Consumers and small businesses are seeing no improvement in credit markets. Indeed ,credit availability is worsening and the cost of credit is actually rising. The Administration and Congress have willfully contributed to these worsening credit conditions? by continued socialization of capital markets, assaults on success , coddling of? large but incompetent , worthless? but politically favored enterprises and? shameless feeding of special interests. If stimulating failure, pessimism and anxiety are the objectives then The Stimulus is working very well indeed.

There are several signs that credit markets are continuing to deteriorate:

?1. ?????? Insurance companies saw a decline of $32 billion in statutory capital in 2008. The decline continues in 2009. Credit downgrades for several insurers lie ahead which will raise their cost of capital , reduce the sales and underwriting of new policies and force a further shrinking of the balance sheets via asset sales to reduce their risk profile. Hartford, Prudential and MetLife have all sought regulatory approval to obtain treasury capital infusions.

?2. ?????? American Express disclosed that ?past due payments in February rose again, following increases in January and December 2008. Following this disclosure, the cost of protecting European corporate bonds from default went up.

?3. ?????? A survey by the National Small Business Association revealed that almost 75% of businesses with less than 500 employees(these businesses rely on corporate credit cards and lines of credit for short term, inventory and seasonal financing) are experiencing a deterioration in credit availability and an increase in credit card and credit line ?interest rates. Banks are sharply curtailing credit limits and lines of credit yet raising interest rates, sharply. ? In the last decade such businesses created 60% to 80% of net new jobs in the US.

?4. ?????? Consumers are defaulting on all credit card payments in unprecedented numbers. Charge -offs rose to 7. 1% in January 2009 compared with a year ago and the worst is still ahead. Citigroup may cut credit lines by $600 billion, Bank of America by $500 billion, JP Morgan by $300billion and American Express by $100billion. . . . . . a total of $1. 5 trillion in 2009.

?5. ?????? The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund is approaching complete depletion. At the beginning of 2008, the fund had $52billion. At the beginning of 2009 the fund had $19 billion. The FDIC projects an additional $65 billion in losses thru end 2013. Insurance companies saw a decline of $32 billion in statutory capital in 2008. The decline continues in 2009.

?6. ?????? A large wave of commercial real estate shopping/shopping mall bankruptcies is coming. This year about 75,000 stores have already closed(the evidence is clear in every town and city) The retail industry thinks that, at least, 4 times as many more stores will close in 2009. Entire malls will shut down.

?7. ?????? By early March 2009, junk bonds were yielding 19% more than Treasuries of comparable maturity. A yield spread of more than 10% is termed distressed. This means that the interest rate on a 10 year junk bond is now around 22%( 19% plus? very close? to 3%? on 10 year Treasury bonds). In effect, credit markets are now effectively closed to thousands of fairly large companies whose debt is rated below investment grade . As the current debt of these companies matures they will not be able to refinance. The only recourse is to massively shed costs by reducing business activity and firing scores of thousands of people in the second half of 2009.

?8. ?????? The cost of protecting investors against a default of US Government debt has risen ?sharply. This cost is 60% higher in Mid March 2009 than at the end of 2008 and 7 times higher than a year ago. The credit worthiness of the US is now about the same as France.

This week the Federal Reserve decided to, literally, print $1. 15Trillion dollars, a move that can only be justified if the US were in a prolonged and major world war that necessitated total national mobilization. Quite likely the move is one of desperation, following the news that in the past 90 days foreign interest in buying US Government bonds has evaporated. Foreign governments such as China and Russia have been quietly shifting into gold and into US Government notes( very short term obligations, unlike bonds). With foreigners losing faith in US Government debt and US citizens less and less able or motivated to buy US debt, the government is buying its own debt. Foreigners have also been net sellers of Agency(Fannie, Freddie) debt for the past several months. ? Readers will recall that in the Fall of 2008? Fannie and Freddie as well as AIG turned to the Chinese government for a bailout. Only when? the Chinese recoiled, ?were Fannie, Freddie and AIG nationalized. ?

