BERITA FOREX

So, you’ve learned the indicators, marked a textbook-perfect entry and still got stopped out the moment an economic report hit the wires. Or perhaps you correctly predicted where interest rates were heading but had no idea where to enter the trade without chasing the price. It is a frustrating position because both forms of analysis can appear convincing, right up until one exposes what the other has missed. This guide once and for all settles the technical analysis vs fundamental analysis debate by explaining how the two approaches differ, which should take the lead for your trading style and how to use them together. The aim is not to declare one the winner, but to give each method a clear job. Technical analysis studies price charts to identify potential entry and exit levels, while fundamental analysis examines economic data and monetary policy to judge whether a currency may strengthen or weaken. Short-term trading generally leans more heavily on technical analysis and longer-term trading on fundamentals, but a practical combined approach is to use fundamentals for direction and technicals for entry. Ready to put both methods to work on a live chart? Technical analysis answers where to enter and exit, while fundamental analysis helps determine whether to be long or short. Technical traders work primarily from the price chart. They study trends, support and resistance, momentum, chart patterns and indicators to identify where price may react and whether a trade offers a sensible entry, stop-loss and profit target. Read more：What is a stop-loss order and how to set it Fundamental traders look beyond the chart at the economic forces affecting a currency. They assess interest rates, inflation, employment, economic growth and central bank policy to decide whether one currency has a stronger outlook than another. In my experience, more established traders rarely waste much energy choosing a permanent side in this debate. They divide the labour instead: fundamentals provide the directional bias, while technical analysis helps turn that opinion into a properly timed trade. Fundamental analysis is the process of studying economic data and the interest-rate environment to judge whether a currency should strengthen or weaken. It considers the underlying forces that create demand for one currency relative to another. In practical terms, fundamental analysis answers the long-or-short direction question. A trader may conclude that a currency is likely to strengthen because its central bank is expected to keep interest rates higher, inflation remains persistent or economic growth is outperforming that of another country. Fundamentals can provide a useful directional bias, but they do not necessarily tell you the best price at which to enter. For a more detailed explanation, see our full fundamental analysis guide. Read more：Forex Fundamental Analysis: Meaning, Data and Trade Setups The main tools used for fundamental analysis include: These tools form the basic fundamental toolkit, while our main fundamental analysis article explains how to interpret them in greater depth. “The information is already priced in by the time the data is released.” This can be true when an announcement matches market expectations, but a meaningful surprise or change in the future policy outlook can still force traders to reprice a currency quickly. “Getting the direction right still gives me no entry level.” This is a fair criticism because fundamental analysis can identify a strong currency without showing where to buy it; this is precisely where technical analysis earns its place. “Fundamental analysis is barely usable on short timeframes.” It is often too slow and broad to generate precise entries on a one-minute or five-minute chart, but high-impact data and central bank comments can still overwhelm every technical signal on those charts. Fundamental analysis is therefore most useful for establishing direction and understanding market drivers, rather than choosing an exact entry price. Technical analysis is the process of reading the price chart and using historical price behaviour to identify possible entry and exit levels. Rather than asking why a currency is moving, it focuses on what price is doing and how traders are responding. In practical terms, technical analysis answers the when-and-at-what-price execution question. It helps traders locate trends, areas where buying or selling pressure previously appeared and levels that would prove a trade idea wrong. Technical analysis does not predict the future with certainty, despite what an especially enthusiastic indicator salesperson might suggest. Its purpose is to organise price information and create repeatable trading decisions with defined risk. Our full technical analysis guide explores the approach in greater detail. Read more：Forex Technical Analysis: A Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide The main tools used in technical analysis include: Indicators and patterns can become detailed subjects in their own right. Our dedicated indicator and chart-pattern guides explain how to use these tools without turning the chart into a collection of flashing lights. Read more：The best forex indicators every trader should use in 2026 “Two traders can reach opposite conclusions from the same chart.” This is a fair objection when rules are vague or levels are drawn to support an existing opinion, but a defined method with objective entry and invalidation criteria reduces that subjectivity. “Technical signals only work because other traders believe in them.” Widely watched levels can become self-reinforcing when many orders gather around them, but that does