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Trading Educators Blog

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Systematic Trader, Educator for Forex, Futures and Systematic Trading. Check out my full bio here.

Jun
11

5 Tips on How to Deal with Drawdowns

After the recent harsh correction in the stock markets and cryptocurrencies, many traders and especially investors currently find their accounts in a not so nice drawdown. So I thought this might be a good time to give some advice on how to deal with such drawdowns. What's a drawdown? Here's a quick explanation: You buy one stock of a company at $100 and after a month it's trading at $120. You're ...

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  2420 Hits
Apr
23

Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money

This is one of the quotes about trading that stuck with me. I googled it and it's from Ed Seykota, I probably read it in one of the Market Wizards books, which I can highly recommend. The exact quote is "Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money." Now this applies especially well to the retail world of traders. And i...

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  1619 Hits
Apr
02

Don't wait too long for "Confirmation"!

​A popular concept in the world of trading, especially among technical traders and chartists is to wait for confirmation before entering a trade. This means you have a Signal, for example, a price action pattern and now you wait for the markets to confirm that pattern before you enter. The idea, of course, is to filter out bad trades this way and to gain confidence before entering the trade. ...

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  3418 Hits
Mar
26

Knowing When NOT to Trade

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...

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  1379 Hits
Oct
13

Who's Next in Line?

"Buy low, sell high" is one of the most popular memes in the investment and trading world. And obviously, it does make sense, who wouldn't like to buy low and sell high all the time? I found this to be quite a helpful advice to invest in stocks for example. Wait for a crash, buy it and sell again when prices are back to old highs. Of course, the problem often is to figure out what's actually a low...

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  2267 Hits
Sep
09

The right mindset to deal with drawdowns

Drawdowns are an unavoidable fact in trading that's tough to deal with. But you probably already noticed that and might have encountered some of the serious issues this can lead to during your trading career. Maybe you tend to stop trading a system or switch systems always at the wrong time. Or worse. But as I've written about these issues before, here's a mindset that has helped me a lot to deal ...

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  2206 Hits
Aug
26

Don’t get married to a market!

There are so many different instruments to trade like stocks, bonds, futures, spot forex, options and so on. And even when you decide to get into futures, there are tons of futures out there! So where to even start? I was as confused as anyone else about this when I started trading. That's why it probably feels good to focus on just one market in the beginning. "I just trade the EUR/USD" or "I onl...

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  2104 Hits
Jun
09

5 Tips to Improve your Day Trading

5 Tips to Improve your Day Trading

Day trading has always been a tough game, requiring a very strong psyche, discipline and a high level of trading skills to succeed in.  Nowadays though it's even harder due to the stronger competition, not only by humans but especially by computers trading at a speed a human trader simply can not match up to. High-Frequency Trading is happening in literally all of the popular markets out ther...

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  2830 Hits
Dec
15

Are You an Efficient Trader?

Most traders start out with a dream. And usually part of that dream is that once you’re a successful trader you’ll have a lot more time for the things in life you enjoy spending time with. Your family, friends, hobbies, spend time in nature and start other business opportunities you’ve been dreaming of realizing. Besides making money, for many the main reason to start trading is ...

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  2725 Hits
Dec
05

E-Mini Russel 2000 (TF) Multiplier Change

Something you should be aware of if you're trading the TF: Starting today (December 5th) the E-Mini Russel 2000 (TF) has a tick value of USD 5.00 instead of USD 10.00 while the tick size stays the same. For more info see the ICE FAQ. Happy Trading! Marco

  2408 Hits
Nov
17

Launching Ambush Signals

I’m happy to tell you that today a new AlgoStrats service was launched: Ambush Signals for Futures. To find out more have a look at the following video presentation: Happy Trading! Marco

  3125 Hits
Nov
02

AlgoStrats:FX October Performance

It’s been three months since AlgoStrats:FX launched so I guess it’s time for a more detailed update on what happened so far. Here’s the up-to-date equity curve of the live trading account: The summary is that we had a tough start and two months of slow, steady drawdown until things turned around nicely in October. Nothing unusual, no problem but hey…couldn’t the markets have given us a slightly ni...

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  3260 Hits
Oct
20

Waiting for Confirmation? Don’t Wait too Long!

A popular concept in the world of trading, especially among technical traders and chartists is to wait for confirmation before entering a trade. This means you have a Signal, for example a price action pattern and now you wait for the markets to confirm that pattern before you enter. The idea of course is to filter out bad trades this way and to gain confidence before entering the trade. But that ...

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  2977 Hits
Oct
18

New Video on Entry Signals

Just wanted to let you know that I uploaded a new video to YouTube a couple of days ago. This time it's about why Entry Signals are important and one way to test an Entry Signal isolated from Exit Signals. If you like the video or my videos in general, and would like to see more of these in the future - please go ahead and like it on YouTube, leave a comment, add it to your playlist and share it o...

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  2555 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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  2435 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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  3022 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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  2759 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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  2503 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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  2810 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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  3013 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.