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Systematic Trader, Educator for Forex, Futures and Systematic Trading. Check out my full bio here.

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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  3915 Hits
Jul
22

AlgoStrats:FX Launches with Free Trial Week

I’m happy to tell you that AlgoStrats:FX is Live and Trading will start on Monday July 25th! To celebrate the Launch we’re starting with a Free Trial Week. Meaning you can follow AlgoStrats:FX completely free for a whole week. No strings attached, no credit card required - 100% free. Registration is already open, so go ahead and register your Free Account! I’ve also uploaded a new video ...

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  2848 Hits
Jul
07

How did Ambush make it through the BREXIT?

FYI: Get 20% off Ambush through July 13th. Simply enter the coupon code ambush20 when you check out. No doubt, the decision if or if not one should trade through the BREXIT-event and on which days was not an easy one for traders. But like most of the time, the answer at least in hindsight for Ambush traders was a clear "Yes". I personally didn't have any positions on going into the BREXIT...

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  3077 Hits
Jun
29

POST BREXIT, ALGOSTRATS:FX LAUNCH AND NEW VIDEOS

And a few days after the surprise from UK (sorry to see you guys leave!) the markets seem to calm down a bit already which is nice. But I expect to see a few more crazy days and regarding the FX markets it’s all one big Risk ON/OFF scheme right now, driving up correlations between the pairs. Now I keep on getting emails asking when the Free Trial for AlgoStrats:FX will start but I won’t rush it as...

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  2762 Hits
Jun
23

Trading the BREXIT

Actually I didn't want to jump on the BREXIT bandwagon but since a few of you asked me if I trade the Brexit and if so how, I'll let you know and give you a bit of a warning along the way. There's tons of traders out there on social media, blogs, trading sites and forum talking about how they'll trade the Brexit event, stay up over night and so on. Now I'm not one of them. Actually the Brexit is o...

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  2868 Hits
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Jun
16

Manual Backtesting Pitfalls

If you don’t want to learn how to backtest automatically right now but still want to profit from backtesting, you got to do it manually. That’s how I started too many years ago. I still remember sitting there with printed charts and writing down trade results on a separate sheet of paper. Now there are some pitfalls you better know about when doing manual backtests and that’s what this weeks video...

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  3303 Hits
Jun
08

FOREX VS. FUTURES

What’s better to trade the currency markets? Trading Futures or Forex? This is the question I try to answer in my new video, where I briefly discuss the major differences between trading Futures and Forex from my perspective. At the end though there’s no “right” answer to that question, as it really depends on your needs.

  3361 Hits
Jun
06

AlgoStrats.com is online!

I'm happy to tell you that AlgoStrats.com, my new website focused on Systematic Trading is now online! Initially I wanted to launch the website together with my new product AlgoStrats:FX, but due to the UK's EU referendum on June 23rd I decided to delay the launch into July.Still I wanted to bring the new site online as planned, so go ahead, check it out and send me some feedba...

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  2700 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!

  2791 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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  2886 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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  3963 Hits
May
05

New Q&A Video Online

I just uploaded Episode 3 of my Questions & Answers Series to YouTube. It covers questions on the usefulness of demo-trading and on trading 123 formations. In the last part I talk about why I developed my own python-based backtesting platform which is probably only interesting for those of you who're hardcore into system-development. So if you're not, just stop there ;)

  2904 Hits
May
03

EUR/USD Update

The last I did a post about what's going on in EUR/USD and that it's unlikely we'll see a significant move unless the pair breaks out of it's established range. Now that finally happened and the Euro is on a strong run for a few days now already. Now what to do? If you're already long, should you keep on holding the position? If you're not in the trade already, should you still buy at the market? ...

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  2881 Hits
Apr
29

Position Sizing/Measuring Performance

About a year ago I wrote an article about measuring performance where I explained the concept of measuring trading performance in Rs instead of $s. Everyone who trades for a while quickly realizes that $s don't really say too much about performance. You made $10? Maybe great. You made $50.000? Maybe not so good. The question always is in relation to what? What account size does the t...

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  3297 Hits
Apr
23

Genesis Trade Navigator FX Data issues and how to fix them

Since many of you are using Genesis Trade Navigator, I thought this might be of interest. I personally use TN mostly for Futures Data, and only sometimes for Forex data - when I just need a quick daily chart for example where I don't mind about a few pips difference. But I don't use their spot Forex Data for backtests. Last week Genesis changed the daily closing time of their FX data to 17:00...

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  3571 Hits
Apr
21

Where's EUR/USD going?

Where's EUR/USD going?

There seems to be a massive obsession out there among traders about the EUR/USD, what's going on with it, where it's going and why. Whenever I go on twitter or Facebook or any of the financial news pages, I find at least a couple of posts on what's going on in that market, usually with some bogus comment on why. Classic one would be "EUR/USD moves higher after breaking through 1.1350" or "EUR/USD ...

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  3407 Hits
Apr
20

New Q&A Video Online

The second Episode of my Q&A Series is uploaded to YouTube. I only managed to answer two questions this time, so I probably should be a bit briefer in the future... Topics are disciplined trading and the lifetime of trading methods, and how to decide when to stop trading them. Enjoy!

  2278 Hits
Apr
18

Everybody Gets What They Want Out of the Market

This is one of the quotes about trading that stuck with me. I googled it and it's from Ed Seykota, I probably read it in one of the Market Wizards books, which I can highly recommend. The exact quote is “Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.” Now this applies especially well to the retail world o...

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  3339 Hits
Apr
13

New YouTube Series: Marco's Trading Q&A

Hi Trader, now this has been a quite volatile week so far in many markets and I hope you've also been able to capture some nice profits out of these wild moves! Thanks to my trading being almost completely systematic right now I still had a few minutes to record a new video for YouTube and actually start of a new Series. In the first one I explain what a BID/ASK spread is for those of you who're c...

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  3361 Hits
Apr
09

Time to sell the JPY?

Hi Traders, after a much needed vacation I'm back from the hills where I could hike long enough to get all relaxed and clear headed again! Now back to the markets, when it comes to currencies, everyone is talking about the Yen these days, especially against the USD (USD/JPY). And yes the USD/JPY dropped quite significantly during the last two weeks, but for the Yen this isn't that unusual. Still i...

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  3013 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.