? ?The consequences of this move to print dollars and brazenly debase the currency , within months(not years), will be rising energy, food and clothing prices as the dollar is debased. Military spending will decline sharply and threats to national security will multiply. The flight away from the dollar and into hard assets(gold, later silver, weapons , oil, metals? and soon? agricultural ?land) has begun in earnest now. Competitive currency devaluation and trade conflicts and contraction ?will follow.

?The result will be a lethal combination of high unemployment, high inflation? especially in the price of daily necessities, and high interest rates. Poor and lower middle class individuals and families will be ravaged. This is a prescription for grave social disorder in the US? which in turn will have consequences we cannot foresee.

Millions of Americans are re-learning? and the majority culture will have to relearn(or perish) that when debt is used by equity to make more equity, debt is good. When debt is used by equity to finance gross self indulgence, debt is very bad indeed. In 2009, in America, equity liberates; debt enslaves. In time, we will go back to making and doing real things for real people. The alternative hardly bears thinking.

Unless these fearful credit conditions? created by the Fed, Congress and the Administration, aided and abetted by the majority culture, are reversed and consumers and real businesses doing real things can get affordable credit in required amounts, the US economy will continue to shrink. The prospects, at present, are that the political elites in the America have embarked on a course that will cost another 2 million jobs in 2009.

1. Introductions

Today, using information and trading platforms has become a de facto requirement for successful trading in the financial markets. Their advantages as compared to conventional trading schemes include, for example, an unprecedented speed of processing and delivery of information to end users, the level of integration with data providers, and a wide array of built-in technical analysis instruments.

At the same time, an investor opening an account with a brokerage firm simply cannot simultaneously manage the real-time analysis and trade in more than 4-6 financial instruments in several markets 24 hours 7 days a week. This brings about the need to employ automatic trading systems in the form of runtime environment with client and server parts and the programs to control these systems (scripts). 2. Comparative Analysis of the Problem Area

Various software components embrace the entire target sector of the market?from analytics and forecasting to complex trade and administration. The components of a trading platform provide its clients?brokers, dealers, traders, financial analysts and advisors?just the service they need at the very moment they need it, from immediate round-the-clock access to information of concern by means of mobile devices, to multi-move trading operations in the major client terminal.

The software market offers a great many of information and trading platforms that differ, first of all, in the functionality of the client and server parts, and the list of services provided by the financial company once an account has been opened. However, only a relatively small number of software solutions include the components that automate trading. 2. 1. MetaTrader4-based Solutions

One of the world?s most widely used trade platform products is apparently MetaTrader4, developed by MetaQuotes Software CorporatVon for Forex market trading. The platform includes an integrated development environment (IDE) MetaEdVtor, intended for writing scripts in a programming language called MetaQuotes Language, or MQL4 for short. The language’s syntax is based on the classic C language syntax, and the flow logic has not been significantly changed since the previous version of the platform that used MQL II as the programming language.

The new automated trade framework is, undoubtedly, an evolution of the previous one. Both languages feature good functionality, with an optimum set of built-in trading and utility functions which is quite sufficient to implement the basic operations, and a facility to define custom functions to help implement non-standard ideas.

From the programming point of view, MQL4 is much more convenient that its predecessor; this language is more oriented at professional programmers, while? MQL II, in my opinion, will rather suit financial experts wishing to build trading programs (or trading advisors, in the MetaQuotes terminology) of their own. 2. 2. Omega Research-based Solutions

In the New World, the vast majority of companies use the Omega Research platform developed by TradeStation Securities, Inc. This platform has long ago proven its worth at the worldwide market, and to date experts consider it to be the best system for technical analysis. The provided IDE called Omega Research PowerEditor is intended to create control programs in EasyLanguage (EL).

