Adam Sikora:              Hello, my name is Adam Sikora.  Today, we are interviewing Andrew Spanton about the Global Markets Premium Service.  Andrew, why did you decide to start this service?

 

Andrew Spanton:        I started this service about three years ago.  And basically, I’m a trader myself, I trade just like you guys do and I’m sitting at my computer, and I have trained other traders before in in-house program, where I, actually, stood over traders and gave webinars in-house.  But the online ability to mentor traders and allow traders to interact with me and hear my thought processes and my 16 years of trading experience, I felt that there were so many people, there was such a need for a trader to talk to you.

 

There’s plenty of services out there where you have someone who’s talking to you and teaching you, but in my opinion, unless you’re in the heat of the battle, it’s sort of like you’re in battle, and do you want to go to battle with someone who has never fought in a war before?  Of course not.  You want someone who is battle tested, who’s been there, done that, and obviously, in any service, you can’t be right all the time, but I decided to create a service where I provided people with trade recommendations, as well as mentoring them as to methodology of trading, from both a macroeconomic standpoint to a tactical analysis standpoint.

 

So so far, never really had someone who asked for their money back, never had somebody that asked for a refund.  If anything, people didn’t stick with the service because they either, one, it was too much for them, meaning we trade a lot of pairs, my style wasn’t for them, or maybe for that month or two, we really didn’t do very well because to make money every month in trading is a very difficult thing.

 

Adam Sikora:              So you said that you’ve been trading for 16 years, over that 16 years, what other markets have you traded?

 

Andrew Spanton:        I started out day trading stocks back in 1993, ’94, where I was a head trader; I was assistant for the head trader of a proprietary day trading firm.  And that’s really where I learned.  I always followed stocks and the market when I was in high school.  I would get home from school at 3:00 and I would always be following my father’s stocks on the ticker tape in the last runoff from 3:00 to 4:00, I was watching CNBC, Maria Bartiromo back when I was, what, 25 years ago.  So I’ve been always following the markets.

 

So as a profession, I started trading stocks, day trading stocks back in ‘93/’94, moved to a couple of proprietary day trading equity houses.  I started trading futures a little bit more back in ‘99/2000, started getting into FX in 2000/2001 after 9/11 really things changed.  The market also changed in equities.  The way I learned trading was really scalping a lot of eighths, quarters, and the market went to decimalization, down to sixteenths, and then went to pennies, at some point.  I forget what the end of like towards 2000.

 

And so I just got turned on to FX and really, the combination of everything I’ve learned from trading equities, I always knew the economic numbers that were coming out, I always analyzed the numbers, based my trading, and the S&P futures and bond futures based upon the economic numbers.  But I never really, in my first five years, let’s say, of trading, really focused on FX and the correlation of FX and the economic numbers and the stock market and bond yields.

 

So really, everything came together when I started getting into FX and the platforms started getting a lot better, more reliable, the leverage was good and getting better.  So I really got turned on to FX and stated Global FX Remote Group, that’s my company that I created to mentor traders, as well as fund traders to trade currencies.  I started that back in 2003, ’02, I forget.

 

Adam Sikora:              So a little back to your premium service.  You’re live in your chat room from 8:00 am until 10:00 am.  Can you describe to me what I would be getting during these hours, what are you going to be giving me?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Well, basically, I allow you to see my desktop.  I allow you to – you get into my chat room, and I’m able to show, those are my people in my chat room my desktop, one screen.  And on that screen, I have scrolling headlines, Dow Jones, PR Newswire, Briefing, I believe, is on there, and S&P futures, gold futures, oil futures, that is on 24 hours a day.  You, as a Premium member, are able to access that chat room 24 hours a day.  Sometimes, it freezes up, so if I’m not there to unfreeze it, you will not get it 24 hours a day.  But as long as the chat room video feed is up, it gets knocked out sometimes, but as long as it’s up, you pretty much do have access to those 24 hours a day, even when I’m not live in my room.

 

When I’m live in my room, that means I’m, actually, talking to you, in the chat room and interacting in what’s going what – what positions we have, whether or not we’ve taken some off, if we’ve reversed any, what numbers have came out, going over the numbers that came out in Europe, as well as the numbers that are coming up, let’s say, at 8:30 Eastern because I am live in my chat room.

