That’s what we can deduct from the adviceIQ.com survey displayed below. It says that women are not interested in finance (in the US, though. In Japan, you know it’s not true).

We can also see that in the lack of presence of women within our Forex contest. “More girls” was actually requested by a couple of guys in our own recent survey (more on the survey results in the coming days).

Not long ago, one of our top overall ranked traders was a woman. Yes, was. Turned out to be a dude illegitimately using someone else’s account. Too bad, it was the biggest “girl power” account on our contest!

(I suggest you to (re)discover these posts about the Forex market and genders.)

What would you suggest to make the contest more feminine?

Trade well… guys.

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Number 9 of April shares his views about Forex and stock trading.

Meet rodpau.

Rod, 36, Philippines, Editorial Support Agent

Can you introduce yourself (hobbies, interests …etc.)?

I am an avid trader of the Philipino equities. Our country ranked 3^rd behind Japan and Argentina in the stock market performance last year.  I trade the Philippine Stock Exchange and focus on low capital and high volatility stocks, which are as volatile as the Forex market.

For how long have you been on the Forex Championship? For you, trading in Forex is a hobby or an occupation?

I have been in The Forex Championship since 22 July 2012. Right now I consider it a hobby. I do plan to be a full time independent trader because I believe that I can become consistently profitable.

How did you hear about The Forex Championship?

I heard about The Forex Championship on Google Search when I was looking for a competition to practice Forex trading a year ago.

Is there another trader (in the Championship or somewhere else) who inspires you?

George Soros inspires me, because he has a philosophical approach for trading.

What was your best trade and your worst trade?

200 pips USD/JPY and -102 pips XAG/USD.

What are your trading styles (scalping, trading the trend, trading the news, hedging…etc.) and schedules?

I don’t have a specific trading style; I just want to test if the market approves the news or sells the news.

How would you describe your trading strategy (daily, weekly and monthly objectives, take profit, stop loss…etc.)?

My strategy is to test the market on a prevailing sentiment. If I am right I ride it, but when I am wrong I cut my losses.

What would be your advice to traders?

Trading is a philosophy, it should have a premise, a conclusion and the market as the judge.

Do you check our market news and analysis? If yes, do you find them useful or can they be improved?

Yes I check them and they provide an overview of the market.  I find them useful.

Do you have other sources of information? If yes, which ones?

I watch CNBC and browse Finance Manila forum, DailyFX and Kathy Lien.

Anything else you would like to add?

Thanks to The Forex Championship for being a gathering of Forex traders and also for rewarding the best traders.

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Another week particularly rich in statistics with highlights Thursday on real estate indices with housing starts and building permits. There’s also the Philadelphia Fed Index (May), Jobless claims (weekly) and the Consumer Price Index (April) on the same day.

On Tuesday, investors will also monitor import prices, and prices for industrial production on Wednesday.

For me, the tendency on the EUR/USD is bullish, if it breaks 1.29 then it would offer a new buy signal for an extension of the bullish rally towards 1.31 or higher, if this level is exceeded. In case of a return below 1.2750, then it will be a sell signal. Traders can then consider shorting their positions.

The tendency on the USD/JPY is bullish after the bullish rally these recent weeks and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announcing an overhaul of its monetary policy, whose primary objective is now to increase the money supply, and not the daily interest rate anymore, which will lead among other things to buy large amounts of bonds.

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Hey traders,

We’ve just randomly picked a winner and the lucky guy is clapotis.

He will receive an iPad Mini, as promised. Don’t hate him for being so lucky ;)

By now, you all (survey participants) also received your 30 FXMiles.

Thanks to the survey, we received a lot of interesting suggestions and we’re currently looking into them.

Congrats to clapotis and thanks to all for participating.

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The dollar eased from a four and a half year high versus the Japanese yen on Thursday, weighed by downbeat factory data from the United States while strong growth data from Japan supported the Nipponese currency. The greenback pulled away from its highs versus most of its major peers as industrial production fell more than expected and the manufacturing survey for the New York area showed a contraction in May.

This latest bout of data from the world’s largest economy showed that the recovery is not uniformly strong and raised doubts on when the Federal Reserve will scale back on their easing program. On the other hand, overnight data from Japan showed the economy grew much faster than expected. Japan’s economy grew by 0.9 percent in the first quarter versus consensus for 0.7 percent, the quickest pace in a year as Prime Minister Abe’s aggressive stimulus seems to be paying off so far.

USD/JPY fell from its peak of 102.76 yesterday and is trading around 102.30 this morning.

The euro has been under pressure from yesterday and hovered close to a six-week low in Asian trading after data showed France has slid back into a recession and the euro area contracted for a sixth consecutive quarter. The single currency is also being weighed by expectations that the inflation report to be published today will confirm consumer prices rose at their slowest pace in three years.