The language?s major advantage that strikes the eye is the easiness (hence is the name) of placing opening and closing orders. The corresponding program instructions can be written such as if we were formulating an order to our broker in the plain human language. In MQL4, for example, placing an order to open a position would involve specifying about a dozen of various parameters. In EasyLanguage, the same can be expressed in a short statement using a few words. Working with technical indicators is about that simple, too. But don’t fall under an illusion: when creating these simple commands, language developers sacrificed the functionality and limited the possible ways of using a particular function, therefore effectively depriving the IDE users of the opportunity to accurately implement their own algorithms.

TradeStation decided not to create extensive libraries of built-in trading and utility functions but to limit to only an essential set. As the platform advanced, the number of functions written by both in-house and third-party developers grew, and TradeStation simply included them as user-defined functions into the repository of its scripts. As a result, the functionality offered to users is not in the least scarcer than that of MetaQuotes product.

PowerEditor provides a built-in dictionary that lets user search and get help on the available functions. Another handy tool worth mentioning is the strategy builder. Using the strategy builder, the user can easily create a basic algorithm for his or her trading program, and then modify and adjust it as necessary.

EasyLanguage is an old-timer and pioneer in the field of creating automated trading systems for the stock market. It was the basis for the development of MQL II. EasyLanguage will be a good choice for programmers, but still a better one for financial experts more oriented at analyzing the market than trading. 2. 3. ProTrader-based Solutions

Professional financial experts can choose the ProTrader2 or ProTraderFX platform as their working tool, depending on the type of the financial market?stock or Forex, respectively. The two platforms are developed and supported by PFSoft LLC. While featuring the specially developed ProTrader Language (PTL), the provided IDE named PTL Builder offers also the opportunity to create scripts in MQLII, MQL4 and EasyLanguage. For this, the text of the program is translated to a language-independent code. Therefore, at runtime it does not matter in which language the script was written. This technology does not only enable creating new scripts, but makes it possible to use freely the entire accumulated collection of scripts that many experienced traders possess.

The main idea put into the new scripting language was to ensure maximum reliability and predictability of the scripts being run. The PTL language is built so as to minimize the possibility of making a mistake in the text of a user?s script?the potentially dangerous points will be detected even before the script is tested or launched.

Regardless of the programming language chosen, the platform works with verified managed code while running the script. This Microsoft-developed technology enables proper handling of errors that cannot be detected before the script is run. This means the program will not fail and will not perform any unwanted operations that might be due to critical errors or damage caused by another program, for which the account holder would eventually have to pay.

The PTL Builder IDE will serve well both financial experts and programmers thanks to its support of different programming languages and provided tools such as tester and debugger. 2. 4. Solution Comparison

The above IDEs have their specific feature sets. The table below provides a summary comparison of the capabilities offered by each. 3. Approaches for Creating Automated Trading Systems and Recommendations for Using Them

It hardly needs mentioning that choosing an information and trading platform should be taken with all seriousness. For those who plan to use an automated trading system in their business, below are some points I would recommend considering, based on my personal experience. 3. 1. Choosing a Working Environment

First of all, define the type of tasks the automated trading system is to perform. These could be:

