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3 Types of Stop LossesToday’s topic is going to be on three types of stop losses . This is a very critical topic because stop losses come under the category of risk management. Risk management is such a pivotal, important and critical topic. Why? Because professional traders and investors, the first thing that they always do and constantly think about before they get into a trade or investment is not how much profit they’re going to make, it’s how much they can afford to lose. The only control that you have when you enter into a trade and you’re in the trade is the risk factor because most of us will not have the capital power to control that trade. It’s a collective pool of people’s thoughts and a lot of other factors that come in which then determines how the price moves in the market, especially how smart money enters the market actually. So in light of all of that, the real power that you have, the real control that you have is your risk management. How much you can afford to lose. In terms of that, we’re going to be looking at the three types of stop losses and how to stop your loss when the market does something which is not favourable to you and not in line with the direction of the trade that you are taking on. The first type is what we call the technical stop . This is the one most people will be familiar with. That’s where all your different kinds of stop losses come under: moving averages, channels, trend lines and so forth. All these are summarised under technical stop losses. Even if you use tier based stop losses, they come under technical stop losses. The second one is called a money stop . A money stop is basically one where you write in your rules, and this is how you execute a trade as well is that you say, for example, you enter a trade and it is going well in profit. You tell yourself to trail your stop loss to break even as soon as the trade is 3% in profit. You don’t care what the moving averages are or where the price pattern is whatsoever, you would just move your stop loss to break even. So that is purely based on money. That is called a money stop because the stop loss is adjusted according to your profits or your losses. Usually it’s to your profits – that’s when you trail and adjust your stop loss. The final one is the time stop . As you’ve already guessed, the time stop is based on time. Especially for intra-day trading it’s very important because you know certain times of the day volume is really high and other times of the day volume starts to dry up. So especially if you want to capture a certain percentage of move, you want to capture it before a certain time and you usually know that after 5pm or 6pm the volume usually dries up. Price movement is not really that much especially towards 9pm. So you can have a rule saying, for example, at 5pm or 6pm you’ll look at exiting a trade if it’s not reached an objective. If you’re a swing trader you start saying things like you know if it’s consolidating for 10-15 days in a row I will possibly exit out of the trade. So all that is basically based on time. Let me ask you a question. Out of all the three stops I’ve talked about: technical, money and time, what do you think is the strongest stop of them all? I think, if my guess is right as we have coached thousands of traders, most of them usually tell me it’s either the technical or the money stop. In fact, let me tell you Traders, the weakest one of them all is the money stop because there’s no basis for it. It’s just based on money and just trailing it. The strongest is the time stop because everything is determined on time and you’re time bound in everything that you do. If you look at daily activities: waking up, going to work, having meals, going to bed – your life is time bound. Here’s the final most critical point. If you actually want to make your risk management really strong, the trick is not to put emphasis on either one of them according to strength, but to make them sync with each other so that they can then adapt to market conditions. It’s basically a confluence of the types of stop losses that can help you to generate the rules which can adapt to market conditions. For example, when you start out if you put in your initial stop loss in a technical place and as time then moves by then you would then get more aggressive with your stop loss and as it’s nearing towards exit, if you’ve reached a certain profit potential as the market price is still hovering around, losing momentum, then you would then start to go into money stop. Money stop is especially useful if you’re in swing trading. For example, when we took the DOW Jones trade and we took that 2,000 point move on a mismatched strategy when it had already done 80% of the move we used a money stop because we don’t want to give back all that profit back to the market. So that’s when we start to us a money stop and a combination of time stop, initially starting with a technical. So that’s how you do it. Do have a good think about this because this is so critical Traders. If there’s only one thing you have total control of, it’s your stop loss, it’s your risk management. So contemplate this, revisit your strategy rules and see how you can optimise that for maximum performance of your strategy. I believe that you have really enjoyed this topic and have some amazing value from this. Until the next time, as we always say, stay disciplined, follow your trading plan and keep trading like a master .
