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Trading Educators Blog

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May
01

What is “Walk-Forward” Testing?

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 univers...

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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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  2431 Hits
May
25

Money Management Explained in a Few Simple Words

Money Management Explained in a Few Simple Words

Money management involves a number of things and it is not to be confused with trade management. Money management is static. It deals with things like deciding the size of your margin account; deciding how much of your account you will put at risk on any one trade; deciding where to place your stop; and deciding on fixed objectives. The main purpose of money management is to save you from a disast...

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  3456 Hits
Mar
21

How to Approach Trading - Part 7

How to Approach Trading - Part 7

Conclusion It is critical to develop a well thought out and organized trading plan. It is then important to have the discipline needed to follow it. Diversify your trading into several unrelated markets, or focus on one market and time frame where you have seen you can make money. Trading, by its nature is not investing. Trading requires consistent monitoring on at least a daily basis because of t...

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  2763 Hits
Mar
15

How to Approach Trading - Part 6

How to Approach Trading - Part 6

Manage the Trade Once you get into a trade, you must eventually get out. Some argue that this is more important than where you get into a trade. My experience has been that any fool can get into the market, but it takes a successful trader to consistently get out with a win. As I follow the markets, I find there are four reasons to get out of a trade. Prices move significantly against my position....

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  2551 Hits
Mar
08

How to approach trading - Part 5

How to approach trading - Part 5

Follow the Markets After you've determined your strategy and the market or markets you will trade, you can start following the price action. It is important to follow each market consistently and see the trading opportunities as they develop. Jumping around from one market to another often leads to missed or late execution of your method. I think it's important to let the market tell you what to d...

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  2565 Hits
Mar
08

Can Trading Be Trained?

Can Trading Be Trained?

Please listen to the following podcast when you have a few minutes: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-03-03/the-incredible-true-story-of-the-real-life-trading-places I found the podcast interesting because of a few facts I want to discuss in today’s blog post. First of all, I am also a believer that trading can be trained but not necessarily everyone can trade. Trading requires a cer...

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  2849 Hits
Mar
01

How to Approach Trading - Part 4

How to Approach Trading - Part 4

Diversify:  Next, you'll need to choose which markets to follow. Diversification is one of the crucial factors in the success of some, but not all trading plans, and may in fact make the difference between success and failure of the plan. Putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good idea for some traders. This approach takes the position that rather than trading ten contracts in one mark...

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  2653 Hits
Feb
15

How to Approach Trading - Part 2

How to Approach Trading - Part 2

Discipline is the Key:  You will need discipline in several areas to be successful. First you'll need the discipline to make a plan, rather than shoot from hip. Without discipline, many approach the markets like a craps table and they can expect the same results; short-term successes based on luck and long-term losses based on randomness. Second you'll need the discipline to follow the plan. ...

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  2676 Hits
Feb
08

How to Approach Trading? Part 1

Develop a Trading Plan The main message, I want traders to understand is how important the disciplined execution of a well thought out trading plan is in today's markets. Nobody knows for sure what a given market will do next. Having a plan of attack will allow you to successfully cope with the uncertainty that is an inherent part of trading. I think it makes good common sense to have a well t...

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  3005 Hits
Dec
08

Looking at how the money supply affects 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 supply figures, which would cause cash bonds and T-Bil...

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  2565 Hits
Dec
02

"Once I’ve achieved success as a trader, then what? I’ve heard that after a while trading can become boring."

Question from a subscriber: "Once I’ve achieved success as a trader, then what? I’ve heard that after a while trading can become boring." I know you would all like to have that problem, but I can vouch for its being true. I always have to find new ways to trade or I do become bored. However, I have never run out of ways to trade that remain exciting, at least for a fairly long time. After the obje...

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  3290 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

  3490 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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  3519 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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  3267 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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  2759 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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  2822 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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  3010 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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  2743 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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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.