Archives: 2009 February

The Federal Trade Commission works hard to protect consumers against many types of fraud, including individualized loan practices by dishonest lenders. The Federal Trade Commission is a government regulated agency developed to help protect consumers. Since 1914, the FTC has been working hard to be a country net for consumers. Congress have given the FTC a great amount of dominance to assist consumers.

There are several distinct divisions of the FTC including Advertising Practices, Consumer and Business Education, Enforcement, Financial Practices, Marketing Practices, Planning and Information, Privacy and Identity, Consumer Protection, and Economics. Each division has rules and regulations in place that businesses much abide by to ensure equality for consumers.

If you believe you are the victim of unfair personal loan practices by a lender, it is very important that you report it to your local authorities and to the FTC immediately. Not reporting such incidents allows the predator to continue doing so to others just like you. Many people choose not to file a complaint because they don’t want to get involved with a government agency or because they are embarrassed. Consumers need to know the FTC is an advocacy and voice for them.

However, it is often difficult to apprehend them and take action, especially if the lender is an online predator. They move very quickly and know how to manipulate computer systems so that they can’t be effectively tracked down.

We will look at foreign exchange basics or the Forex market. There are many things you need to know about the foreign exchange market. In order for you to become a successful Forex trader, you will need to understand how it works as well as take practical steps to reach your goal.

You will come across several different terms for the forex market. Forex and fx are both short ways of saying ‘foreign exchange’. It may also be called the currency market, the foreign currency market, the currency trading market, etc. All of these terms refer to the same international market on which the currencies of the world are exchanged and traded.

Since there is no particular location for the Forex market, almost every country can deal in the marketplace. Almost every country does trade in currencies on the Forex. For this very reason, the foreign exchange market is open 5 days a week, 24 hours a day. You can trade currencies somewhere in the world when it is open. The week begins on Monday morning in Sydney, Australia. This is Sunday, 5pm EST in the United States. On Friday in New York at 4pm EST, the week ends.

The forex market is a surprisingly recent phenomenon. Up until the 1970s, currencies had been stable relative to one another since the second world war. What was called the ‘gold standard’ gave every currency a value in relation to the US dollar. This system was introduced in order to maintain a stable world economy.

Often time global macro trading firms will be accused of being nothing but a commodity trading advisor with a different name. While there are a few similarities the truth is that nothing could be farther from the truth. Commodity trading advisors are almost exclusively systematic technical traders. This means that they use charts and automatic entry exit signals to buy sell and sell short. In fact the primary edge in most of these firms is their risk management algorithms and not their knowledge of why it happened.

Macro trading is similar to commodity trading advisors because global macro traders also use trend following knowledge. But as opposed to the commodity trading firms they only use them as part of the analysis and rarely trade without an underlying fundamental reason.

Global macro trading firms also use a lot of fundamental and sentimental analysis in order to determine what to trade. Most funds want a real reason as to why something should happen and not just that it is happening. They still use price action it is just that they have it backed up by the market fundamentals and market tone to give them better odds and allow them to adjust their exposure accordingly.

Probably the most famous example of using technical as well as fundamental analysis is when George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller broke the bank of England. No they did not actually break anything. But they did make over a billion dollars in two days. Without fundamental analysis this would not have been possible.