A reader asks: "Hey Joe! I'm pretty new at this. Can you tell me the rules for buy and sell stops?"When the market trades above a buy stop price order, it becomes a market order. The first down tick after the market order price is activated determines the highest price at which the buy stop order may be filled. The rule to remember placing stops is this, "Buy above and sell below." Buy stops are p...

A reader asks: How do you handle fear? I seem to have plenty of it.Let's get one thing straight. Fear, for the majority of traders, is a very real thing. You have it, I have it. Others have it as well. What is it that traders fear? The top three, in order, are: Fear of missing a trade. Fear of losing money. Fear of being wrong and losing face. In order to become a professional trader, you must lea...

"Do you think that what this guy wrote below is true?'You can get ahead of yourself in this game, and it's dangerous to get cocky. But I've had times where for an hour I could do no wrong. I'm trading and 99 percent of the trades are good, they're all for 30 or 50 contracts, and I'll make 10 grand. Then I'll overextend myself and maybe buy 10 or 15 contracts, fighting the trend just because I know...

One short time ago I received a couple of emails questioning whether or not I believe in support and resistance. In fact, one subscriber said if I didn't believe in support and resistance, then I couldn't possibly believe in trend! Why? Because in all cases the situation ends.Here's what I believe: The trend is your friend until the end. The swing is the thing until it goes "ding."What is support ...

How does money supply affect trading in the markets?There are two important components of federal market activity which affect long- term economic activity and stock and commodity values; these are interest rates and money supply. A contracting money supply was one of the factors that caused the Great Depression of the 1930's. In the early 1980's most traders focused almost totally on the money su...

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

Success has many faces: peace of mind, high levels of health and energy, loving relationships, financial security, meaningful goals and aspirations, and the feeling that you are growing into all that you are capable of becoming. Becoming all that you can be is called "self-actualization."It is important to recognize that success is not only financial, but exists on many levels. A person may find s...

​There is an old saying that when day trading positions have had negative open equity most of the day, and an opportunity arises to exit the market at break even with less than 30 minutes of trading rises, go ahead and exit the market.  Unless the market is moving rapidly in your direction with expanding-in-length bars, and no more than 5 minutes left, exit immediately and consider the opport...

​When you get an easy winner do you feel guilty?  Do you ask yourself, "Do I deserve to win?"Do I?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 sure that they are able to take profits out of the market. Most important is...

​The gut actually has its own self-contained nervous system, known as the enteric nervous system. It can operate in the complete absence of input from the brain or even the spinal cord. It is vast, with more than one-hundred million nerve cells in the small intestine alone. Add to that the nerve cells of the esophagus, stomach, and large intestine…the result is that the gut contains more nerve cel...

​Science has been called the most creative art form.It expresses its creations in technology. Valuable information is the most prized commodity, because it makes the wealth creation process and individual creative process possible.For me, passing on valuable information and seeing someone use it to fulfill his hopes and dreams is my most rewarding endeavor.So far, the computer is technology's ulti...

The winning trader must be cold, calculating, and logical. It is absolutely necessary to control your emotions, rather than let them interfere with your trading decisions. While it is true that fear and greed are major factors in market behavior, there are other emotions, such as anger and disappointment, that influence our trading decisions.Because emotions can interfere with discipline and sound...

​It sounds crazy, but you can know too much about anything you want to trade.  This is hard for people to accept in our "Knowledge Is Power" society… where the Internet puts thousands of pages of information, data, and news in front of us with a few clicks of a mouse. People like to believe that with enough information, they can make a perfect decision… That by adding fact after fact, data po...

Humans have a tendency to forget the obvious. We often think that life is more complex than the issues right in front of us, and that obvious solutions offer little solace when trying to find solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems.The markets are complex at times, but the psychology of the market is not. And the psychology of winning isn't all that complicated either. It is vital to accent...

As you trade, have you ever heard a little voice inside talk about only what is going wrong? As the market moves against you, the voice whispers, "My money is on the line. What if I lose? What am I going to do? How will I meet my financial obligations this month? I need to win! The little voice moves you away from your ongoing, immediate experience to your emotions, what may go wrong in the next m...

When your money is on the line, it's difficult to remain calm, rational, and in complete control. What happens if you lose? How will you recover? It's natural to become consumed with self-doubt and abandon your trading plan, or act irrationally in the midst of the chaotic market action. But winning traders control their impulses. They execute a trading strategy effortlessly and flawlessly, even un...

There are times when our judgment is cloudy. Perhaps we want to win so badly that we optimistically see trading opportunities that aren't there. At other times we may be so stressed out, busy, and tired that we can't concentrate, and end up making an impulsive decision or a trading error out of a sense of frustration. As much as we search for a rational, robot-like perspective on the markets, it i...

​John is kicking himself right now. He just made an unexpected losing trade and he feels especially down. He expected to make a killing, and he was looking forward to winning and celebrating big. He thought he had done everything to prepare for the trade. He had looked at the moving average to discern the trend. He looked at the highs and lows of the stock for the past two months, and set his stop...

 First and foremost, thank you for sharing your valuable knowledge, its much appreciated.For scalping/daytrading CL, EC, GC, RTY, what would be the suggested time-frame to set up the charts as per the Trading with More Special Set-Ups Webinar--Stochastic 5,3,3 and BB 18,2, but what time-frame do you suggest, 3min/9min? The time frame and the setups are independent of each other—mutually exclu...

​As you trade, do you ever just think, "It's all just random, why even bother trying at all?" If you passively think you have no control, you may end up making less money.A team of scientists studied a group of university students who played a computer game of roulette. All participants reported they had gambled recreationally in the past year. Researchers asked participants to describe the strate...