 

Sundays, every Sunday at 4:30, 4:45 pm Eastern time, and then every weekday, 8:00 am Eastern until 10:00, 10:15.  It depends on the 10:00, 10:15, sometimes I go to 10:30.  It really depends on the market.  Sometimes the market is dead, so I leave exactly at 10:00 if there’s no numbers, let’s say, out of the U.S. or Canada.  And then, I’m gone, or sometimes, I’ll stay to 10:30.  But 8:00 am, you can count on me, pretty much, to be in the room at all times, and you pretty much, that’s until 10:30, 10:15, like I said.

 

Now, again, you’re welcome, everyone’s welcome to interact with each other in the chat room while I’m out there, while I’m not live in the chat room.  I could still be at my desk trading, and sometimes I even type stuff into the chat room when I’m not, actually, speaking in the chat room.  But you’re guaranteed to have me in there at that time.  And then, again, at 3:30 pm Eastern, I move back live in the chat room to go over our positions that we’re either going to close out, mostly, we close out a lot of positions at the end of the day, at 5:00 pm Eastern, go over what positions we’re going to – the biases for the day ahead.

 

And then, of course, the recap, my market recap that I record every day, Premium members are able to see and hear me record that recording every day.  So when Global FX Radio or Global Markets Radio that you hear me, my Premium members are, actually, seeing the charts as I’m describing them to you, so it’s a lot easier for them to follow along.

 

In addition to that, so that’s pretty much about four hours, four-and-a-half hours a day, four hours, you get me live in my chat room.  And then the other times, you get the futures.  In addition to that, I do send out research, that does cost money for you to subscribe to this research, it would cost you double what Premium costs you per month, in some cases, triple and quadruple.  But some newsletters, research from various banks I send out.

 

In addition to that, the Premium members will follow me on a private Twitter account, where I encourage everyone to get their Twitter accounts hooked up to their cell phone so that if I have, it’s 6:00 at night or at 8:00 at night, that’s PM Eastern or early morning European hours, if I’m up trading the German IFO and I’m, let’s say, not home or I’m not in the chat room, I, certainly send out messages via Twitter to my premium members only for any course changes.  But there’s no guarantees to that, and I am going to try with this new website and with my new service because I am going to be including gold, which I’ve traded for years, S&P futures, oil, as well as the DAX and the Australian stock markets trade recommendations as part of my service.

 

We’re going to ease into this, but as part of my service, I’m looking to branch out because currencies, it’s a whole other world out there, and in my eight years of doing foreign exchange, I don’t think I’ve seen a market so, maybe manipulated by the Chinese, where the dollar is really not reacting the way it normally does, and we’re seeing gold correlation and we’re seeing other opportunities in other markets and to be honest, we’re also seeing Obama taking down the Frank Dodd Bill, taking down leverage and changing the rules in FX, making it more difficult.

 

So I am going to be, as part of my new service, going to be giving trade recommendations, again, on gold, oil, the S&P futures, the DAX futures, as well as Australian stock market futures.  But again, we’ll have more on that, as well.

 

And then, in addition to that, at 5:00 pm Eastern, I know it’s a lot, I’m, sorry, but at 5:00 pm Eastern, I do my trade recommendations, where I show you my charts on that same desktop, I pull up the charts, and I show you my channel lines, I show you my technical analysis.  Remember, I use the 10/20/30 exponential moving averages to determine the trend in a currency pair or a financial instrument, as well as microeconomics to make a trade decision.

 

So we’ll go over each trade right in front of you, and I give an entry, which tends to be a clouded area, like I’ll say buy on pullback or sell on strength.  I’ve tried, in the past, to say buy at – sell the Euro at 140.70, and the stop is 142.  Sometimes, what I try and do is help my traders learn to fish themselves, to be a trader yourself.  You see a breakout, and I have an SOS selling strength and it’s breaking out, well, I think it’s gonna reverse, so sell on strength.  But I don’t, exactly, know where, exactly, the momentum is gonna stop.

