Month: October 2011

By Warren Seah

Forex traders are interested in the quick and accurate execution of their trades as a result of swiftness of trading and the use of superior technology. Traders are always interested in fast trading because when forex trades are not executed on time, it could result to a loss of potential winning trades. In order not to lose such golden opportunities, some retail traders turn to Metatrader trailing stop expert advisor, or EA to overcome this weakness.

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When it comes to the automated forex trading and using the right exit strategies, putting together one’s own trailing stop expert advisor on the Metatrader platform is the appropriate thing to do. Trailing stop can be developed to suit the taste and needs of traders, and they can be simple or complex depending on how the trader desires it.

Forex trader may not be able to monitor more than one or two trades at a time while trading, and because trade supervision could be time consuming and energy sapping, the probability of error occurring in trade execution is substantial. The use of stop loss expert advisor in the automation of a forex trade helps to minimize errors that could be attributed to human actions and inactions when trading.

This ensures proper trade management and the ability to choose the most suitable trading strategies for every market condition. Moving stop loss expert advisor gives a trader the freedom to do other things that he desired, like doing market analysis for any available signals instead of monitoring the trade all of the time.

However, to put together a viable stop loss strategies expert advisor and automate a trade, a trader needs to have a solid knowledge and firm grasp of the mql4 programming language that would have to be used to develop it. Trying to have a trailing stop expert advisor developed can cost a sizeable sum of money and time as professional programmers conversant with this language would be in best position to develop it. A trader needs not concern himself more with how much he has to put in to have a stop loss expert advisor developed, but rather on the benefits that awaits him if he has one.

About the Author

Warren Seah

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The Central Bank of Sri Lanka left its benchmark repurchase rate unchanged at 7.00%, and also kept the reverse repurchase rate at 8.50%, and the Statutory Reserve Ratio at 8%.  The Bank said: “Inflation on a year-on-year basis is expected to continue to moderate during the remainder of 2011, with the continuous improvements in domestic supply conditions supported by the high growth momentum of the economy as well as the expected moderation of international commodity prices.”  The Bank also noted “the growth of money supply is expected to moderate in the period ahead given the decline in excess liquidity in the money market”

Sri Lanka’s central bank also kept its monetary policy settings unchanged at its September meeting this year, while the Bank last cut its key interest rates in January this year.  Sri Lanka reported an annual headline inflation rate of 6.4% in September, down from 7% in August, 7.5% in July, 7.1% in June, and 8.2% in May.  

Sri Lanka is aiming for 8.5% GDP growth in 2011, after its economy expanded 8% in 2010, meanwhile inflation is expected to slow to 6% by the end of 2011.  Sri Lanka reported 8.2% annual GDP growth in the second quarter (7.9% in Q1).  

The Bank said broad money supply (M2) grew 20.6% year on year in August, while credit to the private sector grew 34.1%.  The Sri Lankan Rupee (LKR) last traded around 110 against the US dollar.  The Central Bank of Sri Lanka next meets on the 8th of November.

Mobile Security Spending to Rise Through 2015

by Justin Dove, Investment U Research
Monday, October 10, 2011

As smartphone use increases in what’s sometimes called the “biggest tech trend ever,” hacking and security breaches are bound to increase, too.

Last week, Canalys released a report estimating an average investment growth of 44.2 percent per year in mobile security spending. By the end of 2011, investment in mobile security will reach $759.8 million. Canalys predicts it will turn into a $3-billion market opportunity by 2015.

IDC and Infonetics Research aren’t quite as bullish on the growth, but they do expect a moderate increase. Both recently predicted global spending on mobile security is on track to reach about $1.9 billion by 2015.

The IBM (NYSE: IBM) X-Force research team also recently released a prediction that mobile phone security threats will double by the end of 2011. Between the summers of 2010 and 2011, the volume of Android malware increased by 400 percent.

“For years, observers have been wondering when malware would become a real problem for the latest generation of mobile devices,” said Tom Cross, Manager of threat intelligence and strategy for IBM X-Force, in a statement. “It appears that the wait is over.”

Smartphone Security Vulnerability

Part of the problem is the vulnerability of today’s smartphones. Canalys reported that only four percent of smartphones and tablets shipped in 2010 had any security software pre-installed.

Canalys forecasts that by 2015, over 20 percent of smartphones and tablets will have mobile security software pre-installed.

