How To: See Which Stocks Are Exploding In The Pre-Market Just as a bit of an addon to my WallStreetBets Stonks video, this is a view of how you can see which stocks are moving up most aggressively in the pre-market.
Trading Psychology
Day Trading Bullish Wolfe Wave ExampleUsing Wolfe Waves can be done, on any time frames and type of trading.
Why? Candlestick AnalysisCandlestick Analysis is the trading language used to understand trading Forex:
Cutting Through The Candlestick Hype-
The use of indicators will not increase the reliability of candles.
There are no advanced candlestick patterns, but there is a deeper understanding of price movements.
Why Use Candlesticks?
Provides a visual picture of what is occurring.
Gives visual insights into others’thoughts and expectations.
Gives visual confirmation signals of support and resistance.
Can visually align your thoughts with the market.
Can visually point to potential reversal points.
Candle Language Produces Thoughts-
Proper trading is said to be proper thinking, but how do we know what to think?
Pattern recognition is a recurring arrangement of price bars that suggests the future movement of prices, which guides our thoughts.
These patterns communicate how traders have acted and what their beliefs (expectations) are in that time frame, at the moment.
Candles provide a picture of those expectations on an ongoing basis.
Those pictures speak to us in “Candle Language”and are the basis for our continuous thoughts and trading decisions.
Miscellaneous Thoughts on Candlesticks: Attempting to define accuracy of candle names or patterns without considering the trend, support and resistance is useless.There are a least 50 different candle patterns, bullish and bearish. Some memorize them, but you will see this is completely unnecessary. While candles are very good at visually showing reversal signals, the signals that do Not work are often the most powerful! All that is needed is a chart of price bars --all else is secondary. While other analysis tools may add additional information, they can only follow existing price action.
How to Determine Market Direction Using Multiple time frameIn this video I try to explain the best way to determine market direction.
Define a uptrend--- Series of higher highs and higher lows
In an uptrend your goal is to buy from a support and form a new higher high
In order for you to buy from a support, your lower timeframe must be in a downtrend
Define a downtrend--- Series of lower highs and lower lows
In an downtrend your goal is to sell from a resistance and form a new lower low
In order for you to sell from a resistance, your lower timeframe must be in an uptrend
Avoid using historical levels to fight market direction
If you can keep these rules, you will always be safe. Few is always more
Thank you and trade safe
The Number 1 Secret To Forex Trading Success? is...The number 1 Secret To Forex Trading Success? (IT IS THIS!)
What is the secret to forex trading success? Is it the trading strategy or is it rick management? Well, all of these are important... But What I think the real secret is this: doing the exact opposite of what most traders do.
If you believe in this ration that 95% of forex traders fail and only 5% achieve forex success, then you need to understand what factors or behaviors case these 95% of traders to fail and what do you do?
Do the exact opposite of what these 95% of forex traders do. Take narrow, less traveled path, it leads to success. Take the wide path, and it leads to destruction. This is the key to success in forex trading.
What Do 95% Of Forex Traders Do Wrong?
1) inadequate funding 2) lack of proper risk management 3) over trading 4) revenge trading 5) lack of emotional control 6) no patience to wait for proper trading setups 7) no trading plan 8) get rich quick mentality 9) counting pips instead of focusing on account growth over a long period 10) cannot accept trading loses as part of the process (Note) Sure you can add a few in your mind but you get the point...
Forex Trading Success Is Very Easy Yet Very Hard To Achieve:
Sometimes I just do not understand myself. I know what to do and yet I do the opposite thing. We all know what we need to do to be successful in FX trading because we have read books, we have traded money ourselves and we know from experience what we did wrong. Yes, next trade repeat same mistakes.
Success in Forex Is To Get Your Mindset Right. Mark Douglas (books/PDFs) and FX you tube has information about trading psychology.
Trade Smarter Not Harder!!!On this GBPCAD 4 hour chart what do you see?
I see largest moves from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. ( 8 hours) per day. * This is 4th and 5th- 4 hour candle on chart- you could go to hourly to set entries on any trades.
You need to ask yourself how can I catch the daily trend and make 40 pips to 80 pips daily on this pair? Break it down, risk management, lot size, etc...
If I use 4 hour chart, can I catch the trend with a larger stop loss and higher target, make sure you have a 1:2 or higher risk reward set up. So, could be 20 pip stop vs 40 pip target or higher per trade.
If you look at any 4 hour pair, you will notice when they move and do not move- just wait for trend of daily- do not trade side ways (unless you do that).
Also, before trades look for four things:
1) right pair
2) right price
3) right session
4) right time
* If three or four of above align up, then think of setting up a new trade.
Becoming a Successful Trader is a Process of EliminationBecoming a trader is not a journey for the faint of heart. Becoming a successful trader is ultimately an act of determination . Not unlike the titular character of the John Wick trilogy (Quadrology? Pentology?), we traders have to be "a man of focus, commitment, sheer will." (and I'm certainly not being sexist... this goes for you female traders as well!) We have to get up early, stay up late, follow a routine, backtest, journal, rinse, and... repeat... and repeat ... and REPEAT .
Focus . Commitment . Sheer will .
Ultimately, the journey of becoming a successful trader is a process of elimination, not much unlike Michelangelo sculpting his great masterpiece, David, from a mediocre piece of marble . Reportedly, someone asked the artist how he made such a magnificent sculpture from the hulking slab of what was a previously abandoned project – literally a 'leftover' piece of marble. His reply was "Simple... I just chipped away all the parts that weren't David."
Likewise, the successful trader we want to be is inside us... we just have to chip away all the pieces that are "un-traderlike".
Early in my trading journey I had several friends, who career-wise, were in "high places", who tried to convince me that the road I was about to travel was a pathway to failure. One is a fund manager who oversees 8-figure retirement accounts for wealthy clients. Another friend is an industry recognized globetrotting auditor for Fortune-100 clients. Another friend was a nuclear engineer. (All smart cookies, right?) All three tried to sway me from my plans of becoming a trader by recounting stories of friend after friend who lost their homes, lost their fortunes, lost their marriages, lost their minds, etc. after losing their proverbial shorts in the markets. Their universal theme: "Trading is a path doomed for failure. It's legalized Gambling! Nobody makes money trading."
