FXstreet.com

Name: Mike Baghdady

Position: Head Trader

Company: SpyGlass

Mike Baghdady is the world's foremost expert on Price Behaviour and a 33-year veteran of the global financial markets, spending the tail-end of his professional career on the NYBOT trading floor until its merger with the InterContinental Exchange.

A key market analyst, syndicated columnist and commentator for financial television stations, Mike began his career in New York as an apprentice to Alan Shaw, widely considered to be the father of modern Technical Analysis learning.

He started his trading career as a physical grain trader and ran one of the Middle East’s largest grain operations for 15 years. He was awarded the title of Trader of the Year in 1987 by the American Chamber of Commerce magazine, AmCham, in his native Egypt, where he also majored in Economics at the American University. Since then he has worked as a commodities trader, stock trader, futures analyst, options trader and an instructor for both foreign currency exchange and equities markets as well as a technical trading advisor to several major global hedge funds and multinational corporations.

A head trader at the NYBOT, Mike called out trades for his team on the exchange floor and was responsible for training many of the floor traders to transition them from floor trading to technically trading off the charts, off computer screens.

Mike consequently gained extensive experience in teaching and mentoring and was able to clearly define a set of golden trading rules that provided him with the intellectual know-how to produce the first pure rule-based trading software.

Mike now teaches what he calls ‘Back to the future’ trading, using only Price Behaviour rules to gain an edge in the market and manage risk and exposure through a unique price action system, rather than relying on short-lived systems. Using this system, he was one of the very few technicians who publicly advised his clients to short this Bear market at its inception as early as November 2007.

Mike teaches these same rules and strategies, essential for successfully trading today’s turbulent markets, including: Technical Analysis and its practical application; Chart reading skills as they apply to Price Behavior; Identifying different market conditions and winning trades; Quantifying the correct risk for each trade; Identifying price significant points, Reversal, Significant point and flipping trades; Trading the news; Scalping techniques; Trade Preparation; Portfolio Selection; Trade initiation and liquidation rules; Calculating long-term stops; and the 22 rules of successful trading.

He has taught a series of technical trading techniques in several seminars to 50 banks, institutions and dealing desks and delivered keynote speeches in London, Italy, Florida and Mexico this year, at private seminars and trading shows.

Mike has always been a Price Purist and a firm believer that the price is the primary leading indicator and is a true representation of the market participants’ psychology. The collective perception of traders is what really moves the price, he says, and many times the way traders perceive reality gets in the way of their trading.