends in each architectural element are reviewed.

CPT 180
INTRODUCTION TO SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
Prerequisite: PC Literacy Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This course introduces information systems development. Topics include types of information systems, system development, database management systems, and problem solving. Students will read/create UML, ERD, and data flow diagrams to model information system objects, data, processes, and logic. Labs emphasize modeling and SQL/QBE querying to prepare students for later systems, programming, and database classes. Given user requirements students will design, construct, and test a personal computer information system.

CPT 230
DATA COMMUNICATIONS
Prerequisite: CPT 176 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This course provides an introduction to both Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). Modem technology, standards and practices are explored. Three architectural models are used to illustrate protocol relationships and operational characteristics of both packet and circuit switched networks. Business issues from both provider and user perspectives are discussed. Current technology and trends in each architectural element are reviewed.

CPT 255
PROGRAMMING FOR THE INTERNET
Prerequisite: CPT 141 AND 155 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This course introduces programming techniques used to develop dynamic Internet and intranet applications. Topics include client-side scripting, server-side scripting, and their appropriate use. The students will gain practical experience using contemporary scripting technologies in laboratory-based assignments.

CPT 272
DATABASE FUNDAMENTALS
Prerequisite: Corequisite: CPT 255
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
A study of relational database concepts. These concepts include data design, modeling and normalization; the use of Structured Query Language (SQL) to define, manipulate and test the database; programmatic access to a database and practical issues that database developers must handle.

CPT 276
SYSTEMS SOFTWARE AND NETWORKING
Prerequisite: CPT 176 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
Introduction to a wide range of topics in the data communications field, including vocabulary, hardware, issues, trends, network protocols, network operating systems, and directory services. The students will gain hands-on experience in the laboratory with installing and configuring network operating systems software.

CPT 295
OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
Prerequisite: CPT 255 & CPT 272 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This course focuses on using object-oriented programming languages in the development of modern, business applications. Topics include object-oriented design, encapsulation, object interfaces, inheritance, aggregation, abstract classes, polymorphism, data structures, and exception handling.

COM

COM 114
FUNDAMENTALS OF SPEECH COMMUNICATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
A study of communication theories as applied to speech; practical communicative experience ranging from interpersonal communication and small groups process through problem identification and solution in discussion to informative and persuasive speaking in standard speaker-audience situations.

COM 314
ADVANCED PUBLIC SPEAKING
Prerequisite:COM 114 Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Development of a marked degree of skill in the composition and delivery of various types of speeches; special emphasis on speeches related to the student's major vocational area.

COM 318
PRINCIPLES OF PERSUASION
Prerequisite:COM 114 Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Persuasion and its effects, ranging from individual influences to societal impacts. Various perspectives and models of persuasion are examined, including classical and modern approaches. Both theoretical and pragmatic considerations are introduced.

ECET

ECET 107
INTRODUCTION TO CIRCUIT ANALYSIS
Prerequisite: Corequisite: MA 153
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
Voltage, current, resistance, Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's laws, resistance combinations, and Thevenin's, Norton's, and superposition theorems are studied. DC and AC circuits are studied and utilized with basic AC terminology described. The performance of ideal transformers, capacitors and inductors, and first order RLC circuits are investigated. Fundamental analog circuits are utilized in the laboratory to enhance the understanding of basic laws and theorems.

ECET 109
DIGITAL FUNDAMENTALS
Prerequisite: Corequisite: CPT 133 OR DEPARTMENT APPROVAL
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 3
Introduces basic gate and flip-flop logic devices and their application in combinational and sequential digital circuits. Topics include decoders, displays, encoders, multiplexers, demultiplexers, registers, and counters. Logic circuit analysis, implementation of circuits using standard IC chips, programmable logic devices, circuit testing, and troubleshooting are emphasized.

ECET 157
ELECTRICAL CIRCUITS ANALYSIS
Prerequisite: ECET 107, MA 153, CPT 133 Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
Diodes, various discrete and IC regulated power supplies, transistor biasing techniques, and characteristics of small signal amplifiers are studied. Additional topics such as dependent sources, operational amplifiers, non-ideal DC op amp characteristics, waveform generation, and IC fabrication overview are also covered. Circuit fundamentals such as Kirchhoff's laws are utilized in the analysis and design of circuits. Computer-aided analysis of circuits is used.

ECET 159
DIGITAL APPLICATIONS
Prerequisite: ECET 107 AND 109 Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
This course continues the study of combinational and sequential digital applications. The input and output characteristics of the various common logic families and the appropriate signal conditioning techniques for on/off power interfacing are discussed. Also stressed are standard logic function blocks, digital and analog signal interfacing techniques, and memory devices.

ECET 196
EXPLORING EET
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 2 Class Hrs.: 1 Lab Hrs.: 3
This course explores the EET field. Practical experiences to teach techniques for proper and safe use of basic hand and machine tools are introduced. Techniques for connecting various types of circuits are also covered. The process of fabricating printed circuit boards and introductory processes for using plastic and metal to fabricate custom parts are presented. Verbal and written communication skills are utilized to report project progress and results

ECET 207
AC ELECTRONICS CIRCUIT ANALYSIS
Prerequisite: ECET 157 AND MA 154 Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
AC circuits including the j operator, phasors, reactance and impedance are studied. Circuit laws, network theorems, and the fundamental concepts of Fourier analysis are applied and used in the study of topics such as passive filters, IC filters, amplifiers, resonant circuits, single phase and three phase circuits, and elementary magnetic circuits.

ECET 209
INTRODUCTION TO MICROPROCESSORS
Prerequisite: ECET 159 Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
This course is an introduction to microprocessor hardware and software focusing on embedded control applications. Interconnections of components, peripheral devices, bus time relationships, structured C-language programming, debugging, input/output techniques, and use of PC based software development tools are studied.

ECET 214
ELECTRICITY FUNDAMENTALS
Prerequisite: MA 153 AND 154 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 3
An introduction to elemental electrical components and their characteristics, basic electrical circuit theory, and use of basic laboratory test equipment, electrical motors, and industrial motor controls.

ECET 231
ELECTRICAL POWER AND CONTROLS
Prerequisite: MA 221, ECET 207 AND PHYS 218 Corequisite: ECET 257
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
This course introduces magnetic materials and properties followed by analysis of transformers and power conditioning equipment, induction motors, and single-phase and three-phase power systems. Motor control devices, programmable logic controllers, PLC input and output devices, and power systems communications and monitoring are introduced.

ECET 257
POWER AND RF ELECTRONICS
Prerequisite: ECET 207 Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
This course applies circuit analysis techniques to amplifiers used in power and RF electronics. Topics to be introduced include bipolar and field effect transistors, thyristors, RF oscillators, mixers, AM/FM modulation, phase lock loops, frequency synthesis, switching power supplies, and active filters. Computer-aided analysis of circuits is used.

ECET 297
ELECTRONIC SYSTEM DESIGN & FABRICATION
Prerequisite: ECET 196, ECET 159, ECET 207 Corequisite:
Credits: 2 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
This course introduces project planning and basic concepts in electronic design automation (EDA). The student develops the project from an engineering rough sketch to a finished and tested printed circuit board by utilization of EDA. New construction and testing techniques are introduced. The final product is presented in an oral and written report. The written documentation is used along with a resume in a job application simulation.

ECON

ECON 210
PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
Study of the basic economic institutions and the roles they play in defining and achieving the nation's economic goals. Emphasis will be placed on the interdependent nature of the economic decisions on the individual society.

ENGL

ENGL 101
ENGLISH COMPOSITION I
Prerequisite: Corequisite:Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
The first half of the basic composition sequence. Extensive practice in writing clear and effective prose. Instruction in logic, structure, and style.

