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Trading Educators Blog

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Oct
07

In and around Uruguay

Since I began trading for Instant Income, I have a lot of time to enjoy the tiny country of Uruguay. There’s an old fort on high hill overlooking the estuary upon which Montevideo is situated. It is the widest estuary in the world, where the Rio de la Plata meets the Atlantic Ocean.  The Río de la Plata (Spanish: "Silver River") — which is often referred to in English-speaking count...

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  2380 Hits
Oct
06

A typical Traders Notebook Outright Swing Trade

Today I want to show you a trade we had the other day with our new service. As you can see below, we were looking for a few entries in several markets. We were filled in the long Soybean Meal trade at 301.5 with an initial stop at 299.0 (the risk was $250 per contract traded). During the overnight session the market moved a bit, but everything was very quiet. At the open of the day session the mar...

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  2668 Hits
Oct
06

The Forex Trump Trade & Synthetic FX Pairs

One of the hottest topics right now is the ongoing US election and how it will affect the currency markets. If we take Trump by his words, there’s no surprise two currencies should definitely be affected strongly by a winning Trump, the Mexican Peso (MXN due to his plan to build a wall between the US an Mexico) and the Russian Ruble (RUB as Trump wants to get closer to Russia). Therefor the ultima...

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  2900 Hits
Sep
29

Why Pips Don’t Matter!

On a regular basis I get questions regarding Forex Trading in general or AlgoStrats:FX like: - How many Pips do you make per month? - How many Pips does a good trader make per month? - Does your Strategy make 100 Pips a week? Additionally to that, there’s advertisements all around that promise traders 1000 pips a month or performance reports that look like this: This month trades: 27 Sep: GBP/NZD ...

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  3460 Hits
Sep
28

Five Basic Steps To Becoming A Successful Trader

1. Focus on trading vehicles, strategies, and time horizons that suit your personality 2. Identify non-random price behavior 3. Absolutely convince yourself that what you have found is statistically valid 4. Set up trading rules 5. Follow the rules 6. Don’t be afraid to abandon a rule that is no longer working.   In a nutshell, it all comes down to: Do your own thing (independence); And do th...

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  2978 Hits
Sep
23

Drawdown is the norm, not the exception

When I started out trading I had the illusion that being a successful trader meant to no longer have drawdowns or at least on very rare occasions. And I think most traders start out with that idea in their mind even though they don’t understand what it actually means. In Trading, you are in a Drawdown anytime you don’t make new equity highs on your account, or if you have multiple accounts across ...

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  3199 Hits
Sep
20

Market Technicians

Market technicians tend to peer into market detail from the point of view of mathematics and statistics. A market technician will present you with something like: “There are only four range possibilities for a price bar for any chart time frame: The outside bar; the inside bar, the higher high and higher low, and the lower high and lower low. Using only the open, high, low, mid range, and close da...

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  2742 Hits
Sep
20

FOMC Days = Crazy Days?

Whenever the Federal Open Market Committee meets and releases its rate decision and its statement, it’s seen as one of the most important data releases in the markets in the currency markets. And it is, as sometimes there’s a real surprise that can have a huge impact on the markets. Because of that the whole FX world goes crazy days before it and waits for the statement in anticipation of big move...

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  2937 Hits
Sep
14

Markets Tend to Part the Foolish from Their Money

Sometimes you feel that you are able to throw caution to the wind. That is when you must be careful to not spit into it.One satisfying aspect of trading can be identifying a market (or spread) that is undervalued, at support, trending, breaking out, or behaving seasonally – and then seeing it continue to behave as expected. When it does so, it pays to be aggressive – boldly assuming po...

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  2477 Hits
Sep
07

Becoming a consistent winner

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...

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  3202 Hits
Sep
01

Trading on Vacation: Good or bad idea?

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...

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  3476 Hits
Sep
01

Learning from Mistakes

If you make mistakes during trading, go back in your mind to see what you could have done better, or differently. There is usually something to learn from each trade. For example, did you stay too long in a single trade? Did you trade too aggressively, or not aggressively enough? Should you have cashed in (or added) some contracts, but didn’t? Mistakes don’t matter much if you learn from them. Ana...

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  2789 Hits
Aug
24

(Good) Trading happens outside your comfort zone.

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...

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  3780 Hits
Aug
22

Do I deserve to win?

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...

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  3095 Hits
Aug
17

What is the Best Way to Enter or Exit the Spread Trades?

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...

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  3130 Hits
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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  4454 Hits
Aug
11

Feeling Neutral

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...

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  3875 Hits
Aug
01

Is trading a clean way to earn money?

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...

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  3014 Hits
Jul
29

Confidence

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...

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  3311 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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  3055 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.