Physorg.com reported that a recent Symantec survey of 12,704 respondents in 24 nations found that only 16 percent installed the most up-to-date security on their devices, while 10 percent reported being the victim of a mobile-related cyber crime.

Emerging economies in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East are expected to experience a sharp rise in mobile security investment from 2013 to 2015, Canalys predicts.

Canalys is expecting “a strong parallel to emerge between Android operating system growth and the volume of mobile malware threats, as the potential for more people to download compromised applications rises.”

Mobile Security M&A

The bigger companies have already seen this trend coming.

Over the last year or two, there has been a surge in mobile security mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

• Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) bought S mobile.

• Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) bought GuardianEdge, plus parts of the Verisign acquisition to aid its mobile security offering.

• McAfee bought Tencube and Trust Digital.

• Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) bought McAfee.

Investing in Mobile Security

Lookout Mobile Security is one of the leaders in the industry, with rapid growth and 12 million users. However, Lookout is currently private and just received s a $40-million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Considering Lookout doesn’t appear to be going public anytime soon, there are other options to invest in mobile security:

• Symantec, which produces Norton Anti-Virus, is trying to carve out its niche in mobile security.

• Intel now owns McAfee, which offers several mobile security products.

• Juniper Networks recently announced it partnered with AT&T (NYSE: ATT) to provide a mobile security platform for AT&T customers.

• Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) also makes a mobile security app called Cisco SIO to Go.

• Trend Micro (OTC: TMICY.PK) is a Japanese company that’s very active in mobile security. It offers paid products such as: Trend Micro Titanium Tablet Security for Android, Mobile Security Personal Edition™ and Smart Surfing for iPhone and SafeSync™ Mobile. It also has various free applications, such as HouseCall, CWShredder, Smart Surfing for the iPhone, ThreatWatch App for iPhone, RUBotted, Rootkit Buster and HijackThis.

Whether the market grows to $2 billion or $3 billion, mobile security investments will certainly grow over the next four years. Smartphone use will only expand, and as with the internet, the more it expands, the more predators it will attract. Keen investors may want to watch out for companies that emerge as early leaders when spending and awareness starts to ramp up.

Good investing,

Justin Dove

Article by Investment U

Source: ForexYard

After a week of review of the Greek financial situation on the part of the EU, IMF, and ECB, Greece will receive an €8 billion loan.

Greece will receive the loan in early November despite the fact that many EU ministers and the IMF expressed disappointment in the Greek government’s inability to meet its expectations in terms of reducing debt.

Nevertheless, the EU, IMF, and ECB agreed that the EU would be worse off were it not give the authorization for further loans to Greece.

Forex Market Analysis provided by ForexYard.

© 2006 by FxYard Ltd

Disclaimer: Trading Foreign Exchange carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. There is a possibility that you could sustain a loss of all of your investment and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose. You should be aware of all the risks associated with Foreign Exchange trading.

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange, talks about the outlook for the euro and pound. He speaks from London with Maryam Nemazee on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse.”

This Contrarian Indicator is Ringing Like a Fire Alarm

by Alexander Green, Investment U’s Chief Investment Strategist
Monday, October 10, 2011: Issue #1617

In his new book, The Great Crash Ahead, self-styled “economic futurist” Harry Dent warns equity investors to cup their groins.

Stocks, he declares, will “crash to between 3,300 and 5,600 on the Dow by the end of 2013, or 2014 at the latest… Hold onto your life jacket and climb into the lifeboat. The next few years and the next decade will be the most challenging you have ever seen or will see in your lifetime.”

This is great news for stock investors. Terrific, really. Let me explain why.

History shows that Dent has a gift for getting the big macro picture completely backwards. I’ve written about Dent’s failed market predictions before. But let me bring you up to date.

In 1999, near the tail end of the longest and most powerful bull market in U.S. history, Dent brought out his book The Roaring 2000s Investor, confidently predicting that the Dow would hit 44,000 by 2008. He was off by 35,000 points or so.

Dent also argued forcefully at the time for Nasdaq stocks – the worst investment you could make in the New Era bubble – and predicted “the technology revolution will favor internet-oriented companies.”

Within three years, the Nasdaq lost three quarters of its value and the leading index of internet stocks plummeted 89 percent.

Ouch.

In retrospect, it’s obvious just how wrong Dent was. But during the internet mania, plenty of brokers and investors agreed with him. He sold thousands of books and raked in big bucks as an adviser to top Wall Street firms, including Morgan Stanley.