ENGL 421
TECHNICAL WRITING
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Technical reporting, with emphasis upon organizing data logically and suiting format to topic. Practice in the preparation of proposals, standards and specifications, instructions, graphic illustrations, and formal and informal reports.

IET

IET 264
WORK METHODS AND MEASUREMENT
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A survey of work analysis; principles and techniques of motion study; nature of human work; design of work methods; work measurement; work sampling; predetermined time systems.

IT

IT 104S
INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
A detailed survey of organizational structures, operational, financial, marketing, and accounting activities; duties of management, planning, control, personnel, safety, wages, policy, and human factors necessary for effective management.

IT 114
PROBLEM-SOLVING IN MANUFACTURING
Prerequisite:IT 104, Field trips required. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A study of practices used in industry to determine the optimal solution of a given problem. The use of role-playing, computer simulation, & case study analysis will be an integral part of the course.

IT 230
ELEMENTS OF DISTRIBUTION
Prerequisite:FIELD TRIPS REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A study of types and systems of industrial distribution. Emphasis is on in-plant shipping and receiving functions; modes of distribution; functions of, and services provided by, distributors. Consideration also is given to the nature of career opportunities.

IT 281
INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
Prerequisite:IT 104. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A course designed to develop understanding of, and insight ito, the basic aspects of accident prevention and safety. Specific attention will be given to (1) the psyhological aspects of accident prevention; (2) the principles of accident prevention; (3) the pracital aspects of planning, implementing, and maintaining a safe environment; and (4) standards, current laws, and regulations.

IT 342
INDUSTRIAL QUALITY CONTROL
Prerequisite:MA 151 OR EQUIVALENT. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A survey of the basic principles of quality control as applied in a variety of industrial settings. Includes an introduction to sampling, measurement and measuring devices, and documentation for both product and process quality control.

IT 345
AUTOMATI IDENTIFICATION AND DATA CAPTURE
Prerequisite:IT 114 OR CPT 172 OR 175. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:0
The course studies systems used to automate data collection and identify physical objects. Keyless data entry, biometrics, electromagnetics, magnetics, optics, smart cards, and touch input will be utilized. The role of electronic data interchange (EDI) will be studied.

IT 381
TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE
Prerequisite:PHYS 218, IT 342 OR STAT 301. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
The course is a study of the role and scope of total productive maintenance (TPM) in manufacturing. The three types of maintenance activities: corrective, preventive, predictive, and their associated quantitative techniques are studied. Reliability and queuing theory are discussed. Team projects are required.

IT 385
INDUSTRIAL ERGONOMICS
Prerequisite:MA 151 AND JUNIOR STANDING IN IT, OR CONSENT OF INSTRUCTOR. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A course designed to focus on work design and ergonomics in manufacturing. Specific attention will be focused on introducing the terminology and the techniques used in work design and on the fundamental concepts embodied in industrial ergonomics. During scheduled laboratory times, exercises will permit the student to apply the concepts of industrial ergonomics.

IT 442
PRODUCTION PLANNING
Prerequisite:IT 114, MET 242, OR CONSENT OF INSTRUCTOR. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A study of industrial organization and management, research and development, production, personnel, and sales. Examples of the procedures necessary to provide a product or service are included.

IT 450
PRODUCTION COST ANALYSIS
Prerequisite:MA 151 OR EQUIVALENT, JUNIOR OR SENIOR STANDING. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
An introduction to financial statements and to the study of the costs of production in terms of breakeven and least-cost alternatives, including present and future costs when related to the time value of money, mudgeting, labor and overhead, production, cost control, and the role of the supervisor and the engineering technologist to cost control. Computer applications for determining rate of return for complex problems are introduced.

IT 483
FACILITIES PLANNING AND MATERIALS HANDLING
Prerequisite:MET 242 & IT 442 OR MFET 246. FIELD TRIPS MAY BE REQUIRED. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:
This capstone course emphasizes the integration of all aspects of manufacturing ativities and materials handling systems. A systematic approach is used to design a manufacturing facility to produce a complex product. Particular attention is given to efficiencey and productivity. Computer simulation software is utilized. A comprehensive team project is required.

MA

MA 153
ALGEBRA AND TRIGONOMETRY
Prerequisite: NONE Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
First semester of a two semester sequence of MA 151. The study of fundamental concepts of algebra, linear and quadratic equations, inequalities, functions and graphs. Polynomial functions and rational functions, exponential and logarithmic functions, and systems of equations and inequalities. The study of trigonometric functions, identities, equations, formulas, and applications. Also uses logarithmic tables. Includes the study of sequences, series, and probability as well as topics from analytical geometry.

MA 154
ALGEBRA AND TRIGONOMETRY
Prerequisite:MA 153 Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Second semester of a two semester sequence of MA 151. The study of fundamental concepts of algebra, linear and quadratic equations, inequalities, functions and graphs, polynomial functions and rational functions, exponential and logarithmic functions, and systems of equations and inequalities. The study of trigonometric functions, identities, equations, formulas, and applications. Also uses logarithmic tables. Includes the study of sequences, series, and probability as well as topics from analytical geometry.

MA 221
CALCULUS FOR TECHNOLOGY I
Prerequisite: MA 151 or Equivalent Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
This is the first of a two-semester sequence in the techniques of calculus for students enrolled in technical curricula. The study of polynomials and rational functions and the concepts of limit, continuity, differentiability and integrability are developed.

MA 223
INTRODUCTORY ANALYSIS I
Prerequisite:MA 151 OR EQUIVALENT Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Differential calculus with applications to management and economics.

MA 224
INTRODUCTORY ANALYSIS II
Prerequisite: MA 223 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
Integral calculus; partial derivatives; differentials; introduction to differential equations. Applications to management and economics.

MET

MET 102
PRODUCTION DESIGN & SPECIFICATIONS
Prerequisite: CGT 120, MET 160, OR 162 & 163 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 1 Lab Hrs.: 5
The design, evaluation, and documentation of engineering specifications required of manufacturability and assembly are introduced. Emphasis is on cad-based details, assemblies, design layouts, equipment installations, and related industrial practices.

MET 111
APPLIED STATICS
Prerequisite: MA 153 & 154 & MET 162 OR 160 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
Force systems, resultants and equilibrium, trusses, frames, beams, and shear and moments in beams are studied.

MET 141
MATERIALS I
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
An overview of structures, properties, and applications of metals, polymers, ceramics, and composites commonly used in industry is presented. Problem-solving skills are developed in the areas of materials selection, evaluation, measurement, and testing.

MET 142
MANUFACTURING PROSESSES I
Prerequisite: MET 141 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 3
Basic casting, forming, and joining processes are surveyed. The course emphasizes the selection and application of various processes

MET 160
ANALYTICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL TOOLSA IN MET
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 1 Lab Hrs.: 5
The skills needed to solve technical problems in mechanical engineering technology are developed. Instruction is given in analytical and computational problem-solving techniques. The electronic calculator, the factor-label method of unit conversions, engineering graphs, and the computer are used to solve problems. Computer emphasis is on spreadsheet analysis, graphics, and generation of technical reports through the integrated use of software packages.

MET 211
APPLIED STRENGTH OF MATERIALS
Prerequisite: MET 111 AND 163 Corequisite: MA 221
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 2
The principles of strength, stiffness, and stability are introduced and applied primarily to mechanical components.

MET 213
DYNAMICS
Prerequisite: MET 111 & MA 221 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
Kinematics and kinetics principles of rigid-body dynamics are introduced. Emphasis is on the analysis of bodies in plane motion.