Education
by masterthemarkets2010
3 Key Entry Rules to Boost Your Trading PerformanceToday I want to share with you this topic: the 3 Entry Rules to Boost Your Trading Performance. Over the 20,000 traders that we have coached over the time via conferences and talks we’ve done all over the world, we have found one of the challenges that traders have is that they find themselves locked into a trade and then being stopped out when they enter into trade. So their entries are not really optimized or they are not getting the right timing for their entries. Sometimes they come during a coaching session; they say ‘Thiru, I need some help with my entry.’ So this topic, the 3 Entry Rules, can actually help you optimize your entry and overall improve your strategy performance. This is what we’re going to be looking at today in this video. The first one is what we call “ Time Frame Correlation ,” the short form abbreviation TFC. In TFC one thing you do have to remember when you’re correlating the different time frames is that you’ve got to remember three times. Some of you may be wondering ‘What do you mean by three times?’ What I mean is that for example if you are an intra-day trader trading on a shorter time frame, like a one hour time frame, then you need to be looking at three time frames at least altogether, so the one hour and each of the time frames has to be three times the one that you are trading on, three times or four times. Now let me explain by way of an example: If you are trading on a one hour time frame, then we are looking at maybe three to four hours (1 x 4 = 4 hours) and then after that, you want four times that, approximately that is a daily time frame, 16 hours is a daily time frame. What we’re looking at is to correlate the times frames before we take the trade. We are usually looking at three time frames and each time frame is three times each other. For example, if you are an end of day trader and you want to enter your position onto a four hour time frame then you can start to look at daily time frame and then three to four times that would be a weekly time frame as well that you’re looking at. Let me explain why this is important. For example, imagine this – you would have probably experienced this – in a one hour time frame it looks like it’s going down and you are thinking it is looking like a very good short sell as the direction is going further down. You put your entry over here and let’s say you put your stop loss over here and you’re good to go. Let’s say your target is somewhere around there. In the next hour the trade then triggers you in and starts to go towards your target, everything is well and rosy. You are happy, you’re in profit and you are thinking ‘it is only a matter of time before I reach my target.’ Then what happens? You know the usual thing, you would have experienced it if you have traded or if you are trading at the moment as well, it will start to reverse and where your stop loss is – let’s say other traders have their stop loss here as well – suddenly the market reverses and shoots up and takes up all the stops. I’m sure you have experienced this. Now why does that happen? It is because, if you imagine this is the one hour time frame, if you didn’t correlate between the other time frames – the four hour and the daily time frame – and let’s say the four hour and the daily time frame are in an up-trend, if that is the case, then what happens is that the orders that are inside the daily time frame are being filled by the brokers and therefore the market is reversing to fill them up on a higher time frame. This is what is happening and this is why sometimes you get these sharp reversal moves in the market. It is very critical that you correlate the time frames before you start to take your position on the one hour time frame. In fact, in the last live trading we did where we were teaching a strategy that we called “stops to cash,” what we usually do is we take contrarian move on a one hour time frame where it looks like a perfect short, where beginners and even intermediates are getting into short position, but we are looking at a contrarian position in terms of the one hour time frame but when you align it to the higher time frames, it’s just in line with the trend. That’s all we’re doing here. What we’re saying is when everybody’s stops are being taken out, we are actually converting it to cash according to this time frame correlation. I believe that concept is well clear and nice now. Definitely do consider putting that into your entry rules. The second entry rule we’re looking at is “ Indicators .” This is quite a critical one that you can put into your entry rules also to optimize your strategy performance. In terms of indicators, the usual common ones that we are looking at are Stochastic, RSI and for example CCI as well. These are familiar names, you have all heard of them. There are thousands of indicators, but the important thing is don’t just pick an indicator and just slam it onto the screen, but ask yourself what are you looking to achieve, what is the objective of your strategy? Then pick and choose your tools. For example, let’s say you’re driving your car and it starts to break down, you can’t just choose any old hammer or spanner. You have to analyze the problem first before choosing the tool that you want to use to repair the mistake or the fault on the car. It is the same thing here, as we are looking to optimize our strategy, we have to ask ourselves what is going to be the most efficient indicator to help me optimize my strategy performance and towards what objective? That is how you actually choose the indicator that you want to have on the screen in your strategy. The last one we are looking at is “ Price Action .” Price Action is very critical because most of our strategies use price action. It is the fastest of them all. Some things the price won’t be able to tell you and that’s when we use indicators because it involves a lot of calculations. With price actions you notice some really powerful bar patterns that give you an edge in the market and then using all these three factors together that can give you a very strong edge against all the other 99% traders. For example, price action patterns can start to look like the low test bar starts to come up over here and it’s starting to show a reversal pattern. Or even things on a daily time frame where we are looking at something like a down trend and it is starting to reverse – all those critical price action patterns that can give you and edge. So these three rules that’s I’ve just gone through with you right now can be so important to improving your whole strategy and your trading performance. On a final note, what I want you to remember is that just using them by themselves is not enough as Traders. But using them in a cumulative manner strengthens your edge so strongly in the market and also optimizes and maximizes your trading performance for consistent profits. I believe this has been very useful for you all and as we always say, til the next time stay disciplined, follow your trading plan and keep Trading like a Maste r.
