Aegean Airlines' AEGN stock chart shows a couple of buy stock signals according to technical analysis in the beginning of this week. Although the stock is in downtrend, there is a Fail Bottom, MACD divergence and a nice candlestick formation completed yesterday. The stochastic shows that the stock is oversold at this moment, making it a good trading opportunity. If you were looking for a stock to trade in the Greek stock market, I believe AEGN stock is a fine candidate for online stock trading.

Going long and buying Greek shares looks like a good long term investment at the moment. According to technical analysis there are strong indications that the downtrend has most probably come to an end and a reversal is imminent. If I were a long term investor, I would look to buy some well known stocks and predict a long uptrend that is just beginning. Besides the risk/reward is huge at this point, as the stock prices might double or even triple up!

EUR/USD has entered a downtrend since late 2009 but perhaps June 2010 was the month that hit its lowest low. A couple of strong reversal signals indicate a probable ending of the downtrend and all that is left to find out is whether the currency pair will make a full reversal and start an uptrend, or move in a sideways channel in the following weeks. For the time shorting seems riskier than buying euro for the first time this year. On the other hand, pessimistic investors for Euro might think that EUR/USD has retraced to the long term moving average only to bounce back and continue its downtrend.

DFS stock graph provided excellent conditions to carry on swing trading last night. The US stock's price hit the moving average of Bollinger Bands in both the daily and half hour graphs, accompanied by a great candlestick formation in the daily chart, which strengthens the signal for a short term downtrend. Besides the stock is in a long term downtrend for almost a year although not a major one; the slope is rather small. Additionally there was MACD divergence in late June shown at the 30-min graph which make things even better. My stop loss was set at 15.00 but I'm moving it to 14.18 which was the price I shortened the stock. In other words this is another risk-free trade for me from now on.

I went short at BTU's stock when trading the US last night. The stock is currently in a downtrend according to the daily bar graph. I waited for a good entry point, which was a retracement in the 30-min stock chart. The stock bounced off indicating a support level, that was previously a resistance level of an uptrend. There are also quite a few more signals that indicate the trend and I'm quite confident with this trade. I also moved my stop loss from 42,50 to 40,27 making it a risk free trade, since that was the price I initially sold the stock.

I just bought 5 stocks in the Greek stock exchange today. 4 out of the 5 trading orders have been executed, while the one remaining is still in OASIS system waiting for someone to match it at the time of writing. I know that Greece is not doing well during the last months, since I do live in Greece but I believe the so called financial crisis does create opportunities. I always have in mind that whenever someone loses money, someone else must be winning it! Now, which Greek stocks attracted my interest?

First of all I should note that I'm not that happy trading the Greek stock market. The commissions are through the roof (about 0.5% per trading order without cap) and the stocks behave rather peculiar. However, instead of keeping the money sitting in a bank account, I prefer investing them in any way, and stock market is an investment, although it can lead to losses I wouldn't experience if I didn't bother. Ok, maybe the Greek stock exchange isn't my best option, but I don't want to invest all of my money on the same investment, I am a fan of diversification. For that reason, I have divided my whole capital into small parts and invest each part in a different investment tool. Therefore, a part of my trading capital is going to be invested in the Greek Stock Exchange, like it or not! The other parts are invested in US stocks, Forex and other financial products, mainly through Interactive Brokers.

I am using a multi-monitor setup for online trading with Interactive Brokers Trader WorkStation or TWS in short. The stock trading software allows you to open many stock charts and windows at the same, taking advantage of the desktop space. By trying to make the most out of it while day trading, all 4 monitors display trading graphs, account and quote information.

Starting from the first monitor on the left, there are 9 stock charts there showing 1 minute bar graphs. I usually display the charts of the stocks I currently hold or I am about to trade. In this way, in case I want to get out quickly if a stock reverses, it just takes me a moment to verify the reversal and trade out without sacrificing a lot of profit. If on the other hand the stock doesn't perform the way I predicted, I can trade out before my stop loss hits. However these bar graphs are also helpful when scanning the stock market for trading opportunities. I often scan the stocks sorted by volume traded and I can scan almost 10 stocks at once. If I don't find something worth noting, I move on to the next 9 stocks until all 9 stock charts are occupied by stocks that are in my watch list. I always display 1-minute bar graphs in this monitor, since I am day trading and looking for quick trades.

My stock trading system performed well yesterday for a second day in a row after a great start on Friday. 11 out of 16 completed trades were profitable increasing my available for US stocks trading capital by 9.75%. This time I still hold 5 stocks since there weren't signals to trade out. My biggest win was Halliburton Co., although the first trade, Ford Motor Co.,  was also quite profitable during the first hour of online trading, followed by Verizon Communications.

Winners: F, GE, BAC, XOM, VZ, EMC, TXN, HAL, YHOO, PFE, VMC

Losers: CSCO, SYMC, X, SLB, SLM

The stocks that I held shares of overnight are FITB, GNW, MRK, VNO (short) and AMD (short).