MET 214
MACHINE ELEMENTS
Prerequisite: MET 211& 213 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 0
The methods developed in statics, dynamics, and strength of materials are applied to the selection of basic machine components. The fundamental principles required for the selection of individual elements that compose a machine are developed. Selected course topics are included as computer exercises.

MET 220
HEAT/POWER
Prerequisite: MET 160, OR 162 & 163, PHYS 218 Corequisite: MA 221
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
Heat/Power is an introduction to the principles of thermodynamics and heat transfer. Basic thermodynamic processes are used to evaluate the performance of energy-based systems such as internal combustion engines, power plants, and refrigeration equipment.

MET 230
FLUID POWER
Prerequisite: MET 111 OR PHYS 218; MET 160, 163, OR CPT 135; COREQUISITE: MA 221 Corequisite: MA 221
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
This course consists of the study of compressible and incompressible fluid statics and dynamics as applied to hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, motors, transmissions, and controls.

MET 241
POLYMER MATERIALS AND PROCESSES
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:2 Lab Hrs.:2
The technology of plastics materials and processes is studied. Characteristics of thermoplastics and thermosetting plastics, and principles of molding, forming, reinforcing, and other processes are introduced.

MET 242
MANUFACTURING PROCESSES II
Prerequisite: MET 141, MA 154, MET 162, CPT 135 OR MET 163 Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 2 Lab Hrs.: 2
This course surveys the manufacturing processes and tools commonly used to convert cast, forged, molded, and wrought materials into finished products. It includes the basic mechanisms of material removal, measurement, quality control, assembly processes, cold forming, safety, process planning and automated manufacturing.

MGMT

MGMT 190B
INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNTING
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
The objectives of this course are to help students: (1) understand what is in financial statements and what the statements say about a business, (2) identify the business activities that were responsible for the amounts that appear in the statements, and (3) understand how, whe, and at what amount the effects of manager and employee actions will appear in the statements.

MGMT 201
MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
An introduction to accounting for management planning and control, including cost accounting, budgeting, accounting control system, and use of accounting information in management decisions.

OLS

OLS 252
HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN ORGANIZATIONS Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Introduction and orientation to the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision and an overview of the supervision and personnel functions in the world of work.

OLS 274
APPLIED LEADERSHIP
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 3 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.:
Introduction to and overview of the fundamental concepts of leadership. Emphasis is placed on the supervisor's major functions and essential areas of knowledge, his or her relations with others, and his or her personal development.

OLS 284
LEADERSHIP PROCESS
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
An in-depth study of a sequence of manager actions that influence employees to achieve desired performance results. How these manager actions are transformed by employers into desired performance also is covered.

OLS 331
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY & HEALTH
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A presentation of those aspects of occupational safety and health that are most essential to the first-line supervisor. Emphasis is placed on developing an understanding of the economic, legal, and social factors related to providing a safe and healthy work environment.

OLS 376
HUMAN RESOURCE ISSUES
Prerequisite:OLS 386 & OLS 388. OLS MAJORS ONLY Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Analysis and discussion of selected case problems concerning typical personnel situations that impact upon the supervisor. Emphasis directed toward development of student attitude, philosophy, analytical ability, and problem solving skills within the working environment.

OLS 386
MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE
Prerequisite:OLS 252 & 274 Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A survey of the concepts that provide a foundation for the understanding of leadership and its relationship to the management of organizational change, with special emphasis on managing the human side of quality improvement.

OLS 388
LEADERSHIP FOR TEAM DEVELOPMENT
Prerequisite:OLS 252 & 264 Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
An in-depth study of self-directoed work teams and team processes in the work setting, with a view to understanding team functions under varying task conditions. Especially emphasized will be the leadership of teams for effective performance and maximum member satisfactions. This course deals extensively with maintenance and task behaviors of team members.

OLS 399B
PRINCIPLES OF PERSUASION
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Persuasion and its effects, ranging from individual influences to societal impacts. Various perspectives and models of persuasion are examined, including classical and modern approaches. Both theoretical and pragmatic considerations are introduced.

OLS 474
CONFERENCE LEADERSHIP
Prerequisite:OLS 386 & OLS 388. OLS MAJORS ONLY. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
The practical application of presenting technical information and conducting problem-solving and decision-making conferences or meetings. Emphasis is placed on leading and facilitating interactive conferences as well as structuring information for effective presentations.

OLS 484
LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES FOR QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY
Prerequisite:OLS 386, OLS 388, & IT 342. OLS MAUORS ONLY. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A study of how organizational leaders create an environment conducive to high levels of employee self-motivation, quality, and productivity. Actual case situations are used to illustrate the application of course content.

OLS 487
LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY
Prerequisite:OLS 386 & OLS 388. OLS MAJORS ONLY. Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Review of current managerial education and development theories and practices; discussions of fundamental social, economic, and political changes affecting business and the work of managing; implications of these changes for individual manager development and continued growth.

PHYS

PHYS 218
GENERAL PHYSICS I
Prerequisite: Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
Mechanics, heat, and sound, primarily for technology students.

PHYS 219
GENERAL PHYSICS II
Prerequisite: PHYS 218 Corequisite:
Credits: 4 Class Hrs.: 3 Lab Hrs.: 3
Electricity, light, and modem physics, primarily for technology students.

PSY

PSY 120
ELEMENTARY PSYCHOLOGY
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
Introduction to the fundamental principles of psychology, covering particularly the topics of personality, intelligence, emotion, abnormal behavior, attention, perception, learning, memory, and thinking.

SOC

SOC 100
INTRODUCTORY SOCIOLOGY
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A survey course designed to introduce the student to the scene of human society. Fundamental concepts, description, and analysis of society, culture, the socialization process, social institutions, and social change.

STAT

STAT 301T
STATISTICS FOR TECHNOLOGY
Prerequisite: Corequisite: Credits: 3 Class Hrs.:3 Lab Hrs.:
A basic introductory statistics course with applications shown to various fields and emphasis placed on assumptions, applicability, and interpretations of various statistical techniques. Subject matter includes frequency distributions, descriptive statistics, elementary probability, normal distribution application, sampling distributions, estimation, hypothesis testing, linear regression.

2009-02-23T22:36:00.000-08:00

June 8, 2006 -- The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control have declared pandemic influenza the number one health threat facing the world today.

Key reasons that it is such a threat in the United States are the visibly palpable Hurricane Katrina debacle and the assurance of the Federal government that it will not contribute to any preparation to thwart a pandemic — the Feds have made it clear that pandemic influenza is a local problem.

St. Louis is one of the few cities trying to stay ahead of the pandemic curve, thanks to workshops being conducted this spring and summer that bring together area institutions and businesses in round table formats. The Business Community and Pandemic Flu Round Table is sponsored by the Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science's Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and the University's School of Medicine. CAIT is St. Louis' center for IT training, professional development, and executive interaction for more than 25 years. More than 100 business and institutional attendees are learning to address everything from potential vaccines and medications to sick leave policy and protective gear.

Problems with Internet traffic

Information technology is an integral part of all of the problems associated with a pandemic, according to Round table director Bill Darte, CAIT senior technical associate at Washington University in St. Louis. Darte said a key, overlooked impact a pandemic would have on a community is Internet traffic and communications.

