The Markets

Trading the Markets
Written by Andy

What do we mean when we say the ‘Markets’? It’s such a broad term really, ‘the market was good today’, or ‘the markets were weak’ and so on. Quite simply, it’s an easy way to group everything to do with the stock market in one simple phrase, and usually refers to the stock market activity. However, as we all know, the ‘markets’ are made up of so much, that we’d have a hell of a time figuring out what we were doing if everything was simply branded ‘markets’ in the real world. There are other financial markets though, which tend not to get mentioned as much as the stock market, that are also simply referred to as ‘the markets’.

We have the Financial Currency Markets, there’s the Commodities Mar-ket and a few others; but the three we need to concern ourselves over are the stock market, the financial (currency/Forex) markets and, to a lesser degree for our purposes, the Commodities markets.

Within each of these there is so much more, especially when we consider the stock market. With the currency and commodity markets, they are not as broad, so we will only refer to those in very limited terms, when we need to. Furthermore, the currency and commodity markets are not something that I will be covering in this manual. We do have a course that has Forex training included; chances are you’ve already taken those modules. For now, what I want to teach you can be applied easily to the UK Stock Market, and in fact, in turn, to ANY Stock Market, as long as they are traded by people and not aliens!

What I always recommend to those that are outside the UK is to follow the UK charts, as well as those that are available in your own country. Nearly every major country has its own market, but you should learn from the UK FTSE first and then move on to your own charts of your own country. This works, because what we are covering is dealing with crowd psychology, and this is universal. I will be covering what charts to work on, and how best to apply the techniques later, but bear in mind that the techniques that you know already, and that we’re covering in greater and in a more practical way in this workbook and the accompanying videos, will allow you to trade any Stock Market, not just the FTSE.

Before I go on, as this manual is a companion to the full material on this website, I have to be careful in making sure that I am not teaching ‘My grandmother to suck eggs’, to coin a popular saying in the UK. In other words, teaching you something you already know how to do. In creating this manual though, there will be times that I will, more than likely, be covering old ground. I do realise that I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s good reason. 1 – I want to make sure that we’re clear, and 2 – by doing so, we can all start on the later sections of this manual from the same point.

What I won’t do is patronise you, by pointing out some of the blindingly obvious things. I will cover most, if not everything, even if I just mention it. The important ones, I will go into more detail on. The others, I will either just mention in name or simply pass by.

The markets were what we were talking about. What we know then, is that the markets are a broad term for the stock market, mostly. The other markets tend not to get mentioned, certainly not in the news, half as much as I’d like.

Also, in the UK, they tend to say something along the lines of ‘…and now to the markets. The FTSE was down 10 points today.’ The amount of times that they don’t make clear which market in particular they’re talking about! Most of the time, in the UK, they’re referring to the FTSE 100, the top 100 UK companies. Thankfully, the BBC are more accurate, but if you go to somewhere like the lesser channels or, God forbid, a digital one, you’d be shocked to hear what they refer to as the markets.

Which leads us nicely to the next thing that you should already know.

About the author

Andy

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