Well, friends, just watch the news... somebody is making money in the markets, and the secret to success is to do what successful people do. My motto: "Do what successful people do, get what successful people got." Just because you are a successful accountant, a successful investor, a successful nuclear engineer, it doesn't make you a successful trader, and it's hard to take advice from someone who you respect, but has no experience in the field they are pontificating on, saying, "you can't make money doing 'X' " if they themselves have never done it.
I'm not going to listen to my brother for financial advice... he's broke.
I'm not going to listen to my uncle for marriage advice... he's been divorced 3 times.
I'm not going to listen to my brother-in-law for business advice... he's started and shut down 10 businesses in 5 years.
Likewise, I wasn't about to listen to anyone, friends and family included, who have never traded tell me that I can't become a successful trader.
It is said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with . If we want to become successful at trading, we have to associate with successful traders ... and we have to simply do what they did to get what they've got . We not only need to take on certain new behaviors and attitudes... more importantly we have to stop doing certain activities and stop believing certain things to start heading in the direction we want to go in our trading, or any aspect of our lives for that matter. These are the things that are preventing us from being successful. We have to take away all the "bits that aren't trader-like" and become the magnificent trader we are destined to be.
This is a simple process of elimination.
Elimination Point 1: Eliminate or limit relationships that do not support you and your goals.
I had to 'eliminate' or limit some relationships (as mentioned above, people who never traded before trying to tell me that "nobody makes money trading"), and establish new relationships (those among the trading community who are successful at trading) and follow in the footsteps of the successful. One of my mottos as I alluded to before is: "If you do what successful people do ... you will get what successful people've got ."
Why spend time with or take advice from someone with literally zero experience in a field they feel qualified to pontificate about?) Just look at all our FaceBook "friends" who think they're qualified to give advice on immunology, virology, or geopolitics of the Middle East. Turn that noise off... Ain't nobody got time for that!
Elimination Point 2: Eliminate or limit activities that do not move you forward in your goals.
I love movies. One of the reasons (well, the primary reason) I built my home was that I could build my dream home theater in its massive bonus room. It has 2-tier seating, a 144" projection screen, an ear-splitting loveseat-pounding surround sound system, custom cabinetry, and so on... I would binge TV shows (7 seasons of 24, 5 seasons of Breaking Bad), I would have Movie Marathons (9 Star Wars films, 6 Middle Earth movies, 8 Fast & Furious films) and host monthly movie nights with our friends. Other hobbies included woodworking, writing, getting on the JetSki several times each week, not to mention all my other 'commitments'.
We live fast-paced, hectic lives full of 'good' things. However, our glasses are full . In order to add "developing my trading skills" to our glass we have to "empty" that glass of 'good' things in order to make room for 'better' things. This can be a very difficult thing for us to admit: We have to sacrifice the "good" for the "better." My movie routine is now simply Friday afternoons with friends and a twice-a-month movie "date night". I'm not on the lake as often as I'd 'want' to be but I'm still getting out on the 'ol SeaDoo. I haven't done a recreational woodworking project in a long while. Freeing up or reorganizing my time gave me the ability to spend at least four (and sometimes eight) hours per day to hone my trading skills and develop my own consistently profitable trading system...
Every day we need to focus on whittling away bad habits and building on good habits ... Every day we need to build our trading psychology from "I hope I can trade full time someday" to "By doing what these successful traders are doing I will get what I deserve after my consistent efforts in short order!" We need to change our commitment level from "I'll find time to fit in learning how to trade when I can" to "I'm committing the time to develop this skill in order to never be dependent on an employer, customers, on the economy, ever again!" And day by day I and my fellow traders who followed this philosophy alongside me were committed to build our trading performance from a 20% win rate, to a 40% win rate, to a 60% win rate... to where we now have a reliable, consistent income from the markets.
Elimination Point 3: Eliminate all education channels but one: Become an education minimalist.
One of the blessings of the internet today is the plethora of information available about trading. One of the curses however is you can easily find yourself "spinning plates" jumping from guru to guru, watching video after video, following technique after technique and six months later after spending hour after hour doing all that you find you are no farther ahead in your trading journey than when you started. (I speak from personal experience!) I one day decided to simplify : simply look at the trading styles of all my favorite traders and choose one single trading method which I thought would be the best fit for me. My goal was to turn my light bulb into a laser .
Fun fact: a 5-watt light bulb will barely keep a muffin warm. A 5-watt laser will cut through steel . If you focus all of your energy and efforts into one spot , you can literally burn through the barriers that have been holding you back from becoming the trader you want to be, the trader that you need to be.
What one technique do you know, which one mentor or trader do you respect, which one timeframe can you focus on, what one market will you trade over and over until you have the win rate you need to take your trading full time ?
Elimination Point 4: Excuses. Eliminate them!
It has been said that "Excuses are reasons wrapped up in a lie." We can all justify, give a 'reason' for why we can't wake up early, why we can't stay up late, why we can't carve out 90 minutes per day to develop our skill, why we can't commit that first $10K in capital, why we can't join that trading group...
You can make Money , or you can make excuses . You can't do both.
Find the reasons you can and will do what you need to do to get what you are committed to get. Put together a playlist of inspiring music. Put your alarm clock on the other side of the room. Read The Miracle Morning . (More importantly, don't just read it, DO the Miracle Morning!)
We don't have the time to do everything in the world that we want. But we do have the time to do everything that we need to do that is important . If you "don't have time" to trade or develop your skill to the next level then it's just not "important" enough. If you really want to be a successful trader, (the great) it has to be important enough that it will usurp the time previously committed (or squandered) on other activities (the good).
Take 15 minutes to look at what people, activities, excuses, you need to eliminate or limit, and what habits, routines, and relationships you will add or magnify in your life. Then put those items on the calendar and as the most successful ad campaign in history commands, "Just Do It!"
Trade Well!
These 4 Reversal Candlestick Patterns (Know Them)Please google, you tube or PDF all of these following FOUR candlestick reversal patterns, so you can win at trading Forex. (look at them on chart too)
1) Harami candlestick pattern- Bearish or a Bullish Harami, the pattern will contain two candles and the second will be smaller than the first. Harami actually means pregnant woman in Japanese, which makes sense when you consider this signal's shape: the second candle is enclosed within the body of the first. You can think of the second candle as the first candle's baby belly!