Would you like to make money from trading but don’t know how to trade?
Have you heard of others making a killing on the markets and wished yourself in their position?
Trading covers a multitude of sins, or at least a multitude of markets. Mention “trading” to a non-trader and they’ll probably think of stock and shares but there are many other markets you can trade in. These include commodities, futures, indices, CFDs and options. They all have their pros and cons and some require specialized knowledge.
The most popular markets used by traders are stocks, commodities, futures, indices and forex. Some traders switch between markets, others stick to just one. Let’s highlight some of the similarities and differences between them.
Shares
In the USA there are over 40,000 shares so you have a lot of markets to choose from. You can’t deal in all of them so you need to home in on those that offer good trading opportunities using whatever trading methods you decide to use.
When buying shares you usually have to put up all the money at the time of sale. That might seem obvious but it’s not so with all markets. Some brokers offer a 50% margin with shares which means you can trade to the value of twice the amount in your account. This seems like a good deal but if your shares start to go down you’ll get a “margin call” and will either have to put more money in your account or sell the shares at a loss.
Shares are normally traded in lots of 100. If you want to trade an expensive share – and some shares are very expensive, particularly in the US markets – you need a considerable amount of money in your account.
It’s not easy to sell shares short. Selling short is a strange concept to many people who think of buying shares at a low price and selling then at a higher price. But it’s often easier to predict that a share will fall rather than rise so what you’d like to do is to sell it at a high price and then buy it back later at a low price. The net result is the same whatever the order of the deals – buy low, sell high.
However, you can’t sell something you don’t own so in order to sell shares short you must “borrow” them from your broker. This is not quite as straightforward as buying and not all shares are available for selling short.
Finally, share dealing takes place during market hours so if you don’t live in the country where they are being traded you must adjust your trading hours to suit.
Futures, commodities and indices
Commodities are goods such as corn, copper, crude oil, orange juice, oats, gold and wheat.
Technically, a futures contract is an agreement to make or accept delivery of a commodity on a certain day at a certain price. In practice this rarely happens unless you’re a manufacturer who actually wants the goods. The vast majority of futures traders are simply speculating on whether the price will go up or down and never take delivery of an item.
Futures contacts include commodities and also stock market indices such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones and the Russell. Indices are simply a composite of securities that provide an overall reading of the market or some section of it.
The S&P 500 (Standard & Poor’s 500) tracks 500 of the largest companies in the US market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tracks only 30 of the largest and longest-established companies while the Russell 2000 is an index of smaller stocks.
Essentially, commodities and indices are futures and traded in much the same way although traders may use the terms interchangeably.
Unlike shares, futures can be sold short just as easily as they can be bought. Each futures contract has its own fluctuating price and many traders deal in just one lot contracts.
Brokers usually charge a flat fee commission per contract, often expressed as a “round turn” which is one buy and one sell transaction. This may be a few dollars, often less than the value of a point or two on the contract. If you’re trading a long time frame the commission is negligible but if you’re day trading and scalping for a few points here and there it becomes a considerable part of the cost.
Futures brokers usually offer a margin of around 20% of the value of the underlying instrument so you can control $10,000’s worth of a contract for maybe $2,000. However, the same rules apply – if you over-leverage your account you’ll receive a margin call or your positions will be closed at a loss. Margin and leverage are a two-edged sword.
Many brokers offer a demo account so you can get used to the trading platform and test your trading strategies before you put real money on the line.
Forex Currency Trading
Currency trading, foreign exchange or forex as it’s more commonly known, has fast become one of the most popular markets for private traders in recent years.
As its name suggests, it involves buying and selling foreign currency. The most commonly traded currencies are referenced against the US Dollar and are sometimes referred to as a “currency pair” even though you are only trading one instrument. For example, the GBPUSD is the UK Pound/US Dollar pair. A value of 1. 7625 would mean that the one Pound is worth 1. 7625 Dollars. Other popular pairs include the Euro (EURUSD), the Swiss Franc (USDCHF) and the Japanese Yen (USDJPY) although there are others.
So unlike shares and futures, you don’t have a mass of markets to choose from, but there is variety within forex currency trading to give you a range of markets to trade.
The value of each pair differs slightly but the minimum movement – called a “pip” – is worth approximately $10. The GBPUSD has been averaging 100-150 pips per day which would be $1000-1500. Many brokers let you trade half or even quarter-size lots which are useful when you’re starting out. Also, many brokers offer a demo account so you can practice before risking real money.
The total value of the forex market is worth trillions of dollars per day, far larger than shares or futures. It is also a truly international market with dealing taking place all around the globe 24 hours per day from Monday to Friday. You can, therefore, trade at any time of the day or night at times to suit you. It’s worth noting, however, that the bigger moves generally occur during the US and European trading sessions.
You can sell short forex just as easily as you can buy and brokers offer highly-leveraged accounts too – but the same warning regarding margins apply here as well.
Brokers tend not to charge a commission for trading forex and you will often see adverts for “commission free” trading. However, they make their money on the spread which is the difference between the buying price and the selling price. The spread is usually between 3 and 5 pips although some brokers may offer a 2 pip spread on some pairs, and some less-popular pairs may have a larger spread.
Paying on the spread is particularly useful when trading mini lots. A 3-pip spread on a quarter lot will be about $7. 50 whereas on a full-size lot it would be $30. Again, the spread is more important when trading short time frames where you’re only aiming to make a few pips per trade. You need to build the spread into your trading system so you don’t overestimate the amount you might make per trade.
One interesting aspect of forex currency trading is that there is no central clearing house where absolute prices are quoted, unlike shares and futures. So it’s quite possible to see different brokers quoting slightly different prices for the same pair. As the market has become more efficient, this difference has reduced, in most cases, to a few pips but it highlights the importance of checking that the data you are using for analysis is the same – or close to – that used by your broker for placing your orders.
The market you decide to trade will depend on many things, not least of all, your budget, but also how many markets you want to look at and what hours you want to trade. There are trading vehicles to suit all preferences and pockets.

