Axel Rudolph
Axel Rudolph is a senior market analyst at IG who focuses on cross-asset technical analysis, turning moves in indices, FX, commodities and individual equities into precise trading levels and clear, actionable setups.
Cross-asset market moves in a single frame
Rudolph’s daily work centers on multi-market reports that track equity indices, major currency pairs and key commodities in the same piece, with each segment tied to specific support, resistance and price targets. In recent coverage of the Nasdaq 100, USD/JPY and Brent crude, he presents the index’s advance alongside the behaviour of the currency cross and oil, framing short-term upside and downside levels for each market in parallel. His intraday notes on the FTSE 100, GBP/USD and gold, and on the DAX 40, AUD/USD and copper prices follow the same structure, moving systematically through charts and highlighting nearby highs, lows and gaps that matter for traders.
These articles typically conclude with a short-term bias - bullish or bearish - that is explicitly conditional on the market holding or breaking defined levels.
Rudolph’s lens is that of a technical analyst rather than a general markets reporter. The focus stays on price action, chart patterns and extensions of prior moves, with fundamental context appearing mainly where macro events such as inflation data or rate expectations directly affect the technical picture.
His role at IG includes providing macro commentary alongside these chart-based views, but his written pieces remain anchored in the discipline of mapping market structure onto practical trading decisions.
Trading the trend and risk-defined trade ideas
Beyond market summaries, Rudolph runs a recurring “Trading the trend” format that turns his analysis into discrete trade ideas with entry, stop-loss and profit targets spelled out. In a long USD/CAD opportunity, he links a stronger US dollar after an inflation surprise to a break through resistance on the chart, then specifies where to enter, where to cut the trade and where to aim for profits. A short VIX piece in the same series sets up a volatility trade by describing recent geopolitical-driven moves, identifying a reversal pattern and attaching a defined stop and downside target, framed within a strategy that risks a fixed percentage of capital per trade.
A long EUR/USD installment combines discussion of copper futures and natural gas trades with a fresh FX setup, using past trades to illustrate how adjusting stops and respecting trend structure governs his decision-making.
This work is explicitly instructional as well as analytical.
Rudolph uses real trades - in cotton futures, soybeans, natural gas and currencies - to demonstrate how trailing stops, profit-taking and loss-cutting operate in practice. He returns to the theme in a profile on a carbon emissions trade he “will never forget”, describing how confidence in the price containing information led to a long position that moved from roughly €31 towards €100, illustrating his belief in trend-following grounded in both technical and fundamental views. Across these pieces, the distinguishing feature is the blend of concrete trade metrics with narrative lessons about risk and discipline, rather than general market colour.
Earnings previews and single-stock setups
Alongside indices and FX, Rudolph covers individual companies through results previews that tie upcoming earnings to technical positioning in the share price. Recent work includes H1 results previews for Kingfisher, Vistry and JD Sports, where he sets out the scheduled event and then focuses on where the stock trades relative to prior highs, lows and chart gaps. A Micron Technology earnings preview follows the same pattern, linking the AI-related narrative to the stock’s trend while emphasising levels that might matter if the numbers surprise.
In these pieces he treats corporate events as catalysts for moves within an existing technical framework, not as standalone news stories.
Rudolph also writes thematic equity articles that extend his technical perspective into longer-term positioning. A feature on “boring is beautiful” explores how to invest like a particular high-profile investor by focusing on steady, dividend-bearing stocks and the behaviour of their prices over time.
Coverage of banking stocks such as Lloyds Banking Group similarly connects themes like rate paths and inflation to how the share price trades, keeping the emphasis on chart structure and relative performance rather than company strategy or management commentary.
Practitioner background and educational focus
Rudolph’s tone reflects a long practitioner’s career as a trader, fund manager and technical analyst before joining IG. IG profiles describe him as a multiple award-winning cross-asset technical analyst, ranked in the top three of the international FX Euromoney survey for a decade and taking the top spot in 2014 and 2019. He has held trading and technical analysis roles at investment banks in several countries, adding institutional context to the retail-facing analysis he now produces. This background underpins his focus on futures, options, spread betting, CFDs and margin policies, all of which he lists among the topics he can cover.
Education is a core part of his professional identity. Rudolph is a Fellow and non-executive director of the Society of Technical Analysts, where he heads the education programme, and he has previously served as its chair. He has taught technical analysis at universities for over two decades and sits on the board of the International Federation of Technical Analysts as a European vice-chair. IG notes that he is regularly quoted in the financial press and appears on major financial news channels, where he explains how events filter through into market moves - the same link between news and price action that structures his written output.
Taken together, his coverage stands out for its consistency: cross-asset technical analysis expressed in concrete trading levels, backed by long practical experience and delivered in a style that doubles as live market commentary and training in disciplined trade execution.
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