2) Pinbar candlestick pattern- A pin bar pattern consists of one price bar, typically a candlestick price bar, which represents a sharp reversal and rejection of price. The pin bar reversal as it is sometimes called, is defined by a long tail, the tail is also referred to as a “shadow” or “wick”. The area between open and close of the pin bar is called its “real body”, and pin bars generally have small real bodies in comparison to their long tails. The tail of the pin bar shows the area of price that was rejected, and the implication is that price will continue to move opposite to the direction the tail points. Thus, a bearish pin bar signal is one that has a long upper tail, showing rejection of higher prices with the implication that price will fall in the near-term. A bullish pin bar signal has a long lower tail, showing rejection of lower prices with the implication that price will rise in the near-term.
3) Engulfing candlestick pattern- The engulfing candlestick patterns, bullish or bearish are one of the easiest of candlestick reversal patterns to identify. Because these candlestick patterns are two-candlestick patterns, they are more valid and are often looked upon as reversal patterns. As with any candlestick pattern, the bullish or bearish engulfing pattern takes more priority depending on the time frame that they are formed on.
4) Doji candlestick pattern- A Doji is a candlestick pattern that looks like a cross as the opening price and the closing prices are equal or almost the same.
When looked at in isolation, a Doji indicates that neither the buyers nor sellers are gaining – it’s a sign of indecision. There are different types of Doji candlestick patterns, namely the Common Doji, Gravestone Doji, Dragonfly Doji, and Long-Legged Doji. Before acting on any signals, including the Doji candlestick chart pattern, one should always consider other patterns and indicators.
All of these can not be traded ALONE, but need other confirmation too trade. Like at supply and demand, in golden zone of fib (50%-62% area), etc...
HOW TO: Trading the WallStreetBets Stonks with Cascading StopsHadn't seen any videos of anyone doing something as silly as this (which of course fits into the WSB philosophy) so thought I'd make a video of it and share it in case it amused or inspired anyone else.
Just something I have been having a bit of fun with over the last couple of weeks.
You could do this with any broker, but I REALLY like the simplicity of doing this all within TradingView and using TradeStation as the integrated brokerage free broker.
Note: You would not do this if you were paying brokerage.
What I do is:
1. Create a list of WSB type stocks.
2. Watch in the pre-market to see which ones are getting the attention.
3. Try and buy as early in the move as your broker allows.
4. Add a stop loss a bit below your buy price - eg 5% or so. Nice and tight.
5. As the stock price moves up, start to break down your stop loss into lots of mini stops.
Idea is that as the stock moves up, you are moving your stops up, BUT rather than one big stop that gets your whole holding exited, you can place lots of smaller stops (even place some ahead of the price) so that as volatility happens you auto exit some of your position hopefully taking profit along the way.
Rinse and repeat.
Definitely NOT trading advice. As before, it really is a silly idea, but hey its also a bit of fun for now and seems to work reasonably well for these kinds of stocks that spike big in one day and then start to equally quickly pull back.
Might be better to simply buy and hold them, but you never know when they will inevitably come crashing down, and more so which one is going to be the focus of the day.
Like and subscribe if you like it.
One of those videos you can skip through once you see the initial concept...
Some Rules To Improve Your TradingGuild lines For Forex Traders
In the following chart, listed some rules that can help investors improve their investment decisions. These guidelines come from experience and not necessarily based on new theories.
1) Know Yourself (scalping, day trading, swinging- what is your personality?)
2) Put Your Ego Aside (FX has a 6 trillion dollar per day rollover in money- it does not care about your ego, so leave it out of trading).
3) Hoping and Praying Do Not Guarantee Success. ( 50% of trading is from neck up other 50% of trading is preparation and planning)
4) Learn To Live With Losses (No system, plan, edge or strategy has a 100% win rate)- use risk engagement always when trading).
5) Never Double Losses( if trade is going wrong direction, do not keep moving stop loss further and further- just expect loss and move on)
6) Know Your Pain Level ( How large is your account? Using 1% or 5% per trade? What is a pip worth of movement? stop loss and target)
7) Diversify The Risk ( You could only trade one FX pair always, or maybe only around 100 ADRs (which I do)- around 8 to 10 per week)
8) Making Money By Trading Is Hard Labor/Work (You can slowly grow account, compounding, lot sizes, etc... but no Lambos without the hard work).
9) Intuition versus Execution of a trading concept/strategy (Demo versus Real trading is 100% different. Why? you have real money).
10) The importance of a trading plan (Keep your trading plan and edge simple- put it all on one 4 x 4 note card)- Simple works in FX trading)
11) Feel comfortable with your trading strategy (back test any strategy at-least 100 times on TV or a FX simulator program)
12) Nothing is more important than discipline (In life discipline and patience will get you further then wanting everything today or yesterday).
13) Value your trading concept (You need to be confident your strategy works even after a string of losses)
Remember the following four items before entering any new trades: Right pair, Right price, Right Session & Right Time. Also, win big, win small, lose small but never ever lose BIG.
The Curve -watch as Price bounces to set up for a bullish moveThe Curve is a visual representation of Wyckoff method although not designed with Wyckoff in mind it was made over a 9 month period of watching the market and making a ruleset that supports everything I saw in the market. There are 5 stages. Each stage bounces from Bollinger band top to bottom. Except stage 4 which is a continuation of 3 at the midpoint of a curve....usually in Re-accumulation. Price action will hug the upper bb a few candles before dropping to hit the bottom Bollinger Band for stage 5, also called The Spring/Launch. This then goes for a New high if retail is cooperating. it is also the lowest volume part of the curve. In this chart you can see institutional buying setting up to make a very bullish run as it fullfills each stage in just about 5 candles. Why else would it do this if not to full fill each stage and be on stage 5 going to stage 1 for the new high. Of course each stage breaks down into something else in wyckoff method. Which is usually:
1. Buyers Climax
2. Major sign of weakness
3/4. Into Up Thrust After Distribution
5. to Spring or final dip into liquidity
Finally back into
1. Which is the free ride up to create a new higher high.
All my ideas have the Curve represented or are part of the the analysis regardless if stated or not. It is the fundamental basis of how I trade.
