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What is an anomaly?

What is an anomaly?

| fractalerts | Blog

Anomaly – /əˈnɒm(ə)li/ – noun, plural anomalies
1. a deviation from the common rule, type, arrangement, or form.
2. an odd, peculiar, or strange condition, situation, quality, etc.
3. an incongruity or inconsistency.
Synonyms: abnormality, exception, peculiarity.

Anomalies are everywhere; little breaks in the cycle of life that make you stand back, scratch your head and mumble ‘what the heck?!’ before carrying on with your day. They are an exception to a rule, they are the strange occurrences, they are an irregular regular part of life.

In fact there are anomalies all around us, subtle times when nature just doesn’t play by the rules. Take, for example, the waterfall in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The water in the waterfall doesn’t freeze in the winter. Outside temperate could be as low as -22°F (-30°C), but still the water keeps flowing. But then, on occasion in the height of summer and for reasons nobody can seem to grasp, the water freezes and the waterfall stops flowing.

It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t happen, and yet it does.
Take the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.
Oh wait. Right, that didn’t happen… (too soon?!)

Well, the financial markets reflect life, and in doing so they get the odd anomaly too. Remember January, when the Swiss National Bank unexpected decided to uncap the Swiss Franc from the Euro. What happened next was arguably an anomaly, as the market crashed sending the two currencies into a spin.

It didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have happen, but it did.

Anomalies in the market are fine. Half of the time the anomalies fall in our favour. The other 50%, they don’t. As those odds are equal there really isn’t any need to worry about the anomalies that happen infrequently and without warning. The problem comes when you try to get involved.

As soon as you get emotional and start reacting to an anomaly, it’s already too late. At fractalerts we can’t predict them, but we don’t allow emotion to alter our trading system. Given time the anomalies will right themselves, and we have the sense to sit back and allow that time to pass.

At fractalerts we use huge sums of historical data (anomalies and all) to realise the patterns in the markets. Once our systems alert us to a pattern, we send out an email telling you at what time and when we intend to place a trade. You are free to take our lead, follow the exact same trading strategy that we use or just ignore us. Because at fractalerts, and here’s a pretty big anomaly, unlike other companies we place the exact same trade that we alert our clients to.

All trading alert companies are not the same, so to find out more about our industry leading system covering 34 markets.