not make every pattern reliable; the level still needs context, liquidity and sensible risk management. “Beautiful backtests often fail in live trading.” They certainly can when a strategy has been overfitted to historical data or ignores spreads, slippage and changing market conditions, whereas testing across different periods and then trading it forward offers a more realistic verdict. Technical analysis is most useful when it creates a consistent execution framework, not when every line on the chart is treated as a prediction. The approach that really works for you depends largely on how long you intend to hold a position. A scalper lives almost entirely on the chart. Short-term price action, momentum and immediate liquidity matter far more than a long-term view of inflation or interest rates. Even so, a sensible scalper still checks the economic calendar because opening a trade seconds before an interest-rate decision is less technical analysis and more an unusually expensive coin toss. At the opposite extreme, a position trader may build an idea around central bank policy, growth expectations and widening interest-rate differences. That fundamental view can remain valid for weeks or months, but entering at a major resistance level, or placing a stop inside ordinary daily price movement, can still turn a sound idea into a losing trade. Swing traders and many day traders tend to operate between these two extremes. They need enough fundamental awareness to understand the likely direction and enough technical skill to enter without paying any price the market happens to be offering. This table is a starting point rather than a rigid rule. Most traders eventually find themselves somewhere in the middle, requiring a working understanding of both approaches. Combining fundamental and technical analysis works best when each method has a clearly defined responsibility. The principles below establish that division, while the following section turns them into a practical step-by-step trading process. Fundamentals should determine the preferred direction, while technical analysis should control the entry, stop-loss and profit target. Each approach answers a different question, and trouble usually begins when a trader asks a chart pattern to overrule a major economic shift, or expects an inflation report to provide a precise entry price. Decide in advance what you will do when the chart signal conflicts with the fundamental bias. You might ignore the trade, reduce the position size or wait for the technical picture to realign, but the rule must exist before money is at risk; hesitation in a live market often leads to missed opportunities or improvised trades. Avoid opening new positions immediately before or after high-impact economic releases. Spreads can widen, prices may jump and slippage can turn a carefully marked level into little more than a hopeful line on the chart, so it is usually better to wait for the initial volatility to settle. The timeframe of the technical signal should match the period covered by the fundamental view. A directional bias based on several months of central bank policy should not be abandoned because a one-minute chart produces a brief signal in the opposite direction; mismatched timeframes simply set your left hand against your right. Do not use a technical level as an excuse to catch a rapidly falling currency when the market is still repricing its economic outlook. Support and resistance can slow a move, but no structural level is guaranteed to hold against a powerful change in interest-rate expectations or central bank policy. For this reason, technical analysis should help you participate in a fundamental view at a sensible price, not persuade you to stand directly in front of it. The clearest way to understand technical and fundamental analysis is to follow one trade from the initial idea to the final risk calculation. In this example, the fundamental picture establishes the direction, while the chart decides whether the trade is worth taking and at what price. Running scenario: A trader is considering a short position in GBP/USD ahead of a UK inflation release. The trading account contains £8,000, and the trader will risk no more than 1.5% on the position. Begin by checking the economic calendar for events capable of materially changing the outlook for either currency in the pair. The key event in this scenario is the monthly UK Consumer Prices Index release, scheduled for Wednesday at 07:00 London time. The next task is to compare three pieces of information: An economic result matters because of how it changes expectations, not simply because the number is higher or lower than last time. For example, stronger inflation might support a currency if it makes an interest-rate cut less likely. However, the same result could have little effect if traders already expected it or if the central bank has made clear that it is focusing on weaker employment instead. In this scenario, the expected outcome should make the pound relatively weaker than the US dollar. The trader therefore establishes a bearish bias on GBP/USD. That bias narrows the trader’s attention to opportunities in one direction. It is not an entry signal, and no position should be opened simply because the economic argument sounds persuasive. With the directional bias established, technical analysis maps the battlefield. The trader opens the higher-timeframe chart, such as the daily or four-hour timeframe, and checks whether the broader price structure supports the fundamental view. The chart shows: The invalidation level is especially important. It marks the price at which the technical reason for taking the trade would no longer be valid, not merely the largest loss the trader feels emotionally able to tolerate. For a long trade, the entry zone might sit near support following a pullback, with invalidation below the most relevant swing low. For a short trade, it may sit near resistance, with invalidation above the corresponding swing high. If the chart structure clearly opposes the fundamental bias, the trader does not force an entry. The sensible choices are to wait for price structure to realign or reject the trade altogether. The entry is taken only when price reaches the marked technical zone and continues to support the fundamental direction. This is the point where the two forms of analysis finally meet. The trader’s entry rule is: Enter short only if GBP/USD reaches the 1.2705–1.2745 entry zone and produces a one-hour rejection candle closing back below 1.2720 in the same direction as the fundamental bias. Confirmation might be a rejection from support or resistance, a break and retest, or a candle closing back in the intended direction. Whatever rule is selected, it should be defined before price arrives rather than invented afterwards to justify an impulsive trade. Order discipline is particularly important around the scheduled announcement: If price moves away without returning to the level, the trader lets it go. Missing one trade costs nothing; chasing it at a poor price can cost considerably more. Once the entry is confirmed, the stop-loss goes at the technical invalidation level, and the profit target goes at the next meaningful structural level. Position size is then calculated backwards from the permitted account risk. The completed trade plan is: The maximum amount at risk is: Account balance × risk percentage = cash risk £8,000 × 1.5% = £120 This is the most the trader intends to lose if the stop is filled at the requested price. Slippage can still increase the actual loss during fast or illiquid conditions. For most currency pairs, one pip is 0.0001. For pairs involving the Japanese yen, it is normally 0.01. Entry-to-stop price difference ÷ pip size = stop distance |1.2733 − 1.2779| ÷ 0.0001 = 46 pips The amount that may be risked on each pip is: Cash risk ÷ stop distance = permitted value per pip £120 ÷ 46 pips = £2.61 per pip Use the broker’s current pip value for the selected pair and account currency: Permitted value per pip ÷ pip value per standard lot = position size £2.61 ÷ £7.85 = 0.33 standard lots The result should be rounded down if the platform does not accept the precise position size. Rounding up would push the potential loss beyond the planned limit. The distance from entry to target is: |1.2618 − 1.2733| ÷ 0.0001 = 115 pips The estimated profit if the target is reached is: Reward distance × permitted value per pip = potential profit 115 pips × £2.61 = £300.15 The final risk-reward ratio is: Reward distance ÷ stop distance = risk-reward ratio 115 pips ÷ 46 pips = 2.5:1 The completed trade therefore risks approximately £120 to pursue a potential return of around £300, producing a risk-reward ratio of 2.5:1. At this point, both forms of analysis have completed their assigned jobs. Fundamentals supplied the directional bias, technical analysis supplied the entry and invalidation levels, and risk management determined the position size. Neither technical nor fundamental analysis removes uncertainty. Problems arise when a trader relies on one method to perform a job it was never designed to do or combines both without deciding which one takes priority. The common problem is not choosing the wrong school of analysis. It is giving neither school a clearly defined job. The basic framework is the same, but stock fundamentals focus heavily on company earnings, revenue and financial health, whereas forex fundamentals centre on interest rates, inflation and national economic data. Forex also trades almost continuously during the working week, so technical levels can form and be tested across several global sessions. Many institutional and experienced forex traders use both: fundamentals help determine direction, market conviction and sometimes position size, while technical analysis controls execution. Traders relying almost entirely on charts tend to operate at the very short-term end of the market. Yes, many short-term traders make decisions almost entirely from price charts. Even so, they normally check the economic calendar and avoid high-impact release windows because one badly slipped trade can erase the profit from several successful ones. Warren Buffett uses fundamental analysis and value investing; he has recalled studying technical analysis and charting stocks when he was younger, but ultimately moved away from it. He represents the far-right side of our decision table: the lesson for forex traders is not that technical analysis is useless, but that the intended holding period determines which approach should lead. Technical analysis is not outdated, although its role has evolved. Classic chart patterns remain subjective, but price action, momentum and liquidity levels are still used by discretionary traders and algorithms to manage risk and locate short-term forex opportunities. A forex trader might look for EUR/USD to remain above its 50-day moving average while the RSI recovers from below 30, suggesting that a temporary pullback within a broader uptrend may be losing momentum. This combination could support a potential buy setup, although neither indicator guarantees the outcome; our full RSI guide explains the indicator in greater depth. Technical and fundamental analysis are not rival systems competing for a single place in your trading plan. Fundamentals supply the likely direction, technicals identify a sensible location, and your holding period determines which approach should take the lead. Before your next trade, check the economic calendar, write down your directional bias and mark the entry, invalidation and target levels on the chart. If those elements do not align, leave the trade alone and wait for one that does. Lee W. is a seasoned professional trader with over 10 years of experience. Passionate about sharing valuable expertise and unique market insights, Lee W. now serves as an external and independent market analyst for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Related concepts:

