Friday’s TED Spread chart from Bloomberg indicates that big banks are becoming more willing to lend to each other. A necessary first step in getting liquidity pumping again throughout the system.

Forex traders may be the first to see the affect of greater liquidity with tighter bid/ask spreads in the afternoon Forex market.

FXDD

FXDD is located in New York. Has a simple online account registration process. You can fund your account with PayPal. Minimum deposit is $250. FXDD will give you $100 bonus (even before you fund your account) if you open an account before 2:00 PM 12/24/2008. That’s when they close for Christmas.

Spreads are similar to IBFX with the same caution that spreads tends to widen around 5 PM New York time. You can read an explanation of why spreads widen.

Forex brokers and spreads are a major discussion topic in the FAP Turbo Forum. There are inconsistencies between posters with regard to any one broker. Since not every poster identifies where they are located, and because FAP Turbo users are from all over the globe, some of these inconsistencies may be between different branches of the same broker.

The italicized message below is now appearing on the FAP Turbo website:

Update December 15 2008 8:12 PM: Price Change

Due to this we have to change our pricing model to $ USD 399 after the next 27 copies are sold. We seriously apologize but the support team has to be fully staffed, the video and hosting costs shoot through the roof and we want to limit the purchases in order to provide the best support ever.

We have had great success with FAP Turbo. We write about it at the Forex Robot blog.

I think it’s worth $399 but why pay the extra money? You can open a $250 account at Interbank FX and probably make your purchase price back within the first few weeks. Buy FAP Turbo today.

In the coming months, mental health experts expect a rise in theft, depression, drug use, anxiety and even violence as consumers confront a harsh new reality and must live within diminished means.

“People start seeing their economic situation change, and it stimulates a sort of survival panic,” said Gaetano Vaccaro, deputy clinical director of Moonview Sanctuary, which treats patients for emotional and behavioral disorders. “When we are in a survival panic, we are prone to really extreme behaviors.”

Source: CNBC

From: Adam Hewison

In this week’s video, we will be exploring the world of foreign exchange. It is also commonly known as the forex market to industry professionals.

The forex market is the biggest market in the world with trillions of dollars changing hands everyday. This truly is the most fluid and liquid marketplace on earth. This market trades 24 hours a day, 5 1/2 days a week and it is traded by every major bank in the world.

One of the cool things about forex is the fact that markets tend to trend very well and therefore they are very suitable for technical analysis and the use of trend following techniques such as MarketClub’s “Trade Triangle.”

Today, we will be focusing in on the EUR/USD exchange rate. As of right now, the dollar continues to be gaining for the year against the Euro. However, we still have about another week left to trade in 2008 and we could see the USD end up being flat for the year.

This gets back to a point I have made before…never buy-and-hold a security or a currency as events are constantly changing in the financial arena.

My new video runs about seven minutes. In the online video, which you can view with my compliments, I will show you step-by-step exactly how we approach both trends and market timing in the forex markets.

Every success in the coming year and every success in trading the forex markets.

Adam Hewison
MarketClub

December 12, 2008

Editor’s Note: The following article is adapted from Robert Prechter’s 2002 best-selling book, Conquer the Crash – You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression.

In addition to this article, visit Elliott Wave International to download the free 15-page report about how to protect yourself, you wealth and your family in this environment. It contains details about what you should do with your pension plan, valuable tips for business owners, insights on handling loans and debt and important warnings against trusting the government to protect you.

By Robert Prechter, CMT

The ultimate effect of deflation is to reduce the supply of money and credit. Your goal is to make sure that it doesn’t reduce the supply of your money and credit. The ultimate effect of depression is financial ruin. Your goal is to make sure that it doesn’t ruin you.
Many investment advisors speak as if making money by investing is easy. It’s not. What’s easy is losing money, which is exactly what most investors do. They might make money for a while, but they lose eventually. Just keeping what you have over a lifetime of investing can be an achievement. That’s what this my book, Conquer the Crash, is designed to help you do, in perhaps the single most difficult financial environment that exists.

Protecting your liquid wealth against a deflationary crash and depression is pretty easy once you know what to do. Protecting your other assets and ensuring your livelihood can be serious challenges. Knowing how to proceed used to be the most difficult part of your task because almost no one writes about the issue. My book remedies that situation.

Preparing To Take the Right Actions

In a crash and depression, we will see stocks going down 90 percent and more, mutual funds collapsing, massive layoffs, high unemployment, corporate and municipal bankruptcies, bank and insurance company failures and ultimately financial and political crises. The average person, who has no inkling of the risks in the financial system, will be shocked that such things could happen, despite the fact that they have happened repeatedly throughout history.

Being unprepared will leave you vulnerable to a major disruption in your life. Being prepared will allow you to make exceptional profits both in the crash and in the ensuing recovery. For now, you should focus on making sure that you do not become a zombie-eyed victim of the depression.

Taking the Right Actions

Countless advisors have touted “stocks only,” “gold only,” “diversification,” a “balanced portfolio” and other end-all solutions to the problem of attending to your investments. These approaches are usually delusions. As I try to make clear in Conquer the Crash, no investment strategy will provide stability forever. You will have to be nimble enough to see major trends coming and make changes accordingly.

