Trading Educators Blog

​You must be disciplined in following the plan of your trade religiously. 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 ...

​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 ...

Anyone is allowed to make one mistake. When the mistake is repeated, watch out! The third repetition of the same mistake constitutes self-destructive habitual behavior that must be reversed. Stop all trading immediately, and thoroughly examine your self-discipline. Once the reason for the repetitive mistake is understood (usually fear, anger, greed, or guilt) it must be corrected before trading ma...

​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...

A thorough understanding of who you are and what makes you tick is essential in trading. How and what you think, what you believe, and how you behave are critical parts of winning in trading as well as winning in life. It seems very few traders understand, or are aware of this subtlety in the trading profession. You can get by without knowing who and what you are in most other careers but in tradi...

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 ...

​Learning the business of trading is basically no different from learning any other business. The important thing is that you realize that trading is a business that must be studied and learned correctly, because that determines your success or failure. Winning means learning major guidelines and concepts that you repeat so often in your own behavior that they become good habits. These good habits...

​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...

​If you're like most modern traders, you try to do it all. You study charts and historical data for trading opportunities. You struggle to devise a thorough, well-designed trading plan. You enter trades on your own electronic trading platform, and you monitor your trades to make midcourse corrections when necessary. Depending on your personality, available resources, and time commitment, you may w...

Do you remember your first impressions of trading? Perhaps you were young and had a strong desire to achieve early success, but if you were like most people, you had unrealistic expectations about the financial resources and skill level that were needed to trade profitably. You probably figured that you could just open a typical online brokerage account and turn $1,500 into a fortune. You probably...

 Here is what I found on Wikipedia about Ed Seykota: Edward Arthur Seykota (born August 7, 1946) is a commodities trader, who earned S.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT and Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, both in 1969. In 1970, he pioneered Systems trading by using early punched card computers to test ideas on trading the markets. Seykota resided in Incline Vil...

​It was a muggy day and I couldn't seem to do anything right. I fumbled around all morning. He hadn't slept the previous night. I was tired, and was tempted to just quit for the day, drink some ice-tea, and sit in a hammock by the pool. But I still had enough willpower to fight temptation a little longer. I had been working on a trading plan for the past month and I wanted to see it through. The d...

I like Marty Schwartz and his trading book "Pit Bull" a lot. It is an honest book about a trader who had his ups and downs in the market as we all do. In his book he writes, he made his highest progress, when he stopped trying "to be right" with the trades and instead followed the approach of "making money". Here is what I found on Wikipedia about him: Martin S. Schwartz (Buzzy, born March 23, 194...

When your money is on the line, you can't help but feel a little uneasy. What if you lose? It's hard not to put some of your ego on the line with your money, and when you lose, feel hurt. Winning traders, though, keep cool. They don't ride a roller coaster ride of emotions, feeling euphoric after a win and beaten after a loss. They take losses in stride. However, it's hard to stay objective and co...

​During the next few weeks, I want to have a look into the "golden rules" of famous traders with the idea, to find something they all have in common. I am starting with Paul Tudor Jones. Here, what I found in Wikipedia about him: Paul Tudor Jones II (born September 28, 1954) is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. In 1980, he founded his hedge fund, Tudor Investment Corpor...

​Jim own a Hog farm. He produces 1,000 hogs per month to take to market, so he runs a fair-sized hog operation.Jim grows corn and soybeans for feed. He grinds his own beans into meal, and has silos for storage of both the corn and the beans. In years where the crop of the best quality, Jim stores as much of his crop as possible. If the crop is of lesser quality, he sells his crop in the open marke...

To become a truly successful trader you must become a truly committed trader. How do you get yourself to be in control? Statistics and society may predict, but you alone determine whether you will succeed or fail. You alone are in control. You alone must take responsibility for your performance and your life. There are always tremendous opportunities in the markets. It is not what happens; it is w...

​Traders and investors try to understand their world. They make hypotheses and test them. Rather than conducting formal experiments, however, they use their everyday experience to test out theories they have about the markets. We study the markets and try to develop our own personal theories about how the markets work. Because we don't conduct formal experiments, we may fall prey to psychological ...

​In 1981, when I first started day trading, I would get to bed early night, wake up early, and be excited about starting the trading day. I remember on time when it was a cool, sunny day, and I really felt rejuvenated. After a quick exercise session, I couldn't wait for the markets to open, so I could make a few winning trades. I was really hyped. "Today is my lucky day. Today I'm going to make a ...

​Have you ever had a bad day when nothing seemed to go right? First, you got up late. Second, your computer wouldn't boot up, and third, when it did, you couldn't seem to get in and out at the right time when executing even the most basic trade. What really upset you was when your Data line went down for 10 minutes during a critical moment in your trading plan. Traders face setback after setback, ...