Tensions in the Middle East are flaring up once again and markets are behaving exactly as one might expect. Two super tankers of Saudi Arabian and South Korean origin were struck by projectiles early on Tuesday morning while attempting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, according to multiple sources. Mere hours later, the US military launched a retaliatory strike against several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets located across southern Iran. President Trump followed up the attacks by threatening the Iranian regime with more retaliation ‘at a much harder and higher level’. Needless to say, all progress on the peace front has been scattered to the winds and both sides are back to square one. For a brief moment it did look like some kind of arrangement was beginning to emerge, but the last 48 hours have once again made mockery of such optimism. Crude oil prices inevitably creeped higher on Tuesday as the day’s events unfolded, pushing the Brent Crude benchmark to $95 per barrel. Precious metals were thoroughly unimpressed with the proceedings, with gold falling $120 to a daily close of $4,328 per ounce and silver crumbling back down to $64. Bitcoin held up better than both with a manageable 1.5% decline on the day, bringing the original cryptocurrency down to $77,400 per coin. US markets were still closed when the two super tankers were attacked, leading to a sizeable gap to the downside as trading got underway; the S&P 500 closed the day 0.7% in the red, while the Dow Jones fell 0.8% and the Nasdaq 100 shed 1.3%. Predictably, as the opening bells chimed across Asia early this morning, stock exchanges also opened with moderate gaps in the red, 1.6% in the case of the Nikkei 225 and almost 3% in the case of the Kospi index. Yesterday, the UK 30-year gilt yield reached 5.9%, the highest level since 1998, while yields on the 10-year gilt hit 5.18%, the highest level since 2008. In Japan, 10-year bond yields touched 3% for the first time since 1996. The US 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.8%, the highest level since January 2025. Germany and France are likewise seeing decade-long highs on their 10-year debt instruments, which are now offering yields not seen since 2011 and 2008 respectively. The entire sovereign bond market is undergoing a pretty severe repricing adjustment, due to a mix of inflation concerns, potential interest rate hikes, and a perceived loss in fiscal responsibility on behalf of the governments issuing said bonds. Either that or someone is expecting the mother of all bull runs to commence any second now. The month is off to a shaky start, which is all the more worrying considering that September is historically the worst month for stock markets, with the S&P 500 averaging a 1.1% loss since 1928; no other month has an average negative return. There is very little to say about the current state of financial markets that is not tied to developments in Iran, at least until Friday’s NFP report. #IRAN #OIL #BONDS About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

The same losing script keeps replaying. Your stop gets swept by a hair before price turns back, the account shows an overnight deduction you never planned for, and one news release sends your order flying to a fill you do not recognise. At some point every trader asks the same question: is the market against me, or am I repeating mistakes I could actually fix? Almost always, it is the second one. This article lays out the 10 most common forex trading mistakes, and for each gives you three things: the symptom that tells you it is yours, the concrete fix, and the way to verify the fix has worked. Most forex losses come from a small set of repeated mistakes in two families: behavioural discipline errors, and trading costs treated as if they were free. The three most expensive are trading without a plan, overtrading, and ignoring spread, slippage and swap. Each of the 10 mistakes below comes with a fix and a way to verify it, and the cheapest place to run that whole cycle is a demo account, before any of it costs real money. Practise the fixes on a demo account: The 10 mistakes fall into two families. The first 4 are behaviour and discipline; the last 6 are mechanics and costs that most traders never count. Most people reading this list honestly will find they are running at least 3 of them. Here is the full set at a glance, before each gets its own section. With no written rules, every trade is improvised on the spot. There is nothing to follow, so there is nothing to break, and when the account bleeds you cannot say which decision did the damage. The symptom is simple to test: if you cannot state the entry and exit logic of your own last trade in one sentence, you are trading without a plan, whatever file sits on your desktop. The fix is to write the rules down and treat them as an operating document. The full eight-step build, with a copy-ready template, is in our trading plan guide. Read more：How to Make a Profitable Trading Plan: A Senior