This week I began trading the US markets and specifically the stocks of SP500. I created an Excel spreadsheet where I keep track of the stocks I buy or sell according to my online trading system.  I must confess that the adventure has started quite well and above my expectations, given that it is the first time I am trading online the US stock exchange.

At the time of writing, I am not holding any stock. The Excel spreadsheet consists of 15 or so columns, including stock name, buy or sell price, stop loss limit price, number of shares, capital at risk, risk per trade and P/L. I am also using the spreadsheet to calculate other significant statistical data about the online stock trading system like average win/loss ratio and winning percentage that will help me in the future to evaluate the trading system.

Betfair graphs show the odds movement of an event. If many bettors back a team or a competitor, the betting odds will shorten and we profit by trading the trend. What about the final result of the game? Can Betfair graphs really predict the final outcome of an event? I believe so and I have a couple of examples to prove that.

My latest experience regarding predicting final results with the help of Betfair Graphs was the night of the Oscars 2010. A week ago I had posted in my sports blog an article where I did basic technical analysis on the Betfair graphs of popular nominations. Although most of the favorites won and was not that difficult predicting wins of The Hurt Locker and the like, what surprised even myself was my prediction on the Foreign Language Film category. To quote from my original article: "To be honest it is an [Academy] award where an outsider might surprise us all and take down the first place. I'm talking about El Secreto de Sus Ojos which although is in third position considering the betting odds, the betting graph seems promising. The White Ribbon's odds are drifting since the beginning of the betting and Un Prophete's odds do seem uneasy trending in a channel. A small bet on El Secreto de Sus Ojos might be worth the risk! The odds at the time paid 5 times the original bet. A nice win without knowing anything about the movie or the latest news! Just by simply looking at the Betfair graph.

GBP/USD is one of the currency pair in Forex trading. If you think the British pound will do better against the American dollar you buy, if you favor USD you sell. Yesterday GBP did exceptionally well in just one minute as I was trading the currency pair together with USD/JPY and EUR/USD. The pair climbed 500 pips in a matter of seconds and I had just got long, which means I had bought, right from the beginning of the movement.

It is actually a 50 pips movement! I was so thrilled that I added up a zero! Sorry for that!

This is my trading graphs' arrangement regarding a currency pair. Since I'm new to the Interactive Brokers interface, I haven't tried trading any stocks yet and I focus on Forex trading until I get accustomed to the software. In the trading screen there are 4 graphs, 1 minute, 5 minute, 30 minute and 1 hour charts. All of them include the latest 100 candlestick bars at each scale. MACD is also plotted, which is a popular indicator in technical analysis.

Most of traders at Interactive Brokers use third party charting software for their trading graphs. I thought that Interactive Brokers' platform was good enough to trade but apparently traders find it easier to trade using bar or line graphs of NinjaTrader, AmiBroker or Sierra Chart. These are 3 of the most popular pieces of charting software to accompany an Interactive Brokers account. Tradestation is another popular alternative while very few are trading through Metastock, since it requires a paid third party plug-in to connect it with IB.

I have been using Metastock as my charting software while I am trading in the Greek stock market and backtesting any online stock trading system I believed would work. So, when I spent a couple of hours yesterday night to find out what is going on regarding charting software, I was surprised to find out that other programs are more popular than Metastock. I read a lot of software reviews, software comparisons and according to most of them I have reached to some conclusions.

The first race of Formula 1 this season is Bahrain Grand Prix and Vettel will be starting from the pole position right in front of the two Ferrari's. Formula 1 is a fascinating sport to be trading in Betfair for a change besides football or horse racing. Since each race consists of a 3-day event, there is plenty of time to trade the odds. At this time the odds pretty much reflect the qualification results with Sebastian Vettel posing as the favorite driver for the win tomorrow. What do the line graphs say though?

Vettel's Betfair odds experienced an uptrend from 7.0 up to 10.0 but due to the qualification outcome the odds dropped to 3.00 in a snap. Not much to make out from this graph.

There is no stock trading system in online stock trading that can guarantee every trade to be profitable. If you are looking for a 100% strike rate you will be disappointed to know that there isn't such a system. We just have to cut our losses and let our winners run in stock trading. For the time being I just have a nice day in the Greek stock market this morning, where every stock I own is rising. It is not usual to see so many green figures in my portfolio picture, but of course a welcome sign of doing something correctly. I bought most of those stocks 10 days ago and I believe there is money to be made.

These first articles at Trading Graphs are like an introduction and it feels like reinventing the wheel! While I admit I am a newbie at stock trading and have just opened an account with Interactive Brokers, I have tons of experience in another form of online trading, called Betfair trading. Although the general term is sports trading, Betfair is the leading sports exchange and due to their popularity, the term is known as Betfair trading nowadays. I have been a professional Betfair trader for a couple of years in the past, when I traded the horse racing betting markets in Betfair just like in stock trading.

To take a glimpse of a Betfair trading graph, here is a line graph of the betting odds of a favorite horse running in a UK horse race during last year.