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The Ira Sohn Investment research conference was founded in 1996 by friends and colleagues of Ira W. Sohn after he died from cancer. Its purpose is to raise money for cancer research and it became a popular event on Wall Street “where top money managers discuss their favourite stock picks”.

Zerohedge.com highlighted the most valuable delivered info and we narrowed it to what is of better interest for you: currencies (and commodities).

-          Singer talks about the global banking environment, notes that it is opaque and very highly leveraged.

-          The Yen will continue to weaken and the JPY could hit 120, he sees Japan CPI hitting 2% in the next couple of years.  He calls the current policy of QE in Japan “adding a ponzi scheme to a ponzi scheme.”

-          Commences by calling QE a nuclear weapon and believes that Bernanke has embarked on the wrong policy. But he notes that listening to Bernanke shows that he’s not going “wobbly anytime.”

-          No condition of Bear market until Fed changes – so expect the market to continue to rise.

-          On commodities, he says that the super-cycle is ending and believes that they’re a “poisonous cocktail” in commodities when it comes to China.

-          He says he thinks the AUD will sell-off hard.

-          Gundlach says that everything is backwards and that although he expects QE to continue, he thinks that the Fed Minutes show “talk” about ending QE, just for the illusion.

-          He says investors should NOT be asking when QE is going to end, but they should be asking how to invest if it never does.

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The Eurozone crisis regularly brings the delicate tax evasion topic on stage (Greece, France, Cyprus…etc.).

The chart below displays the estimated loss revenue due to tax evasion in percentage of the GDP.

While we would expect some countries to have a strong tax evasion percentage (France…), you will be surprised by a few figures (Germany!)

If your country isn’t listed, add it in the comments and put your own estimation.

Trade well

The Shadow Economy infographic by davidmatton.

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I know some of you want to work as a trader in a financial institution (see interviews here and there) and use this trading contest as a training/improvement/knowledge facility. Those will love this post on businessinsider.com where a day in the life of a trader at a Wall Street bank is realistically described.

No hype, no drama, no fantasy. It even states the typical unspoken office rules. Without further ado, here are a few selected pieces:

5:45: Wake up. No matter which desk you end up on, you are most likely going to be waking up around this time.

Adjust your sleeping habits accordingly or suffer for most of the day. Also keep in mind that even if you go out the night before, you are still expected to be in on time and alert. Any signs that you are at less than 100% capacity will be looked upon very badly.

7:30: Morning meeting with sales and research, which is generally the worst moment of your entire day if you have had a rough night out (Samy’s note: I have a friend who’s trader in Hong Kong and who told me exactly the same thing). The macro summary is given, and then everyone discusses important research updates.

8:30: Finally send off last of the prices, get some time to look at how the book is doing, and start phoning up brokers and start working some trades.

Options on single stocks in Europe trade a bit differently than in the US because the liquidity is not the same – the issue is that screen prices are kept very tight in extremely small sizes, and clients expect the same spreads in sizes that are 50x larger.

But the problem is that unless you can find someone to find the other side in the broker market, you will get wider prices with brokers than you give to your clients.

This means that to survive, you constantly need to be aware of what brokers are working so that you can spot chances to offload risk.

12:00: A company you’re following announces a profit warning – unfortunately, you have a short gamma position and the stock is down 5%. This is one of the situations you hate to be in.

14:00: You get back to the desk to find 10 prices waiting for you. Lock back into the cockpit.

Pricing becomes routine after a while. This can become dangerous, especially with very small requests.

You have to make sure that for every single price, you are very rigorous in assessing all the different risks; you can easily get picked off because you missed an announcement in a company conference call that dividends were being changed or restructured, for example.

16:00: You slowly start hedging the smaller delta positions on the book so you can spend the last 15 minutes focusing on the 10-15 large positions and expiries.

This is one of the most hectic times of the day, as you need to hedge quite a large percentage of daily volume for a lot of stocks.

In addition, several prices come in for clients, and you are trying to finish off some stuff you have been working in the broker market.

On a standard day there are 20-30 things you need to be on top of, and so mentally it does stretch you a bit. Another tricky thing is that different markets close at different times of the day, so you can’t necessarily stop paying attention or finish up right away as soon as the market of the city you’re in closes.

18:45: Wrap things up and head home.

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Hi friends,

I’m trading EUR/JPY, mostly with moving averages.

There is a very interesting situation right now … So what do we have: move from 94.20 to 127.70, next corrective move to 118.70 and next Kuroda’s easing program to push the currency pair a few pips over 131.00.

All moving averages are not in this trading direction in the 4H time frame.

So my view in this pair is a future move around 120.00.

Short from 128.00, stop loss 150 pips, target price 120.00.

Wishing you good luck…

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