Bloodied but unbroken, five years later, using his same “demographic trends theory,” Dent published The Next Great Bubble Boom: How to Profit from the Greatest Boom in History: 2006-2010.

Well, no. That period encapsulated a full-blown financial crisis and the biggest stock market bust since the Great Depression. In the book, he argued again that the Dow would hit 40,000, this time by 2009. The benchmark plummeted to less than 6,500 in the spring of that year instead.

With a track record like this, you might imagine Mr. Dent would get out of the economic prognostication game and think about, say, flipping pancakes or running a daycare center. But no, near the market bottom two years ago, he unleashed The Great Depression Ahead.

Within weeks of the book’s publication, the financial crisis began to ebb, the economy moved out of recession and the Dow began one of its most powerful rallies of the last 100 years. Corporate profits hit an all-time record. And within two years, the S&P 500, with dividends reinvested, doubled.

The Greater Depression? It’s still M.I.A.

You have to admire Dent’s pluck, if not his luck. This is a man with a penchant for getting the big picture spectacularly wrong. And – giving hope and comfort to equity investors everywhere – he now predicts a stock market crash is dead ahead.

Is this truly good news or am I just having fun? Well, both.

In 1995, two finance academics, Campbell Harvey and John Graham, looked at the performance of 236 strategies from 132 investment newsletters. Their discovery? Fewer than 35 percent of the investment letters achieved long-term returns that matched the return of simply buying and holding the S&P 500.

There was one extraordinary finding, however. The performance of some gurus was absolutely horrid, lagging the market by 10 percent to 40 percent per year.

Harvey and Graham concluded that the worst market forecasters are so miserable that their performance could not be attributed to chance! (In other words, it didn’t seem possible to get it that wrong.) They pointed out that you could prosper mightily by doing the opposite of what these gurus recommend.

So a sophisticated investor might note Harry Dent’s new take-no-prisoners forecast… and immediately go long stocks.

There are plenty of contrary indicators…

• The put/call ratio.
• Short interest.
• Mutual fund flows.
• Investor sentiment.
• Consumer confidence.
• The odd-lot indicator.
• And so on…

But Mr. Dent appears to occupy a special place on Mt. Olympus… or at least Mt. Rushmore.

Yes, yes. I know. Even a blind squirrel can pick up an acorn sometimes.

Still… I thought you deserved to know.

Good investing,

Alexander Green

Article by Investment U

London Gold Market Report
from Ben Traynor
BullionVault
Monday 10 October, 08:30 EDT

WHOLESALE MARKET gold bullion prices climbed to $1670 an ounce Monday lunchtime in London – 2% up on last week’s close – while stocks and commodities also rose and government bonds fell following a pledge by France and Germany to recapitalize Europe’s banks.

Silver bullion rose to $32.37 – 3.8% up on where it ended last week.

“Physical demand for gold is very strong, with gold below $1,650”, says Marc Ground, commodities strategist at Standard Bank.

“[This means] the potential for future short covering exists, which could see prices push higher.”
“The physical premium [on the Shanghai Gold Exchange] has been very strong,” adds one gold bullion dealer in Hong Kong.

China meantime saw strong gold sales during last week’s holiday period – in sharp contrast to disappointing real estate figures.

The leaders of France and Germany announced Sunday that they will have a new plan to deal with the ongoing Eurozone crisis within the next three weeks.

“We will recapitalize the banks,” said French president Nicolas Sarkozy, as part of a joint briefing held with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

“By the end of the month, we will have responded to the crisis.”

“The Merkel-Sarkozy announcement is positive as it focuses on banks,” says Alberto Gallo, London-based strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland.

“The timing appears ambitious, however. Having a full response to the crisis by month-end sets a high bar.”

“Typically liquidity concerns and funding issues are not gold’s friends,” says a note from UBS this morning.

“While a detailed plan was lacking, we view any progress on bank recapitalization as a positive for gold.”

France reportedly wants to use funds from the European Financial Stability Facility – the Eurozone’s €440 billion bailout fund – to recapitalize French banks. Germany, however, is said to view such a step as a last resort.

Franco-Belgian banking group Dexia agreed this morning to the nationalization of its Belgian division by that country’s government.

The Belgian government will buy Dexia Bank Belgium for €4 billion. It has also pledged to guarantee €90 billion of Dexia’s borrowing over a period of ten years – the equivalent to around a quarter of Belgium’s GDP last year by International Monetary Fund estimates.

Ratings agency Moody’s warned on Friday it may cut Belgium’s credit rating. Fellow ratings agency Fitch meantime downgraded both Italy and Spain.

Over in China meantime – the world’s second-largest source of private gold bullion demand – sales of gold during last week’s National Day Golden Week “were 50% higher from a year earlier,” according to a note from HSBC.

“Due to positive retail buying, we remain upbeat on gold prices.”

The October Golden Week is also traditionally a peak period for real estate demand. Data taken from 20 major cities however show home sales last week were 23% down compared to a year earlier – making it the worst in six years. Shanghai saw a 40% drop, news agency Bloomberg reports.

“We expect further downside for both property prices and transaction volumes for the rest of the year,” says Jinsong Du, property analyst at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

“But most developers were still not willing to cut prices beyond marketing gimmicks, hoping for the government to loosen the [monetary policy] tightening measures soon.”

China’s central bank has raised its interest rates five times in the last 12 months – while increasing commercial banks’ reserve requirements nine times. The annual rate of consumer price inflation fell to 6.2% last month – down from 6.5% in August.

In New York, the net long position of bullish minus bearish gold futures and options contracts held by noncommercial – or ‘speculative’ – traders on the Comex rose2.2% in the week ended October 4, to the equivalent of around 505 tonnes of gold bullion, according to data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Friday. This follows the previous week’s fall of 20%.

The gross tonnage of gold bullion held to back shares in world’s largest gold ETF the SPDR Gold Trust (ticker GLD) in contrast fell by just 1.8% in the two weeks ending October 4.

“Gold ETF stocks [have] changes only minimally,” said a note published by German bullion refiner Heraeus last week, contrasting this with the fall in speculative futures positions.

“From this it is evident that the longer-term oriented investor…still remains faithful to the yellow metal.”

Ben Traynor
BullionVault

Gold value calculator   |   Buy gold online at live prices

Editor of Gold News, the analysis and investment research site from world-leading gold ownership service BullionVault, Ben Traynor was formerly editor of the Fleet Street Letter, the UK’s longest-running investment letter. A Cambridge economics graduate, he is a professional writer and editor with a specialist interest in monetary economics.

(c) BullionVault 2011

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.

Akamai Takeover: Verizon or IBM?

by Justin Dove, Investment U Research
Monday, October 10, 2011

According to Bloomberg research, Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM) is the most talked-about takeover candidate since 2005. That takeover chatter was rekindled this week as shares hit a new 52-week low at $18.25 per share.

Shares are currently trading in the low $20s, following a slight pop based on the rumors. The stock has a 52-week high of $54.65, which was hit in late 2010. Since then, the stock is on a steady decline. Market value for Akamai plummeted to about $4 billion after reaching $9.9 billion last December.

But Trefis.com claims the fair value of the stock is almost $31 per share. And the low valuation could be enticing to potential suitors.

What is Akamai?

Akamai is a company that speeds up internet content delivery. According to its website, “Akamai routinely delivers between 15 and 30 percent of all web traffic, reaching more than four terabits per second.”

Its customers include Apple (Nasdaq: APPL), Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), NFL.com and MLB.com streaming videos and a who’s who list of websites and internet-related companies.

The stock has likely tanked over the last 12 months because of lowered expectation on company performance. After the second quarter, analysts predicted an EPS of $1.57 for this year and $1.79 in 2012. The expectations have now been lowered to $1.45 this year and $1.62 next year.

Akamai has also faced increasing pressure from competitors, having renewed some of its content delivery contracts at lower prices. Late in 2010, the stock was trading with a P/E ratio in the 60s, however currently the P/E of roughly 23 is very reasonable for an internet technology company that should experience more growth.

IBM and Verizon: Likely Takeover Candidates for Akamai

Bloomberg claims IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) are the most likely takeover candidates. It also cites SunTrust Robinson analyst Rodney Ratliff, who thinks the company might not accept any offers under $40 per share.

And although the stock suffered heavy losses, the company is still experiencing success. Akamai is projected to post an increase in net income for a fifth consecutive year at 13-percent growth over 2010.

Even if Akamai isn’t taken over, its current price may represent a nice entry point for investors that aren’t totally spooked by the crisis in Europe.

Good investing,

Justin Dove

Article by Investment U

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