TraderWise

worldwide trading contest to determine who’s the best

American forex dealer GFT is harnessing the power of the real-time social networking site Twitter, as part of its new Trading Challenge.

The trading competition, which started Sunday, Feb. 7, is open to anybody who has a GFT account, or sets one up with a minimum account balance of $2,500 (or equivalent).

Within several days of the contest launch, more than 7,000 traders are a part of the competition, and the amount of cash and prizes at stake are generating buzz in the trading community.

Trade to win $50,000, Tweet to win cool prizes

The GFT Trading Challenge is in full swing. As a result, the forex blogosphere and Twitterverse are buzzing with articles, comments and tweets.

So far, more than 7,000 traders have qualified for the worldwide trading competition that will award more than $100,000 in cash and prizes.

Traders are tracking their rate against the rest of the world’s best traders. Watch the action here!

Google Goes Social with Google Buzz
It’s official: Google has just announced Google Buzz, its newest push into the social media foray. This confirms earlier reports of Gmail integrating a social status feature.

I want to thank the many traders who have responded to the post regarding forming virtual trading groups. My hope is that those who commented to the post can follow through with mutual contacts and explorations of common interests.

It always surprises me that people who otherwise seem to desire success don't follow through on their desires with solid, persistent networking.

Social cognition has been a prominent topic of study within psychology for many years, as psychologists have attempted to understand how we make sense of our social worlds. Related to social cognition is the study of how we process information within social contexts: thinking as a social, not just individual, process.

The first post in this two-part series made the case that much of thinking is a social process; isolated from the back-and-forth testing and revising of ideas, traders lapse into internal feedback loops that magnify perceptual biases and action tendencies.

I am truly amazed at what is going on in the networking space.  Stocks no one wanted to touch with a 10 foot pole 1.5 weeks ago are being piled into as if there is no tomorrow. (see CAVM, FNSR for examples)  I am incredibly curious if there is some massive algo that reads "if copper rises then buy networking stocks" - there must be.  Student body left trading is awesome.*

* I lie.

There is yet another TARP bailout today, this time for the insurance companies - not a surprise but frankly I have bailout fatigue so I am not going to even waste bandwith anymore on these things. Instead I am going to try to actually look at fundamentals like in the old days.

I have not looked at this sector in a long while, but the networking group is picking up some steam as the rotation into technology continues on. Unlike the move into consumer discretionary I can at least build some fundamental case for the networking stocks, mostly based on federal stimulus.

As some of you may notice, I have a new sponsor on Free Money Finance (see the big pink ad to the right.) It's SmartyPig -- the online piggy bank and social networking site. Anyway, since they'll be around for awhile, I thought I'd ask if anyone out there uses SmartyPig and if so what you think about them. And if you don't, why not?

Interested to hear your thoughts...