If you have an account with IG Index, you may well have noticed that they have just created a new research tool called Insight. This is available to all customers free of charge, and it allows you to research and analyse various different financial markets, including each of the currency pairs, in some detail.

It includes things like live prices, streaming news, an economic calendar and More on The IG Index Insight Feature - A Useful Tool Or Not?

I stopped trading the USD/JPY last year because it was proving to be very difficult and the big price swings were becoming less and less frequent. Well the bad news is that it seems to have got even worse in 2012, and the USD/JPY pair looks as if it is on a life support machine at the moment.

For this reason I don't think anyone should be trading the USD/JPY pair at the moment. The price movements are just too small to make any real money from.

To demonstrate this point, just look at the  More on Why You Should Stop Trading The USD/JPY Pair In 2012

Every year around this year I produce a list of my most popular posts from the last 12 months, so I thought it was worth carrying on the tradition this year. I didn't think I had had been so active on this blog this year, but I actually wrote a lot more posts than last year. I'm not sure that trend will continue next year because after running this blog for a good few years now, I am starting to run out of things to say.
 
Anyway I hope there will be one or two posts that you like from this year's collection.
 
The full list of posts is below.  More on My Most Popular Posts Of 2011

Another year is coming to an end and I think it's fair to say that in general it's been a really tough one for a lot of forex traders. I have certainly found it quite hard to make money in recent months. Indeed I haven't traded at all for several weeks now as I'm taking an extended break from forex trading at the moment.
 
So let's look back at three of the most important currency pairs – the GBP/USD, EUR/USD and USD/JPY pairs – and I will try and explain why these pairs have been so hard to trade this year.
 
More on A Review Of The Forex Markets In 2011

A while ago I posted a link to a video that Bill Poulos created which revealed how his trade alert software was able to detect (and profit from) 5 day trends for the major currency pairs. Well he has recently updated this video and demonstrated how his Forex Profit Accelerator software has performed since then.
 
As you may know, the markets have been very difficult to trade in recent months, but this trade alert software seems to have performed very well trading the end of day charts, as you can see in this new video.
 
The overall profits were $32,000, and you can see how he did this by clicking here and watching the free video.

IG Index have brought good news to a lot of forex traders this week with the announcement that they are cutting spreads on many different currency pairs once more. They were already really competitive, but now you will be hard pushed to find a spread betting firm or forex broker that offers tighter spreads.

For example the dealing spreads for the EUR/USD and USD/JPY pairs start at 0.8 pips, whilst the spread for the GBP/USD and EUR/GBP pairs start at  More on IG Index Reduces Spreads On Forex Pairs

I've recently received an email from ZuluTrade telling me about an important development with regards to their signal providers. It looks like they are trying to improve the overall quality of their signal providers, and therefore help their customers generate more profits.
 
As you may know, the signal providers get paid a small commission per trade per subscriber. So therefore if they are successful, they will attract more subscribers who wish to have their signals auto-traded in their account, and therefore they will make more money.
 
However ZuluTrade have decided to  More on Are The Signal Providers On ZuluTrade About To Become A Lot More Profitable?

There were no trades for me again this week, and I've actually decided to stop trading forex for the time being. My 4 hour trading system just doesn't generate as many trades as it used to, and with the markets drifting aimlessly with all the uncertainty that's around right now, I think it's best to just sit on the sidelines.

Even if market conditions do change and we start to see a lot more volatility, it will be only last for a few weeks anyway because we have the Christmas and New Year holidays just around the corner, and the markets are always very quiet and impossible to trade at that time of the year.

Anyway I shall still be trading stocks, as this is what I love doing more than anything else, and I have this website and a few others to keep me busy, but there probably won't be any more Weekly Trading Updates for a while.

To some extent trading the forex markets using long term charts (such as the daily and weekly charts) is a lot easier than trading the short term charts (such as the 1 and 5 minute charts). Indeed that's why my core trading system, ie my main 4 hour trading system (see right for more details), is based on the 4 hour and daily charts.

However when you are comparing long term forex trading to long term share trading, there is only one winner for me - share trading.
 
There is one thing you have in your favour when trading good quality stocks, and that's the fact that  More on My Experiences Of Trading Forex And Stocks Using Long Term Charts

There were no trades for me this week. Regarding my 4 hour trading system (see right for more details), there were no decent set-ups on any of the major pairs, and I haven't used my early morning breakout system this week because to be honest I have preferred to watch the share price movements of Tomco Energy instead.

This is the only small cap stock in my portfolio and it has continued to soar higher this week, despite a little bit of selling today after the latest RNS. I have already decided that if this stock gets to 10p in the next few years (which I'm sure it will), I will probably give up forex trading and  More on Weekly Trading Update - 31 October - 04 November 2011