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Trading Educators Blog

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Nov
08

Write Down Your Thoughts

​Have you ever made a dumb mistake? Perhaps you knew you should have used a protective stop before leaving for two days to take your children on a road trip. You may have thought, "I'll stop off at an Internet café and monitor the trade." But it didn't happen. You got wrapped up taking care of your children or worrying about traffic, and you didn't get around to looking at the market. It fell hard...

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  1911 Hits
Oct
11

Rise to the Occasion

Trading is a challenging profession. Many seek out success, but few make it. The markets don't always cooperate with your plans. You can trade all day, and work hard at it, but you can still end up losing money. Thinking of the big picture helps ease the pressure. You can calmly think, "What's there to worry about? It's just one trade among many. It's just one day. There are many more days to trad...

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  1588 Hits
Sep
06

Stay Calm

​Charles is on edge. He isn't extremely uptight but he isn't completely calm either. He is just a little fidgety and it's getting to him. He is having a little trouble concentrating. He's reading charts incorrectly and he is having trouble outlining a trading plan. He can't figure out where to place his stops, where to enter or where to exit. Can you relate to Charles' plight? There are times when...

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  1742 Hits
Jul
31

Your Money or Your Ego?

​Which would you be willing to part with first, your money or your self-esteem? If you are like most traders, you are likely to let your money go before your self-esteem. Trading stories are full of traders who gladly fed losing trades to avoid admitting the fact that they made a mistake. They hoped against hope that a losing trade would turn around if they could merely wait long enough. In the en...

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  1595 Hits
Jul
27

Trading Preparations

Are you ready to tackle the markets at any time? Bring it on, right? It would be ideal if we were ready to trade at any given moment, but the human mind has its limits. You don't have an endless supply of energy. After a marathon stretch of trading, for example, you may not be able to tackle the markets in earnest. You may not be able to concentrate fully. You may be easily distracted, and while y...

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  1682 Hits
Jul
20

Be Humble

​Seasoned traders observed long ago that after a series of wins, a trader is vulnerable to over-confidence and trading errors. It's quite understandable. Trading is a competitive business, and when you win, someone else loses. Market participants trade because they are greedy for profits, but often sell out of a fear of losing. How do many traders deal with the inevitable feelings of uncertainty a...

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  1920 Hits
Jun
24

Developing a Trading Style

Developing a Trading Style

Master Traders develop a style that is a reflection of their education and character. Most individual trading styles are either positional or combinational and, rarely, a synthesis of both. However, there are other styles.  Positional traders take x amount of positions within a specific price area where the market is thought to be favorable to their trading strategy. This may occur on short t...

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  2473 Hits
Dec
15

Do you think that what this guy wrote is true?

“You can get ahead of yourself in this game, and it’s dangerous to get cocky. But I’ve had times where for an hour I could do no wrong. I’m trading and 99 percent of the trades are good, they’re all for 30 or 50 contracts, and I’ll make 10 grand. Then I’ll overextend myself and maybe buy 10 or 15 contracts, fighting the trend just because I know prices have hit a support level. Then prices blow th...

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  2219 Hits
Dec
08

Looking at how the money supply affects trading in the markets.

There are two important components of federal market activity which affect long- term economic activity and stock and commodity values; these are interest rates and money supply. A contracting money supply was one of the factors that caused the Great Depression of the 1930's. In the early 1980's most traders focused almost totally on the money supply figures, which would cause cash bonds and T-Bil...

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  2298 Hits
Dec
02

"Once I’ve achieved success as a trader, then what? I’ve heard that after a while trading can become boring."

Question from a subscriber: "Once I’ve achieved success as a trader, then what? I’ve heard that after a while trading can become boring." I know you would all like to have that problem, but I can vouch for its being true. I always have to find new ways to trade or I do become bored. However, I have never run out of ways to trade that remain exciting, at least for a fairly long time. After the obje...

