The derivatives market is the biggest market in the world and futures contracts are among the oldest investing instruments in history.In this article, we are going to make an introduction to the futures contracts and present the futures spread strategy.Photo byVenti ViewsonUnsplashWhat is an Index Futures Contract?In 1864, futures contracts based on grain became available as a trading vehicle and before 1970, all futures contracts had strictly commodities as underline assets. Today, futures contracts can be derived from stock indices, interest rates, forex, etc.A futures contract, in its basic definition, is a promise for receiving or delivering a predefined quantity of an underline asset at a predetermined date in the future.Perpetual futures, on the other side, do not have a predefi

Continuing the “technofundamental” approach to market trading, this article with be focused on another more modern legendary trader, Mark Minervini.DISCLAIMER: His books and course offer too much material for study and thus this article cannot be considered a replacement.The image has been taken fromhttps://www.tradingreviewers.comMark Minervini was born in 1965 in Queens, New York, and bought his first stock at the age of 18 in the year 1983, although he would be profitable at a later point in his career in the late 80s.He hasn’t spoken much about his family and private life, and education, so this information is not known, although in his interview he mentioned that he “started as a quant”. He might have also attended the University of Maryland.The facts that are known for him are his co

Continuing from “your starting guide on price action and Japanese candlesticks”, in this article we are going to start building our price action toolkit with our first single candlestick recognition and meaning.Trend Bars versus Trading Range BarsAl Brooks in his book “Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar” start by defining the two different types of Japanese candlesticks by saying that “every bar is either a trend bar or a trading range bar”.The trend bars have a body that is at least half the size of the overall bar and it shows either a bullish or bearish tendency.The trading range bars are closer to what it would be defined as doji, where the buyers and the sellers came to an almost equilibrium and thus the candlestick doesn’t show any direction tendency.With blue arrow the trading bars, an

William O’Neil is one of the most influential traders of the 20th century. His lessons are been derived from master traders like Jesse Livermore, Nicolas Darvas, and Richard Wyckoff. His CAN SLIM trading method not only made him very successful but influenced many successful traders until today.The CAN SLIM MethodWilliam O’Neil, after his extensive research, concluded that every top-performing stock shares some common characteristics. The CAN SLIM abbreviation has summed up these characteristics. Each of these numbers is used as stock searching criteria in a stock screening application.The earnings of a company, as you are about to find out, is, according to O’Neil, one of the most important things when trying to pick a winner stock. The Earnings Per Share (EPS) is calculated by takin

A day trader with a vast library of free content, but also with a free day-trading and swing trading channels, Tom Hougaard is certainly a trading source that deserves attention and study.The image has been taken fromhttps://www.linkedin.com/Tom Hougaard was born in 1969 in Denmark. He gained his Bachelor of Science in economics and Master of Science degree in money, banking, and finance from the University of Wales and Birmingham in the UK, where he moved in 1992 at 23.After finishing his education, he started his career by working for the American bank J.P. Morgan, and after he left the company “Financial Spreads” in 2022, he went to work for “City Index” until 2009. This year was the year that he started his trading career.Tom Hougaard uses theeSignal platformto analyze the markets, che

There are many ways to price the market. One famous that accomplishes that is the CAPM method, which is analyzed in “The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) by William Sharp” article. The downside of the CAPM method is that it is more suitable for longer-term use. For a shorter, intra-day use, a more practical approach would be to price the market according to the market action theory.Photo bySasun BughdaryanonUnsplashThe Life of Pail Samuelson and The Market Auction TheoryPaul Samuelson (1915–2009), was born in Indiana in the US and grew up the Chicago. When in high school, Samuelson started studying the stock market, up to the point where he helped his teacher to select stocks in which he would invest. It was the booming market of the ’20s after all.Samuelson would receive his bachelor’s

Continuing the “A Relatively Quick Probability Crash Course” article series, this article will be examined the Bernoulli Trial.Daniel BernoulliDaniel Bernoulli (1700 — 1782) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist from the Enlightenment era that was born in the city of Groningen, in the Netherlands. He grew up in a distinct family of mathematicians. He lived and worked mainly in the Swiss city of Basel in Switzerland as a professor at the University of Basel from 1733 until his death. Until this day he is remembered for his contributions to fluid mechanics and probability and statistics. The concept of a Bernoulli trial is described in his book “Ars Conjectandi” (1713).Bernoulli TrialA Bernoulli trial, also known as a “binomial trial”, is an experiment that has two outcomes. One of them is

Recently, the media was talking about the U.S. debt ceiling and the struggle that the U.S. government had to convince the U.S. Congress to approve additional borrowing.In this article, the main focus will be on the Modern Monetary Theory in contrast to the U.S. debt ceiling.The Debt CeilingSince 1917, the U.S. Congress has had the power to “To borrow Money on the credit of the United States”, given by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. This mechanism sets a limit on the amount of national debt that the U.S. Treasury can hold.This debt can be used for paying social security, military salaries, tax refunds, and more. It basically helps the U.S. government’s revenues, which are mainly derived from taxes, to meet its expenditures.The U.S. government is not the only country in the w

In this article, the main focus will be on the best-selling book in technical analysis from Stan Weinstein “Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets”, as well as his general teachings.BioNot many things are known about his life. He likes to keep his private life, private.Stain Weinstein holds a degree in economics, although he claims that he “put his degree on the side” during his career.First published in 1988, the “Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets”, has become a market classic in the field of technical analysis.He is married and has three daughters.Stage AnalysisWeinstein is famous for his “Stage Analysis”. Stan identified that historically, every asset follows the same price action cycle, and dived into four stages.Stage 1 — The price has been dropping for a while an

In this article, the main focus would be the MSCI Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) that defines sectors, and industries. $MSCI Inc(MSCI)$HistorySince 1999, MSCI, S&P, and Dow Jones have collaborated in order to create the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). The goal of the documents is to standardize the categorization and classification of securities in the investment process.SectorsAt the top level, as the broader categories, are the sectors, which are 11:EnergyMaterialsIndustrialsConsumer DiscretionaryConsumer StaplesHealth CareFinancialsInformation TechnologyCommunication ServicesUtilitiesReal EstateIndustriesEach of these 11 sectors, of course, has corresponding industries, and in the following ex