As I never looked at any other teachings until 2 months ago when I found wyckoff as I was curious as to what the logical explanation of what I saw was.
Thank you.
if you like ideas like this or want to see more of these please comment below, like, subscribe, and share. As its the only way I can tell if you are actually into this or not.
by iCantw84it
06.08.2021
Two Different Trading StylesShort Term
Daily/Hourly/Min profits
Get in and out quickly
Heavily Technical
Use Indicators
News are important
Price Action is important
Loss and Wins
Retail Traders
Long Term
Monthly,Weekly profits
Cant’s get in and Out quickly
Heavily Fundamentals
Use Indicators …haha
News are important
Create Price Action
Only Wins
Institutional Traders
Time frame differentiates us. And also " How Much Money You Have"
4 dangerous states of a trader. Obsessive Compulsive Trading1. I must always be right
"The key to dealing with probabilities is good money management"
Unfortunately, many traders are unable to admit their own mistake. This is an internal attitude to one's own unconditional righteousness. In this case, they will blame anyone and anything for their loss, up to the forces of nature. Any market is a system of probabilities. This means that even the best trade can be a loss.
2. I must know everything
"Reduce unwanted psychological stress when making decisions"
Some traders believe that they can gain a very significant advantage by studying and considering literally every aspect of trading. News, economics, political background and indicators of all indicators. However, this is too much information, and it will lead to severe psychological stress.
Ultimately, this approach will provoke a phenomenon known as "analytical paralysis", when, due to a large amount of conflicting facts, a person falls into a stupor and is unable to make a final decision. Rely on what you understand and understand well enough.
3. I have to control everything
“Microcontrolling” the market in general and open positions in particular is very dangerous. It leads to overly emotional trading.
And this is already a direct road to impulsive deals, disruptions to the trading plan, ill-considered decisions and irrational reactions. This is a direct result of the inability to psychologically “disconnect” from the market. First of all, you need to believe in your trading system and trust it. And only then invest real money in it. Remember if you have a hobby or an interesting activity outside the market? Switch your attention to any topic not related to trading.
4. I constantly have to be in the market
"It is very easy to become addicted to the market and let it control your thoughts and emotions. When the market is the only thing you can think about, that is very bad"
Such dependence on the market, in its essence, is not much different from any other dependence, and this is already an extremely dangerous situation.
Overcoming this addiction can be very challenging. Development of your own trading system, which you completely trust, can help in this. And besides, a clear understanding of their actions in the market, drawing up a trading plan and its implementation. To some, such recommendations may seem trivial and sore. Perhaps I agree. But they still will not lose their relevance. Successful trading!
Power of compounding interest, but why do traders still fail ?
Hello everyone:
Welcome to this quick educational video on Compounding interest in trading.
Today I want to break down the benefits of compounding a trading account while keeping good risk management at bay.
The reason why compounding interest is so lucrative is due to investing interest on top of interest, and your trading account can grow much faster than traditional investment returns.
The important note is that, by having strict risk management rules, proper trading plan, the account can grow over time. But why do many traders fail to do so ?
Let's take a deeper look into this:
Many new/beginner traders often get involved in trading due to its profitable potential.
However, most of them do not learn about risk management, trading psychology on mindset and emotions.
They tend to over trade, over leverage their accounts in hope to double it in a short period of time.
This almost always leads to traders to blow their accounts, and re-deposit more money to “chase/revenge” their losses, and the cycle continues.
The truth is, growing the account by compounding can eventually double a trading account, but only in time and with strict risk management rules.
However, the greed, emotion and mindset often become the tread stone for the traders’ success.
It's important to understand that having a consistent, sustainable approach in trading can lead to profits and growth over time, but it's not something that is instantaneous, which is what most new/beginner traders often misunderstood.
This can be due to social media, and lots of typical trading “guru” out there promising guaranteed results and easy money.
Take a step back and think about compounding interest in time and scale. 5-7.5% return per month may not seem much for a small trading account, but it is sustainable and consistent by not over-risking and over-trading.
In time when the account is at a larger scale, a few % return with compound effect in a year can generate very sizable return and growth.
In today’s trading industry, there are many prop firms out there that allow you to trade their funds, if you can be consistent and sustainable.
Understand these firms are not looking for traders to double their larger capital, rather, to have consistent return and proper risk management.
When you can prove you can be consistent to compound a small account, then when you actually do trade a larger account, the % return would be the same.
Last Note:
Build up the right habits from the start. Your job in the beginning of trading is not to make massive returns, rather to focus on risk management, control emotion, and understand trading psychology.
Once all these are checked, then you will be miles ahead of other traders who are still struggling to understand the concept.
Any questions, comments or feedback welcome to let me know.
Thank you
Jojo
BASICS OF SAVING & INVESTMENT | RULES YOU SHOULD NEVER BREAK
Debt and living on credit is a universal norm .
While the "wisest" among us are trying to persuade themselves how they "hack" the system buying on credit card smartly, the richest among us keep following totally different commandments .
You must remember that debt makes you dependent , it makes you submissive to the system.
To become truly free and wealthy, here are the simple rules that will change your life if you follow them:
1 - Spend less than you make
2 - Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving
3 - Invest the rest in the industries that you understand
4 - Never borrow to invest
5 - Stop trying to get rich quick
6 - Never let your emotions intervene
7 - Patience pays
The rules by themselves are very easy and straightforward, however, most of us are not disciplined enough to follow.
Learn them, try them, practice them and one day you will become free!
❤️ Please, support my work with like and lovely comment !❤️
It truly helps!
Thank you!
BASICS OF SAVING & INVESTMENT | RULES YOU SHOULD NEVER BREAK
Debt and living on credit is a universal norm.
While the "wisest" among us are trying to persuade themselves how they "hack" the system buying on credit card smartly, the richest among us keep following totally different commandments .
You must remember that debt makes you dependent , it makes you submissive to the system.
