Trading Educators Blog

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...

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 that they are able to take profits out of the market. Most important is they believe that they deserve to win. They have a mind-set that is conducive to winning as a trader. It's essen...

I think there is no “best way” to enter or exit spread trades, there is only “your way”. Let me explain: I personally prefer the open and the close to enter all my spreads. I don’t like to watch my spreads during the day and I focus only on the closing price.Most buying and selling is at the open and at the close, especially in thin markets. When you use a limit order...

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...

Some traders unconsciously ratchet their emotions up a notch each time they avoid a trade when the market is not in their favor. So their emotions build, like steam pressure, to higher and higher levels. You can see the anger growing in them. They feel that by patiently staying out of every trade that they are demonstrating superior trading skills, but they are not being rewarded for it. When we i...

Many wannabe traders have trouble following their trading plans when they are seemingly in conflict with their basic beliefs. While you may have intended to stay with a strategy having specific parameters for entering and exiting a trade, there are things that can cause you to abandon your plan when you are faced with the reality of a live market. Sometimes this happens because you question whethe...

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...

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 ...

Have you ever changed a losing trade into a winning trade by ignoring your trading rules? I would guess almost every trader has done it at least once, and many do it regularly. The problem is, even if you made money on this single trade, the market will almost surely make you pay back your gains with high interest. Let me giving you an example.   Let’s assume you went long the Soybeans. Based...

I've received the following email from one of our Traders Notebook subscriber regarding the new Outright Futures trading ideas. I think it is VERY informative! Thank you Tom!!! "This new program sounds very interesting.  Here are a few thoughts about trading with the mini/micro contracts.  I would advise everyone to put up a chart of the full size contract side by side with one of the mi...

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...

I say that because trading is not an exact science. You can't do X and get Y every time. Trading does not fit the definition of science. It is not totally objective. It is as much an art as it is anything else. There is no magic formula. Trading is all about probability. It is the art of correctly applying a set of carefully thought out rules and allocating the probability of that event to result ...

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...

 It is critical that you trade what you see, not what you think. What you "think" is your opinion, and trading your opinion, or that of anyone else, generally results in more losses than wins. Being flexible, and being able to adapt to what you see in the markets, is the only tradable reality we have.  You have to learn to adapt your trading style to what is happening in the markets in w...

Recent figures show that 90% of traders who ever trade lose their account and that 10% actually go bankrupt. Those are scary numbers, I’m sure you’d agree. Traders are not stupid people; most traders have an above average IQ and are above average in most categories such as education and income. I think they don’t make a success out of trading because they lack proper education and mentoring. By ed...

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...

Over-trading fits in under the topic of risk management. We are talking “risk control.” First, I would say that risk management is one of the most important things that you really need to understand. Second, you must begin to under-trade, under-trade, under-trade. Whatever you think your position ought to be, cut it at least in half. My experience with novice traders is that they trade 3 to 5 time...

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...

 On 23 June 2016, the UK will vote on a referendum (i.e., BrExit) to decide whether to remain a part of the European Union. This vote is expected to create substantial market volatility in the days leading up to the vote and perhaps even greater volatility should the final vote be for the UK to separate from the EU.  The market consensus suggests that separation would lead to a weaker GB...

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...