The Road to Successful Trading

Fundamentals for other types of investment 
Currency traders have a different sort of fundamentals to work with. Fundamental FX analysis takes 
a look at- not one company or industry- but an entire nation. As a nation’s currency is correlated 
with a nation’s economy and politics, the types of fundamental information usually concerns itself 
with things specific to each country such as Balance of Trade, Interest rates, Domestic Politics, 
National Budget and other macro economic issues.
Commodity traders look at things such as world demand, weather, transportation costs and other 
factors specific to the type of commodity being traded.
Fundamental analysis relates to the overall understanding of the factors that can affect price and 
interpreting the current and extrapolated implications of what is currently happening to the 
fundamentals. 
Technical Analysis 
The central idea of technical analysis is that all of the myriad of factors that investors and traders 
through out the markets take into consideration about a company, currency or commodity are 
reflected in the price of the stock and other measurable parameters. The thousands or millions of 
investors/traders that drive the market reach a sort of consensus symbolized by what has happened 
to price as an indicator of what will happen to price in the future. Even though technical analysis 
tries to put on a good front as something scientific and predictable, it is at its core still soothsaying 
the future, which is never for certain. Indeed, a trader or investor who practices technical analysis is 
in a way still reading the “tea leaves” of quantifiable, historical performance. The following 
discussion on technical indicators can be found at www.shaefer.com. 
Charting 
How to Design and Construct An Effective Trading Plan 
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Technical analysis takes full advantage of the fact that a “picture is worth a thousand words”. The 
basic way to depict the daily price movement of a particular asset is depicted as a bar which will 
demonstrate the daily high, low and close for the stock. 

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Daily
Weekly 
Yearly
The red and blue lines are called moving 
averages which we will talk about in detail. 
But as you can see, it is fairly easy to see 
trends in the price movement of the stock. 
Learning to read these patterns of movement is 
vital to helping the trader pick entry and exit