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  2982 Hits
Nov
25

I Find Myself with an Attitude of Gratitude

Dear Friends, Whenever this time of year rolls around, I find myself with an attitude of gratitude. This week we celebrated Thanksgiving Day. Although "Thanksgiving" is not celebrated here in Uruguay, many living here celebrated at various places around the country. There were at least fifty people at the gathering my wife and I went to. Trading and markets have been a major part of my life for al...

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  2112 Hits
Nov
17

Reaching Your Trading Goals

As a trader, it's essential that you set specific goals. Trading is chaotic enough without trying to achieve unstructured goals that are difficult to manage and reach. Making profitable investments requires you to prepare carefully. You have to develop hypotheses regarding current market conditions. You have to devise ways of identifying setups and determine how and when to enter and exit the trad...

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  2630 Hits
Oct
20

Waiting for Confirmation? Don’t Wait too Long!

A popular concept in the world of trading, especially among technical traders and chartists is to wait for confirmation before entering a trade. This means you have a Signal, for example a price action pattern and now you wait for the markets to confirm that pattern before you enter. The idea of course is to filter out bad trades this way and to gain confidence before entering the trade. But that ...

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  2977 Hits
Sep
23

Drawdown is the norm, not the exception

When I started out trading I had the illusion that being a successful trader meant to no longer have drawdowns or at least on very rare occasions. And I think most traders start out with that idea in their mind even though they don’t understand what it actually means. In Trading, you are in a Drawdown anytime you don’t make new equity highs on your account, or if you have multiple accounts across ...

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  2759 Hits
Sep
01

Trading on Vacation: Good or bad idea?

As I’m about to go on vacation I thought it’s a good idea to write down my thoughts about trading on vacation. Is it a good idea to do so, or just crazy? I believe it depends. If you’re longer-term position trader and have a couple of positions open that are doing great and you don’t want to close them out now for example, I think there’s nothing wrong managing your position once a day while you’r...

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  2810 Hits
Aug
24

(Good) Trading happens outside your comfort zone.

After writing about why good trading usually is quite boring last week, I’ll continue down that road today and write about another similar topic.  And again it’s more of a rant that many of you maybe don’t want to read about. But I believe it really can be an eye-opener to those of you who’re really serious about trading and these are the traders that I care for the most. Actually I wish I ha...

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  3013 Hits
Aug
16

(Good) Trading Is Boring

When you start out trading, it’s pretty much all about the excitement. You watch every trade tick by tick, gazing at a chart ticking up and down together your P&L. You’re long. When it goes up, you feel excited because you’re making money, if it goes down you’re excited because you’re losing money. But boy you’re making sure you don’t miss any of this. You sit there and gaze at that chart as i...

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  3629 Hits
Jun
02

Don't Trade Your P&L, Trade The Market!

I just posted another video on our YouTube channel about another very common trading mistake, and that's trading your P&L instead of the actual market. While there are many variations of this, I guess I covered some of the most common ones that I've done myself again and again when I started trading. Go check it out and let me know if you have any questions or comments!

  2629 Hits
May
17

Trading Error: Stop Trading At The Worst Time...

Trading Error: Stop Trading At The Worst Time...

I just wanted to let you know about a new video that I uploaded to YouTube about one of the most common trading mistakes out there: To Stop Trading/Following your method/system/yourself at the worst time possible. This is something I see over and over again especially among beginning traders. You won't believe how often I've trapped into this myself during my first years of trading! Happy Trading!...

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  2701 Hits
May
12

How much to risk per Trade

How much to risk per Trade

One of the questions every trader has to think about at some point is, how much of my account should I risk per trade? A percentage? If so, what percentage? I’d love to have the right answer in my pocket for you, like "exactly 1.25% per trade/market and no more than 5% at the same time," but unfortunately, I don’t. Again I know you don’t want to waste too much time with this bo...

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  3735 Hits

Derivative transactions, including futures, are complex and carry a high degree of risk. They are intended for sophisticated investors and are not suitable for everyone. There are numerous other factors related to the markets in general or to the implementation of any specific trading program which cannot be fully accounted for in the preparation of hypothetical performance results, and all of which can adversely affect actual trading results. For more information, see the Risk Disclosure Statement for Futures and Options.