The main goal of investing in a crash environment is safety. When deflation looms, almost every investment category becomes associated with immense risks. Most investors have no idea of these risks and will think you are a fool for taking precautions.
Many readers will object to taking certain prudent actions because of the presumed cost. For example: “I can’t take a profit; I’ll have to pay taxes!” My reply is, if you don’t want to pay taxes, well, you’ll get your wish; your profit will turn into a loss, and you won’t have to pay any taxes. Or they say, “I can’t sell my stocks for cash; interest rates are only 2 percent!” My reply is, if you can’t abide a 2 percent annual gain, well, you’ll get your wish there, too; you’ll have a 30 percent annual loss instead. Others say, “I can’t cash out my retirement plan; there’s a penalty!” I reply, take your money out before there is none to get. Then there is the venerable, “I can’t sell now; I’d be taking a loss!” I say no, you are recovering some capital that you can put to better use. My advice always is, make the right move, and the costs will take care of themselves.

If you are preoccupied with pedestrian concerns or blithely going along with mainstream opinions, you need to wake up now, while there is still time, and actively take charge of your personal finances. First you must make your capital, your person and your family safe. Then you can explore options for making money during the crash and especially after it’s over.
…………….

For more information, Prechter has made five full chapters from his book available for free download.
• What to do with your pension plan
• How to identify a safe haven (a safe place for your family)
• What should you do if you run a business
• Calling in loans and paying off debt
• Should you rely on the government to protect you?

Robert Prechter, Certified Market Technician, is the founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International, author of Wall Street best-sellers Conquer the Crash and Elliott Wave Principle and editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist monthly market letter since 1979.

FAP Turbo, the 100% automatic Forex trading robot, has been out for about two weeks. The introductory price was $97. The price changed to $149 a few days later. The developers are talking about raising the price to $399 or going to a monthly subscription rate.

I’m not privy to the number of units that have been sold but it’s been more than enough to force the developers to add telephone lines and geometrically grow the size of the FAP Turbo support staff. Overhead has to be paid for, and when you have a hot product that actually delivers as good as the hype why not raise the sales price?

We’ve been blogging about FAP Turbo since it came out. FAP Turbo works. No question about it. We especially like the money management settings that allow you to define a profile that fits your personality and trading style. If you want to swing at home run every time you’re up you can do that. Or, you can selectively manage the risk aspects to make sure you get to play for a very long time.

From the desk of Adam Hewison

I can honestly say that 30 years ago I learned how to trade the markets in the pits of Chicago.

It was there, in one of those sweaty, tumultuous, in your face trading pits, that I learned one of the most valuable trading secrets in the world.

This one trading secret opened my eyes to why things happen in the markets.

This trading secret, which is over 800 years old, is one of the most monumental mathematical discoveries of all time.

The publication in 1202 of the “The Book of Calculation” was never meant to be a road map to success in the markets. However, it turned out to be an extraordinary blueprint for how modern day markets work.

The number sequences contained in this amazing 800 year old book, is like having a virtual DNA for every stock, futures and foreign exchange market.

No one knows for sure why these number sequences work. Some traders believe them to be mystical, others, like myself prefer to call them one of life’s little mysteries.

I have been using this sequence of numbers to trade the markets for over 30 years. I have to say that after all this time, I am still amazed that these numbers still work!

My new 8 minute educational trading video that remains true to core principles of the “The Book of Calculation.” Show you step by step, exactly how you can benefit from using this trading secret.

Once you view the video and absorb this valuable educational trading lesson, you can apply the exact same principles you learn to your own trading. What could be better than that.

We do not require you to register to view this video.

Discover and benefit today, from what I learned over 30 years ago in the trading pits of Chicago.

Every success.

Adam Hewison
President, INO.com

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) — Treasuries rose, pushing rates on the three-month bill negative for the first time, as investors gravitate toward the safety of U.S. government debt amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Treasury sold $27 billion of three-month bills yesterday at a discount rate of 0.005 percent, the lowest since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929. The U.S. also sold $30 billion of four-week bills today at zero percent for the first time since it began selling the debt in 2001.

What should we take from this?

One thing, certainly, is the obvious – an 80 year low in any major financial indicator is self-evident proof that something BIG is underfoot.

The Bloomberg writers attribute this historical event to institutional purchasers’ collective desire to have “something of value” on their books for their year end balance sheets. There’s probably something to that. The individuals making the decision to buy zero interest securities are employees of major institutions who have to answer to somebody about the riskiness of their portfolios.

But even if we accept that explanation as the entire story we are still left with the ugly fact that in today’s environment “something of value” means getting your money back.

The folks at Elliott Wave International are saying that this auctions is screaming “Deflation.” It’s hard to argue against that.

One of the easiest ways to determine the trend in any market is simply to connect the dot’s. In this five minute video, I explain how you can connect the dots in any market to determine its trend. I will show you three examples of connecting the dots…

1. How to determine a downtrend.
2. How to determine an uptrend.
3. How to determine when a market is making a change of direction.

One of the key components I look for is how a market closes on a Friday or the last trading day of the week. This is when traders have to decide what they want to do with their positions. It also tells you with a high degree of probability which way the market is headed for the upcoming week. I learned this trading secret on the floor of the exchange in Chicago and it is one I would like to share with you today. I feel that this technique has a lot of validity, particularly in light of today’s volatile markets.

Enjoy the Video

Adam Hewison
President INO.com