FXsTREET.COM
Figure 1: Homepage of www.FXstreet.com
"Take the challenge: Test your forex knowledge" -- the headline was enough to tempt me to take a closer look at www.FXstreet.com. A click on that link took me to a 10-question test, which, although basic, really will test your knowledge. Fortunately for me, there were enough technical analysis questions to make the quiz a breeze. But it also prompted me to explore the site further.
The content changes just about every day, and you'll find that you get a good overview of the forex market. You can find forecasts, commentary, technical analysis, charts, news, quotes -- basically anything you want to know about the currency market. Interested in finding out the current interest rates in Egypt? Want to know the exchange rate of the country you will be visiting on your next vacation? You'll find it all on this site.
Most of the technical analysis articles I read here discussed support and resistance levels of major currency pairs or crosses. I am assuming these can be helpful in making your entry and exit decisions. The most popular articles all have to do with forecasts, and don't miss the "editor's selection." Overall, you'll find an interesting collection. I did come across some articles written in Spanish (I was unable to read these). There's a plethora of articles on this site, many of which are penned by individuals from organizations that you'll be familiar with: Commerzbank, GCI Financial Ltd., Wachovia Securities, Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd., Forex Capital Markets LLC, and Gerrard Limited. New articles pop up just about every day.
If you haven't guessed by now, this site is all content. It's also a useful site for finding further resources, since there are so many links to various other sites. I read several good articles, and they weren't all necessarily about currency trading: One that I particularly liked was on international trade. There also were a few interesting charts that I had never come across before, such as the strategic charts, bond yields, and market trend charts. The currency trading tools are worth mentioning: Here you'll find a rate history tool, currency converters, risk probability calculator, investment risk (VAR) calculator, forex pivot point calculator, and a pip-USD value calculator. You could get lost for hours in this site. There's just so much available, for free, and it has a global touch.
With this amount of information, it only makes sense to personalize the site, which you can do if you register. You cannot, however, personalize everything: The only services that can be personalized are My Home, My Newsletter, and My Alert. This may reduce the amount of time you spend on the site, but you'll still be checking things out on it for a long time. It's certainly worth a visit.
FXstreet also has a site for futures trading, but we'll save that for another issue.
--Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan, Editor
WALLSTREETCITY.COM
One of the blessings of being a market technician is listening to fundamental analysts fire off explanations for events that technicians had anticipated for days. Sure, it's an extra kicker when the fundamentalist finds him- or herself suddenly reversing a position that was fiercely argued only a few weeks before. But how many times has a technician been watching a financial news program or reading a mainstream financial periodical and said to himself -- in the midst of a blizzard of pundit rationalization and obfuscation -- "Sure, whatever you say, pal. But if it does bounce, I'm going to sell it again"?
Nevertheless, fundamentals are an irresistible attraction to many technicians, either out of familiarity (former accountants and brokers turned chartists and technicians) or morbid curiosity (in part the inspiration of some technical contrarians, perhaps). And for those technicians looking for a good website where the fundamentals lead and the technicals are not far behind, consider bookmarking www.WallStreetCity.com.
As my editor reminds me, WallStreetCity.com has undergone a number of changes since it was among those websites during the stock market boom that were most responsible for keeping active stock traders and investors abreast of the latest news and events in the market. Now under the auspices of IndividualInvestor.com, WallStreetCity.com serves as a source for the big market news of the day as well as a resource center for traders and investors looking for stock screeners, scans and searches, charts, technical analysis tools, and more.
WALL STREET CITY LIFE
The homepage gets right to business, with market news like "Today's Hottest Stocks" and "State of the Market" reports. When I visited WallStreetCity.com, a total of seven stories were posted on the homepage. These included commentary on the morning's action, as well as a short and long technical outlook and more than one discussion on earnings. Some of these seemed to be updated more frequently than others. But for the most part, there was ample recent commentary, with a calendar of scheduled comments to show visitors what to expect on what days. The homepage also features options for visitors to try out WallStreetCity's "Favorite Backtested Searches" as well as a "Build Your Own Stock Search" function.
A toolbar across the top makes it easy to reference some of the specific sections of WallStreetcity.com. The tabs here include links to charts, portfolio tracker, news, and market commentary on stock, mutual fund, and options opportunities. The material is a bit uneven, with few articles in the fund area and only Bernie Schaeffer's (worthwhile) options-related analysis, compared to the larger amount of material available in the stock section. Other tabs, such as "Advisors" and "Trading," are essentially advertising portals for advisory services and online brokerages. Fortunately, all of the advisory services listed -- from "OTC Insight" and "The Chartist" to "The Buyback Letter" and "The Spear Report" -- offer free trials to make inquiries into these services as pain-free as possible.
The charting and portfolio tracking services are modest but effective. WallStreet City.com's charts betray the website's fundamental bias, with price/earnings, five-year growth, and price/sales data included in the quote box along with high, low, bid, ask, volume, and change. A few technical indicators can be added: indicators such as Bollinger Bands, stochastics, volume, the CCI MACD, on-balance volume, negative and positive volume index, momentum, Wilder's RSI moving averages, and insider trading.
A pulldown menu lets you call up a window that features information about a stock. This includes a corporate snapshot, financial overview, company news, historical quotes, industry analysis, detailed company financials, listed options, earnings, ProSearch criteria report, stocks in industry group, Telescan rankings, technical data, Vickers insider trading, and Zacks earnings estimate.
PROSEARCH AND PROSTATION
Two of WallStreetCity.com's most attractive features are available now on a free-trial basis: ProSearch and ProStation. ProSearch is a proprietary stock screener developed by Telescan and, while many of its features are available separately, the screener is also incorporated into the larger ProStation product.
ProStation -- which can be browsed by way of a 10-day free trial -- is a Java-based charting/technical analysis online platform that features streaming intraday charts; interactive charts; historical charts; over 40 different technical indicators; portfolio tracking; thumbnail charting to scan broader sections of the market; Level II quotes; fundamental data including earnings estimates, news, analyst rankings, insider trading and company profiles; and, as mentioned, ProSearch Pro. Generally available for $59 a month, ProStation's free 10-day trial is an excellent opportunity for those interested in checking out other platforms to do so on the cheap.
There is one last caveat. Many of the features provided on the site are apparently available courtesy of InvesTools.com, which has, according to a recurring popup at WallStreetCity.com, sold some of its assets -- such as some of the newsletter commentaries that come with a free registration to WallStreetCity.com. At times, it was difficult to determine which links would lead to the data being sought and which would lead to the popup message. Clicking on "Earnings Search" yielded not a search engine, nor an invitation to subscribe, but produced the forementioned popup announcement instead.
None of this is to suggest that WallStreetCity.com doesn't have its act together, but merely to recognize that the website, like many financial- and trading-oriented websites that offer free market data and commentary, is undergoing a transition, and there might be a few dripcloths and exposed plumbing where labor has not yet been completed. And I can't help but wonder if the (largely) free, (largely) fundamental analysis websites like this aren't having a harder go at it -- post-2000 -- than their technical analysis competitors ... but I'm hardly an unbiased observer.
Still, if you enjoy the marriage of fundamental and technical analysis -- or even just the schadenfreude of knowing what the fundamental analysts are looking at and praying for as the technicals point in the opposite direction -- then the next time you're browsing the web, consider taking it to the streets: of WallStreetCity.com.
-- David Penn, Technical Writer
Originally published in the September 2004 issue of Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES magazine. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2004, Technical Analysis, Inc.