I hope you’re well and escaping the rain that’s currently hammering against the windows of Market Maven towers. Rather depressing as I’m off to The Oval on

Thursday for the cricket and was looking forward to seeing the new look England with captain Kevin at the helm. The forecast is currently rather bleak, with interrupted play likely at best.

With all the rain and continuing economic woes, I thought we could all do with a pick me up. So I’ve had a rummage through my notes and put together a list of the best trading resources and tools that are available for free. Nothing like a good freebie to put a smile on your face.

So here goes….

Free trading tools and resources

TRADING SOFTWARE: It’s pretty much impossible to trade without charts, but getting live data can be extremely expensive. Thankfully the spread betting companies have been getting their act together over the last couple of years and their built in charting programs with live data feeds have come on leaps and bounds.

One note of caution. Spread betting companies take a live feed, run it through their systems and spit out the charts at the other end. This means you’re not trading the actual official prices, but the spread betting companies derivation of them. Still, they are increasingly upping their game with some great features. They’re often web based so you need a half decent computer, but in my opinion, the pick of the bunch is www.igindex.co.uk.

These guys are the Granddaddy of the spread betting world and are really cornering the market in terms of pricing and range of markets. Their simple charts are easy to use and their advanced charts are very effective, provided your computer has the necessary firepower.

They’ve even introduced a feature that allows you to trade directly from the charts. You do of course need an IG index account, but you do not have to trade if you don’t want to. With forex there are a few other options available.

http://www.alpari-idc.com/. If you go to “Download MetaTrader 4” on the right, you can download the excellent meta trader platform using Alpari’s forex data. If you are trading forex, then I’d highly recommend this as a great way of getting free live charts with a powerful charting package.

http://www.cmsfx.com/en/trading-software/ is another forex broker with accompanying software. CMS has a brilliant charting package called Visual Trader which I highly recommend.

http://www.moneycorpmarkets.com I like these guys as brokers and they have a very good charting package with integrated trading. They are my favourite forex broker at the moment.

NEWS & ANALYSIS: For the latest, up to date news I regularly read the following news sites:

http://www.bloomberg.com/ Fast news & analysis.

http://www.briefing.com/ Superb for analysis of US markets.

http://finance.google.com/finance Fantastic news aggregator and portfolio tracker.

http://www.sharecast.com/ UK focused news feeds.

http://ransquawk.com/ Free delayed squawk box with the news delivered via voice.

Blog wise I regularly read the following:

http://www.kirkreport.com/

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/

http://quantifiableedges.blogspot.com/

http://bespokeinvest.typepad.com/

EDUCATION & SYSTEMS: There are some fantastic free resources on the internet. Forums can be useful, but they often involved having to sift through lots of idiotic posts to get to the good stuff.

www.trade2win.com is an ever popular forum and it does contain some very useful stuff. However, I’ve heard it called Trade2Winge and sometimes it’s not far off the mark. There are some useful nuggets dotted about however.

http://www.forexfactory.com/ is one of the better forums with less noise and silly bickering. There are some great system ideas like Phillip Nel’s system here:

http://tinyurl.com/6zrsay.

http://www.hardrightedge.com/tw.htm Alan Farley is a master trader, one of the best in the business. His Hard Right Edge website is stacked full of trading lessons from chart patterns to exit rules. Highly recommended.

http://thepatternsite.com Tom Bulkowski is one of the most famous chart pattern traders in the business, his free website contains tons of useful studies into the various patterns and their effectiveness.

http://www.babypips.com. The best free forex trading resource on the internet. Want to start trading forex and don’t want to slash the cash. Visit here first.

http://forex-trading-machine.com/privatelibrary.html has a number of free trading systems for you to download and take a look at.

http://www.tradersnarrative.com/free-trading-resources/ A great collection of trading systems available for nothing.

Hope that helps folks!

My trades

A decent week for TUFXP I lost 30 pips on the EUR/ GBP, cancelled out by +30 pips on USD/ JPY. Pick of the bunch was a 93 pipper on EUR/ USD. Very quiet on my longer term EUR/ CHF trade which made a few more pips to push me up to +69, but it’s been slow going to say the least.

I’m a bit miffed to have been stopped out on my short on the US markets. I made a small profit on my SPY short and broke even on my emini S&P 500 short. Annoying because I was up 20 points or +$1,000 at one stage. So it’s a bit galling to come out with nothing. Still I made a plan and stuck to it. I thought there’d be a continued sell off going into the Non Farm Payroll numbers. In the end there wasn’t and the market came back up to my entry point. I still like the look of the down side though, particularly with today’s rally. With the help of The Wizard, I’m looking at shorting the EUR/ JPY from 167.296 and the EUR/ GBP from 0.7845. I’m also looking at paper trading cotton futures, selling Cotton from $69.01.

Jason Jankovsky is doing a better job at http://www.fxofficial.com this month after breaking even the last two months. A much better performance with around 1500 pips so far this month. On the whole the guys testing the new FTSE systems for me seem to be doing quite well. It’s only been a week or so, but the feedback so far has been positive.

This week’s hot trading buttons

This week is unlikely to bring an end to the recent volatility with some major top tier economic announcements due. We’ve already had UK manufacturing data and services PMI, withy US ISM non-manufacturing composite to follow early in the afternoon. This evening, we have the big one, the US interest statement. Although a no change is largely expected, as ever it is expectations for the future that will excite. It is Europe ‘s turn on Thursday, with the release of the MPC and ECB statements. Both are again expected to be no change, but the statements and overall timbre will be analysed and re-analysed with regard to future expectations.

I’m leaning toward more hawkish sentiment from central banks on rates (ie they’ll talk more about the risks of inflation and the likelihood of putting up rates). However, the announcements are so dangerous to trade that I’ll be out the market sitting on the fence until a trend appears to set in.

Trading wisdom

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” Andre Gide.