 

That’s where I try and teach my trades to try and identify that entry level to sell.  So I try and give a bubble, a cloud, as far as selling strength with a stop, and then a limit for profit.  So the trade recommendations are ea good way to learn my strategy, as well as interact with me with any questions or you might even disagree with me, and it’s a great opportunity time to do that.

 

Adam Sikora:              When you’re recording your videos and market recaps do I get to see what you’re talking about?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Yeah.  I, obviously, answered that question, but yeah, of course, you do.  You do get to see what I am showing because, again – but now, remember, you only get to see that during the trade recommendations.  The other times, you’re seeing the futures, and that’s pretty much 23 hours a day.

 

Adam Sikora:              It seems like you haven’t done any webinars lately.  Do you plan on updating them, adding new ones?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Absolutely.  Yeah, I do plan on doing that.  With the new service, I do plan on doing some new webinars.  A lot of my existing members are pretty much existing traders, and they’ve seen my webinars.  I have seen people that have been premium members for, literally, as long as I’ve been doing it, three years, almost.  And so a lot of them have seen it.

 

But yeah, I, definitely, do intend on updating the webinars, doing them better, and you can look forward to, again, the new subscribers that are going to be coming on board for me to be doing more of a Q&A.  Whereas, a lot of the webinars I make available, and a lot of people have seen them, but a Q&A, where you can ask me what is a hammer?  How do you really identify a hammer, just a general question and answer, I am gonna be going that on Sundays from 4:00 pm until the week ahead show I start to record.

 

Adam Sikora:              And how have the markets been for you this past year?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Not so great.  The markets have been really in a straight one way move, and it’s been, probably, one of the tougher years that I can remember, in a sense of, usually, there’s a correlation.  Usually, you have a major correlation between, let’s say, the carry trade, the Yen and the S&P futures, where you have, if the stock market’s going up, let’s say the dollar, Yen is going up or you know that the carry trades are going up, even the dollar is gonna go down.  Yes, the stock market has gone up and the dollar has gone down, but the Yen, which has really been a staple of mine, trading wise, has been very difficult, again the Chinese involved.

 

And then QEII, when the markets tend to go straight up or maintain an over-bought position for a very long time, I don’t tend to do very well.  I tend to – my trading falls off.  When the stock market does more of a backend filling, or even in a bear market, for that matter, again, I’m a bear, so unfortunately, the stock market has gone from in June to even now, the S&P just isn’t driving hard.  The Euro has gone from 120 all the way up to 140, 150.  So the markets have been kind of tough.  And I think, again, the correlations are gonna be coming back more to fray, from a standpoint of risk aversion.

 

Right now, in my opinion, we’re in the calm of the storm, and the date right now, we are October 24, 2010, and I believe the rest of the year, for now, is gonna be more choppy, if not down, in the stock market.  And if that’s true, I do tend to do better in down markets.  That’s not to say we don’t do well in up markets, we do.  But it’s more where the S&P, let’s say, pulls back to a thousand.  Okay, we can get long, but if it goes back up to 1,300, 1,400, no, we’re gonna get killed.  So again, the markets have been taking out highs, the quantitative easing anticipation has really propelled risk aversion, so it’s been a little bit tough.

 

But by and large, this summer wasn’t good, but the beginning of the year was great.  And I anticipate the end of this year to be just as good, too, as the beginning.

 

Adam Sikora:              So now, you were talking before about trade recommendations and positions that you say you recommend to your listeners.  How do you communicate those?

 

Andrew Spanton:        The way I communicate my trade recommendations are multiple ways.  I tried to explain a little bit before, one is via email and I have people that never even come in my chat room.  I have people that are Premium members that I never even see.  They just get my trade recommendations every day, I send them out at 5:15 pm Eastern, around there, 5:30 pm Eastern.  And they, basically, trade off my trade recommendations.  That’s one way of – and they don’t even, necessarily, know how I’m coming to my conclusions on the trades, they just know that I’ve been trading for 16 years.

