Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Forex trading as a hedge to the potential demise of King Dollar

I just published an article about using the Forex market as a hedge to the demise of the US Dollar. This post provides an overview of the article and several "low cost to no cost" yet effective ways to determine if this wealth creating strategy is for you.

The Forex currency market is a $4T market and the largest market on the planet. Due to the liquidity of the Forex market and the fact that this market is open 24 hours a day, the currency market should be considered by anyone pursuing alternative wealth creating strategies.

Also, the Forex currency market can offer a hedge as you can trade in currency pairs, such as the EUR USD (which is the value of the Euro currency compared to the value of the US Dollar currency) where as the USD weakens, the Euro currency strengthens.

There are also currency pairs, such as the GBP JPY (which is the value of the Great British Pound currency compared to the value of the Japanese Yen currency) providing investment alternatives in totally non dollar-denominated assets … a great way to hedge against the potential demise of the USD.

If you like this alternative but not sure where to begin … let me provide in this blog post a few pointers for consideration. The entire article can be found here .

Be aware that there is a lot of “junk” and misleading information on the web related to training and trading the Forex market. Be sure to do your homework before you go too far with any one training provider, trading platform, or broker.

A company that I found and use provides 35 free training lessons on their website and the lessons are of the highest quality. They also discourage you from signing up for their trading service until after you have reviewed the 35 lessons and paper traded their big lights and trend trading approach. This way you get a lot of free material and a low cost way to learn about the Forex market to determine if their approach will work for you.

Also, consider attending a training session.

I recently attended a very inexpensive seminar where the material was in an instructor lead format (which is rare these days) with significant face-to-face interaction however all of the materials were delivered during the seminar online from their website and associated blog. There was a significant amount of supporting materials such as detailed lessons and trading tips to read and study, pictures of trading screen setups highlighted on Flickr, and Youtube videos of previous training sessions that can be accessed in the future, as a refresher.

As a student, I was able to bookmark the material for access and review a future time.

The seminar was organized around 5 key topics:

- chart reading
- support and resistance
- parallel and inverse pair analysis
- writing trading plans; and
- entry management and verification

In addition, there were several topics on mindset, building confidence, and determining when there are good times to trade … and, when are times to avoid trading.

I trust this material has provided you insight and an overview … as you consider the Forex currency market as a hedge to the potential demise of the US Dollar.

One more suggestion would be to read an excellent “state-of-the union” message on the hubpage of the instructor that taught the seminar I recently attended. The "state-of-the-union" message can be found here .

You can find out more about the Forex marketplace and the Forex Early Warning seminar by reading updates posted periodically here on my blog.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “financial education and empowerment is the key to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis."

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook : www.facebook.com/mifarrell

Follow me on my blog: http://aspenIbiz.blogspot.com

Watch me at my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/MikeAIB

Join my venture at: www.aspenIbiz.com

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing multiple streams of income and opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

Watch my video update of the article and this blog post here.

Monday, September 21, 2009

$200B of supply to be auctioned by US Gov't next week

I saw this headline yesterday … $200B of supply to be auctioned by US Gov’t next week … and I thought of 3 things.

1) This is an interesting way for the US Gov’t to say they want to borrow $200B next week from anyone that will lend them that amount of money … overall, it is somewhat vague and potentially misleading. What the headline is saying is that the US Gov’t has $200B of debt instruments like Bills, Notes, and Bonds that they will supply, or provide, as collateral to anyone that will lend the US Gov’t $200B next week.

2) Next, I thought, “what do most people think when they see that type of headline?” … “do they really understand what is going on?”. I wrote an article several weeks ago titled “Decades of Debt and Dollar Doubts. It provides a brief overview to help you understand what all this debt issuance means in terms of annual run rate at $5T, 40% of budget is being used to pay interest on the debt, how inflation might happen, and the potential risk of the US Dollar not being the world’s reserve currency.

3) Finally, I thought, “where is this $200B going to come from?” “Who is going to buy all the debt instruments?” Many domestic buyers are underwater here in the USA and trying to pay off their personal and business debt, so most of the buyers of US Gov’t debt will be from overseas. In a report released this week, the TIC (Treasury International Capital) Long-Term Purchases amount for last month was significantly below both the forecast amount and the previous month’s amount … this means that at this time, overseas buyers are less interested in our debt.

With that much supply of debt instruments (meaning money to be borrowed) and what most likely will be lower demand for this debt, the offering prices for this debt will likely be low (just following basic laws of supply and demand). One of two situations is likely to occur next week when this debt is auctioned off. Either the yield amount will be increased to entice buyers or the Federal Reserve Bank will buy the debt.

If the yield amount is increased over several auctions, this would be an indication that higher interest rates are on the horizon. With higher interest rates, many think any type of economic recovery will be jeopardized.

If the Federal Reserve buys the debt, it will just add to the many facets of Dollar Doubts described in the article.

In the meantime, many are asking what they should do to protect themselves from what yet maybe another upcoming crisis. Many are seeking to obtain more financial education and literacy in order to be aware of, and understand, alternative wealth creating strategies that are outside of dollar-denominated assets or in things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … perhaps oil rigs, precious metals, or potash mines.

When you get a chance to read the article, I trust you will find it insightful. You can read the entire article here: http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/1053164?articleid=1053164 .


Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at: www.facebook.com/mifarrell ;
Follow me here on my blog: http://aspenibiz.blogspot.com/ ;
Watch me at: www.youtube.com/user/MikeAIB ;
Join my venture at: http://www.aspenibiz.com/ ;

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow join my venture link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz7ycxabaYM .

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

WizeFEST 2009: an update from the front line

I recently attended WizeFEST 2009 in Dallas, TX. It was a conference of traders for traders that are primarily users of trading tools offered by The WizeTRADE Group.

This event was held at the Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center in downtown Dallas where there were over 60 classes spread over several days on trading methods and techniques, several general sessions with inspirational speakers providing insight and offering guidelines to develop a balanced lifestyle, and an Exhibition Hall, open more than 10 hours a day, full of trading tools from The WizeTrade Group and several partners that were being constantly demonstrated by experienced traders and trainers.

Classes covered how-to trade in stocks, options, forex, and commodities. Several classes were conducted by former traders and trainers at The WizeTrade Group who have gone on and are now key contributors on CNBC (where they are frequently seen) on various segments throughout the trading day.

Speakers included Stuart Varney, business reporter and journalist of Fox News, and Chris Gardner, who was the key figure of the movie “Pursuit of Happyness”.

Several of the recently released products from The WizeTrade Group that had large crowds of people around their booth include 4xTracker (which seems to be everything of CommandTradeFX except the automatic trade execution) and WizeTrade Commodities (now offering over 50 tradable markets with new markets in the Grains, Financials, Metals, Indices, Energy, Meats, and the Softs). Alan Knuckman, formerly with The WizeTrade Group, made a guest appearance and conducted a class showing how “It ALL comes back to commodities” highlighting the updated version of WizeTrade Commodities.

This conference is outstanding every year yet somehow it continues to exceed the expectations set by previous year’s events. It is an amazing group of people … traders for traders … providing clarity through community.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte, I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improving their ability for personal sustainability, and to contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes … Forbes says “financial education and empowerment from the pursuit of wealth creating strategies are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis”.

I invite you to:

Meet me at: www.facebook.com/mifarrell ;
Follow me here on my blog: http://aspenIbiz.blogspot.com ;
Watch me at: www.youtube.com/user/MikeAIB ;
Join my venture at: www.aspenIbiz.com .

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1CPvGivZb0