"I have significant reservations about whether the infrastructure for 'network services' will support the strategies of work-from-home that may be implemented by many organizations," Darte said." Still, I cannot say of my own knowledge that such will be the case. There are many factors that come into play. By way of example: When I work at the University, I spend a significant amount of time on the Internet. If I worked from home, what incremental impact would exist? Little, I think. On the other hand, a clerk that utilizes an internal database or application for a firm would have to communicate in the same way, but from home this would be 100 percent new traffic on the metropolitan network. And, depending upon who the ISP was for both the firm and the worker at home, there could be regional traffic loads as well."

In addition, Darte said that a pandemic could pose problems of large-scale absenteeism, and organizations and businesses need to address such concerns as sick-leave policies, protective equipment for employees, deciding who should go home and who would remain at work and keeping the illness from spreading.

He said that employees will need to successfully adapt to dramatic changes in community services — like schools, public transportation, and hospitals — while still remaining healthy, caring for their families, and maintaining the productivity that the organizations need to survive.

Since 1997, 53 countries have been infected with Avian Influenza and over half of those have happened since January 1, 2006. The U. S. government warns that the virus will make its way to the United States yet this year. Human infections have followed this spread with a case fatality rate of greater than 50 percent.

"Any community that fails to prepare with the expectation that the federal government will, at the last moment, be able to come to the rescue will be tragically wrong," according to U. S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.

St. Louis businesses employ nearly three million people. Darte said the ability to survive a pandemic influenza that may last up to 18 months will depend upon preparing operations and employees for dramatically altered circumstances and to plan in concert with business partners, community agencies and government.

"To help limit risk to business and employees, CAIT is presenting this comprehensive and condensed program that will provide business leaders with the needed information to introduce practical response policy and procedures into an organization," he said. "The overall impact to St. Louis will be the aggregate response of all individuals. Since most individuals are employees, they and the community rely on businesses to help them prepare. In addition, a community website for pandemic planning and further community organization will be developed in an effort to advance overall regional preparedness."

Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research

2009-02-23T22:35:00.000-08:00

Editorial Preface
Global Sourcing of Services: Vision 2020

Kiran Karnik, Ex- President of Nasscom, India

Research Article One
An IS Offshore Outsourcing Framework: Emerging Knowledge Requirements for IS Professionals

William R. King

University of Pittsburgh, USA

Research Article Two
An Elaboration of Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Project Sustainability in Developing Countries: Exploring the DWESA Case

Caroline Pade, Brenda Mallinson, and David Sewry

Rhodes University, South Africa

Teaching Case Article
Challenges of A Small Enterprise in the Sourcing Life Cycle: Evidence from Offshoring to India

Shailendra C. Jain Palvia

Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, USA

The Expert Opinion

An Interview with Sangita Reddy, Executive Director

Apollo Hospitals Group

Conducted and Documented by Shailendra C. Jain Palvia, Long Island University, New York, USA

Book Review
Offshoring Secrets Building & Running a Successful India Operation

By Utkarsh Rai

Published in 2008 by HappyAbout.Info, ISBN: 978-1-60005-064-9; 148 pages

Reviewed by Richard G. Platt, University of West Florida, Florida, USA

Editorial Preface
Global Sourcing of Services: Vision 2020

Kiran Karnik, Ex- President of Nasscom, India

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, the IT and ITES sector has seen strong growth. Even in times of economic down-turn, many corporations have seen IT as a means by which they can sustain their bottom-line. The industry has been evolving rapidly with developments not only in the scope and kind of work being done, but even in its business model. A major – and growing – factor driving growth in the IT and ITES sector has been the increasing out-sourcing of work, both onshore and offshore to countries like India. This has been both the result and driver of globalization.

Research Article One
An IS Offshore Outsourcing Framework: Emerging Knowledge Requirements for IS Professionals

William R. King

University of Pittsburgh, USA

ABSTRACT

The offshoring of information systems tasks has come to be a major feature of the international IS domain. This chapter introduces some basic concepts of offshoring, some reasons companies are offshoring, how offshoring has evolved, the costs and benefits of offshoring, difficulties and risks of offshoring, and the future of offshoring. It also provides a framework for analyzing IS offshoring and outsourcing decisions and discusses the emerging offshoring-related knowledge requirements for people working in the IS field. This chapter makes a case for IS professional who are knowledgeable in offshoring management by providing management and skill requirements and implications for IS/IT educational programs.

Research Article Two
An Elaboration of Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Project Sustainability in Developing Countries: Exploring the DWESA Case

Caroline Pade, Brenda Mallinson, and David Sewry

Rhodes University, South Africa

ABSTRACT

Rural development is significantly enhanced and supported by Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the use of which is highlighted by the emerging importance of information and knowledge as key strategic resources for social and economic development. An investigation of the use of ICT by rural people suggests that there are a number of barriers and constraints that are faced when taking advantage of these technologies in developing countries. These include access to infrastructure, limited formal education, insufficient training and capacity building, financial and political constraints, and social and cultural challenges. These challenges threaten the success and sustainability of rural ICT projects. Sustainability is key to the effectiveness of a rural ICT project, therefore it is important to understand the concept and categories associated with ICT project sustainability in rural areas. The categories of sustainability which include social and cultural, institutional, economic, political, and technological reveal critical success factors that need to be considered in the implementation and management of rural ICT projects. An exploration of the Dwesa Case study reveals the extent of the application of these critical success factors of sustainability.

Teaching Case Article
Challenges of A Small Enterprise in the Sourcing Life Cycle: Evidence from Offshoring to India

Shailendra C. Jain Palvia

Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, USA.

ABSTRACT

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have generally shied away from offshoring, because of issues of control, trust, scarce resources to manage legal contracts and service level agreements, and other inherent risks. This paper documents two year-long experiences with offshoring website design and development by a small client company based in USA to a small vendor company in India. It is instructional to compare and contrast the offshore outsourcing experiences of large enterprises to the experience of this small enterprise. Of particular interest are differences in the formality and structure of the outsourcing process and the implications of these differences.

The Expert Opinion
An Interview with Sangita Reddy, Executive Director

Apollo Hospitals Group

Conducted and Documented by Shailendra C. Jain Palvia, Long Island University, New York, USA

ABSTRACT

Ms. Sangita Reddy is the Executive Director (Operations) of Asia’s leading healthcare conglomerate, the Apollo Hospitals Group. She holds major leadership roles in the Group, as core member for decisions on policy, growth and strategy. Her dynamic qualities are central to the structure and values of the “Apollo Culture”. Her responsibilities extend to all the 44 hospitals of the group for the purposes of operational control across divisional heads. In addition, she holds specific functional responsibilities as Managing Director, Apollo Hyderabad division. Under her stewardship, Apollo Hyderabad has emerged as Asia’s first Health City – introducing a multidimensional holistic health care set up in India. She has been also instrumental in extending community based hospital projects, with special focus on rural areas. The concept of “Apollo Reach” is one of her ventures, aiming to build a string of secondary care hospitals in rural areas across India. In addition, Ms Reddy is Managing Director of Apollo Health Street. Under Ms. Reddy’s guidance, Apollo has become a leading offshore services firm and provides consultancy to some of the largest US payers and providers.

Book Review
Offshoring Secrets: Building & Running a Successful India Operation

By Utkarsh Rai

Published in 2008 by HappyAbout.Info, ISBN: 978-1-60005-064-9; 148 pages

Richard G. Platt, University of West Florida, Florida, USA

Outsourcing is defined as an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company that could also be, or usually have been, provided in-house. (http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid182_gci212731,00.html). Outsourcing in the IT industry is not a new phenomenon. Early providers of outsourcing in the IT industry included IBM and Electronic Data Systems (EDS). According to the EDS web site (http://www.eds.com) EDS began its service provision contracts to companies in the early 1960s and grew its business to become a 20+ billion USD technology service provider. Even in the midst of the 2008 economic recession, IBM announced a healthy profit in the third quarter and kept its profit projects for well into 2009, fueled in no small part by its earnings as a major service provider to many international corporations.

