Trading Educators Blog

​In general, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to trading. There are many ways to sabotage yourself as a trader. Not creating a trading plan, or creating one and then not following it are two of the most common. Some ways to self-defeat are deep seated; they lurk at the back of your mind and work behind the scenes. These are often self-image problems that can rise from as far back as early ...

Traders want to trade. That's what we feel is our job and that's when we feel that we're actually really doing something. And I think that's why it can be so tough to go through periods of low trade frequency. It just somehow doesn't feel right. Might be missing out on something. For sure the markets keep on moving and others are trading, right? But feelings are often misleading, especially when i...

​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...

​One of the most important things to learn in this life is how we ourselves behave, not only when we are acting on our own, but when we are part of the crowd. And what few of us understand is how many of our important daily actions are not thought out in advance. We are all attempting to survive in what is basically a hostile environment. Many of our actions are in response to some sort of stimulu...

​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...

​I've read this phrase over and over again in scam emails, Twitter posts of different Gurus and other sources mainly because of marketing reasons using the current panic in the markets to sell their wisdom. But all I know from brokers I know is, that many of their clients are losing or already have lost tremendous amounts of money because they only think in terms of "how much money can b...

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...

​Traders are willing to gamble a lot of money to avoid a potential loss, rather than immediately accepting a smaller but certain loss. Likewise, traders will hold on to a losing trade, and continue to watch it loses money, rather than face the loss. Why is it that we see money as being so important? The answer stems from our culture. What we esteem as good things are associated with money. Money i...

​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...

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...

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...

Paper trading cannot replace real trading for many (mainly emotionally based) reasons, but it can be an important part of the process of finding and trading a new method. First you might have an idea about how to trade a market based on price bars, candlestick charts, indicators, or whatever you use for your trading. Next you would back test it with older data. You would do it manually or by using...

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...

​In most other fields of activity we need to convince people around us that our opinion is correct. In the market, it just doesn't work that way. It's suicide to try to trade from your opinion. Instead of insisting that you are right, you have to get rid of your ego and any opinion you have of the market. What you want, is simply to be in tune with what's happening at the moment. Connect to the re...

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...

​Most successful traders failed at some point in their careers and wiped out their account. Many traders lose because they do not understand the nature of the decision-making process, which should be based on rational price action analysis versus emotional, irrational reactions to price action. A reason should be required for each market action taken. When fear exits a trade, it is more difficult ...

​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...

 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...

​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...

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...