A great deal of debate has gone on regarding the trustworthiness of the two major candidates in this year’s presidential election. Much has been made of the fact that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump have the highest unfavorable ratings and percentage of people who view them as untrustworthy in modern election history.

One would be dishonest to present this year’s election as just a contest between an entrenched Democrat and a different kind of Republican: Status quo vs. change.

Just before its convention this past July, the Democratic Party released its 2016 Party Platform. It contained many ideas that just about everyone can support. For example, “Fight for economic fairness and against inequality.” Who can disagree with that?

What are you reading now?

“Hall of Mirrors” by Barry Eichengreen and “Kissinger” by Niall Ferguson.

Your essential book on economics?

Economics is more about articles than books, but for the definitive textbook, I highly recommend “Microeconomic” by Goolsbee, Levitt and Syverson (2nd edition).

Last month, activist manager Bill Ackman announced a 9.9% stake in Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG). Ackman plans to engage the firm’s management after investing roughly $1.2 billion in the casual dining giant. 

Last month investors gathered at the annual Delivering Alpha conference presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor. It was another star-studded affair for the financial sector, with hedge fund managers and investors gathered to share their latest trading ideas. 

A presidential race can’t change a culture’s ideas, it only cashes in on those already accepted as truth. As Ayn Rand once noted, “Elections are won in every month of the year except November.” 

Since the drastic drop from 1.40 to 1.05 starting in May 2014 and culminating in March 2015, the Euro/U.S. dollar (EUR/USD) currency pair has essentially been experiencing range-bound trading.

We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of the mini-DAX contract launched by Eurex last October. The success of the DAX and more recently of the mini-DAX has been an interesting story.

This November’s U.S. Presidential election will affect currency markets, and the challenge for the forex trader is to select the best strategy for trading it. It is important to keep two dimensions of analysis in mind: time frame and volatility. 

The Cycle Projection Oscillator (CPO) is a technical tool that uses complex algorithms to filter multiple cycles from historical data, combines them and gives a graphical representation of their productive behavior. The CPO methodology employs proprietary statistical techniques to obtain cyclical information from price data.

The healthcare sector has had quite a run over the past couple of years. Earnings and revenue growth have consistently been in the double digits, an especially impressive accomplishment considering the earnings recession environment. The first half of 2016 saw the S&P Health Care sector post bottom-line growth of 6% and top-line growth of 9%.

German chemicals company Bayer AG (BAYN) announced plans in September to acquire Monsanto (MON) for $66 billion, including debt, in the largest cash bid on record. The deal values Monsanto shares at $128.

The British pound lost more than 20¢ to the dollar in less than two weeks following the Brexit vote. The total commercial position had shrunk significantly as players appeared to be taking off positions ahead of the vote. Now that the post-Brexit action is taking shape, we can once again see what is happening in this market given the tools we’re used to working with.

Our May issue had a sharp focus on the future of trading technology with an emphasis on fintech and Blockchain. 

Trading the dollar has been a tough game since the Federal Reserve moved toward a tightening bias (kind of) as other central banks try to “ease” their way to prosperity. For traders, currency funds have been the best vehicle to wager on the impact of central bank policies.

How will the November Presidential election affect energy in general, and the coal industry specifically? The contrast between the two major candidates is glaring. This brings up a possibility for an options strategy you can enter now.

Whether you need to take an emergency out-of-town business meeting, travel to an important conference or even take an impromptu trip to your favorite getaway at the last minute, the last thing you should worry about are the vagaries of commercial travel.

In April, 2016, music taste profiler Ajay Kalia compiled data on listeners from Spotify and on the popularity of the artists they listened to from the music intelligience and data platform, Echo Nest.

When you’re a high-profile individual, even an essential accessory like a wristwatch is something in which you pay extra attention to detail.

Americans aren’t taking vacation days. According to Forbes, only 25% of Americans use all their paid vacation days. Even more concerning, 42% didn’t take a single vacation day last year. Why? It all comes down to some form of fear. Employees are afraid of falling behind, letting team members down, being judged by their coworkers and bosses, and even of losing their jobs.

In August the Federal Reserve created a Facebook page to promote its operations and teach Americans about how the central bank works. 

The central bank used the Facebook page to release a series of public statements. They included pictures of the central bank and some of the members. They announced and promoted the speeches of members of the Federal Open Market Committee.

A recent story in Bloomberg suggested that a strong negative correlation between the prospects of a Donald Trump presidency and the health of the Mexican peso. 

While insider trading is clearly illegal, defining it can be difficult, especially when considering arguably innocent banter between friends and family. Not all “tipper-tippee” situations are black and white, and courts have struggled to uphold consistent definitions of intent and personal benefit when it comes to prosecuting these cases.

Johnson Controls (JCI) will spin off its automotive interiors unit into a separately traded company on Oct. 31, 2016. The Milwaukee-based industrial giant plans to distribute one Adient share, as the division is called (with a ticker ADNT), for every 10 JCI shares.

Not too many people realize it yet, but the worst part of machine-driven trading is the absence of human traders making the same mistake over and over again. Two different pseudo-sciences, technical analysis and behavioral finance, are based on nothing more.

Williams %R is a momentum indicator developed by well-known trader and trading educator Larry Williams. It is an oscillator that moves between 0 and -100. It is intended to provide insight into the weakness or strength of a financial instrument; be it a stock, futures forex pair or exchange traded fund.

One market that has quickly become a popular topic in the trading and analyst community is the CBOE’s (Chicago Board Options Exchange) Volatility Index (VIX). It is a unique product, also known as the “fear gauge” for measuring implied volatility. 

There are a lot of choices a trader must make before entering futures markets. Some are obvious, like choosing a market, whether to base trades on fundamental or technical (or both) inputs and the size you will trade. At that point, a trader can go determine the best time and price to enter a trade.

Richard Wyckoff was a legendary trader in the early 1900s. Wyckoff thought that a trader who applied tape-reading skills (i.e., studies of current price and volume characteristics to weekly and monthly charts) could determine a market’s forthcoming price movement ahead of price change.

When Eddy Elfenbein earned his MBA from the University of Connecticut in 1994, he knew he was interested in investing but wasn’t sure he would work as a professional manager. He worked several years in finance before getting into the newsletter business, starting out writing about microcaps.

I sat down this month with Gabriel Cardarella, North American Brand Ambassador for the Bacardi Whisky Portfolio to talk about life, work and his personal preferences.

As we saw in the first installment of this series on moving average convergence-divergence, MACD is more than the sum of its parts, which essentially amount to a couple moving averages. The intricacies of how the indicator is put together make it useful in a number of different ways. The histogram is one such feature.

Parabolic Arc chart patterns form when a steep rise in prices caused by irrational buying and intense speculation hits its apex. Parabolic Arc patterns are rare, but they are reliable and are generated in mega-bull trends. These patterns trend gradually, making higher highs and lower lows in the beginning stages, but can be volatile in the exhaustion and reversal stages.

Following the worst performing month (September) and most volatile month (October), November tends to provide the markets with a respite from anxiety.