What are ARs? Do you read books? Can recommend some of them? As for TA, do you derive your own algorithm or do you follow a fixed set of TA? Where can one learn TA easily? Thank you for answering my many many questions!

elfinchilde      ( Date: 04-Nov-2008 14:21) Posted: hmm... abt 10 years in the markets bah. or 7 years if you want to be legal. had some advantages though: started out with an internship in a foreign fund house; so literally sat beside them and saw them doing the trades etc. from there, you learn to relate it to the charts. helps that i have been interested in psychology for a long while. so you blend together: human patterns of behaviour, the charts, the reading of sentiment. FA is relatively new to me though: credit to shplayer and victorian for kindly teaching me in this aspect.   as for forex, i'm just a newbie there. only started out this year cos stocks didn't give enough margin of safety from abt jul (which was abt when i started doing forex). uphill learning process. the rest of it is just practice, really. i read ARs almost everyday (since i consider my FA to be weak). Even for things i'm not vested in. it's all part of training oneself. there's no shortcut to success. actually i'd say that i'm not yet happy with myself: i can still be better. so still a long journey to go. shd add here that i have no degree or 'proper certification'. the only experience i have is, literally, from the market itself. so those wanting to learn from me should note this point, since i understand that certs are very important to s'poreans: i'm not going to pretend to be some certified expert or whatever. i'm just an ordinary person who grew up on the market's streets. cheers!

Hi Elfin,

Thanks a lot for your explanation & sharing.

Btw, can I kindly request your TA & FA analysis on China Kunda as I m holding some since IPO but it doesn't seems to move but I saw CNA "Money Mind" coverage tat it has extremely good growth potential.

I wish you all the best.

elfinchilde      ( Date: 04-Nov-2008 13:55) Posted: hi richtan, DCA = dollar cost average/averaging. it's a method of putting in your funds in separate portions into the market, so you can average up or down your buy price. a lot of insurance planners and financial advisors will tell you to do this: put aside a fixed sum of money monthly, and go in no matter what the market is, so that over the years, your cost price is low. To me, that's right principle, wrong application. eg, imagine if you DCA cosco from its peak monthly from 8.2 to now. the only thing you'd be facing is a certain scenario known as *moths fly out of wallet*.   For one thing, DCA is mainly for longterm investors (think 5 year horizon or more). For another, you really need to choose your counters well. For a third, it isn't just blindly putting in your money every month: the proper way to DCA is via technicals. Those wanting to apply it on CD/XD plays need to be careful too: i have to stress here that not all counters will go back up to their CD levels. Some just fade away. cheers!

Hi,

Pardon my ignorance, plse advise wat is the meaning of "DCA".

Thks a lot

waverly      ( Date: 04-Nov-2008 10:11) Posted: Thanks CW and elfin for teaching elfinchilde      ( Date: 30-Oct-2008 17:05) Posted: thanks CWquah for helping out. :) yuppers. dividend play strategy: you are buying in for the dividend (CD), you sell XD. the hope is that the fall is less than the dividend payout. And no, it's not an 'automatic' adjustment. there are some counters which do not fall XD either. A better strategy for good counters actually is this: 1) Buy 1/2 of your intended lots CD. preferably before the run up period. (there tends to be a run up a week or so before the div payout date, usu the px of the div. eg, if dividend is 5c, you'll see px of stock run up before that by more than 5c. you want to get in before the px runs up.). 2) Take the dividend. 3) DCA in at the low XD. the other 1/2 of your funds. 4) Stock goes up to CD px, sell all. So this way, you lock in dividend returns plus some capital gains. Note that you can only do the above for good blue chips and FA stocks. and pls pay attention to current climate as well. it is NOT a guarantee that the price will go back up to the CD price. hope this helps. cheers!

I think the pair where you practiced everyday i.e. USD/JPY will give a good indication or prediction of the carry trade and the Asian market. If this pair is dropping rapidly especially heading close towards 95.00, it looks very scary and usually the whole Asian market will starts to get red rapidly too. Some pleople guess this could be due to the unwinding of carry trade as the Yen is getting too expensive and those long on the pairs for interest gains are giving up by selling or "unwinding" it.

Just another forex newbie opinion. Do not take this seriously :))

baseerahmed      ( Date: 01-Nov-2008 09:49) Posted: respected harryp : thank you very much for pointing to babypips ... in fact i had read it earlier ... the basics are very easy to grasp ...but just curious to know how elfinchilde's comes up with "carry trade is unwinding now, etc " .... how to look out for the 'symptoms' ... from news ..anticipate BOJ announcement .. economic calendar ..etc .. btw ... for newbies ...  www.babypips.com ...is a good site .... can get a good dose of TA lessons in there ...if u haven't ... how about munching on it this weekend ... hahaha !

Good basics on carry trade can be found here:      http://www.babypips.com/school/the_carry_trade.html

This may help enjoy the phenomenon of the carry trade...

==> CLICK