Trading covers a multitude of sins, or at least a multitude of markets. Mention “trading” to a non-trader and they’ll probably think of stock and shares but there
are many other markets you can trade in. These include commodities, futures, indices, CFDs and options. They all have their pros and cons and some require specialized knowledge.
The most popular markets used by traders are stocks, commodities, futures, indices and forex. Some traders switch between markets, others stick to just one. Let’s highlight some of the similarities and differences between them.
Shares
In the USA there are over 40,000 shares so you have a lot of markets to choose from. You can’t deal in all of them so you need to home in on those that offer good trading opportunities using whatever trading methods you decide to use.
When buying shares you usually have to put up all the money at the time of sale. That might seem obvious but it’s not so with all markets. Some brokers offer a 50%
margin with shares which means you can trade to the value of twice the amount in your account. This seems like a good deal but if your shares start to go down you’ll get a “margin call” and will either have to put more money in your account or sell the shares at a loss.
Shares are normally traded in lots of 100. If you want to trade an expensive share – and some shares are very expensive, particularly in the US markets – you need a considerable amount of money in your account.
It’s not easy to sell shares short. Selling short is a strange concept to many people who think of buying shares at a low price and selling then at a higher price.
But it’s often easier to predict that a share will fall rather than rise so what you’d like to do is to sell it at a high price and then buy it back later at a low price. The net result is the same whatever the order of the deals – buy low, sell high.
However, you can’t sell something you don’t own so in order to sell shares short you must “borrow” them from your broker. This is not quite as straightforward as buying and not all shares are available for selling short.
Finally, share dealing takes place during market hours so if you don’t live in the country where they are being traded you must adjust your trading hours to suit.
Futures, commodities and indices
Commodities are goods such as corn, copper, crude oil, orange juice, oats, gold and wheat.
Technically, a futures contract is an agreement to make or accept delivery of a commodity on a certain day at a certain price. In practice this rarely happens unless you’re a manufacturer who actually wants the goods. The vast majority of futures traders are simply speculating on whether the price will go up or down and never take delivery of an item.
Futures contacts include commodities and also stock market indices such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones and the Russell. Indices are simply a composite of securities that provide an overall reading of the market or some section of it.
The S&P 500 (Standard & Poor’s 500) tracks 500 of the largest companies in the US market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tracks only 30 of the largest and longest-established companies while the Russell 2000 is an index of smaller stocks.
Essentially, commodities and indices are futures and traded in much the same way although traders may use the terms interchangeably.
Unlike shares, futures can be sold short just as easily as they can be bought. Each futures contract has its own fluctuating price and many traders deal in just one lot contracts.
Brokers usually charge a flat fee commission per contract, often expressed as a “round turn” which is one buy and one sell transaction. This may be a few dollars,
often less than the value of a point or two on the contract. If you’re trading a long time frame the commission is negligible but if you’re day trading and scalping for a few points here and there it becomes a considerable part of the cost.
Futures brokers usually offer a margin of around 20% of the value of the underlying instrument so you can control $10,000’s worth of a contract for maybe $2,000.
