FXCM Research Team

The global energy complex is a vast trading arena that accounts for billions of dollars in derivatives turnover on a daily basis. Whether one is interested in commodities such as natural gas and crude oil futures, or the gasoline and heating oil refinements, active traders have countless opportunities available. What Is Crude Oil? According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), crude oil is "a mixture of hydrocarbons that exists…

The robust equities market of 2020 and 2021 brought a rush of fresh initial public offering (IPO) listings to Wall Street. Nearly every sector was represented in the bonanza, including offerings from the cryptocurrency, technology, and manufacturing spaces. Of all tech companies that planned to make their 2021 market debuts, the Databricks IPO garnered extensive fanfare and coverage. What Is Databricks? Founded in 2013, Databricks is self-described as being "the…

Since the dawn of human civilisation, gold has played a variety of important economic roles. The yellow metal has been utilised as specie, as a store of wealth and as a preferred artistic medium—functions that all contribute to its intrinsic value. In the world of finance, gold bullion has established itself as the benchmark of the precious metals asset class. As a result, tradable bullion is offered to the public…

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is the world's largest derivatives marketplace, offering the public a vast array of options and futures contracts. Several of the CME's featured products face the equity, debt, agricultural, energy and metal asset classes. Among these listings is a softwood industry staple known as random length lumber futures. What Are Lumber Futures? Lumber futures are financial derivatives that furnish participants with leveraged softwood market exposure. Hedgers…

Past performance is not an indicator of future results Gold has had a very ordinary 2021. The precious metal has been drifting sideways for most of the year (blue rectangle). We have added a triple moving average to get a sense of gold's directional bias. This is inherently risky because moving averages are trend-following indicators. This means that they work very well during trending moves but give constant whipsaw signals…

In the world of finance, inflation is a key driver of asset valuations, consumption and consumer sentiment. Traders and investors alike monitor inflation on a daily basis, evaluating its potential impact on the markets. While views toward the phenomenon vary, it is a primary driver of economic progress. What Is Inflation? According to the Oxford dictionary, inflation is "a general increase in prices in an economy and consequent fall in…

What Is Thematic Investing? Thematic investing is an investment approach that seeks to outperform the general market by buying stocks and other financial assets that the investor or portfolio manager believes will benefit from widespread economic, social, financial and technological trends over the long term. Thematic investing goes beyond sector investing, in which a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) invests in securities in a particular industry. Rather, thematic investing…

More and more people today want their investments to reflect their values—in a sense, "putting their money where their mouth is"—while also providing a good financial return. Professional investment firms have responded by creating mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other vehicles to respond to the demand. According to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, or US SIF, there were US$17.1 trillion invested in sustainable investing strategies at year-end 2019,…