Speculation is the purchase of an asset with the hope that it will become more valuable in the near future. In finance, speculation is also the practice of engaging in risky financial transactions in an attempt to profit from short term fluctuations in the market value of a tradable financial instrument—rather than attempting to profit from the underlying financial attributes embodied in the instrument such as capital gains, dividends, or interest.
Rogan LaBier is an American financial services executive and author.
Leo Melamed is an American attorney, finance executive, and a pioneer of financial futures. He is the chairman emeritus of CME Group.
Victor Niederhoffer is a hedge fund manager, champion squash player, bestselling author and statistician.
Monroe Trout, Jr. is a retired financial speculator and hedge fund manager profiled in the book New Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager. Monroe Trout, Jr.'s expertise is in quantitative analysis, with pattern recognition backed by statistical analysis. He subscribes to Ayn Rand's Objectivism. He has traded stocks, stock index futures, commodity futures, and options on all these, both for his own account and as an advisor for others.
Charles Faulkner is an American who is a practitioner of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), life coach, motivational speaker, trader and author.
Michael Marcus is a commodities trader who, in less than 20 years, is reputed to have turned his initial $30,000 into $80 million.
Lawrence D. Hite is a hedge fund manager who, along with Ed Seykota, is one of the forefathers of system trading.
Linda Bradford Raschke (/'ræʃki/) is an American commodities and futures trader. She is President of LBRGroup, Inc., a registered CTA and money management firm, and President of LBR Asset Management, a CPO.
Thomas F. Basso is an American hedge fund manager. He was president and founder of Trendstat Capital Management. Trendstat was closed in 2003 when assets under management fell to $65M. He is the author of two books, Panic-Proof Investing and the self-published The Frustrated Investor. In 1998, he was elected to the board of the National Futures Association.
Bill Lipschutz is a foreign exchange market (forex) trader and the co-founder and Director of Portfolio Management at Hathersage Capital Management. He was also the former Global Head of Foreign Exchange at Salomon Brothers, where he worked from 1981 to 1990.
Trend following or trend trading is a trading strategy according to which one should buy an asset when its price trend goes up, and sell when its trend goes down, expecting price movements to continue.
Robert R. Prechter Jr. is an American author and stock market analyst, known for his financial forecasts using the Elliott Wave Principle. Prechter is an author and co-author of 14 books, and editor of 2 books, and his book Conquer the Crash was a New York Times bestseller in 2002. He also has published monthly financial commentary in the newsletter The Elliott Wave Theorist since 1979, and is the founder of Elliott Wave International and New Classics Library. Prechter served on the board of the CMT Association for nine years, and as its President in 1990-1991. In recent years Prechter has supported the study of socionomics, a theory about human social behavior.
Hand signaling, also known as arb or arbing, is a system of hand signals used on financial trading floors to communicate buy and sell information in an open outcry trading environment. The system is used at financial exchanges such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX). The AMEX is the only U.S. stock market to permit the transmission of buy and sell orders through hand signals.
Morgan Downey is an Irish-born New York-based American commodities trader and acknowledged authority on the financial aspects of the oil industry. His views about price fluctuations and trends in the oil market have been reported in numerous publications. His bestselling 2009 book Oil 101 is an overall guide to the oil industry with information about how oil prices are determined in global wholesale markets. According to the Wall Street Journal, the book covers the "technologies and systems related to oil exploration, production, refining, distribution and more." Reviewer Robert Rapier described his book as detailed and comprehensive and an excellent resource for persons wanting to understand the oil industry. In February 2014, Downey was appointed as the chief executive officer of financial data vendor Money.Net, described as a real-time market information platform for investors. Before Money.net, he was Global Head of Commodities at Bloomberg LP where he managed development and content of the Bloomberg Professional terminal as well as moderated panel discussions on industry topics. Before that, he was a commodities trader for Standard Chartered Bank, after trading at Bank of America and at Citibank. Downey was born in Ireland, studied finance at the University of Limerick, and moved to New York City after college.
Michael W. Covel is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and film director. In 1996, he co-founded TurtleTrader.com, later expanded into TrendFollowing.com, a popular online resource focused on investment style known as trend following, which allows investors to profit in both up and down markets.
Gerald Loeb was a founding partner of E.F. Hutton & Co., a renowned Wall Street trader and brokerage firm. He was the author of the books The Battle For Investment Survival and The Battle For Stock Market Profits. Loeb promoted a view of the market as too risky to hold stocks for the long term in contrast to well known value investors. He also created the Gerald Loeb Award, given annually for excellence in various categories of financial journalism.
John J. Murphy is an American financial market analyst, and is considered the father of inter-market technical analysis. He has authored several books including Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets. He later revised and broadened this book into Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets.
The true strength index (TSI) is a technical indicator used in the analysis of financial markets that attempts to show both trend direction and overbought/oversold conditions. It was first published William Blau in 1991. The indicator uses moving averages of the underlying momentum of a financial instrument. Momentum is considered a leading indicator of price movements, and a moving average characteristically lags behind price. The TSI combines these characteristics to create an indication of price and direction more in sync with market turns than either momentum or moving average. The TSI is provided as part of the standard collection of indicators offered by various trading platforms.
Perry J. Kaufman is an American systematic trader, index developer, and quantitative financial theorist. He is considered a leading expert in the development of fully algorithmic trading programs.
