One great way to track your trade performance and determine which setups are working and which are not is to evaluate your trades at the end of each day and week. This is the breakdown I use and is derived from John Carter’s book Mastering the Trade. 5 – Target reached 4 – Out for win (due to technical factor that signaled me to exit) 3 – Break even 2 – 1 target hit 0 – Full stop out I…
Waiting patiently on the sidelines is one thing you hear some of the world’s greatest trader’s talk about in the book Stock Market Wizards. These are the times I’ve found best NOT to trade. When breadth is at parody, 1:1 When the a/d line is at parody, inside |400| When the tick is at parody, inside |400|
When doing market trends analysis you are looking to identify not only the direction the market is moving, but whether or not it is moving in any direction at all. These are some things we look for when identifying the market trends. Questions to ask when Identifying the Trend Are we in a trend or counter trend on the monthly, weekly, and daily timeframes? Are we in a trend day or choppy day on the 15-min? Is volume on the…
Avoid gap plays on the following days. 1. Options expiry Fridays. It’s OK to play gap up situation. 2. Rollover Thursday and the day after. 3. First trading day of the new month. 4. Day after Fed day. 5. If after a narrow range day, the next day’s gap is larger than the previous day’s range. 6. Gaps where the opening prices are outside the previous day’s session high or low.
The road to consistently profiting from the market begins with the question, is becoming a trader right for you? Is it a career you’re looking for? A job? A lifestyle? Most people become or strive to become consistently profitable traders because they think it will bring them endless amounts of money and while this may be the case for a select few (less than 1% I would estimate) trading is a hard way to make an easy living. Really, what…
One of the most important parts of technical analysis is candlestick 101. The candlestick charting method was brought to the United States by a man names Steve Nison. Nison is known as the founding father to candlestick 101 in the western part of the world. His book, Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques includes everything from the basics, such as constructing the candlesticks and learning the patterns, to advanced topics, such as the rules of multiple technical techniques. These candlestick charting methods…
The biggest trader on the Eurex Paul Rotter is said to be one of the most successful traders of all time, and he does it as a flipper. Here is a feature story from Trader Monthly magazine in 2004 on Paul Rotter, sadly the magazine has since been discontinued. You can read more about trading extremely profitable and futures trading for a living over at the EminiMind blog.