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Trading Educators Blog

#1 Trading Blog Site

Practical Teaching Derived from over 60 Years of Trading Experience and over 30 Years of Mentoring .  Click here to learn about private mentoring with Master Trader Joe Ross.

Apr
23

Closing Out a Trade

You must be disciplined in following the plan of your trade. Once you have closed your position, you should record everything about the trade. Write down where you wanted to enter the trade, what you expected out of the trade, and what you actually did get out of the trade. Make sure to include notes that will help you learn from the trade, reasoning what actually took place once you entered the t...

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  1585 Hits
Apr
16

What will success as a trader bring to my life?

Success has many faces: peace of mind, high levels of health and energy, loving relationships, financial security, meaningful goals and aspirations, and the feeling that you are growing into all that you are capable of becoming. Becoming all that you can be is called "self-actualization."It is important to recognize that success is not only financial, but exists on many levels. A person may find s...

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  1645 Hits
Apr
09

Avoid negative open equity

​There is an old saying that when day trading positions have had negative open equity most of the day, and an opportunity arises to exit the market at break even with less than 30 minutes of trading rises, go ahead and exit the market.  Unless the market is moving rapidly in your direction with expanding-in-length bars, and no more than 5 minutes left, exit immediately and consider the opport...

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  1548 Hits
Apr
02

Ego or No Ego

​When you get an easy winner do you feel guilty?  Do you ask yourself, "Do I deserve to win?"Do I? The world's most successful traders believe in themselves and their ability to win. In fact, many of them feel that they "own" the market. They are not necessarily being arrogant, but they are sure of themselves and sure that they are able to take profits out of the market. Most important i...

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  1564 Hits
Mar
26

That GUT FEELING is no mere figure of speech!

​The gut actually has its own self-contained nervous system, known as the enteric nervous system. It can operate in the complete absence of input from the brain or even the spinal cord. It is vast, with more than one-hundred million nerve cells in the small intestine alone. Add to that the nerve cells of the esophagus, stomach, and large intestine…the result is that the gut contains more nerve cel...

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  1541 Hits
Mar
19

Why I Commit to Teach and Train Others

​Science has been called the most creative art form.It expresses its creations in technology. Valuable information is the most prized commodity, because it makes the wealth creation process and individual creative process possible.For me, passing on valuable information and seeing someone use it to fulfill his hopes and dreams is my most rewarding endeavor. So far, the computer is technology's ult...

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  1517 Hits
Mar
12

Winning Traders

The winning trader must be cold, calculating, and logical. It is absolutely necessary to control your emotions, rather than let them interfere with your trading decisions. While it is true that fear and greed are major factors in market behavior, there are other emotions, such as anger and disappointment, that influence our trading decisions. Because emotions can interfere with discipline and soun...

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  1625 Hits
Mar
05

Knowing too Much

​It sounds crazy, but you can know too much about anything you want to trade.  This is hard for people to accept in our "Knowledge Is Power" society… where the Internet puts thousands of pages of information, data, and news in front of us with a few clicks of a mouse. People like to believe that with enough information, they can make a perfect decision… That by adding fact after fact, data po...

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  2081 Hits
Feb
27

Focus on the Obvious

Humans have a tendency to forget the obvious. We often think that life is more complex than the issues right in front of us, and that obvious solutions offer little solace when trying to find solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. The markets are complex at times, but the psychology of the market is not. And the psychology of winning isn't all that complicated either. It is vital to accen...

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  1952 Hits
Feb
20

Objective State of Mind

As you trade, have you ever heard a little voice inside talk about only what is going wrong? As the market moves against you, the voice whispers, "My money is on the line. What if I lose? What am I going to do? How will I meet my financial obligations this month? I need to win! The little voice moves you away from your ongoing, immediate experience to your emotions, what may go wrong in the next m...

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  1806 Hits
Feb
12

More on Impulsive Trading

When your money is on the line, it's difficult to remain calm, rational, and in complete control. What happens if you lose? How will you recover? It's natural to become consumed with self-doubt and abandon your trading plan, or act irrationally in the midst of the chaotic market action. But winning traders control their impulses. They execute a trading strategy effortlessly and flawlessly, even un...

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  1741 Hits
Feb
06

Clear Perspective

There are times when our judgment is cloudy. Perhaps we want to win so badly that we optimistically see trading opportunities that aren't there. At other times we may be so stressed out, busy, and tired that we can't concentrate, and end up making an impulsive decision or a trading error out of a sense of frustration. As much as we search for a rational, robot-like perspective on the markets, it i...

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  1649 Hits
Jan
30

So, You Made a Mistake…

​John is kicking himself right now. He just made an unexpected losing trade and he feels especially down. He expected to make a killing, and he was looking forward to winning and celebrating big. He thought he had done everything to prepare for the trade. He had looked at the moving average to discern the trend. He looked at the highs and lows of the stock for the past two months, and set his stop...

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  1700 Hits
Jan
23

Question from Student

 First and foremost, thank you for sharing your valuable knowledge, its much appreciated. For scalping/daytrading CL, EC, GC, RTY, what would be the suggested time-frame to set up the charts as per the Trading with More Special Set-Ups Webinar--Stochastic 5,3,3 and BB 18,2, but what time-frame do you suggest, 3min/9min? The time frame and the setups are independent of each other—mutually excl...

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  1671 Hits
Jan
16

Beliefs About Randomness: Do They Impact Profits?

​As you trade, do you ever just think, "It's all just random, why even bother trying at all?" If you passively think you have no control, you may end up making less money. A team of scientists studied a group of university students who played a computer game of roulette. All participants reported they had gambled recreationally in the past year. Researchers asked participants to describe the strat...

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  1770 Hits
Jan
09

Self-Control

Self-control is often the key to trading success. Masters of the market are disciplined. They don't sporadically act on a whim. They develop specific trading plans and follow them. Trading is largely a matter of capitalizing on odds. If you assume that a given trading strategy has a past performance record of 50%, for example, it's a matter of odds as to whether that particular strategy will obtai...

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  2177 Hits
Jan
02

Look at the Facts

​Have you ever made a small losing trade and thought, "It's alright.I'll win on the next one." The next trade comes along, and you lose. And then the next one is a loser, and so on, and so on...until finally, you are in a severe drawdown. Before you dig yourself into a hole that is virtually impossible to climb out of, it is vital for survival to constantly monitor your progress. Take a good hard ...

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  1893 Hits
Dec
26

Fighting Back

​It's not the number of times you fail that matters. It is all about getting back up after you've been knocked down. Ask any successful person and you'll find that he or she has experienced a mountain of failure. Trading is a challenging profession. Few make it, and of those who do, many eventually blow out their accounts and give up the profession. What's the difference between the successful, wi...

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  1951 Hits
Dec
19

Discipline and Temptation

Looking at your screen can be much like looking at a slot machine, and stopping yourself from dropping a dollar in the slot and pulling the handle. You must restrain yourself from making an impulsive trade, but there's a very human tendency to seek out excitement and receive a quick reward. You must fight temptation and maintain self-control, however. Electronic trading platforms have made trades ...

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  1835 Hits
Dec
12

The News

​What are the latest headlines? Do they impact the markets? Well, it depends. On Monday, October 17, 2005, here were some of the headlines that may have impacted you. GM reached a tentative agreement with the union. What's the impact? It seemed to satisfy long term investors. Company profits are bound to improve with lower labor costs, right? The Supreme Court refused to allow the government to pu...

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  2118 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.