Education
by masterthemarkets2010
Demo vs Live TradingWhen most new traders finally switch over from demo to live trading, they usually believe that their demo trading results can easily be replicated on a live account. Because of this misconception, many are left frustrated and demoralised when they finally realise that this is far from the case. Here are a few reasons why: Real money and real emotions Demo is risk-free Chasing losses on a live account Cutting profits short We have discussed the main differences between demo and live trading, but will delve further into the psychological barriers when live trading and how to overcome them in a future post. Stay tuned! BluetonaFX
Education
by BluetonaFX
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3 categories for Strategy RulesToday we’re going to be looking at three categories for strategy rules . This is very critical because the most important concept before we enter into a trade is to have it already pre-set in our mind where we’re going to enter and how we’re going to exit. It’s all got to be totally predetermined and you have to visualise your whole trade set-up, your trade management and your trade exit. All these three things must be very clear within you and you must already have spelled it out with clear rules so that’s its very clear in your mind. Clarity leads to conviction. Finally that gives you courage to pull through any kind of loss cluster or drawdowns. Let’s take a look at these three categories for strategy rules. The first one is about entry rules . These tie in with what your trade set-up should look like. So when should you enter a trade? The last thing you want to do Traders is to enter a trade just out of emotional impulse. Once you’ve entered a trade by emotional impulse, when you come out of it you’ll think ‘Oh no, why did I do that?’ and that hurts so many traders. Many of the over 20,000 traders that we’ve coached so far and talked to at seminars have told us that they’ve made this mistake. One of the ways to stop that and nip that mistake in the bud is by making the rules really clear and so straight forward that you know how to follow them and can repeat them again and again. The entry rules can be sub-categorised into pre-entry rules and post-entry rules. Pre-entry rules basically means before you enter the trade what are the criteria for you that must set-up for you to enter and then to trade that price or that instrument? If you do get stopped out, what are the rules for you to then re-enter back into that trade. Some tools that you can use to formulate your entry rules are: Price action – be very clear on how the price action should be before you enter into a trade. For example, if you want to buy into a position has there got to be two seller bars and one buyer bar or has there got to be some kind of momentum decline which you also need to quantify so that emotional trading doesn’t come in. That’s all to do with price action. Time frame correlation – as I have explained in other videos, if you’re an end of day trader you’ve got to correlate with a higher time frame. We usually recommend three time frames. Indicators – there are thousands of them and you’d know about them. Cycles and phases – you can incorporate rules about cycles and phases into your strategy. Support and resistance rules – where you can enter into the market based on supply and demand. News – think about how long before news comes out do you want to enter? For example, if news comes out in the next 30 minutes, do you want to enter a trade even before, say 30 or 40 minutes before news comes out? All these things you need to include in your entry rules and as good criteria you need to at least include three or four of them. We call it degrees of freedom and you need to have at least three to four of them, ideally four, minimum three in your strategy. Of course as I’ve mentioned before in other talks, you need to choose and mix and match these rules according to the concept and objective of your strategy. The second thing, after the entry rules, we’re looking at stop loss rules . Stop loss can be further sub-categorised into initial stop loss rules and trailing stop loss rules. Before you even enter the trade you should know where the stop loss is going to go which is the initial stop loss. Once you enter into the trade you need to then know how you’re going to manage your trade and then to trail that stop loss progressively. This is critical. You need to know this before you enter the trade. Finally, our target rules . Where are we going to get out, what is our target? In terms of target rules we’re looking at pre-target, that is, before we enter the trade we should already know where we’re going to get out. And the intra-target as well, for example, you might be familiar with the USD and Swiss Franc – it was crazy, a price shock as we call it, a price adverse move of 5000 pips in just one day. When price adverse shocks like that happen suddenly in the market, you must have plans to get out. That’s what we call intra-target rules. Those are the three categories that you definitely must have in your strategy rules so as to consistently execute and also to remove doubt and emotion you need to quantify those rules. That will really help towards your consistent execution. In summary, they are entry rules, stop loss rules and target rules. The objective of writing all those rules, Traders, is so that you really get clear in your mind how the trade should look. You should have predetermined everything and you should be able to visualise how everything should be before you get into the trade, while you are in the trade and how you should get out of the trade – trade entry, trade management and trade exit. I believe this has been very useful. Do some research on your strategies and you’ll clearly see how much clarity and conviction you’ll have in your strategy and how it will help you with your execution and strategy forms. Until the next time, as we always say, stay disciplined, follow your trading plan and keep Trading Like a Master.