Information Technology: Its Application on the Small Scale Industries Sector

2009-02-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

This book entitled �Information Technology- Its Application of the SSI Sector� is compilation of research papers presented in a UGC sponsored seminar organized at Cardemom Planters Association College Bodinayakanur (Madurai Kamaraj University) under the Directorship of Dr. S. Maria John, Reader in Commerce C.P.A. College Bodinayakanur. The seminar was organized mainly to focus the role of IT and its applications. Accordingly research papers were received from the faculty members of different universities and Colleges on different aspects of IT such as E-Commerce, E-Banking, Application of IT in the development of Entrepreneurship, especially SSI sector. As the contents of the articles were highly informative and are expected to be useful to the general public, research scholars, students and fellow faculty, all such articles are compiled in the form of a book. This publication is mainly intended as part of the effort in creating awareness among the readers about the need for applying IT in different walks of life.

Introduction to Information Technology & its Application

2009-02-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

Community Solutions

The Community Solutions team oversees a suite of enterprise software applications that serve the campus business community, serving the enterprise business needs of campus administrative developers and support personnel. Our suite of services focus primarily on eCommunications and Workflow Management: Group Email, programmatic mail (EMN$INET and EMN$HTML), secure messaging, the Directory Open Records Request system, the Department Contact function of the University Department System; electronic document routing, security and infrastructure (DEFINE Internals), including the Electronic Inbox and other workflow tools for both financial and non-account-based documents, plus configuration and global data handling for *DEFINE and many DEFINE-related, web-based ERP functions. We also retain responsibility for a large part of the University's eCommerce infrastructure (online retail via TX Shop as well as back-end Credit Card Processing), as well as several legacy mainframe applications still in significant use (TXMAIL, TXSEND).

Finally, as part of our work, we are investigating unified workflow and communications tools, including especially the Kuali higher ed community source ERP system, while also doing our part to address issues with the ownership of key enterprise applications, including TX Shop and the Department System.

Tools

The Tools Team provides software solutions in three broad categories: developer tools for college and administrative IT departments; lab management tools for lab managers; and configuration tools for ITS Services. The types of services provided include mainframe data access (XML Gateway), development languages and application deployment (jwebAgent and DMG), development environments (SPoD, jEdit, Eclipse), batch job networking and submission (Task Manager), lab client setup (LabMan client and server), lab client administration (LabMan console and waitlist), and configuration utilities (BevoWare, IPSec). These tools centrally address common needs and standardize campus-wide best practices.

Identity and Access Management

Many of you know the Identify and Access Management (IAM) team as the EID team, but that's just the surface of what IAM does. The IAM team has responsibility for the central authentication, authorization, directory and identity management systems for the university. The team manages over 4 million records in the core campus identity management system, known as the uTexas Identity Manager (TIM). Our directory services (TED - uTexas Enterprise Directory, TOM - TED on the mainframe, WHIPS - White Pages Directory) are central repositories of identity details that are accessible to campus systems.

The current suite of authentication products include EID authentication services for mainframe-based services and cookie-based authentication for web services not operating on the utdirect servers. This year a new authentication service will be released that will provide secure, robust, cross-platform authentication with consistent session management. Our authorization products include Apollo, a mainframe authorization repository with customizable application profiles and group management functionality, and *DPUSER, an authorization system for mainframe services including the management of Natural and Adabas resources. The IAM team also supports the ID Center by maintaining the ID Card system and the Official Visitor system.

Software Development Support

The Software Development and Support team (SWDS) provides application development for ITS administrative applications and contract services for departments. Our administrative services focus on providing users with access to the many services ITS offers. Among these services are those that allow for students, faculty, and staff to order, manage, and pay for core services such as email accounts and disk storage space through TRAC; telephone, voicemail service, and Internet wiring through MySoft and Smartvoice; and software through Software Distributions and Sales. The contract service we provide allows departments that don't have their own software developers to have customized applications built for their needs. These applications include a suite of academic services for the Jackson School of Geosciences; AdGrad, a social networking site for the Advertising department in the College of Communications; and Odonata Central, an application developed to assist Dr. John Abbott with his research of dragonflies and damselflies. Many of you were familiar with the Agile Contracts Team (ACT) in ITS Applications. While this team does not exist formally anymore we still do contract development, it's just not focused within one team.

Web Technologies

The Web Technologies Team maintains a publishing infrastructure for the University's primary Web Server, Web Central, and the University's portal, UT Direct. We provide tools, consulting, and technical documentation to assist Webmasters and Web developers throughout campus. These tools include Web scanning and monitoring tools (Urchin and WebXM), search tools (htdig), templates, content management (Oracle), database service (MySQL), and various Web publishing utilities. The team also provides accessibility and usability consulting and services to campus webmasters, as well as content development, Web design, virtual hosting service, digital video, and multimedia projects for campus departments.

Application Security Team

The Application Security Team (AST) supports secure software application development practices on campus. We develop and deliver courses and guidelines (e.g. Secure Application Development in PHP), provide access to and expertise in the use of supporting tools and technologies (e.g. AppScan Enterprise), and develop and maintain associated systems and tools (e.g. the Application Registry). The team provides also provides expertise in testing web applications for security vulnerabilities.

Forex Brokers

2008-06-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

MetaTrader 4 Forex Brokers — a list of Forex brokerage firms which support MetaTrader 4 Forex trading software as their trading platform.

PayPal Forex Brokers — a list of Forex brokers accepting PayPal on-line payment system as a way to deposit/withdraw money to/from customers' accounts.

e-gold Forex Brokers — a list of Forex brokers which accept e-gold payment system as the method of depositing/withdrawing funds to/from the trading accounts.

WebMoney Forex Brokers — a list of Forex brokers that accept WebMoney e-currency system as the fast deposit/witdhrawal method, offering high security combined with the fast transfers.

Muslim Friendly Forex Brokers — a list of Forex brokers which try to be friendly to Muslim Forex traders offering "no-interest" margin accounts.

Forex Brokers with Web Based Platform — a list of Forex brokers which fully support Forex trading without installing any trading software.

Forex Brokers with Advanced Trading Platform — a list of Forex brokers with unique and powerful Forex trading software.

Institutional Forex Brokers — a list of on-line Forex brokers which are backed by strong and respected off-line financial companies.

Forex Brokers with CFD Trading — a list of Forex broker companies that allow their traders to trade not only Forex, but also CFDs (Contracts for Difference).

ECN Forex Brokers — a list of on-line Forex brokers which act as ECNs (Electronic Communication Network) offering Forex traders highly competitive spreads.

