By Richard U. Olson

Leonardo of Pisa, aka the mathematician "Fibonacci", published his Fibonacci sequence in 1202. Fibonacci came upon his now very famous sequence of numbers when he was trying to breed rabbits and figure out how many pairs of rabbits he would have at the end of one year based upon their breeding behavior. This is just the kind of no-nonsense approach that Forex traders are into.

So you see, what many people mistakenly take as a mere mathematical abstraction, just "fooling around" with numbers, is rooted in very real-world applied mathematics. To state things very basically, the Fibonacci sequence can be used to detect and describe otherwise hidden patterns in the world around us.

How can this be applied to investing? Very astute investors understand that there are hidden patterns in the stock market--based on the mass of investors' behavior. "Buy low and sell high" and "The best time to buy is when there's blood in the streets" are but two investment aphorisms that not only work, but also come from understanding hidden patterns of the investment markets.

The reason that investment market patterns are so well hidden is because "up close" they cannot be seen. Day to day, hour to hour fluctuations in the investment markets cannot be predicted with any accuracy. But certain overall trends that extend over longer periods of time definitely can be. And savvy investors, including Forex traders, have successfully been using Fibonacci's number sequence to take advantage and make big profits.

The Fibonacci sequence is a string of numbers with each number being the sum of the two numbers which preceded it. For example, one such string would be 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on. These numbers are related in several ways. Any given number in a Fibonacci sequence is about 1.618 of its predecessor - the "golden ratio" of the Greek mathematicians.

Arcs and retracements are two of the most widely used applications of the Fibonacci series by investors, including Forex traders.

Fibonacci chart technique involves three curved lines drawn for anticipating key resistance and supporting various levels as well as areas of ranging. First drawn is an invisible trendline between the two points of high and low for particular period of time. Next, three intersecting curves are drawn overlapping the trendline at the levels of 38.2, 50, and 61.8 percent according to Fibonacci. When the price of the asset crosses through these key levels, decisions of transaction are made.

Next is the retracement - this is when the movement of a stock or other traded commodity reverses direction; this is a reversal which is stronger than the prevailing trend of the stock's movement. Retracement patterns are looked at closely by investors; a Fibonacci retracement can be used to analyze the odds of a commodity's price having a larger than average retracement before continuing back on the direction it had before reversal. The trendline is typically drawn between two extremes and is divided vertically by the Fibonacci ratios of 23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8% and 100%.

Multitudes of high-level traders gain with the Fibonacci retracement method. It aids them in finding the most strategic placement of transactions, their target prices and stop-losses. Gartley patterns, Tirone levels and the Elliott Wave theory are other technical tools that make use of retracement.

The Fibonacci formula simply works and is useful while investing. Forex traders worldwide are finding it successful while using it. - 18098

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