Baron Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family, is credited with saying that “the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” He should know. Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. This is known as contrarian investing, for example, the strongly held […]

During the winter of 1997 and just a few years into my trading career within banking, I was sent to New York for a four week secondment to the bank’s Wall Street dealing room. The idea of working on Wall Street was exciting, the atmosphere was different, the people were different and it took some […]

It struck me when talking to folk at the weekend, on a personal development course, that many of us don’t actually know how much to eat as well as what to eat. That in mind, I thought I’d write a short piece that I hope will help or at least get people thinking. How much […]

During late summer of 2006 I was on a work trip to New York to meet with some of my American colleagues and to visit some of our NY based clients. A very good friend of mine, who I’d met on secondment there in 1997, had been kind enough to arrange for me to be […]

Last week I was flying back to London after an amazing weekend in the Highlands of Scotland. Beautiful scenery, fresh air and interesting company. I had picked up my shortbread from the airport, boarded the plane and sat in my orange aisle seat ready for the journey back to the ‘smoke’. As the plane taxied […]

I awoke with a throbbing head and a sick feeling in my stomach, where was I, oh yeah I was in Marbella and we’d had rather a lot to drink last night. The purpose of our trip had been golf but we had already missed out tee off time and anyway there was no way […]

Thinking back to the beginning of the book and my conversations with Zahira in the bar at Borough Market, it seems many of us are looking for short cuts and ‘easy wins’ and get rich quick schemes, “This time next year Rodney……: Zahira was put off the idea of starting with a sum she was […]

When people ask me about trading there is a commonly help perception by everybody that successful traders make their money by correctly predicting the direction that the market is going to move. There’s almost an implication in this perception that traders somehow have psychic powers or a crystal ball guiding them as to where to […]

Despite what some folk would have you believe, markets obsolete daily in a fairly random fashion, reacting to snippets of news and data or adjusting to the impact of big buy or sell orders. Whilst trends establish themselves over time, I reiterate my point that daily moves can be very random indeed and almost meaningless […]

Having identified those who don’t have our best interests at heart (Harry & Vic), it’s important to remind ourselves who our true friends are and what they do for us. Our best friend, and by far the most important to us, is our ‘stop loss’. Our stop loss is always there for us, protecting us, […]