Education
by masterthemarkets2010
Live Trading Session 223: Putting it altogether based on ST(5/5)In this live trading session video, we are looking at how we put all the parts together based on the stretch principle along with the volume spread analysis methodology. We show you an example of the strategy rules you need to consider to put the strategy together and trade with conviction. Remember that the knowledge shared here are powerful cross-transferrable principles that can be applied with any intra-day strategy.
by masterthemarkets2010
3 Essentials to Start TradingA very warm welcome to this video which is all about the 3 Essentials to Start Trading . This is for all of you out there that may be new to trading, that haven’t got a feel for the market yet and haven’t got started and maybe you’re asking yourself ‘What is it I need to do now to get myself up and running?’ We found out of the 20,000 plus traders that we’ve mentored over the time that we’ve been running live trading seminars and running these start up basecamps, what generally tends to happen is you get traders who want to get up and running, want to start now and want to know what they need to do? So we broke it down into three essential things that you need. The first one is knowledge . You need some knowledge of what you’re going to be doing in the market. In a nutshell, what that means is you’re going to need to know exactly what to do, when to do it, what the pips pricing means, when to buy and sell, you need a profitable trading strategy – all of these things are knowledge. Knowledge can be acquired in many different ways. One of the things that we recommend strongly is reading the right kind of books. There is a fantastic list of books that you can get and these are available on our Facebook page. You’ll be able to see the types of books that we recommend you read. The other thing to be very careful of is the wealth of information out there on the Internet. What I would strongly recommend is to find a trading mentor that can guide you through on a step by step basis in a custom environment that is suited around you, ideally on a one to one basis. That would be the best way to learn and be mentored in the financial markets. You need to have the right knowledge but don’t get immersed in all of the knowledge available on the Internet because there is so much junk out there. Having seen 20 years in the markets between myself and Thiru we’ve seen all of these traders that have come to us and they’ve got all of these deeply ingrained habits in them which are so hard to shift and they think that they’ve accumulated so much knowledge but actually a lot of it is just completely useless. So you really need to work with someone who can give you the guidance that you need. That’s very important and I strongly recommend that. So that’s knowledge. Get around the right people, the right guidance and the right types of books. The second thing that you need is a broker account . With a broker account what you need there is a facility to be able to buy and sell the market. Let’s say, for example, you have invested already £15,000 into a trading account. That trading account needs to be with a broker, ideally regulated in the country in which you’re trading. If you’re not sure about how to select a broker account, check out my video on how to select a broker where we talk about three essential things that you should look for personally when a selecting a broker. That will give you the facility to be able to hit the trades, to be able to enter the market, and buy when your strategy and your set up gives you that signal to do so. Once you’ve accumulated the right knowledge you need the right type of broker account. The final thing that you need on your journey is a mentor . This is so critical and I can’t overemphasise how important it is to have the right trading mentor because the right trading mentor will make the difference between being hugely successful and just feeling demotivated. A mentor is someone who has been there, done that and got the T-shirt! That is, they have an established track record, they’re transparent in their dealings, and they’ve got logs that can verify everything and you’re comfortable working with them that they will push you to get you to the next level of goals. It is really important to work with a mentor. There are two things actually that have a deep impact on our lives. One is the books that we read, this falls under knowledge, and the second is the people that we associate ourselves with or the company we keep. In this case, that’s your mentor. You need to have someone around you who has been there, done that and who is actually living the knowledge and not just talking about it. Look for people who walk the walk. If you have these three things, you have all the tools you need to get up and running and to be successful in the markets and ingrain the right types of habits and that’s what we’d love to see for you. So give us your comments, give us your feedback and keep in touch. Until the next time, as we always say, stay disciplined, follow your plan and Trade Like a Master. Team at MastertheMarkets
Education
by masterthemarkets2010
GBPUSD Intraday Trend Continuation On Friday, there was a notable rebound in GBPUSD. The 15-minute chart displayed a completed upward wavestructure, indicating a positive trend. Additionally, a secondary pullback trend started on the same day, and the final leg of the retracement, labelled as (c), is showing signs of concluding. At the current low, we observed a Market Structure Low reversal pattern, which holds significant importance. Furthermore, the price briefly dipped below the 3DL (3-Day Low), but failed to sustain below it. This occurrence serves as a genuine signal for bullish participation from a lower price range. Taking everything into consideration, it appears that a bullish approach is the most probable scenario for Cable (GBPUSD). However, if the price slides below the 3DL once again, we will abandon all long positions. Trade Details: Entry Long: 1.2437 Target: 1.2506 (Deep Correction Factor) Stop Loss: 1.2410 Happy trading!
Long
by Charts247TradingAcademy