A full list of retail Forex broker companies that offer on-line Forex trading services:

Introduction to Forex Articles

2008-06-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

Advantages of the Forex Market — by Heather Redmond

Investing in Forex — by Joe Clinton

Forex The Future Investment — by Mike Pachuta

Explosive Profits: 7 Reasons to Trade Forex — by Sorna Devadas

Why Trade the Forex? — by Susan Walker

Forex Avenue: The Road to Riches — by Scott Bianchi

Forex Trading — by Richard Goldie

Forex Enterprise — A Full Review — by Joey Merrick

Introduction To Forex Trading — by Marquez Comelab

The Benefits of Trading The Forex Market — by Marquez Comelab

Trading Forex To Advance Your Financial Position — by Jay Moncliff

The 6 Advantages Forex Trading Has Over Other Investments — by David Morrison

What Is Forex Trading? — by David Morrison

Forex Trade: Main Drawbacks of a Forex Trader — by Raul Lopez

Learn Currency Trade — Intro to The Forex Market — by Anna Rowe

Forex: Benefits of Trading the Forex Market — by Raul Lopez

Forex Trading — Understanding Commissions, Spreads and Trading Costs — by Rich Cochrane

Interested in Forex Trading? — by Jill Kane

Forex: What Is It And How Does It Work? — by Frederic Madore

Futures Versus Forex (Foreign Exchange Market) — by Jeff Slokum

Online Forex Trading — by Bob Hett

How To Get Started In Forex Trading — by Ron King

Forex Market Offers Opportunity And Information — by Jay Moncliff

Forex Glossary — by Norman Fleming

Introduction To Forex — by Norman Fleming

How To Get Started In Forex Trading — by Hana Lee

Reality of Online Forex Trading — by David Jones

Internet Marketing VS Forex Currency Trading — by Amin Sadak

Forex Made Easy for Everyone — by Brian Kolewe

Forex Trading — Opportunities for Individuals — by Anthony Trister

Your Mother Could Make Money In Forex Trading — by Wayne Watson

The History of Forex Trading — by Divyansh Sharma

A Short Introduction To Forex — by Adrian Pablo

Forex 101: Make Money with Currency Trading — by Rich McIver

Online Forex — by Rafik Patel

Shoes Or Forex? — by Marquez Comelab

Forex 101 — by John Sanderson

Currency Trading Is Not The Monopoly Of The Nerds And The Geeks — by Sara Chambers

What Is Rollover Interest In The Forex Market? — by Martin Maier

Investment Myths And The Forex Markets — by David Mclauchlan

The Forex Market And Its Three Distinctive Elements — by David Mclauchlan

The Prime Time For Daily Forex Trading — by David Mclauchlan

A Forex Quickie — How To Get An Educated Quick Start — by David Mclauchlan

Forex Trading, What Hours Should I Be Ready For Trading? — by Adrian Pablo

The Pros and Cons, of Trading a Forex Trading Demonstration Account — by Bill Boyd

Forex: Starting your own trading — by Andrey Moraru

Forex Practice Accounts — Are Demo Accounts Really a Good Thing? — by Paul Bryan

EUR/USD Down for the First Day This Week

2008-06-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

EUR/USD posted its first daily decline this week today — it went down from 1.5528 to 1.5489. Even bad employment data didn’t help the euro to get higher against the U.S. dollar.

Initial jobless claims fell from 386k to 381k last week, but nevertheless were higher than 375k forecast.

May leading indicators rose 0.1% in May a similar growth in April and forecasted stagnation for this month.

Philadelphia Fed index decreased slightly in June — from -15.6 to -17.1. It was expected to rise to -10.

FOREX SOFTWARE

2008-06-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

1. MetaTrader 4Best client Forex online trading and tools.Os support: Win98,WinNT, Win2000, winxp.
2. StreamsterMarketiva client software.Os support: Win98,WinNT, Win2000, winxp.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Marketiva Forex Online Trading

2008-06-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

Forex (Foreign Exchange) is the name given to the direct access trading of foreign currencies. With an average daily volume of $1.4 trillion, Forex is 46 times larger than all the futures markets combined and, for that reason, is the world's most liquid market.

A Forex Trader’s Lifestyle

2008-06-22T05:39:00.001-07:00

Whether you are a novice Forex trader or a seasoned veteran one aspect you must always take into account is to ensure your lifestyle supports successful trading. Forex trading is no different from any other endeavor in life. Whether you are employee, employer or self-employed you must take the time and effort to ensure your environment is conducive to your success.Take a look at your surroundings and make sure your lifestyle supports you being a successful Forex trader. Take in all the factors of success (how YOU define success) evaluate your factors to make sure your trading is:Specific – Do you have specific trading goals and objectives? Do you have a trading plan? Ask yourself is your plan to general?Measurable – Do you have systems in place to objectively measure your performance? If you don’t know your numbers then do you really have a trading business?Has a Timeline – Do you have a timeline for which you are measuring your goals and objectives against?Controllable – There are many aspects in Forex trading you can’t control, ensure that the areas your can control are firmly defined and managed with discipline.Programmed Into Your Lifestyle – Are your Forex trading activities programmed and congruent with your lifestyle? Balance is important so make sure this passes the test!Taken in Small Steps - This business is a marathon and not a sprint. Start off with small steps and build. The best practice trading principals do not change with account size.Accountable – Forex trading (or any trading for that matter) can be such an isolated activity. Find ways to have others participate and hold you accountable for your goals. Make it real and measurable!True Forex success is built through smart work and dedication. By establishing the trading lifestyle that best supports your personality will guarantee prolonged success. Remember, it is your Forex Journey. Be sure you enjoy the ride!Happy Trading!!

Suddenly, It's a Bleak Midwinter for Housing and Lending

2008-06-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering how the housing market collapse in the US will impact your favorite Central Banker (and interest rates), here's an interesting article to help support your fundamental Forex analysis:***************************************Suddenly, It's a Bleak Midwinter for Housing and LendingBy Susan C. Walker, Elliott Wave InternationalJanuary 7, 2008 In the bleak midwinter, Frosty wind made moan,Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone…(From "A Christmas Carol" by Christina Rossetti)Shawn Colvin sings a beautiful song based on this poem by Christina Rossetti, reminding us of the bleakness of midwinter. That is exactly where the housing market seems to be now – facing its very own bleak midwinter of falling prices, rising mortgage rates and growing inventories.The latest report of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index shows that the price of houses fell 6.7% in October, year over year. That is the largest year-to-year decline drop since April 1991.Think of it – if you had bought a home for $300,000 in October 2006, it is now worth about $280,000. And suppose you just got a new job and need to move? You are going to have trouble selling it at that price, too, thanks to so many foreclosed homes on the market. One realtor in Phoenix explained to a Wall Street Journal reporter that local residents are now competing with foreclosed homes selling for $50,000 to $100,000 less than other houses on the market. "The sellers now are having to reduce their prices by 20% to 30% to compete," she says. (Wall Street Journal, "Pace of Decline in Home Prices Sets a Record," 12/27/07)At a meeting of the New York Society of Security Analysts on January 7, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said this about the U.S. economy: "We will likely have further indications of slower growth in the weeks and months ahead.''Paulson and central bankers at the U.S. Federal Reserve recognize that they, too, face their own bleak financial midwinter. It's not just the mayhem brought on by the subprime mortgage debacle, the implosion of the housing market and the ensuing credit crunch; nor is it that the U.S. economy lurches toward a recession and hard times.No, it is something bigger than that. Public opinion or social mood, as we call it here at Elliott Wave International, has shifted from positive to negative. When that happens, financial heroes find themselves falling from their pedestals onto frozen earth hard as iron.Exhibit A - The headline of a recent article on Bloomberg: "Paulson Gets Diminishing Return with Bush, Like Powell, O'Neill" and the lead: "Henry Paulson escaped the Nixon White House with his reputation enhanced. He won't be so lucky this time around."Exhibit B - The lead from a recent column by David Ignatius in the Washington Post:"When airport rescue crews are worried that a damaged plane may have a crash landing, they sometimes spread the runway with foam to reduce the probability of fire on impact. That's what the Federal Reserve and other central banks are doing in pumping liquidity into severely damaged financial markets. Make no mistake: The central bankers' announcement Wednesday of a new coordinated effort to pump cash into the global financial system is a sign of their nervousness…."Nervousness is in the air now. Investors are anxious about the markets; everyone is worried about the housing market.Our Elliott Wave Financial Forecast December issue explains how housing starts (and stops) are intimately tied to recessions: "One key indicator of success in pre-dating economic downturns is housing starts, which are approaching the 1-million-a-month level that has preceded all recessions of the last 40 years." And the Fed is nervous, too. So much so that it announced a credit giveaway with four other major central banks (the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank) in mid-December to try to bolster the financial system and the banks that keep it humming. The Fed reports that banks have been stepping up to its auction window each week to purchase $20 billion. Unfortunately for the banks, most of this "liquidity" isn't that liquid. It has to be paid back within 30 days, with interest of about 4.65%.Editor's note: Elliott Wave International has agreed to make available to our readers a 2-1/2-page excerpt from Bob Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist in which he describes exactly how the Fed's latest effort to shore up banks' balance sheets has become "High Noon for the Fed's Credibility." Click here to read the Theorist excerpt.Just how bleak is the future for central bankers if this recently implemented plan doesn't work? Bob Prechter explains in his just-published Theorist:"Nevertheless, this is probably the single most important central-bank pronouncement yet. But it is not significant for the reasons people think. By far most people take such pronouncements at face value, presume that what the authorities promise will happen and reason from there. But the tremendous significance of this seismic engagement of the monetary jawbone is that if this announcement fails to restore confidence, central bankers' credibility will evaporate.""At least that's the way historians will play it. But of course, the true causality, as elucidated by socionomics, is that an evaporation of confidence will make the central bankers' plans fail. The outcome is predicated on psychology."The "socionomics" Prechter refers to is a new social science he has introduced that studies how humans behave in groups within contexts of uncertainty – where fluctuations in social mood motivate social actions. It explains that rather than an event happening that affects social mood (for example, falling home prices make people feel bad), what really happens is that social mood changes first from positive to negative and then lousy things happen (for example, unhappy people make home prices fall). If you can adopt this point of view, then you can see that, in poetic terms, we are fast approaching a bleak midwinter for the economy and the financial markets. Susan C. Walker writes for Elliott Wave International, a market forecasting and technical analysis company. She has been an associate editor with Inc. magazine, a newspaper writer and editor, an investor relations executive and a speechwriter for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Her columns also appear regularly on FoxNews.com.***************************************Happy Trading!!