To become truly free and wealthy, here are the simple rules that will change your life if you follow them:
1 - Spend less than you make
2 - Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving
3 - Invest the rest in the industries that you understand
4 - Never borrow to invest
5 - Stop trying to get rich quick
6 - Never let your emotions intervene
7 - Patience pays
The rules by themselves are very easy and straightforward, however, most of us are not disciplined enough to follow.
Learn them, try them, practice them and one day you will become free!
❤️Please, support my work with like and lovely comment!❤️
It truly helps!
Thank you!
The Key To Confident Trading - Focus On What You Can ControlHi Traders, today's topic regarding "The key to confident trading - focus on what you can control." Believe or not, some of the best Traders out there I know, have huge amount of confidence in their own trading profitability. The confidence to stick to your process & strategies, execute your trade, and get yourself through drawdown period are all essential. Focus on your mistakes, is the one and only thing that makes you a better Trader each day.
During your journey to a consistently profitable trader, it's crucial to understand what are some of the factors you can control, and what you cannot control. This post is inspired by Mark, a trading mentor.
Can
1. Pre-trade/ Post trade Process
Have a strict routine and checklist, before you start jumping into the market begin shooting your position all over. Spend the effort to create your daily plan, be prepared, and be sharp clear on what you're looking for. After any closed position, spend the time to review and reflect them, identify common mistakes and methods to leverage them into your advantage.
2. Trading environment
Trading requires immense focus, you must have a peaceful trading office that allows you to tackle the market with a calm mindset.
3. Position size
Majority of Traders blow up their capital due to improper position sizing and risk management. Protect your capital at all cost, and never allow one position to cause damage to your capital. Treat every trade the same way, trading is a probability game.
4. Entry/ Exit
The patience to wait for the market to come to your entry point/ criteria is essential. The same goes to exit, identify your exit plan beforehand, so you're well-prepared for any possibilities.
5. Stop position
Knowing when to get out of a trade is equally important as your entries. Identify multiple ways to exit a position, it could be scale out, trail stops, market structure, etc. Learn how to squeeze as much milk from each winning trade and ride them through your daily review.
6. Markets you trade
Especially in the beginning of your trading journey, narrow down your watchlist and focus on what you're good at. Less is more, pay more attention to those high quality setups and ignore the rest.
7. Diet, nutrition, sleep
Great Traders focus on their diet, nutrition and sleep. If you do not have the discipline to eat and sleep properly, how good would you be at managing your capital? To be your at your peak mental performance, you must first have a healthy physical state.
8. Education & learning
Keep grinding and learning everyday. Do not overlook the significance of each day, small steps everyday is what get you towards your goals.
Cannot
1. What the market does
Most of the losing Traders tend to blame the market or themselves whenever things aren't going according to their plan. Understand the probability and possibility. Focus on your personal performance rather than the market behaviour.
2. When it stops you out
The feeling of getting stopped out of a position is unpleasant. But on the positive note, getting stop out of a bad trade avoids you from wasting your time and energy on any unfavourable setups. With a proper SL and Risk Management, several losing trades aren't a big deal, as you're confident that your capital is well-protected. Always stay positive!
3. How many losers you have
As a wise Trader, we can't control how many losers we encounter as trading is a game of probability. Instead, what we can do is to focus on get to get ourselves out of a losing streaks, journal and review our mistakes. A healthy equity curve is never like a 90 degree angle, but a slow and steady uptrend-like movement that keeps you in the business as long as you want.
4. How quiet or volatile
The volatility of a market is unpredictable & uncontrollable. But the ability to spot them and identify trading potential is important. If the market is quiet, simply stay out of the market if the potential isn't there. "Money is made by sitting, not trading." - Jesse Lauriston Livermore
5. Surprise events
Be cautious on major news event (Eg. NFP, CPI , Unemployment Rate, Interest Rate, Government Speech). These major events usually cause some surge in market volatility , stay out of the market to avoid some unpredictable spikes OR slippage.
Comment down what's your worst experience trying to 'control' the uncontrollable!
"The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading." - Victor Sperandeo
Trade safe as usual.
Do follow my profile for daily fx forecast & educational content.
Retail gamblers found the holy grail... To be a rogue trader!I just had a little look into "robots". I've known from reading some of the BIS reports that Forex quants mostly vanished after 2008.
But I wanted to go on these FX retail sites that are heavy in the "automated" very short term "trading", which is not actually day trading as they run these programs 24/24 there is no "end of the day so let's stay out of the market for 2/3 of the time to compound profits faster" 😄
Here is how I expect an exchange with an "automated" day gambler would go:
My day gambling strategy works muahahaha it does well on backtest for 1 years.
Me: "That's simply because the pair you tested it on has been trending for 1 year you numbskull"
Well you just have to apply it in the right conditions!
Me: "With your crystal ball? If you know what they are, why not just manually take 1 trade?"
Aha! Because of the power of compounding! Rather than risk 1% to make 5% I will make 2% 25 times.
Me: "Your brain on holiday? Forgot you would also compound spread costs and losses?"
Well forget it, if you rly zoom in and can't see anything it looks magical! Doesn't depend on the 1 year trend!
Me: "Then it depends on the 1 month trend?"
No! no matter what you say I have an idiotic answer!
Usually starts with "You just have to"!
I'll throw idiotic answers at you until you get bored and give up on me because I am hopeless!
Me: "Well done I give up" "Thanks for the laugh though" 😂
Take a good friend of mine, UDNCNY:
I can tell you for a fact that an "automated strategy" of the kind I am going to describe would work. Don't even need to backtest it.
The strategy is as follow: Take about any indicator (RSI, Bollinger Bands, etc). When the price goes down (< 30 RSI or lower band) then goes back up to the middle (RSI 50 or center of Bollingers) you sell. And of course the same on the opposite with buying.
Yes that strategy would work, we can quickly eyeball it:
In practice this is not even what they do. A risk-to-reward ratio as enormous as puny 1-to-1.8? That's like 1% of retail. Never!
What they do is have super distant stops, or no stops. And quickly by looking at USDCNY you understand how they can win.
Shorts at a loss are all in a pullback, and the price never goes very far, so by just waiting they will turn into winners at some point.
In my example which wasn't the best part of the USDCNY trend, there are 6 short signals, and 3 longs.
The longs that are not winners quickly, will "never" recover so they'll take a loss on a far away stop here.
But some longs are winners, and most to all shorts are winners, the smaller the reward and bigger distance the stop is, the close to 100% winrate it gets on shorts.
To sum up, with their ridiculous high winrate strategies applied in the right conditions:
- The vast majority of trades are going to be winners no matter what
- Maybe 1/3 of the losers are in the wrong direction and will be big bags
- Maybe 2/3 of the "losers" are in the correct direction and eventually will recover
These troll retail gamblers are zooming in a flower to the molecule level and wondering why it suddenly went invisible. Must be magic!
They have no clue. There is an insect on the flower, that's why you can't see the flower molecule anymore you numbskull.
This indicator strategy I mentioned works on a trend, how about a nice thick really gross sideways?
Constantly stopped! But have no worries for the retail gamblers have a trick up their sleeve!
With a very wide stop such as the risk is 20 times the size of the reward you will keep winning! Hurrah! Martingale!
And then it will start trending in the wrong direction and the clowns will get wiped out.
And I can assure you, this happens more often than 1 in 20 times 🙂
Now we are getting to my favorite part: The holy grail in the title.
I went to myfxbook take a look at system. By default they show you only the ones with positive returns, and many of those are very recent.
No no no no no. let me change that filter to at least 1 year of activity, and any returns.
What's this? More than half show red returns? Oh my that's a lot of -99% 🙂
Most people quit before getting to -99.
How about I pick one of the "winners"? Weird, why are their open trades private?
Another one. Private. Another. Private. And another, private again!
Oh I found one! TrumpBot. Interesting, that's a lot of red sir.
70 open trades, almost all in the red. USDCAD, EURUSD, USDJPY.
All EURUSD are sells, and all the ones ones are buys.
He took plenty of short term trades (well long term now as he's been holding the bag for a while) LONG on the USDOLLAR. Oh no!
Remember USDCNH? Well these bags go back to early in the USD downtrend. He's been holding for nearly a year 🙂
L - O - S - E - R
Just takes 1 L to wipe out these clowns. They can hack some site to make losses vanish, and obviously the dum dums that buy these kinds of systems are too lazy to really do their research so they never notice it, but if it's real money IT'S REALLY GONE.
There are some guys that have been struggling to make money for 20 years and have sold robots for 10.
Is it cruel if I... roll myself on the floor while I laugh to tears? 🤣
What about all these "private" systems? They're holding bags too?
There is a name for this. It starts with an F. And ends with raud.
It is the rogue traders specialty.
They do a bit more (pros), call them "hedges", manipulate accounting for example,
take opposite positions to cut their losses while keeping them secret (unrealized)...
Here is a regulator release on famous Karen Bruton, known as "the supertrader".
She was made famous by Tom Sosnoff that had her appear on his show.
The SEC fined her and a partner to over a million dollar. She lost way more than that. No jail.
www.sec.gov
Tom Sosnoff is a market maker from the 80s that created a popular trading platform that he sold,
and now teaches people to sell option spreads. With no edge or risk it will return little money, like 1%.
Karen the Supertrader got superresults by leveraging that strat. Which causes it to LOSE money.
Looks like Karen couldn't figure out high school level maths, nowadays this got to be 2nd uni year,
the levels has collapsed it's amazing, my sister aiming for med school doesn't even HAVE math classes
since 16 year old, science with no maths, genius government.
"But kids don't like it", ye so let's make them even dumber than they already are!
Yes but Karen convinced investors, and even Tom Sosnoff and his colleagues, that she made money!
Ye, just like all the myfxbook trolls. She never closed the losers.
Plenty of realized gains, and much larger unrealized losses. Pathetic.
And the flip side?
Warren Buffett has held unrealized gains on Coca-Cola since 1987.
Never held losses very long. Ever. Some uni nerd looked at it.
We know because he has to report all positions.
Losers (and crooks) hold losers. Winners hold winners. That simple.
How To Trade Forex VolumePlease look at any Forex 4 hour chart with simply volume on bottom- what do you see? Part of your trading edge should be only trading with high liquidity and volume (in-between these 12 hours a day)- then do other things to maintain balance of body, mind and soul in your life.
Yes, you see that only times you should be either scalping or day trading is in between 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. PST/USA ( 12 hours)- this is at the end of Tokyo session to end of London session. *NOTE: convert these times with your own times and/or location.
What is Forex volume: How to use it to your advantage:
If you did not know, the Forex market has an average turnover of $6 trillion daily! In other words, that is the Forex volume! Forex allows swing traders, scalping and position trading... even long term trading. You can enter markets at any time, with tight spreads and good leverage. Lets explain what is Forex volume and how to use it to your advantage...
The Forex players:
To start, interestingly, the bulk of trades are made with major currencies. And only a few global powerhouses account for most of these trades. Forex traders are separated into two categories: Institutional traders: Major banks, governments, hedge funds and portfolio managers. Retail traders: Individual traders ( like you and me) and prop traders (who work at proprietary trading firms).
Institutional trading makes up 90% of the Forex market- the smart money. Only 10% of trades are done by individual and prop shop traders (i.e. traders who trade capital for other people).
Forex volume and liquidity: The Forex market trades 24 hours a day, five day a week. Traders often confuse Forex volume and liqudity. Forex volume is the total amount of capital traded in market. Lots of trades around the clock means a massive amount of volume in the Forex market. Therefore, trades have high liquidity with steady money flows to buy and sell currency. Liquidity is the ability to move your money in and out of the market. High liquidity allows you to enter or exit your trade quickly.
1 Day of a TraderDo you plan your day? 🔥
First and one of the most important quality of successfull trader is planning.
You always have to plan your DAY, WEEKEND, LIFE and most importantly EACH TRADE.
How can you describe your trading day?
Write it in COMMENTS BELOW🚀
Is there hope for Forex retail traders wanting to make money?The numbers are disastrous. Virtually all Forex retail traders lose money. Most of those that persist lose big.
There is no improvement over time, no matter how many years they keep trying, and no matter how much help they get. There is no hope.
How bad are really the stats? And why are they so bad?
Let's look at the evidence.
Citi 2014 presentation of the Retail FX market
They say there are 4 million traders (implying FX), 1.6 million in Asia, 1.4 million in Europe, and 150,000 in the USA.
Mainly male (shocker) and of an average age of 35.
It does not add up.
An AMF doc from the same period looks at 15,000 traders from intermediaries representing 50% of the market.
So 30k for France and 1.4 million in Europe?
Americans are into stocks so their number is much smaller as expected.
An unsurprising quote from the doc: "FXCM accounts larger than $10,000 have profitability that are double the average.
Part of it is likely due to the natural selection of profitable averaged-sized accounts surviving and becoming large accounts."
And the CEO said in an interview the smallest accounts pushed the winrate down.
This doc says "Strictly Private and Confidential" so I won't share it even though it is accessible on the ECB website.
Conflicting evidence: The elusive profitable FX individual investors
According to the paper linked below, a studied sample of 1,231 accounts were found to be profitable on average (0.2%).
www.researchgate.net
Most people feel bad, demoralized, sick to the stomach, when they hear everyone loses money trading.
Me, I feel bad, disgusted, demoralized, when I hear that noobs have the ability to make money. Almost makes me want to cry.
There is something really rotten about clueless casuals finding success. Yuck I can just picture them being joyful and euphoric.
I don't know, I don't understand, where this data comes from.
I need to wash my eyes with some IG, FXCM, and myfxbook client positions data :)
I need to warm my heart by seing dumb monkeys constantly go against the trend and hold losers for weeks 😊
In this paper we do not know who the guinea pigs studied are, how long have they been in the business?
What we know is how long they subscribed to a service. And the average was 0.27 years, or 3 months.
Those are not your usual daygamblers as:
- The average opening equity is $90,854.03
- Average Holding Time for Trades (in h) 1,508.48 (63 days or 2 months)
- The average total net gain was $190.30 (0.2% of 91k), it might only be from interests
So this paper does not look at average Forex retail traders at all. Stats change completely when you remove the degenerates.
You look at FXCM and IG client stats, you might find 80% short on a big uptrend, then you look at myfxbook - which attracts all the "robot trading" clowns, and 95% are short!
The more daygamblers and "automated expert advisor 🤡" and 800 leveragers you have, the worse the stats.
Remove all these 🤡, and sure then you get a totally different result.
Conflicting evidence: 99% of noobs lose money, now that's what I like to hear
A Forex website with 120,000 subscribers at the time (mostly FX traders) surveyed in 2020 3,127 Forex traders from 32 countries.
97% of respondents trade Forex, 43% Gold, 24% stock indices, and 9% cryptocurrencies.
Half of users surveyed are 25 to 34 years old, mostly men, and 1 in 4 is 35 to 44. Roughly consistent with other stats, a bit younger.
72% of the Forex traders surveyed are fresh noobs, they had no previous experience before FX.
The retail "traders" surveyed are a tad bit delusional, as 50% of Americans, 59% of Asians, 44% of Europeans, 42% of Oceanians and aye aye aye 100% of Africans think they can achieve more than 5% monthly returns. Between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3, and even 88% of Africans, think they can make more than 10% monthly.
Typical stats: 53% have been trading for less than a year, I assume those are the "5% to over 10% monthly" types?
39% have been trading for 1-3 years, 7% for 4-10 years, and 1% for more than 10.
The success rates (I believe this is self-reported):
Conflicting evidence: Run for your lives! Forex is an evil scam!
This may sound like an exaggeration, but I have the video.
A lady from the french regulator, on television, was screaming "YOU HAVE TO FLEEEE FOREX DON'T YOU GET IT. R.U.N. A.W.A.Y!!!"
In the AMF report "Étude des résultats des investisseurs particuliers sur le trading de CFD et de Forex en France" they come up with scary stats.
Close to 90% of traders lost money in the 2009-2012 period, and even the more experienced ones that traded for the entire period (48 months) lost money at 87.56%.
They have a graph "losses by leverage" but nowhere on that graph is indicated leverage...
And of course there is no distinction between day gamblers and the rest, as their goal is to scare people away.
You cannot say I am biased towards defending Forex, you know how much I LOVE watching noobs break their teeth.
Honestly, this doc is pretty bad, and just pointless fearmongering with nothing to learn that we don't already know (90% lose money).
In a BOJ doc I saw that around 90% of individual "investors" were day gamblers. Explains why 90% lose money.
Ok so retail loses money when day trading I get it, but then how do institutional traders make money intraday? What is their secret?
Simple. They don't. That's the big secret.
There are other sets of data, like what FXCM did for us a few years ago, showing that traders with a risk to reward of 1:1 or more were greatly more profitable than bagholders with high winrate (3.12 times as much):
"Of the traders who traded 1:1 or higher risk-reward, 53% turned a profit; of those who didn't, 17% turned a profit."
Also they show 40% of their traders with 5:1 or less leverage make money, compared to 17% of the ones with > 25:1, and the ones that do make profit with this leverage probably only made a small deposit compared to their net worth.
For obvious reason you'll never hear from a broker the correlation between day gambling or not and profitability.
I heard from someone that worked at FXCM that they tried looking for an edge from their biggest losers, all that they found is they overtraded, this is again something you'll rarely hear from brokers for obvious reasons.
In the end all we can take out from all of this, is some win, most lose. There is at least some little improvement with experience.
"Intraday" Gamblers and leverage gamblers are gigantic losers that destroy the stats, as most of us I am sure already knew.
And as Locke and Mann (2000) show in a study "there is evidence that trading success is negatively related to the degree of loss realization aversion."
Might also want to add: Be a one trick! Warren Buffett is one big fat OTP that only value invest in blue chip US stocks in sectors he understands.
1 market. 1 strategy. And he is doing rather well unlike all the loud mouths with zero life medals that say he "misses out".
Trading psychology and a story of history repeating itself.Take a look at the chart above.
Now take a look at this one.
And now take a look at this one.
There’s something that all three of these charts have in common and it might not be what you think it is. I'll add before going further that this is probably going to be my most crapped-on post here but it is what it is. I want to talk about the problem of winning early.
During the COVID crash, millionaires were made. Millionaires were also destroyed. In more cases than you may imagine, millionaires were made and then destroyed. During the crash, there were a bunch of savvy investors who profited greatly off of the collapse of the stock market over the course of a month. A huge part of this was due to options and the magnified returns that can be possible with them. During the crash, this became even more possible.
