My date with Kathy Lien

Wow, last night I had a date with Kathy Lien, yes the real Forex analyst Kathy Lien and not some look alike with the same name! OK, I was not alone but with another 300 or so men (and ladies) at her Forex Masterclass in Kuala Lumpur. You see, she was in Singapore over the weekend for the Asia Trader and Investor Conference and stopped over here to meet her clients. She was formerly with FXCM but is now with GFT, a Forex broker with an office in Singapore.

As this talk was sponsored by GFT, I was expecting a lot of sales talk but no, there was only one slide she showed that had the GFT account offer. She did had several slides on Foresight-AI, a forecasting tool marketed by GFT but it was nothing pushy at all. She also had some slides promoting a GFT website, FX360, for Forex news and commentary and again it was done without any sales pitch. Most of the evening was devoted to Forex trading itself and it was definitely not for beginners as she went straight into some trading strategies. (Didn't she called it Forex Masterclass?) Here's a summary of what she covered for those interested and were not able to see her in person.

1. The Five-Minute Momo Trade. Trading on the 5 minute chart using MACD to confirm momentum. You can get details of this in Investopedia here.

2. Using Bollinger Bands to pick Tops and Bottoms. Has the 1 deviation Bollinger Bands together with the normal 2 deviations BB to define Buy and Sell Zones.

3. Trading the First Break using the Bollinger Bands above.

4. Trading the Retrace using the same Bollinger Bands above.

5. The Perfect Order. No, this is not the long or short order that made you a lot of profit but all the SMA's lining up in the right order according to their durations.

The most interesting part of the evening was on Trading the news. While most Forex gurus will advise traders not to trade the news, Kathy gives TWO strategies to trade the news. One is Proactive Trading (i.e. enter before the news is released) and the other, Reactive Trading (i.e. after the news is released). The first requires a lot of work but big pips reward while the second is easier but with comparatively smaller pips reward.

Finally she gave some words of wisdom on Trading Lessons. Not bad overall, considering that it is totally free except for the parking fee.

Kathy has just published her new Forex book, Day Trading & Swing Trading the Currency Market and I was surprised that she was not even promoting this book at the gathering. Maybe I got there a bit late and her book has already sold out or she is making more than enough in the Forex market. I picked up my copy last weekend at Kinokuniya but you can get almost 40% discount from Amazon but check the shipping charges.



I have not gone through the book yet but from my browsing, I believe it is worth a read. It has great background information on the Forex market, the major currency pairs and on Fundamental Analysis but there is not much on Technical Analysis so you'll need something else for that. There's a chapter on Technical Trading strategies but this assumes knowledge of the technical indicators employed. Many of the trading strategies given in her talk are also included here. I'll give a more detail review of her book after I have read it but at 290 pages, it'll take some time!

If you need a book on Technical Analysis to complement Kathy's book, I would recommend Technical Analysis for Dummies. Though it is not specifically written for the Forex market, it covers all the basic technical indicators and most of them are applicable to the Forex market.

Meanwhile, happy trading.

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok