Independent Investor

The Financial Times have an opinion piece that is worth reading.  Speculators are doing God’s Work.  The God’s work is from the boss of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, who made a throwaway question to a journalist about the work of the bank, a quote that hit the front page and that he has regretted ever since.
Speculators are getting a bad press at the moment.  How can people make more money by guessing future prices than by making useful things?
Some people would answer, does it matter?  Money …

It sounds like a nightmare.  Why would anyone want to put their pension on the futures market?  Yes you could retire rich, but the chances are higher that you will be headed for the poorhouse.  It really does not sound like a good idea.
We will have another post later on this week about what your investment lifetime looks like and how you should deal with futures, contracts for difference and spread bets as part of that, by the way you can’t put spread bets …

The fall in the market was triggered by President Obama’s remarks about splitting up banks.  So what’s behind this split and what would this mean for the banks in the long run?
The first thing to notice is the timing.  The Democrats lost one of their safest seats in the Senate last week.  This can’t help but scare a politician.  It seems to have given the Obama team a taste of their political mortality.  There would have been some scare like this at a later …

Even though the name itself implies about futures trading, in very simple way futures trading is basically the practice of trading that includes buying and selling of a particular commodity with standardized quality at an expiration period and pre-determined market price. Apart from its name factor, when you will have the exposure and experience with direct securities like bonds and stocks, it will be an easy learning for you.
Always remember that the futures contracts are traded on a different platform than these direct securities, …

Trading covers a multitude of sins, or else at least multitude of the markets. Mention, “trading” to the non-trader and they will most likely, think of the stock & shares however but there are many other markets that you can trade. All these include futures, commodities, CFDs, indices, and options. They have their pros & cons and a few need an specialized knowledge.
Most famous markets that are used by the traders are commodities, stocks, indices, futures, and forex. Few traders switch between the …