President Franklin Roosevelt is famous for the statement, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It is one of the most repeated presidential quotes. It basically suggests that decisions born of fear often turn out bad, sometimes even disastrous.
Financial technology has been driving markets for decades. Often when we talk about fintech it is about some new technology that promises to disrupt the current market model. But today’s disruptive technology can be tomorrow’s trading infrastructure.
For years we in the financial media business have split types of market analysis and traders into two large camps: fundamental and technical. Fundamental traders would look at basic meat and potato supply and demand fundamentals and perhaps some proprietary insights to come up with their market outlook, while technical traders would look at market charts to determine patterns and momentum based on price data.
Every year that MODERN TRADER approaches our forecasting issue we confront the conflict between a healthy skepticism of the market forecasting industry and the need to provide readers with actionable information on markets, and finding the best sources to provide it.
In a sense all major economic stories we cover somehow relate back to the 2008 credit crisis; how it changed certain markets and how the reaction to the crisis by major central banks altered the equilibrium of the trading world.
Over the years as we have covered various sectors — from energies to stocks and stock indexes to fixed income to forex; and different asset classes from futures to equities to exchanges traded funds — trading has grown more complex.