However, the same rules apply – if you over-leverage your account you’ll receive a margin call or your positions will be closed at a loss. Margin and leverage are a double-edged sword.
Many brokers offer a demo account so you can get used to the trading platform and test your trading strategies before you put real money on the line.
Forex Currency Trading
Currency trading, foreign exchange or forex as it’s more commonly known, has fast become one of the most popular markets for private traders in recent years.
As its name suggests, it involves buying and selling foreign currency. The most commonly traded currencies are referenced against the US Dollar and are sometimes referred to as a “currency pair” even though you are only trading one instrument. For example, the GBPUSD is the UK Pound/US Dollar pair. A value of 1. 7625 would
mean that the one Pound is worth 1. 7625 Dollars. Other popular pairs include the Euro (EURUSD), the Swiss Franc (USDCHF) and the Japanese Yen (USDJPY) although there are others.
So unlike shares and futures, you don’t have a mass of markets to choose from, but there is variety within forex currency trading to give you a range of markets to trade.
The value of each pair differs slightly but the minimum movement – called a “pip” – is worth approximately $10. The GBPUSD has been averaging 100-150 pips per day
which would be $1000-1500. Many brokers let you trade half or even quarter-size lots which are useful when you’re starting out. Also, many brokers offer a demo account so you can practice before risking real money.
The total value of the forex market is worth trillions of dollars per day, far larger than shares or futures. It is also a truly international market with dealing
taking place all around the globe 24 hours per day from Monday to Friday. You can, therefore, trade at any time of the day or night at times to suit you. It’s worth noting, however, that the bigger moves generally occur during the US and European trading sessions.
You can sell short forex just as easily as you can buy and brokers offer highly-leveraged accounts too – but the same warning regarding margins apply here as well.
Brokers tend not to charge a commission for trading forex and you will often see adverts for “commission free” trading. However, they make their money on the spread which is the difference between the buying price and the selling price. The spread is usually between 3 and 5 pips although some brokers may offer a 2 pip spread on some pairs, and some less-popular pairs may have a larger spread.
Paying on the spread is particularly useful when trading mini lots. A 3-pip spread on a quarter lot will be about $7. 50 whereas on a full-size lot it would be $30.
Again, the spread is more important when trading short time frames where you’re only aiming to make a few pips per trade. You need to build the spread into your trading system so you don’t overestimate the amount you might make per trade.
One interesting aspect of forex currency trading is that there is no central clearing house where absolute prices are quoted, unlike shares and futures. So it’s quite possible to see different brokers quoting slightly different prices for the same pair. As the market has become more efficient, this difference has reduced,
in most cases, to a few pips but it highlights the importance of checking that the data you are using for analysis is the same – or close to – that used by your broker for placing your orders.
The market you decide to trade will depend on many things, not least of all, your budget, but also how many markets you want to look at and what hours you want to trade. There are trading vehicles to suit all preferences and pockets.

Product DescriptionMake Volatility and Risk Work for You with Forex Trading! “This book should be in every trader/investor’s library. As we come out of this depressed market . . . this book can be your companion, helping you avoid mistakes and enhance your trading/investment program. ” —Bill M. Williams, author of Trading Chaos “Whether you’re just getting started trading the world’s most exciting financial market, or you. . . More >>

Mastering the Currency Market: Forex Strategies for High and Low Volatility Markets