PipStop

Just a quick look at the top of our web analytics at 11 p.m. here in the Pacific time zone shows visitors on our website from countries such as Taiwan, Singapore and India.

It's always fun seeing visitors from all around the world.

Through the wonders of Facebook, I have been able to interact with many more from around the world, underscoring the fact that online trading has little in terms of geographic restrictions.

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We keep hearing, amidst general global market turmoil, from not only our brokerage partners but other brokers, also, that October has been a record month from various perspectives. Account openings, total trading volume, etc. With a day to go in the month I can say that Trading Post Brokerage has seen its highest client trading volume in over 6 months. It's been a very interesting time to be sure.

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So it was reported today that American Express announced the axing of 7000 jobs, Motorola announced the shedding of 3000 jobs, and Sun Microsystems posted a $1.7 billion loss for its most recent reporting quarter.

With all this, how odd is it that Exxon recorded record quarterly profits in Q3 2008 with $14.83 billion. Can it be assumed that there haven't been any job losses there?

It its most recent quarterly newsletter sent out earlier today, the National Futures Association (NFA) clarified some impending amendments to its Forex rules.

Grounded to reflect the CFTC Reauthorization Act of 2008, this mainly deals with the categorization of Forex, and how it is not only viewed, but how it is treated and further regulated.

Further, and more vigilant oversight of the Forex market in the United States has been a long time in coming. Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer (RFED) is a term that will become known in the industry (synonymous with FCM).

The impending designations are:

The legislation also requires firms that solicit retail forex customers, manage retail forex accounts or operate pools for retail customers to register with the CFTC and be Members of NFA. FCMs, IBs, CPOs and CTAs whose activities involve retail forex will be designated Forex FCMs, Forex IBs, Forex CPOs and Forex CTAs, while APs of those firms will be designated as Forex Associated Persons.

"The separate designations are necessary for several reasons," said Sexton. "We need to track which firms and individuals are engaged in retail forex activities, and we need to distinguish between FCMs that are designated as approved FDMs and those that are not, because approved FDMs have a higher minimum net capital requirement."

Many in the industry who have been operating with no oversight will be in for a rude awakening when they realize the small profit centers they have been relying on will no longer be there if they do not become officially registered with the NFA - which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. From the NFA:

Because the Reauthorization Act will require forex solicitors and account managers to be NFA Members, NFA will eliminate its provision making FDMs responsible for the acts of non-Members and replace it with a prohibition on doing business with non-Members, similar to the prohibition in Bylaw 1101. Bylaw 1101 has long been a cornerstone of NFA's regulatory effectiveness and states that no NFA Member can do business with a non-Member.

Also, Forex Dealer Member (FDM) adjusted net capital is rising to $15 million on Jan. 17, 2009, and to $20 million on May 15, 2009.

Lastly, there is a new proficiency exam for those who work in the Forex industry designated as the Series 34 exam. The NFA has recommended to the CFTC to make mandatory the passing of Series 3 and Series 34 exams by individuals who act as Associated Persons in the Forex industry.

It continues to be a stomach churning time for sure. The UK announced negative growth in GDP for the quarter ending in September (for the first time since 1992). Usually when there are consecutive months of negative GDP growth it is an indicator of a recession.

But can anyone really argue that we're going through a global recession of sorts now?

Other than that heading into the weekend after another quick week, here are some additional thoughts.

+++ One of our trading coaches Nikhil Patel just sent a link to me for ONN.TV. Interesting if you're into options - but doesn't it seem like there are so many websites like this coming online nowadays? ONN does seem to put out a quality channel, though.

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+++ Isn't reading Boris Schlossberg and Kathy Lien's latest FX Outlook reason enough to stay out of the market? The commentary, which isn't indicative of the writer, is like the market unpredictable and unsettling.

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+++ Interbank FX announced that September was a record breaking month for them from a revenue perspective. I imagine it might have been for many brokers. As the economy has turned down, at Trading Post we've seen a surge in overall trading activity with our partner brokers.

A quick thanks to everyone who contributed on Trading Post Tuesday yesterday, our monthly buffet of Online Trading Webinars. It was a successful day that featured the most new presenters we've seen in this event in quite some time.

It will only continue to be fresh with great coaches, products, and topics.

A special thanks to the back-to-back duo of Ryan O'Keefe who was followed by Rob Booker. Ryan talked about Trading Around a Day Job, and Rob shared his thoughts on the market and on Support and Resistance.

One thing we do currently is give unencumbered access to recordings from TP Tuesday, but it's always best free, so join us for our next session on Nov. 18!

This is a memory from the Forex workshop that was held over the weekend (Oct. 18 - 19, 2008) taught by Trading Post Trading Coaches Nikhil Patel (in red) and Pierre Charlebois (to Nikhil's left).

It's always great for traders to get together and hopefully we can all do it again soon.

Trading Post Tuesday is up again tomorrow and we've had our highest pre-registration numbers to date.

We have a few new guest presenters scheduled including Rob Booker, chief market strategist for Interbank FX and also independent trader and blogger Ryan O'Keefe.

The all-day webinars starts at 7 a.m. Pacific; 10 a.m. Eastern; 2 p.m. GMT and continues through for eight consecutive hours!

The concept may be crazy, but we've been doing it for over a year and it continues to grow stronger. You're invited to attend one, two, three, or all sessions.

Just register for free.

I'm sitting here, oh, at 2:39 a.m. Pacific Time. It's a rather uneventful market right now and I'm absolutely astounded by something I just read.

Understand that I LOVE to eat. I've curbed my eating habits and traded an extra burger here and there trading it for what I hope is a better life decades down the road, but I still love to indulge every once in a while.

There was even a time I ate 1.3 kg (4.5 lbs) of curry in just over 11 minutes (20 minutes is the allotted time) in Japan over 10 years ago. I was pretty proud of that ridiculous accomplishment. I also found a YouTube video of a random example below:

My point in all of this is that Brad Sciullo ate a 20 lb. burger on Monday. It makes me sick just thinking about it. But I guess he wanted to prove a point and was willing to over indulge to do it.

So crazy thoughts enter my head wondering what indulgences do traders go through to make a "point?" Whether its proving something to themselves or to others?