And again, my goal is to be more than 50 percent right.  My goal is not when I send out 12 trade recommendations every day, I’d love to be right on every single one of them, but my goal is really to be right 50 percent of the time, 51, 52, 53 percent of the time.  But the idea is that my profitable trades I make more on than I lose on my losing trades, so that net/net, if I make 100 and lose 75, and I’m right 50 percent of the time and I make ten trades, I just made 125, I lost on five and I made on five, but I made 100 and I lost 75.  So that is my goal, not to knock the cover off the ball, and not to be right on every one.  It’s impossible to be right on every trade.

 

And that is part of having a constitution and the wherewithal to stick it out.  A lot of traders don’t stick it out.  A lot of traders think it’s an easy, quick hit and run, make money and you’re gone type of situation, it’s so easy.  Trading is not easy.  Trading means being wrong a lot.  Trading means waking up in the middle of the morning and saying, I’m gonna make money today.  Not oh, what happened yesterday?  Oh, my goodness, what am I gonna do?

 

I come in, even if we’re getting killed, I’m like, all right, let’s make this back.  Let’s figure out how to make this – you can, it’s sort of like even in the NFL, the five second rule.  You make a bad play, forget about it, move on, keep playing, and that’s what I try and implore upon my traders and myself.  But it’s not easy because, again, if I give you 100 trade recommendations, I’m gonna be wrong a lot, and I’m gonna have a lot of pissed off people.  But it happens, and it’s part of the business, and hopefully, those people that don’t realize that and learn that while they’re with me, and those that have been in the business know, so it’s really very important to understand that.

 

Now, as far as people in my chat room, they are able to see my actual charts, and as I’m making that trade recommendation, I’m gonna say Euro, USD, we’re gonna sell on strength.  I’m gonna put the stop in where the stop level is, I show people on the chart where my stop level is.  Many times, it’s a Fibonacci level, many times it’s a resistance level, many times it’s a candlestick level. So there are always technical reasons for the trade.  And then, there’s the macroeconomic side.

 

When I do a trade recommendation, I also will mention, well, let’s say the Euro, for example was a perfect example, in a situation where, let’s say, the Euro has been going up ahead of a number.  And if the Euro dollar pair has been going up for days before an economic number and everyone thinks the economic number is gonna be good and then it comes out good, well, who’s left to buy?  So our bias would be, let’s say, to be low on the Euro into the number and then sell on the news.  And then we get short the Euro after that news comes out.  So again, these are the kind of things, strategies, that I show traders in my chat room when I make my trade recommendations ever day.

 

And again, the Twitter is another way to change courses if something comes out in the middle of the night that I want to change direction, I will send that Twitter out, where my traders will get the text message.

 

Adam Sikora:              All right.  Now, you had mentioned about different factors in your trades and things coming out throughout the day.  Your intraday trade recommendations, how do you make your members aware of the fact that something has changed or –

 

Andrew Spanton:        By Twitter, I’ll send out a Twitter.  In my chat room, I’ll come in, let’s say a 12:00, I’ll just come in when I don’t have to and type in there.  I could send out an email to everyone, if it’s big enough.  And I also listen for the freebies, I’m on Facebook and I’m on Twitter, so a lot of times, I post that stuff on Facebook and Twitter as well, if I see a reversal happening, or if I see news that’s important coming out.  I am always able to be connected to my trades.

 

Adam Sikora:              So even not being part of your primary or your premium service, your viewers or your listeners are able to get information from the market from you.

 

Andrew Spanton:        Well, I like to take care of the freebies a little bit.

 

Adam Sikora:              Of course.

 

Andrew Spanton:        That’s why I give my free Fridays.  But I do, it’s a way to get people to know me by I give away a little bit, but my Premium members get ten times what I give out on Facebook.

 

Adam Sikora:              Now, would you say that your premium service is good for a newbie, beginner, a junior or maybe a senior level trader?  What do you think would be the best suited?

 

Andrew Spanton:        I think it depends on what people are looking for from my service.  I think that, for the newbie, you’re probably not gonna make money, but you spend three months with me, and it’s gonna be like an MBA.  You’re, probably, not gonna follow along at first, you’re, probably, gonna be so like, what’d he say?  What, this, that, I’m not following along, but a little bit.  And then, the more you trade, the more you trade, the more you’re going to, oh, I understand that now, oh.  So a lot of it does take doing.