Trader's Guide Piling on trades after a winning streak and revenge-trading after a loss look like opposites, and they are the same mistake: trade count driven by emotion instead of setups. The symptoms are a daily count far beyond anything you planned, and a quiet inability to justify each trade when you review the day after the close. The fix is a hard cap on trades per day and a cooling-off rule after losses. The 10 warning signs and a self-check table are in our overtrading article. Read more：10 Signs of Overtrading and How to Avoid It Bet a large slice of the account on one idea and a single run of bad luck becomes an exit from the market. Oversizing turns ordinary variance into ruin. The symptom shows in the equity curve: one losing trade visibly bends it. The fix is to size every position from a fixed percentage of the account, decided before the trade, never from conviction. How to set that percentage and build the rest of the risk framework is covered in our risk management guide. Read more：10 Forex risk management tips every trader should know Skipping the stop hands the exit decision to whichever is reached first: your emotions or your margin. Neither exits well. The symptom is the losing position that gets held longer and longer, funded by fresh hope that price only needs to come back to break-even. The fix is mechanical: the stop is entered together with the trade, at the level where the idea is wrong, and it is not moved further away afterwards. Placement and order mechanics are covered in our stop-loss article and stop order guide. Read more：What is a stop-loss order and how to set it The spread is an entry fee paid on every single trade. Per trade it looks like noise; multiplied by frequency it becomes one of the biggest lines in a day trader's accounts. The symptom: you have never once written spread cost into a strategy's expectancy. Worked through with illustrative numbers: a day trader takes 8 trades a day on EUR/USD at an average spread of 0.9 pips, trading 0.5 lots. One pip on 0.5 lots is worth about $5, so each entry costs roughly $4.50. That is $36 a day, about $756 a month over 21 trading days, and roughly $9,072 a year. Verification: $4.50 × 8 × 21 × 12 = $9,072. On a $10,000 account, the spread alone consumes most of the account's starting value in a year, before a single bad decision is made. The fix has two parts: trade active sessions and lower-spread instruments, and write the spread into every trade's cost column so the number stays visible. You have verified the fix when spread cost appears as its own line in your next batch of journaled trades. The full calculation method is in our spread guide. Read more：What Is Spread in Forex? Formula, Calculation & Examples Around a major release, the spread widens and liquidity gets pulled at the same moment. A stop order triggered in that window converts to a market order in a market that has briefly stopped offering prices near your level. The symptom is unmistakable: line up your worst slippage and most of it clusters inside a few minutes of scheduled data. Illustratively, a pair that trades at 0.8 pips all morning can quote 6 pips or worse in the seconds around a rate decision. A stop that fills 5 pips beyond its trigger on 0.5 lots hands back an extra $25 on top of the planned loss. Nothing malfunctioned; that is what thin liquidity does to market orders. The fix: check the economic calendar before every session, and when a position must be held through a release, cut the size or pull resting orders first. You have verified it when a full data week passes with no unplanned fills. How execution behaves in fast markets is covered in our slippage article. Read more：What is slippage and how to avoid it in trading Hold a position past the daily rollover and it earns or pays overnight interest. On the wrong side of the rate gap, the charge lands every night, and on a multi-week hold it quietly eats a visible slice of whatever the trade makes. The symptom is a closed trade whose final profit and loss never quite matches your own arithmetic. Illustratively, a position charged $6.80 a night that is held for two calendar weeks collects around 10 charged nights, roughly $68, with one triple-charged Wednesday in each week already counted inside the total. Traders who never open the swap column simply find the account lighter than the chart says it should be. The fix: before opening any trade you intend to hold, look up the instrument's swap rate and multiply the planned nights into the cost. Verification is a habit, not a number: the swap column of every overnight position actually gets read. Rate lookup and the full formula are in our swap guide. Read more：What are swap fees and how are they calculated in forex trading? The market closes on Friday; elections, referendums and surprise announcements do not. Monday can open far beyond your stop level, and a stop order does not fill at its price after a gap — it fills at the first price available. The symptom is a Monday-morning statement showing an exit dozens of pips worse than the stop you set. Illustratively, a stop resting at 1.0800 protects nothing if Monday opens at 1.0754: the position closes 46 pips beyond the plan, and on 1 lot that is an extra $460 of loss the risk calculation never included. The fix: any position carried over a weekend is sized so that a gap through the stop is survivable, or reduced before Friday's close. Verification: every weekend hold in your journal was a deliberate decision, not a position you forgot. Gap behaviour and trigger mechanics are covered in our stop order guide. Read more：What is a stop order? Types, examples and how to set one The same pair is not the