SSI

The green line represents the price of the USD/JPY while the shaded gray area shows the open positions held by FXCM clients. I am showing this chart to show the value of the SSI as an indicator and to show that trading with the trend increases one's chance of success. This morning's reading of the SSI on this pair was +6.19. That means that for every sell position of the USD/JPY, there are 6.19 buy positions. So the buys outnumber the sells by more than six to one. You would think that the market would rally based on this but in fact this ratio has been near or above +3 since the market was trading above 90. The USD/JPY sits at 84.25 as I write this. This is obviously a contrarian indicator as most new traders that come into the markets try to pick tops and bottoms and trade against the trend. So why does the market fall? It is the big traders like the hedge funds, money managers, bank traders and corporations that are doing the selling. They are the professionals and their actions determine the trend. It is the small retail trader that trades against the trend. This is not unique to FXCM or even to the FX markets. It is the same in the stock markets and the futures markets. Retail traders typically try to pick tops and bottoms while the professionals trade with the trend. So actually, the new traders are trading against the professionals. This is one of the main reasons that professionals make money while most retail traders do not. Which group would you rather trade with...the new traders or the professionals?