 

My belief, trading is the kind of business you can’t study.  It’s like being President of the United States, you can’t study to be President of the United States, you’ve got to be a governor.  That’s why the United States usually elects governors that are the best presidents.  Sorry, that’s another subject.  But the only way to learn is by doing, and by trading, you learn. And for the newbie, I think that my service is great, whether or not you stick with it, that’s another story.  I’ve had many people start in trading and realize it’s not for them.  It’s just too much pressure, but three months, no one has ever really regretted that has never traded before.

 

Now, would it be ideal?  Would you get more out of trading if you have a base of knowledge?  Absolutely. But if you watch CNBC or Bloomberg, and you can, pretty much, follow along with them, you could, pretty much, follow along with my service.

 

Now, the junior trader, I think, definitely, can benefit from my service.  He’s the guy that’s been trading three years.  Again, I’ve been trading 16 years, I’ve seen so many situations.  Obviously, we’re in a new world trading environment, but everything, eventually, gravitates back to a mean, just like this quantitative easing now is making it easier to trade on because we are looking for that, so the market is not gonna sell off until that comes out, you know, that nature.  But the junior trader, I, definitely, will be able to help take it to the next level.

 

The senior trader, maybe not as much, but again, listen, part of my service is to entertain you, as well. I try and make trading as enjoyable.  We’re all sitting at our computer terminals, bored, sometimes, to death.  We’ve got to make it interesting.  So I do try and at least make it enjoyable, interesting to outside interests, funny, as well as listen, even I learn something new every day, as far as trading goes.  So even the most experienced trader, to hear another trader’s perspective, to have this sort of trader round table, which is what I really envisioned when I started this up is to have a round table of experienced traders taking on newbies in a virtual environment, thus replacing the onsite office, which is what I did.

 

And it’s very taxing.  I have 40 traders in Manhattan, and we’re in a 24 hour a day office, and finding managers and managing the desk 24 hours a day, you don’t have a life.  With this, it’s a lot more manageable, I have more of a life.  But again, I think my service, really, anyone can sign up for my service and benefit.

 

Adam Sikora:              So let’s go back a little more to your trade recommendations because that seems to be what a lot of people are interested in.  You said that there are people that only really look at your trade recommendations just because they trust them.  What makes you – what factors are in your decision making?  How do you come to your conclusions regarding that recommendation?

 

Andrew Spanton:        The macroeconomic technicals, market psychology all play a part of it.  In foreign exchange, in particular, there’s, sort of, a soap opera to every day.  It’s sort of like is it gonna go up in Asia down in Europe, up in the U.S. and then back down in the U.S, or down, up, down up, or down, down, up,  or down, up, down, down?  So there’s such a soap opera, and a lot of times, we book our trades, and we’re flat in the U.S. session because all the action happened in Europe.

 

But again, the trade recommendations are based upon my personal bias, both from a longer term perspective and a short term perspective.  I give my long term bias on currencies.  I mean, in my opinion, this European crisis is not over, the Euro has rallied 2,000 pips from the lows, if not more, 2,300 pips.  And long term, it’s going down.  Short term, in the next day or two, is it going down?  Maybe not.  Probably not, it’s gonna have a little bounce.

 

So I do have a longer term perspective, and those traders that have a longer term perspective on trades also are part of my Premium service because I do have a longer term bias, absolutely.  Listen, dollar Yen, I think dollar Yen might go down to 75, but it’s coming to the end of this move, and I think there’s a tremendous opportunity long dollar Yen, absolutely.  That’s more of a longer term trade.  But in the next day or two, it’s probably going down.

 

So my trade recommendations are based upon 16, 17 years of experience, of market psychology, understanding planning economic numbers that are coming up in the day ahead, any possible reaction to the numbers that came out from the day before, and then technical formations, which, like I’ve said, in the beginning, I used 10/20,30 exponential moving averages, crossing over, in conjunction with channel lines and candlesticks.

