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Trading Educators Blog

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Nov
10

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 thought out plan of attack fo...

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  3571 Hits
Nov
07

As a Percent of Capital, Should I Go Big or Small?

Careful risk management is a key component you being able to trade at your best. Comfort level is really important when it comes to risk. You need to be comfortable in three areas: Emotional, Mental, and Financial. We could even add Physical to that list without having to make too great a stretch. If there is a real danger that you will lose large amounts of capital, or money that you just can'...

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  2763 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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  3506 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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  3246 Hits
Oct
18

Is trading more of an art than a science?

I believe trading is far more an art than a science. For one thing, if trading were a science, then we should all be able to enter the same trade at the same time, and exit at the same time getting identical results. We all know that just isn’t so. Yet if trading were scientific, we should be able to get identical results doing the same thing. I believe such expectation describes the “scientific m...

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  2470 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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  2748 Hits
Oct
13

Don't Let Your Emotions Influence Your Decisions in Trading

Trading is nothing more than a long, random statistical run. An experienced trader knows that even if he is in a losing streak right now, as long as he sticks to his already approved trading plan, he will come out a winner in the long run. This is why becoming angry is pointless. In fact, it is worse than pointless, because heated emotions often lead to poor decisions in subsequent trades. In such...

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  2927 Hits
Oct
10

Stressful Times

We are living in stressful times. However, In times of greatest economic stress, the worst thing you can do as a trader or investor is to panic. Reactions to situations that are born of fear are rarely wise or helpful. Perhaps you didn't sell before everyone else began to, and the market is in a slump. Now you’re facing a huge loss, all in one day. Your first thought may be to call your ...

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  2594 Hits
Oct
07

In and around Uruguay

Since I began trading for Instant Income, I have a lot of time to enjoy the tiny country of Uruguay. There’s an old fort on high hill overlooking the estuary upon which Montevideo is situated. It is the widest estuary in the world, where the Rio de la Plata meets the Atlantic Ocean.  The Río de la Plata (Spanish: "Silver River") — which is often referred to in English-speaking count...

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  2232 Hits
Oct
06

A typical Traders Notebook Outright Swing Trade

Today I want to show you a trade we had the other day with our new service. As you can see below, we were looking for a few entries in several markets. We were filled in the long Soybean Meal trade at 301.5 with an initial stop at 299.0 (the risk was $250 per contract traded). During the overnight session the market moved a bit, but everything was very quiet. At the open of the day session the mar...

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  2493 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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  2696 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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  3267 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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  2813 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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  3003 Hits
Sep
20

Market Technicians

Market technicians tend to peer into market detail from the point of view of mathematics and statistics. A market technician will present you with something like: “There are only four range possibilities for a price bar for any chart time frame: The outside bar; the inside bar, the higher high and higher low, and the lower high and lower low. Using only the open, high, low, mid range, and close da...

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  2576 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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  2732 Hits
Sep
14

Markets Tend to Part the Foolish from Their Money

Sometimes you feel that you are able to throw caution to the wind. That is when you must be careful to not spit into it.One satisfying aspect of trading can be identifying a market (or spread) that is undervalued, at support, trending, breaking out, or behaving seasonally – and then seeing it continue to behave as expected. When it does so, it pays to be aggressive – boldly assuming po...

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  2332 Hits
Sep
07

Becoming a consistent winner

Many novice traders underestimate how long it takes to become consistently profitable. They assume they can trade profitably in a matter of months, whereas veteran traders will tell you that such consistently profitable trading may take several years. And it's difficult to achieve. It requires great effort and persistence to become a steady winner, yet many aspiring traders think only minimal effo...

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  3051 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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  3078 Hits
Sep
01

Learning from Mistakes

If you make mistakes during trading, go back in your mind to see what you could have done better, or differently. There is usually something to learn from each trade. For example, did you stay too long in a single trade? Did you trade too aggressively, or not aggressively enough? Should you have cashed in (or added) some contracts, but didn’t? Mistakes don’t matter much if you learn from them. Ana...

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  2620 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.