Trading Educators Blog

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

The majority of traders might think it would be impossible to trade in an "ego-less state", but this is not the case. To trade in an ego-less state means simply to not let the ego and emotions get involved. While trading in an ego-less state, winning or losing on a single trade become almost meaningless when the focus lies only on the whole picture. This is the soul of ego-less trading. Trading wi...

If you had to describe the best trader in the world, who would that person be? What qualities would he have? Take a moment to envision him. This is important, because this is the person you want to be, so you need to have an exact picture of him and what his qualities are. The answer is that he is someone whose trading is somehow “complete”. Someone who is controlling his trading at al...

Winning traders cannot afford to be influenced by their emotions. The nature of trading demands an objective, logical approach. If you experience extreme excitement after a win and extreme disappointment after a loss, you will be living on an emotional roller coaster: up and down, up and down. Many beginning traders have head knowledge of what it means to control their emotions. They can imagine a...

The best way to handle that kind of fear is walk away from the situation. Get up, and walk away from the computer and any news you may be watching. Remove yourself from whatever it is that triggered the fear. Do anything that will take you out of the fear/panic mode. Don’t sit down to trade again, and don’t return to the markets until you have managed to achieve some emotional control over your fe...

As traders we have a strong need to want complete control over the outcome of a trade. We want to believe that if we analyze the markets long enough, we'll have perfect knowledge and we can trade to perfection. But such desire leads to wrong assumptions that can do us more harm than good. Assuming we must have control restricts our actions and reactions, and the result can be unnecessary stress. W...

Walk-forward testing is the first real step in testing any system on live data. A trader should be somewhat confident that the system or method can produce results in line with the hypothetical results received from back testing. At this stage of testing, it’s important to watch a trading system or method run over live data for a period of weeks or months until a large, statistically valid u...

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 entered the trade. Explain why the trade was a winner or a loser. If you k...

An option buyer has the odds strongly stacked against him. What most option buyers don't realize is that in order for them to make money, they must be right in three areas: He has to be right about market direction He has to be right about the degree of market direction He has to know when the market move will move in a certain direction That is definitely worse than being a trader in the underlyi...

Not many traders are familiar with futures spread trading. Even fewer traders understand multi-leg spreads. However, trading these types of spreads is as easy as trading an outright futures contract. Below is a 3-leg butterfly spread in Lean Hogs that we recently closed out in Traders Notebook: short one contract in June and in August, 2016, and long 2 contracts in July, 2016. The blue line on the...

Markets move between low volatility trading range moves and high volatility trend moves. One of the best ways to see this taking place is with the Bollinger Bands. When a market makes an extremely narrow range move the Bollinger Bands will noticeably narrow together. When the bands narrow down it shows decreasing to low volatility condition on prices. Of course, a low volatility market forecasts a...

I've got asked a few times about the 3-leg or butterfly spreads we have been trading in Traders Notebook and therefore I want to show you one of our latest trades. What you can see on the seasonal chart below is a butterfly Lean Hogs spread, long 2 contracts in July and short 1 contract in June and 1 short in August. We've entered the spread on June 30 at 0.0 (red arrow), we covered some c...

You alone determine whether you will succeed or fail at trading. You alone are in control; take responsibility for your performance and your life. There are always tremendous opportunities in the markets. It is not what happens; it is what you do with what happens that makes the difference between profit and loss. However, you cannot marry a market or a single trading style. You have to look. Look...

As you can see on the chart below, the 90000 level is an important one. It was a clear resistance level in February and March of this year and could now work as support. I'd try to buy the June Japanese Yen one tick above today's high using the TTE with a first target at around 90470 with the idea of a possible 1-2-3 low. I would risk about $300/contract on the trade. Update 04/28, 6 AM CT: The Ja...