Trading Educators Blog

Your trading goals and objectives must be possible to complete. They cannot be too abstract or too high. It is best to just execute a trade rather than being overly concerned with profits or achieving unrealistic performance standards.You must be able to intensely concentrate on what you are doing. While trading, it's vital that you have a detailed trading plan and control risk so that you can foc...

​Yesterday, Jack went over to his best friend Tom's house to look at his new Porsche Turbo. Jack has wanted a Porsche since he was a teenager but could never afford one. Four years ago he taught Tom how to trade. Tom's been doing great ever since. Each year he has made greater and greater profits, even during bear markets. Jack can't help but envy Tom's success, yet at the same time, he berates hi...

By being flexible I mean that over time, your trading philosophy will undergo changes. These changes are brought about because of external events (economic considerations, natural disasters, political events, etc.), and because of internal events, usually my own mistakes. My views change as economic, political, and technological changes occur both on and now off our planet. My views change as I se...

Throughout the day you make everyday decisions that mean little to you. You drive your kids to school and along the way, you make a host of decisions about which route to take, where to turn, or when to stop off for gas. Each decision is made with little thought. Later in the day, you may decide to stop off at the supermarket. You decide what to buy for dinner and how much you will spend. Do you o...

​After reading the financial page on Wednesday night, Jim thought, "How could anyone invest in the markets and get a sound night's sleep?" After you saw the major indexes drop on Wednesday, you might have thought the same thing. But as a seasoned investor or trader, you realize that such corrections are commonplace and you've learned to take them in stride. You don't worry about it and know that i...

Sometimes in softball games, as a kid, they handed out the bats, balls and gloves, and there weren't enough to go around – so you had to sit it out. You had to sit on the bench and watch. The same thing happens in trading. Sometimes you don't get to participate. You must get used to the idea that sometimes you will sit in front of your charts for days or weeks, and nothing at all will happen....

​Charles is on edge. He isn't extremely uptight but he isn't completely calm either. He is just a little fidgety and it's getting to him. He is having a little trouble concentrating. He's reading charts incorrectly and he is having trouble outlining a trading plan. He can't figure out where to place his stops, where to enter or where to exit. Can you relate to Charles' plight? There are times when...

​Every time Dino gets ahead as a trader, he sabotages his efforts. It comes about in many ways. He may feel guilty for getting ahead, and so distraught over his success that he doesn't pay attention to market conditions. This leads to a few bad trades, wiping out a month's worth of profits in a day. Other times he may seemingly forget to stick with his trading plan, which results in a significant ...

I believe that to be a truly successful trader you have to have a true passion for trading. This is probably true for any field of endeavor. I believe that the people who do best are not primarily motivated by fame, glory, respect, or status. They are driven by the pure love of the what they do. Winning traders, similarly, have strong interests in the markets, and this passion is the driving force...

When trading the markets, it's vital to stay grounded in reality. You can't get caught up in dreams. For instance, it may sound "easy" to people outside the profession to make money by trading Google, but there are a couple of real obstacles to taking home huge profits. First, risk should always be considered when making a trade, and while trying to manage risk, some traders would not want to take...

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 thought out plan of attack fo...

When trading the markets, you can't merely sit back and wait for the profits to roll in. You have to take an active approach to trading. You must search the markets for new opportunities. That can mean looking through stacks of boring reports, scanning through a hundred charts, or working as an amateur specialist to see if anything can give you an insight as to how prices will move. If you want to...

In trading, hopelessness is not brought about by the situation, but rather by your interpretation of the situation. How you explain the cause of a bad situation accounts for how you cope with it. If you think, "I've always been incompetent and this is just another one of those times that proves how incompetent I've always been," you will tend to view the situation as hopeless and just want to give...

Inaction - not putting on a trade - is one of the greatest, most powerful tools you possess. Many large funds have to always be invested with at least some percentage of their capital. Moving into or out of a trade, without their own actions moving the market, is much more difficult for them. They are usually not able to quickly jump in and out of a market. This is an important advantage a smaller...

​Which would you be willing to part with first, your money or your self-esteem? If you are like most traders, you are likely to let your money go before your self-esteem. Trading stories are full of traders who gladly fed losing trades to avoid admitting the fact that they made a mistake. They hoped against hope that a losing trade would turn around if they could merely wait long enough. In the en...

Are you ready to tackle the markets at any time? Bring it on, right? It would be ideal if we were ready to trade at any given moment, but the human mind has its limits. You don't have an endless supply of energy. After a marathon stretch of trading, for example, you may not be able to tackle the markets in earnest. You may not be able to concentrate fully. You may be easily distracted, and while y...

​Seasoned traders observed long ago that after a series of wins, a trader is vulnerable to over-confidence and trading errors. It's quite understandable. Trading is a competitive business, and when you win, someone else loses. Market participants trade because they are greedy for profits, but often sell out of a fear of losing. How do many traders deal with the inevitable feelings of uncertainty a...

​Short-term winning traders have guts. They have to. No one has a crystal ball. You can guess what the markets will do, but you can never know what will happen with complete certainty. Only the traders who risk enough money, and make enough winning trades can hope to achieve glory. And living under these conditions takes guts. Trading can be about 90% market psychology. Do fundamentals play a role...

You're in the midst of a perfect trade. You entered where you had planned, and you know when to exit. All you have to do now is wait for the price to reach 53 and sell. But it's not moving fast enough. It seems to be hovering around 51 and 50. You're starting to wonder whether or not it will ever move up. Panic sets in and you sell. About an hour later, the price hits 53 and it now seems obvious t...

​What is your tolerance for pain? Consider the following scenario. You have 10% of your account balance on the line. For the past two days, prices have been going in the direction you had anticipated, but today, an announcement was made that caused a market move that caused all your profits to be wiped out in an hour. What will you do? See if prices will move back to where you are okay again? At t...