Regret Will Kill Your Forex Account

2008-06-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

OK, so you just pulled the trigger on a trade and every bone in your body told you not to. You violated the rules dictated in your trade plan and you watched a small profit immediately turn into a major loss.Sound familiar? What do you do?You get over it, that’s what you do! Regret over a bad trade will eat your account from the inside out. Regret is a more powerful emotion than most traders recognize. It is like the unwanted guest that keeps living off of your bank account until there is no more left. It takes most traders into a tailspin that they will never recover. It can lead to dangerous psychological results such as failure to pull the trigger over even worse, paralysis by analysis.“Yeah, but…” (I will save the disempowerment of this statement for another day)It’s not easy putting those emotions aside when your money is on the line. That’s why they called it trading, folks. In Forex someone is on the other side of the trade controlling their emotions and eventually controlling your account balance. If you want to find consistency you must never let regret live in your trading experience. Here’s what I do to combat this debilitating emotion … I get over it! How do I do this? I simply perform a post mortem of my bad trades (I still have them every now and then) and keep a detailed journal. Over time I began to recognize my personal triggers and simply tweaked my trade plan to be a more proactive currency trader and avoid the situations that led to the bad trade in the first place, in my instance over-trading or being tired.What trader do I model my approach after? The answer may surprise you!The answer is Tiger Woods.I play golf, so you could imagine I am a huge fan of Tiger Woods. There are a lot of similarities between golf and trading. Both venues offer a look at who we are as a person, raw and uncensored. Both live in the world of risk and reward. I admire Tiger Woods skill as a golfer, but even more so his mental toughness. Next time you watch Tiger Wood hit a bad shot follow his reaction. His immediate reaction is to get upset, really upset. Then count 5 seconds. His expressions and demeanor will have returned to one of focus and concentration. And the funny thing is that is doesn’t matter what kind of prize money is online. He takes the same approach to every golf shot, in every tournament.Let’s translate that to trading. Do you give yourself 5 seconds to get over a bad trade? Do you take the same approach to every trade?Stop living in the world of regret and only think about the possibilities of wining trades and you will find your experiences trading the Forex market one filled with achievement and success.Happy Trading!!ForexJourney

Why the Fed is such a Lousy Wizard of Oz

2008-06-22T05:36:00.002-07:00

Another interesting articles from my friends over at Elliottwave.********************************Why the Fed is Such a Lousy Wizard of OzBy Susan C. Walker, Elliott Wave InternationalSeptember 7, 2007 Central bankers who "follow the yellow brick road" end up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, every Labor Day weekend for their annual symposium sponsored by – who else? – the Kansas City Fed. (Who can forget Judy Garland saying to her little dog, "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," in the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz?) The Jackson Hole Resort serves as the Federal Reserve's equivalent of the Emerald City, as Fed governors and presidents meet with central bankers and economists from around the world to discuss economic issues. This year, the symposium focused on housing and monetary policy. Usually, the Fed chairman kicks off the symposium and, this year, the new chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, did the honors. He closed his speech with these words: "The interaction of housing, housing finance, and economic activity has for years been of central importance for understanding the behavior of the economy, and it will continue to be central to our thinking as we try to anticipate economic and financial developments."Then came the other speeches. And it seems that some of the guests in Emerald City were waiting for their chance to pull back the curtain and prove that the Wonderful Wizard of Oz isn't such a wizard after all. Bloomberg reported that "Federal Reserve officials, wrestling with a housing recession that jeopardizes U.S. growth, got an earful from critics at a weekend retreat, arguing they should use regulation and interest rates to prevent asset-price bubbles." Apparently, one academic paper presented at Jackson Hole graded the Fed an 'F' for the way it has handled the repercussions from the rise and fall of the housing market.Truth be told, these folks are a little late to the table as critics of the Fed. We're glad they're joining us, but here's what they still haven't learned: It isn't because the Federal Reserve messes up by allowing credit, asset and stock bubbles to form that it's not a wizard. The Federal Reserve isn't a wizard for one particular reason that it doesn't want anybody to know – and that is that the Fed doesn't lead the financial markets, it follows them. People everywhere want to believe in the Fed's wizardry. But all this talk about how the Fed will be able to help the U.S. economy and hold up the markets by cutting rates now is as much hooey as the Wizard of Oz promising Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion that he could give them what they wanted: a return to Kansas, a brain, a heart, and courage. Because when the Fed does do something, it always comes after the markets have already made their moves. If you don't believe it, you should look at one chart from the most recent Elliott Wave Financial Forecast. It compares the movements in the Fed Funds rate with the movements of the 3-month U.S. Treasury Bill Yield. What does it reveal? That the Fed has followed the T-Bill yield up and down every step of the way since 2000. And the interesting question becomes this: Since the T-bill yield has dropped nearly two points since February, how soon will the Fed cut its rate to follow the market's lead this time? [Editor's note: You can see this chart and read the Special Section it appears in by accessing the free report, The Unwonderful Wizardry of the Fed.]We've got our own brains, heart and courage here at Elliott Wave International, and we've used them to explain over and over again that putting faith in the Fed to turn around the markets and the economy is blind faith indeed. "This blind faith in the Fed's power to hold up the economy and stocks epitomizes the following definition of magic offered by Teller of the illusionist and comedy team of Penn and Teller: a 'theatrical linking of a cause with an effect that has no basis in physical reality, but that – in our hearts – ought to be.'" [September 2007, The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast]Because, you see, what makes the markets move has less to do with what the unwizardly Fed does and more with changes in the mass psychology of all the people investing in those markets. The Elliott Wave Principle describes how bullish and bearish trends in the financial markets reflect changes in social mood, from positive to negative and back again. To extend the metaphor: The Fed can't affect social mood anymore than the Wonderful Wizard of Oz could change the direction of the wind that brought his hot air balloon to the Land of Oz in the first place. As our EWI analysts write, "With respect to the timing of the Federal Reserve Board rate cuts, we need to reiterate one key point. The market, not the Fed, sets rates." Being able to understand this information puts you one step closer to clicking your ruby red shoes together and whispering those magic words: "There's no place like home." Once you land back in Kansas, your eyes will open, and you will see that an unwarranted faith in the Fed was just a bad dream.Susan C. Walker writes for Elliott Wave International, a market forecasting and technical analysis company. She has been an associate editor with Inc. magazine, a newspaper writer and editor, an investor relations executive and a speechwriter for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Her columns also appear regularly on FoxNews.com. *********************************Happy Trading!!ForexJourney

