Short, because the history is not the point. It explains why a research project about forecasting carries a name about currencies.
It started with goods rather than with markets.
A family business moving stock between Asia, Europe and North America in the early nineties, run from a standing start. What became obvious after a few years was that the margin on the goods was smaller and less interesting than the margin on the currencies used to buy them. The freight was the cover story. The trade was in the differential.
A small London desk followed in the late nineties, trading that observation directly, and it closed at the end of the decade when its founder went into the corporate world. Twenty-five years followed in technology, operations and risk inside large regulated institutions, which is where the habits on the Method page were formed, and where it became clear how much of what passes for evidence does not survive a controls review.
The reading never stopped, and somewhere along the way the question stopped being about currencies. What survives is more general and more interesting: how do you know whether a prediction about anything was any good. Currency Times LLP was formed in 2023 to house it. The name is kept for its pedigree rather than its subject.
The shaded stretch is the twenty-five years away. The reading continued throughout it, which is why the record picks up rather than starts.
Numbers tell you what happened. Sentiment tells you what is coming next.
The founding note, and still the reason the front page is organised around the past, the present and what comes next.