same market at different hours. In quiet sessions spreads run wide, depth runs thin, and a strategy that earns its edge in London hours can give the whole edge back in dead hours through costs alone. The symptom appears the first time you split your results by session: the losses cluster in specific times of day. The fix: concentrate trading in the active sessions for your pairs, and in thin hours let resting orders work instead of chasing prices. Verification is one honest pass through the journal with a session tag on every trade. Which hours are active for which pairs is covered in our trading sessions guide. Read more：Best time to trade forex: When to enter the market during the day Losses and recoveries are not symmetric. Lose 10% and an 11% gain repairs it; lose half the account and it takes a 100% run just to get back to the start. This asymmetry is the real mathematical price behind holding losers and oversizing, and the symptom is one specific belief: that a 50% drawdown is undone by a 50% gain. The table below is worth memorising. The fix folds back into Mistake 3: controlling the depth of each individual loss is the only way to keep the required recovery inside the possible. You have verified it when the account's maximum drawdown stops setting new records. The share of retail forex and CFD accounts that lose money is not urban legend; regulators publish it. The famous 90% figure is folklore, and the measured numbers are lower but still brutal. Here is what the official sources actually report. The figures differ because the samples differ. The FCA number comes from its 2016 analysis of CFD client accounts, ESMA's range aggregates national studies across the EU with average losses per client of €1,600 to €29,000, and the academic result tracks day traders on the Taiwan Stock Exchange across 14 years. Every serious measurement lands in the same territory: most retail accounts lose. The point of this table is not despair. The loss rate is high not because the market cheats, but because most participants repeat the same recognisable mistakes listed above, at leverage, in a market turning over $9.5 trillion a day that does not wait for anyone to learn. Every one of those mistakes is fixable, and fixing them is a process question. That is what the checklists below are for. Mistakes are not avoided by willpower; they are intercepted by process. The three checklists below can be copied straight off this page and adapted to your own market and style. Run this one before every entry: Run this one on your broker and your costs, once a quarter: And run this one after every losing trade: The 90% rule, often quoted as the 90/90/90 rule, is an informal industry saying that 90% of new traders lose 90% of their capital within their first 90 days. It is folklore rather than measured data, but the direction is right: regulator figures put the share of losing retail accounts at 74–89% in ESMA's analyses and 82% in the FCA's sample, and the behaviour the saying describes is exactly the stack of the 10 mistakes in this article. Forex trading leans heavily on skill, though luck decides plenty of individual trades. The skill side is precisely the 10 fixable mistakes above: any single position can go either way, but the long-run shape of the account curve is decided by discipline and cost awareness, not by fortune. Trading without a plan is the most common, because it also makes every other mistake impossible to attribute. Risking too much on a single trade is the close second, and the overview table at the top of this article maps the full set. Start by making the three invisible costs visible: spread, slippage and swap. Then put two risk rules in place, a fixed risk percentage and a stop entered with every trade, and run the pre-trade checklist in this article before every entry to intercept the most common leaks. The mechanics are easy to learn; the discipline and the cost awareness are the hard part. Making and fixing each of these 10 mistakes on a demo account is the cheapest trading education available. Structurally it is close: without written rules there is no expectancy management, so outcomes are driven by chance and emotion. A written trading plan is the thing that separates the two. The 10 mistakes in this article sort into two families: behaviour you can put rules around, and costs you can count. The loss-rate statistics are official and sobering, and none of them describe an unbeatable market; they describe a majority repeating recognisable errors at leverage. The three checklists exist to catch those errors before they price themselves in. The yardstick to take away: every loss in your journal should map to one of the 10 mistakes, or be confirmed as none of them, and only the losses that map to nothing belong to the market. Work through a losing streak with the post-mortem list in hand, and the shape of your losses changes: fewer categories, smaller depths, and a maximum drawdown that finally stops setting records. The RADEX MARKETS editorial team consists of seasoned financial professionals and market observers. Dedicated to delivering objective market summaries, macroeconomic insights, and educational content, the team strives to keep traders well-informed in a fast-paced financial environment. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Related concepts:

