Trading Educators Blog

People don't want to be changed. They don't want to be told that they need to change. Do you ever find yourself struggling in those areas? Thank you for your honesty. If there is a struggle, that means there is a battle for truth. If you're not battling, you've already lost. Truth has been lost and deceit has won. We must come to a place where we are willing to unclothe our soul, ultimately, compl...

I received a couple of emails asking whether or not I believe in support and resistance. In fact, one subscriber said if I didn't believe in support and resistance, then I couldn't possibly believe in trend! Why? Because in all cases the situation ends. Here's what I believe: The trend is your friend until the end. The swing is the thing until it goes "ding." What is support and what is resistance...

You need to find other things to do while padding the time waiting for better trades. Try to study the markets or different ways of trading, or simply do something completely different like going to the beach. It is critical that you learn to enjoy yourself in ways other than being in a trade. The fact is, if you are trading in a professional way, you are out of the market much of time. So you nee...

Optimized entry (green vertical line on the chart below) or exit (red vertical line on the chart below) is part of seasonal patterns. For example: the spread X–Y shows a strong seasonal up move in July with an optimized entry date on July 3 and an optimized exit date on July 28. This means “usually” the spread moves up between July 3 and July 28, but this is just based on statistical data of the p...

I believe trading is far more an art than a science. For one thing, if trading were a science, then we should all be able to enter the same trade at the same time, and exit at the same time getting identical results. We all know that just isn’t so. Yet if trading were scientific, we should be able to get identical results doing the same thing. I believe such expectation describes the “scientific m...

Many novice traders underestimate how long it takes to become consistently profitable. They assume they can trade profitably in a matter of months, whereas veteran traders will tell you that such consistently profitable trading may take several years. And it's difficult to achieve. It requires great effort and persistence to become a steady winner, yet many aspiring traders think only minimal effo...

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...

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...

A few years ago I had an interesting conversation with Joe about “what makes a trader a successful trader”. We discussed this over several days because we wanted to find out how we can help struggling traders to enhance their trading. We finally came to the conclusion that “confidence” is what makes a huge difference. A trader can have a good system, good money and risk management in place, good u...

The exchanges all have some very basic information freely available. This even includes some trading strategies. There may be a small amount of hype in what they say, but generally, the information is good. The problem with information you get outside of the exchanges is all too often filled with false claims, slanted to whatever the person is selling. Traders are continually bombarded in magazine...

The majority of traders might think it would be impossible to trade in an "ego-less state", but this is not the case. To trade in an ego-less state means simply to not let the ego and emotions get involved. While trading in an ego-less state, winning or losing on a single trade become almost meaningless when the focus lies only on the whole picture. This is the soul of ego-less trading. Trading wi...

Markets move between low volatility trading range moves and high volatility trend moves. One of the best ways to see this taking place is with the Bollinger Bands. When a market makes an extremely narrow range move the Bollinger Bands will noticeably narrow together. When the bands narrow down it shows decreasing to low volatility condition on prices. Of course, a low volatility market forecasts a...

I've got asked a few times about the 3-leg or butterfly spreads we have been trading in Traders Notebook and therefore I want to show you one of our latest trades. What you can see on the seasonal chart below is a butterfly Lean Hogs spread, long 2 contracts in July and short 1 contract in June and 1 short in August. We've entered the spread on June 30 at 0.0 (red arrow), we covered some c...

You alone determine whether you will succeed or fail at trading. You alone are in control; take responsibility for your performance and your life. There are always tremendous opportunities in the markets. It is not what happens; it is what you do with what happens that makes the difference between profit and loss. However, you cannot marry a market or a single trading style. You have to look. Look...

As you can see on the chart below, the 90000 level is an important one. It was a clear resistance level in February and March of this year and could now work as support. I'd try to buy the June Japanese Yen one tick above today's high using the TTE with a first target at around 90470 with the idea of a possible 1-2-3 low. I would risk about $300/contract on the trade. Update 04/28, 6 AM CT: The Ja...

Let’s get one thing straight. Fear, for the majority of traders is a very real thing. You have it, I have it. Others have it as well. In order to become a professional trader, you must learn to deal with fear. The first step is to acknowledge that you have fear. Once you admit to fear, you can begin to deal with it. When you notice the impulse to trade based on strong fear, it is usually best to l...

"I review my checklist. It’s a handwritten sheet laminated in plastic and taped to the right-hand corner of my desk where I can’t overlook it. If you have a game plan prepared ahead of time, it can help you find courage in the heat of the battle.” - Marty Schwartz Yes, I also have a checklist and I look at it every day. On my checklist you can find reminders like “trade onl...

Richard Wyckoff wrote: “My stop was moved down so there couldn't be a loss, and soon a slight rally and another break gave me a new stop, which insured a profit, come what might… I strongly advocate this method of profit insuring. The scientific elimination of loss is one of the most important factors in the art, and the operator who fails to properly protect his paper profits will find that many ...

I wrote an article with the headline "Sometimes others get to play and you don't" some time ago and today (Friday 04/01) was such a day. And I tell you, it is difficult to watch markets are going my way knowing I could have made my shares for April but I missed the trade. Well, I haven't missed the trade actually because it wasn't my train. Here comes what happened. At 7:30 AM CT this morning we h...

Because of the short week ahead of us, I've decided to head for the beach for a few days (until Sunday). Of course, I will take my "trading stuff" with me (Laptop, Smartphone) to watch and manage my open trading positions. When I travel, I usually don't put on any new trades (and I definitely don't day trade or swing trade) but with today's technic it is an easy task to keep an eye...