Who or what controls market prices?

A clear understanding of how market prices are really set, and the underlying process that determines them, can significantly enhance your trading performance.

Many people are under the illusion that market prices are somehow 'set' or manipulated by large powerful organisations who conspire to push prices their way (usually in the direction contrary to those people's wishes).

Even some traders who have been around the markets for some time do not have a clear understanding of how they really work, and the underlying process that determines price.

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John is is a British-born lapsed PhD physicist, who previously worked for Nasa on the Mars exploration team. He is a former commodity trading advisor with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and worked in a boutique futures house in California in the 1980s.

 

He was a partner in one of the first futures newsletter advisory services, based in Washington DC, specialising in pork bellies and currencies. John is primarily a chart-reading trader, having cut his trading teeth in the days before PCs.

 

As well as his work in the financial world, he has launched, run and sold several 'real' businesses producing 'real' products.