On Monday, Tim Cook stepped down as CEO of Apple after fifteen years at the helm of the company. In a heartfelt message to Apple employees, Cook quoted the late Steve Jobs, saying that the company ‘made it possible to leave our “dent in the universe” […] because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am’. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will now take on the role of CEO, while Tim Cook will remain on as executive Chairman. Cook first joined Apple back in 1998 after being asked to join the company by Steve Jobs. His first position was that of senior vice president for worldwide operations, which he would hold until 2009, after which Cook was promoted to lead operations. Over the next two years, as Jobs’ health continued to deteriorate, Cook took on a more active role in day-to-day operations, before officially replacing the former CEO in August of 2011, six weeks before Steve Jobs sadly passed away as result of complications from pancreatic cancer. It may be hard to comprehend today, but back in the mid-1990s, Apple was financially struggling due to a bloated product line and severe mismanagement. In 1997, Apple reported a net loss of over $1 billion and was estimated at one point to be only 90 days away from bankruptcy. Co-founder Steve Jobs rejoined the company during that same year, managed to secure a $150 million lifeline from none other than Microsoft, consolidated production efforts on a much smaller number of commercial ventures and eliminated many failed projects. While Jobs was the visionary giving newfound momentum to the company, Tim Cook was the financial architect that stopped Apple from bleeding to death. Supply chain management, distribution, logistics and manufacturing were all streamlined, leading to a system where idle inventory became almost non-existent. Hardware was assembled and shipped as quickly as possible, creating the ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing model that freed up millions in spare cash. By securing massive contracts with its various suppliers, Apple was also able to lock in stable supplies of components at lower prices than its competitors. In 1998, Apple recorded a net income of over $300 million, the first profitable year since 1995. The following year, in 1999, net income doubled to $600 million. Unfortunately, the dot-com bubble burst at the tail end of the year 2000, killing the upward momentum and causing the company to eat a loss of $25 million in 2001. This would be the last time Apple failed to turn a profit. Over the following years and decades, Apple gradually became the unstoppable behemoth we have all come to recognise. In 2007, the year the first iPhone launched, net income hit $3.5 billion; by 2010, this had quadrupled to $14 billion; in 2020, $57 billion. Over the last twelve months, Apple has recorded net profits of nearly $130 billion, while the company’s market cap has surpassed $4.5 trillion – the second largest in the world after Nvidia. Apple’s transformation is one of the greatest financial success stories the world has ever seen, and Tim Cook was at the heart of it from the very beginning. To say that he succeeded in his role is a huge understatement. He was instrumental. For clues as to what the future holds for Apple, one could do worse than to look at the incoming CEO John Ternus. Far from a typical boardroom executive, Ternus is a mechanical engineer by trade, who spent his entire career climbing the internal ranks inside Apple. For decades, his job has been to build the products for which Apple is now famous. Well respected by the rank-and-file of the company, John Ternus is the kind of person who spends hours arguing about the number of threads on a screw that no one will ever likely lay eyes upon. The shift from economic efficiency to product design and engineering is intentional. Apple has financially dominated for a generation; the new appointment suggests that the company’s focus will turn back to the products themselves and away from the bottom line. It is fair to say that Apple is no longer the cultural pioneer it used to be; one might even accuse the company of being somewhat boring in recent years. With that said, most companies are in no position to make such a transition. The fact that Apple is able to pivot back to its roots so readily is all down to the financial flexibility afforded by the actions of Tim Cook. About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

Last week’s boredom finally ended on Friday following comments from Kevin Warsh at the Jackson Hole Symposium in Wyoming. The Federal Reserve Chairman gave his most candid view yet on the threat of inflation in the United States, stating that the committee “will have work to do” in order to bring rates back down to 2%. Warsh continued by saying that although headline numbers had improved, the latest data did not show that underlying inflation trends had “meaningfully improved”. Although the Fed is still refusing to give away much in terms of forward guidance, the message is straightforward. Rate hikes are absolutely still on the menu, and in fact the odds of such increased dramatically after Friday’s speech. According to CME’s FedWatch tool, the September meeting is now leaning towards a 60% chance of a 25-bps hike on the dollar; the same tool estimates only a 10% chance of interest rates remaining unmoved by the end of the year. The greenback reacted as one might expect, attracting foreign exchange flows that ultimately pushed the DXY up half a percent by the daily close, to 99.7 points. Precious metals took the news badly, with gold dropping around $150 on Friday to close the week at $4,455 per ounce and silver losing around $3 to hit $66.35 per ounce. Bitcoin also fell precipitously, forfeiting its membership of the $80,000 club and settling back down to the $77k range. US stocks incurred only minor losses on the day. For all the movement in other commodities, crude oil prices were remarkably stable on Friday, as the main seaborne benchmark