How to Adopt the Traits of a Successful Trader

2008-06-22T05:36:00.001-07:00

Hey Traders,Here's a post by Heather Johnson that will serve you well in your trading – Enjoy!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Not all Forex traders were cut from the same cloth, but the most successful investors do have several things in common. Whether you are a newcomer to trading or you are a seasoned pro who is trying to improve your game plan, the following suggestions may help you out. Below are five ways to evolve into a successful trader:1. Become a lifelong student – Never stop learning about the business you are in. If you think you know everything about the Forex market, then think again. The successful trader is a lifelong student who constantly absorbs new information about the ever-evolving climate of Forex trading. 2. Be courageous – It's hard to overcome your fears when you are dealing with an unpredictable investment. Even if you are equipped with extensive knowledge about the market, you still have to put your money at risk every day. Reserve a small amount of apprehension (just enough to keep you sensible), but don't hesitate at every turn.3. Hone your math skills – You are wading through a sea of mathematical information every day when you look over your charts. The most successful traders know how to take that large amount of information and pull out necessary information.4. Be patient – Become a long-term investor and put all notions of overnight success to rest. You must adopt a stoic attitude, as you make the most informed decisions about your business and leave the rest to fate.5. Learn to love trading – Maybe you already do love trading and that's why you are involved with Forex. However, many people are either too wrought with anxiety to enjoy it or merely see it as a job. If you don't like trading, don't trade. A great trader will love the roller coaster ride he/she is on.Are the above suggestions obvious? Perhaps, but many of us take a wrong turn somewhere and need some simple advice to get us back on track. In order to stay on top of your game, you will need to constantly reinvent yourself, as there is no world that calls for flexibility more than the Forex market.About the Author:Heather Johnson is a freelance finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor for CurrencyTrading.net, a site for currency trading and forex tradinginformation. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com .ForexJourney.com

Trust Yourself

2008-06-22T05:34:00.000-07:00

When you turn on the TV (especially mainstream media) you are inundated with news of the demise of the dollar. Business news, national news and even your local news channels are leading into events with reports of the dollar and the economy. Analysts are featured and opinions are smattered across the airwaves in an attempt to provide an oracle response to current economic events.Beware the source and follow your system.In these volatile times it is easy to get caught up in the hype provide by all the news media and analyst. It is natural to want to look for guidance. Remember to trust your system and more important trust yourself. You, after all, are the single largest determinant of your success.Your approach should remain consistent, almost impervious to the events occurring because you follow your plan with discipline and ruthless detail to executing at optimum performance.Be disciplined and follow your plan. If market conditions don’t suite your style – sit this one out until conditions provide your with your personal edge!Happy Trading!!ForexJourney

Do you have what it takes to become a successful Forex Trader?

2008-06-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

Forex trading, or any trading for that matter, is an occupation that requires experience and the accumulation of proficiency not unlike any other highly skilled profession. Whether you are a leading executive at a major publically traded company, a professional golfer or trading from your kitchen table, there are 5 key ingredients that one must possess in order to become successful.

1. You must be Passionate about what you do.As Forex traders we all face one unique set of circumstances that does not exist in any other profession. We get rewarded for when we succeed and equally punished when we don’t! Could you image a corporate worker one quarter receiving a significant accomplishment bonus and the next quarter actually getting money taken from their paycheck for missing performance targets? Not on your life! We do as Forex traders and that is why passion for what you do will carry you through the tough times that are part of your trading business. Asked yourself why you trade currencies and would you still do it if Forex were not potentially lucrative? Your answers will be quite revealing. You’ve got to feel your passion for trading!2. You have to Apply Yourself and work hard at it.I talk to so many people that enter into Forex trading with the aspiration of getting rich quick. Without putting the time and energy into really getting good at trading I see them jump from strategy to strategy looking for the goose that will lay the golden egg and eventually quitting while blaming everything else, except the true cause.I got news for you – you are the goose and your Forex education is the golden egg. The magic has always resided with the magician and not some strategy. Work hard at trading and the rewards will eventually come your way. Remember what Tiger Woods said, “Funny, the harder I work the luckier I get.” Apply yourself as a trader and it will be no accident when your account begins to blossom.3. You must Focus to really get good at what you do.Now here is the hurdle most Forex traders struggle to get over. You have the passion and you are applying yourself to your trade, now focus and really get good at just at what you are doing. Be the expert to the experts at just that one thing. Become the master of a strategy or risk management methodologies. Really focus on getting good at it.Stop jumping around or getting pulled from the last “latest and greatest” into the next “latest and greatest” and focus on one aspect of Forex trading and know it inside out. Know it strengths and weakness. Set your sights on becoming expert on just one aspect of trading and watch it spill over in all other aspects for your currency trading. This is the time to fail forward fast, use every setback as a learning opportunity that will propel you 3-steps ahead!4. You must Push Yourself beyond the point everyone else might have quite. In Forex Trading this is simple. Assume there is someone on the other side of your trade that is pushing themselves and sharpening their edge. To be successful you must you must do the same thing. Now is the time to examine your mental edge. Do you know the single most critical factor in any currency trade? It is you, the trader! Sharpening you mental edge is the most difficult aspect of trading, but also the most rewarding.Start with your Forex education and gain the self-awareness necessary to maximize your strengths and suppress your weaknesses. Any expert will tell you that trading is 80% mental. It’s time to sharpen your trading to the razor’s edge and you do this through Forex education. A constant and never ending process that will become the cornerstone of your Forex experience.5. You must, without wavering, be Determined and Persist to your objective.You will fail. I can state that emphatically. However, you will not be defeated unless you allow your failures to control your trading. It is the old adage; failure is not falling of your horse, failure is refusing to get back on. Your success depends on your ability to dismiss the criticism, rejection, self-doubt and pressures associated with Forex trading.Defining what is a winning trade, losing trade and bad trade will go a long way into developing you as a successful trader. Without the determination and persistence in all aspects of your trading life, obstacle will definitely appear closer and larger than they actually are.Take a moment and assess yourself and your trading. Do you have the key elements to succeed? Which areas are presents development opportunities? When conducting a self-evaluation it is critical to be totally upfront and honest with yourself. After all, you will only be dishonest with yourself. One of the most interesting observations you can make is that all key success factors are interwoven. One factor supports the other. This is why your Forex education is a continuous journey of forex strategy, money management and self-mastery. Set these factors as your Forex education goals and take your currency trading to new heights.Happy Trading!!