See, while AMEX:SPY was shitting itself over the course of a month, implied volatility exploded across essentially every options chain that existed in the market. Normally, to be successful with options trading you have to have at least some kind of comprehension of how the underlying math works behind building a position. You have to have at least *some* comprehension of the Greeks. During this period, you needed none of that. You could buy a $150 strike put expiring tomorrow at the beginning of March and by market close you’d 10x your initial investment. It was definitionally free money if you were able to capture it and get in early enough.
This led to a huge influx of people jumping into the market because they were hearing their friends just buying puts like crazy. r/wallstreetbets started becoming more and more popular during this time as options use on Robinhood exploded and more and more people started piling in for the free money. After all, if the friend you have who flips burgers just made $1,000 in options why couldn’t you? Tons of inexperienced traders jumped in and made a lot of money.
Then the bottom happened. Volume started to die out, the bleeding stopped, the Fed ramped up their unlimited QE operations, and the market stabilized. What’s more, implied volatility slowly started to creep down.
New entrants into the “easy money” market who were very successful were convinced it was a fake-out. They were POSITIVE that there was no way this was a real bottom. COVID was still rampant, countries were still shutting down, and in this case they were correct. COVID was nowhere near finished. Now more than a year later, we’re still dealing with it in many ways and the world is far from being “back to normal”. What they were wrong on, however, was that the market would continue to care.
The truth of the matter was that none of these new entrants had any clue what they were talking about. None of them had any concept of even what the market’s current valuation of specific assets even meant in the context of COVID. There was no talk of gauging the actual value of stocks against projected success in sustaining COVID. There was no concept of the market being “forward thinking” in terms of how it allocates capital. It was just all “this is bullshit, there’s no way this it the bottom” and reams and reams of conspiratorial tweets and posts about “the coming leg down”. It was all bullshit, the market bottomed, big money was now hunting for bargains because it assumed that COVID would pass and the market would recover.
In addition to this, implied volatility also started to drop. Just buying random options in the general direction you thought the market might go became less and less of a winning strategy. Soon, people were losing their shirts on big bets using money they made during the drop. People were bearish to the point of insolvency. They fought the trend instead of going with it and they kept with a losing options strategy because they used to make money doing it. The amount of money won and lost by retail during the months of March, April, May and June was astronomical.
There’s something that happens to a person when they discover something new, try it out, and become immediately successful at it. There’s a trigger in our brains that leads us to assume that we’re successful because we’ve just discovered some nascent talent that we never knew we had. Instead of looking at ourselves as lucky, we look at ourselves as imbued with innate knowledge that is guiding us toward success. After all, look at your account balance. That doesn’t just happen on its own.
This becomes so much worse in something like the stock market (or, perhaps crypto). The stock market and finance generally are things that people are often led to believe are zones of institutional expertise. They’re things that regular people shouldn’t be involved in. Look at the math used by some quant fund. Listen to the financialized, confusing language. It looks like this monolith of expertise from the outside. Then you become successful in it and you feel like you’re one of the club or, even worse, beating the club.
When we start to win after learning lessons and applying them, we train ourselves to evaluate information and apply it to something in the real world. When we start to win immediately, we train ourselves to believe that we just “know” what’s going to happen.
The biggest difference between these two mentalities in my eyes is what one does when what they “know” starts to be tested and broken. With experience and time, when the play you make starts to falter because what you “know” starts to look like it’s not working out, you take losses and learn. When you win immediately and a play you make based off of what you “know” starts to falter, it’s because of some outside force “manipulating” things or because of a million other reasons. You don’t take losses and learn because there’s nothing to learn. You’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Now we see this playing out again in the crypto world. Every other post seems to be about manipulation in the crypto market. Duh. Crypto is the most manipulated market on Earth. When 1,000 wallet addresses control 40% of the entire market cap of something, you don’t get to call it decentralized. It’s centralized, just in the hands of anonymous strangers or groups instead of alphabet soup agencies you can put a face to.
We see new entrants to the market flooding $DOGE and $BTC, enraptured by the story behind the crypto revolution and captured by early initial success. Look at my account. It’s up 1,000% I must know what I’m doing. I can’t imagine I just now found out about this. Look at the innate knowledge I have and how I can read these markets. If the market goes down, it’s not because of anything other than people not knowing what I know.
It’s going to make me sound like an asshole but it has to be said: if you are up 1,000% on an investment and you haven’t sold anything, you aren’t an investor. You’re not “beating the market”. You’re not on the vanguard of a new wave of investor shaking the establishment. You’re not “doing battle with the hedgies”. You’re a rube.
Everyone starts somewhere. Unfortunately (or maybe not) for some people, that somewhere is in the middle of a period of mania leading to euphoria in a specific market sector. It’s a period where you just can’t lose money. The good ones get crushed and learn from their mistakes. They lick their wounds and decide to stick with it. I mean, the population of r/ThetaGang must have EXPLODED of the past year with people destroying themselves with options buys. The bad ones get crushed and disappear, further angered at a system that “manipulated” them out of their money.
The moral of the story here is that we should all be suspicious of everything in the markets. Above everything else, we should be most suspicious of ourselves. Are we trading for the right reasons? Are we missing something? Are we really as smart as we think we are? The second you start to believe you know something the rest of the market doesn’t, well you’re screwed. Just remember that the second you look at a chart like the BTC or DOGE charts above and blindly think they look good you have turned a corner into trading on emotion or hope. What goes down isn't required to come up.
Supply & Demand: Sell Trading ExampleAfter a range or sideways area breakout, retracements in price action are always the best places to enter into any buy or sell trades- they have the lowest risk/highest reward setups and best risk management.
The True resistance/supply is within the range of the cluster of price action. It begins at the origin of the supply/demand imbalance. - for bearish trades
(See chart example of bearish trade coming from supply area)
The True support/demand is within the range of the cluster of price action. It begins at the origin of the supply/demand imbalance. - for bullish trades
This trade had a possible 50 pip potential: How much of that could you have got with right stop loss and risk management of 1%,2% or? whats your plan!!