remained anchored at $88 per barrel. There appears to be a lot going on behind the scenes in the oil industry, particularly in Venezuela, as a series of cryptic messages emerged over the weekend concerning the South American nation’s vast oil reserves. According to a social media post on Friday, President Trump claimed that the US would acquire a stake in said reserves, while Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez described the agreement as a step towards modernising the nation’s oil industry. Trump went on to explain on Sunday that part of the deal would see Venezuelan oil being used to fill up the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is currently only around 40% full. Details of the arrangement have not yet been forthcoming. The recent rapprochement towards the United States aligns perfectly with a separate rumour currently floating around Caracas, which suggests that Venezuela may be getting closer to withdrawing from OPEC, of which it is a founding member. When the organisation was first created back in 1960, the explicit purpose of the oil cartel was to consolidate power away from Western oil majors – the very same powers that are now establishing deals to exploit large swathes of Venezuela’s oil fields. The irony is lost on no one. The London Stock Exchange is closed today for the Summer Bank Holiday, but all other major exchanges will remain open this week. Eurozone CPI figures hit the newswires on Tuesday, followed by the July JOLT survey and the ISM manufacturing PMI later on in the US session. On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada is expected to hold rates steady on the Canadian dollar at 2.25%. On Thursday, the ISM will complete the services element of the PMI picture. Finally, on Friday, markets will brace themselves for the August non-farm payroll report, which is expected to showcase 45 thousand new jobs. Speaking of NFP reports, last Friday’s preliminary benchmark revision cut just 79 thousand jobs over the entire yearly period, representing a 0.1% change overall, producing no market reaction whatsoever. The earnings calendar is relatively quiet this week, with the exception of Dell Technologies (DELL) on Tuesday and Broadcom (AVGO) on Wednesday. The other major event of note is this year’s G20 summit, which will take place in North Carolina on Monday and Tuesday and is expected to cover ongoing tariff disputes as well the situation in the Middle East, which may well be the driving force in market sentiment over the next few days. The week is young but reports of attacks against oil tankers and Iranian targets alike are beginning to emerge, pushing the Brent Crude benchmark back towards $90 per barrel as oil markets open for trading. Asian stock exchanges are not impressed, with the Nikkei 225 and Kospi indices opening with moderate gaps to the downside earlier this morning. #IRAN #G20 #WARSH About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

Wall Street got exactly the confirmation it was hoping for late on Wednesday night, after Nvidia (NVDA) not only smashed expectations on its latest earnings report but also reassured investors that demand for AI infrastructure remains sky-high for the foreseeable future. CFO Colette Kress estimated that the chipmaker could achieve 70% revenue growth in 2028, and that this figure was constrained not by demand but by supply concerns. CEO Jensen Huang went on to claim that sales could in fact double if it were not for the supply limitations currently throttling the semiconductor industry. The figures are there for all to see and the conclusion is an obvious one: demand in the AI sector is so high that manufacturers simply cannot keep up. Nvidia shares rose the better part of 9% on Thursday, the largest daily gain in over a year. The report also struck a chord with the wider tech sector, pushing Intel (INTC) and Broadcom (AVGO) over 4% higher during yesterday’s session; the Nasdaq 100 index climbed 1.4% when all was said and done. Further afield, markets have remained quiet in the latter half of this week, with the DXY treading water above 99 points, gold clinging on to $4,600 per ounce, crude oil rising marginally to $88 per barrel, while the only real outlier was Bitcoin, which finally managed to register a daily close above $80,000 for the first time since May. With Nvidia out of the way, attentions will turn to the Jackson Hole Symposium, which is now entering its second day. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is scheduled to speak at 10am Eastern Time and is expected to address the central bank’s path forward with regard to interest rates. The new chairman is still relatively new in his role and has adopted a much more tight-lipped stance than his predecessor. The Fed has essentially abandoned any form of forward guidance, leaving markets with very little to grapple with, making today’s statement all the more critical. Commentary pertaining to inflation will be particularly scrutinised, as will any reaction to the Treasury’s bond intervention last week. High inflation is obviously a problem, but the question floating around is how much of it is due to temporary causes and how much of it has a deeper, structural origin. Concerns around growth also factor into the equation; if the US economy can grow faster than the government’s borrowing costs, the debt-to-GDP ratio can stabilise, making predictions about an AI-fuelled economic boom all the more pertinent. Later today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the first annual revision to last year’s non-farm payroll count, contributing yet another argument for or against the strength of the US economy. #NVDA #INTC #FED