 

Adam Sikora:              And any given point, how many pairs do you like to trade?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Well, that’s getting more difficult because the margin has come down so much in the United States because of our President, Barrack Hussein Obama, and the Frank Dodd Bill.  But before leverage came down, we would have 12, multiple units for each trade.  Usually, what I like to do is like to scale in and scale out of trades.  I call trades a money lot.  So we might have two, three or four units, let’s say, of one pair.  We might have three units, let’s say.  And we’re up 60 pips and we’re up and now it goes up more in our favor, we might take some off, and now, we’re left with two units.  Then it goes up more, we take another unit off.

 

Then, we leave the other one on, let’s say it’s a money lot.  So we might have positions on, but we already booked a lot of the profit, we locked in, and then, hey, if it goes up even more, great, and if it comes back down, we already locked in profits.  But I am gonna be narrowing it down, now, given the fact that I’m gonna be focusing, also, I would say 60 percent is gonna be foreign exchange, 40 percent is gonna be gold, oil, S&P futures, and Australian and the DAX.  Australian and the DAX is gonna be tough for me, the other ones aren’t gonna be tough.

 

Adam Sikora:              So you just mentioned before gold and oil, are you gonna be giving recommendations on additional topics?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Well, I pretty much cover, if you follow me, I pretty much, every day, I cover gold.  I always have gold, I always look at the chart on gold for my Premium members, and I give my opinion on where gold is going.  I mean, when gold broke through 1250, my target on gold was 1360, if you’ve been listening to my show, you know that.  And so I’m pretty good in gold.  And I think the key, obviously, is fighting the up trend when it goes up ballistic, but yes, gold should be good.

 

Adam Sikora:              So how do you think this next year is gonna be for global markets?

 

Andrew Spanton:        For us, I think it’s gonna be a great year.  I’m excited about the new website, I’m excited about the effort that I’ve put into it and the team I’ve put together to get it going.  And I’m excited about the prospects, absolutely.

 

As far a foreign exchange is concerned, specifically, I think it’s gonna be a very volatile year.  I think that, again, we can look back on this in a while, but I think that we’re gonna start to see it coming together.  The big question in the next year, really, in my mind, in foreign exchange trading, is is the playing field gonna be level?  Is the United States gonna be the only country out there that has reduced leverage for foreign exchange traders?  Is the FSA and the RBA, are they gonna, sort of, have the same rules as us, or is this loophole gonna continue where foreigners get more leverage than United States traders.  So that is big.

 

And obviously, the debt crisis in Europe, I think, is gonna pop up, and I think the Euro will be lower come this time next year.

 

Adam Sikora:              One of the things that you’re known for are your beautiful dictionary words.  You want to go over a few of them?

 

Andrew Spanton:        Well, actually –

 

Adam Sikora:              Some of your favorites.

 

Andrew Spanton:        Yeah, I brushed on a couple of them, like I brought sell on the news, that is, certainly, a very favorite of mine, sell on the news, like I explained it before.  But I encourage you to go to, on the website, we do have Andrew’s dictionary, and I have a bunch of them there now.  I plan on continuing to update that across, as time goes on, as I get more comfortable updating the website.  But I do plan on doing that, as well.

 

And the only other thing I would say regarding Premium, look for – I have different deals, and I offer a student discount, those that are in college.  Hey, listen, I know you’re scraping by and I want to give you a deal, so I offer you a 50 percent discount, you’ve just got to send me an email with your syllabus or something proving that you are, actually, in school. And of course, our military, anyone that has been in our military that is looking to be a trader, obviously, I will give you a 50 percent discount, there.  And again, that should be on subscribe now, and that page, you should have that link for that.  But again, I do need proof. I apologize for not believing you, but obviously, I do need proof.

 

And then, of course, the one year deal, I only offer that one year deal probably once or twice a year, that’s it.  So if you are interested in that, I usually do that in September, end of August, September, and you want to look for that deal, as well.  But other than that, hopefully, what do you think?  Do you think we made things clear enough for everyone?  Okay.  Good deal.

 

All right, everyone, I want to thank you for listening, and hopefully, I’ll see you in my chat room.  Have a good one.

 

[End of Audio]

Duration: 30 minutes