If You're Thinking About Giving Up On TradingHello to you TradingView traders,
All the below are based on my preferences, I don't give any financial recommendations and I have nothing to sell you with this article.
I'm sharing content because I see a lot of traders being/becoming broke and I don't want you to be one of them.
If you're thinking of giving up on trading read this 👇
A long time before becoming profitable
Trading is one of the most difficult tasks in the world
It sucks you in and takes your money within minutes
But if you're seriously trying to change your life around, here's why you should stick with it:
I've been trading for 10 years now
For the first 2 years I lost money
The first account I funded with $10,000 I lost in 6 days
The trading journey is mentally tough.
Not only did I lose a lot of money, but I lost a lot of confidence
I had devoted 2 years of my life to trading and still could not get consistent profits.
It was mentally draining.
The light at the end of the tunnel
But sticking with it was the best decision I have EVER made
I get to wake up every day now feeling fulfilled.
Feeling like all those years of hard work and sacrifice were worth it
Trading turned me into the person I am today.
Before I had ZERO:
- Confidence
- Sense of accomplishment
- Happiness
And now I have all of those things
AND...
I also learned a lot about myself.
I learned what it takes for me to become disciplined
I learned that in some scenarios I'm not very patient, in others I am
I learned about how I learn and the best way for me to educate myself
Yes the trading journey was financially and mentally tough but it was also fun.
The process was fun.
At the end of the day, that's what makes people happy:
Setting a goal, working towards it, and achieving it
There is no better feeling than that in my opinion
But here's the kicker:
If you don't give up, you can't lose
It's LITERALLY a waiting game
It's impossible to spend 10,000 hours on something and NOT be successful at it
Don't compare your journey to someone else
It took me 3.5 years to become profitable, and one more year to trade full-time
For some, it took 6 months
For others, it took 7 years
But I can say for every successful trader out there that it was totally worth it
So if you're considering giving up, take a step back
Think.
Are you a quitter?
How bad do you want this?
Sleep on it and see what happens tomorrow :)
I'll keep bringing a few articles like this every week because it helps me clarifying my thoughts AND giving back to the community makes me feel good about myself somehow :)
I want to teach you guys every aspects of what makes a great trader and how to get there.
This is the most challenging and the most rewarding job at the same time
Thank you for reading
Dave
Trading Tools
Why Your Backtest Results May Not Give Realistic ResultsHello traders,
All the below are based on my preferences, I don't give any financial recommendations and I have nothing to sell you with this article.
I'm sharing content because I see a lot of traders being/becoming broke and I don't want you to be one of them.
Timeframes
A lot of models work on high timeframes on the charts.
They work visually at least and that's why many are only sharing with high timeframes charts greater than 4H.
We all built a backtest based on a moving average cross and got a shooting 95%+ win-rate when running the backtest engine for the very first time.
We all thought we were geniuses right :)
"Way too easy" we all thought
There is a caveat though...
For derivatives trading (CFDs, options, futures, ..) backtests always account for real trading fees.
Let me explain... We all heard/saw those rollover fees that we need to pay overnight.
This is basically how the brokers are forcing the overnight/over weekend traders to pay more fees.
While the explanation longs to pay for the shorts, and shorts to pay for the longs is poetic - those fees could eat out your position capital way before the price action has even moved.
Imagine a range during days/weeks.
You'll end up paying a lot of fees and might end up with a very negative position size way before anything interesting (from a trading perspective) ever happened.
I saw many trades being minus double digits percent PnL only because of fees.
Then, imagine trading contracts with an expiration date - this adds another challenge - and most of backtests don't even account for that either.
Leverage
Leverage increases disproportionally the risk compared to the opportunity.
Leverage 2 does increase the risk by 2 but the opportunity won't be multiplied by 2.
Well.... it would be in case the analysis is good in the first place. (assuming the risk/entry/exit plan is correctly calculated).
Assuming those analyses are made by experienced traders, then using leverage makes sense - otherwise I'd stay away from it.
I surely sound like a broken record with this...
But, I know what you're thinking
You calculated already how many trades and pips you need to earn $1M and you concluded it won't be possible without leverage.
This statement is true if you want to get rich quick which anyway always lead to get poor quick.
"Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance"
Probably the quote we hear the most in trading guys...
Generally in trading, what worked before has a probability to not work anymore the more time has been elapsed.
I don't mean it won't work anymore.
This only means we should be cautious when trading setups valid from a while ago on a specific market.
A way to not get that burden on our psychology is to indeed reduce the position sizing.
Until we are comfortable and not stressed anymore.
That's the sweet spot you guys have to find.
For some, it might be a few hundreds per trade, for others a few thousands.
There IS NOT a well-formulated generic universal valid answer for what's the best position sizing.
Apart of course from starting with tiny baby positions and scaling up from there
But for sure, once we get comfortable with one position size range level, we should go to the upper level direct above.
Direct above means, if we trade 100 USD position sizes, the next one could be in the 110-150 USD range. (and not 1K right off the bat...)
We wouldn't lift 100 kg after getting used to only 10 kg.
Trading isn't different than any skill requiring training and dedication
The challenge is to not change our goals midway after a few wins or a few losses.
And to stick with them for a few months at least.
Literally takes me weeks of training to add a few kg to my chest press barbell or biceps curls.
That's how much it took me also to increase the average position sizing by 10% or so.
Thus the more I increase it, the more time I need to get comfortable with it.
And it gets increasingly difficult from a psychological perspective the bigger the position size gets
Applies in a lot of areas in life, sport, career also.
It takes time!
The worst thing for new traders is getting early very lucky and rewarding trades.
That's what happened with many crypto traders in 2017 and 2021
They got too cocky and made that money too quickly and too easily.
Then, when the market turned bearish... they gave all it back because their experience/backtest/psychology/beliefs weren't ready for a market shift.
We're at a time where markets change constantly.
And perhaps that's why the patterns used by our predecessors 20 years ago aren't relevant anymore.
My father told me that trading 40 years ago was as "easy" stealing a candy from a baby.
Now it’s a lot more complicated due to the noise, trading bots, etc..
Often orders aren't filled
In paper trading or with a backtest, when a Take Profit is hit... well we make profit and that's cool.
But those LIVE trading know that sometimes... the limit orders aren't filled and no one can give us a logical explanation why the F... they weren't filled.
Even though the charts clearly show we should have been filled...
Your broker will say slippage.
Your guru will say "I got a nice 1000% profit - Hope you all exited when I told you so"
You will say "But my backtest claimed that an order should always be filled..."
I'm saying blaming the casino isn't useful and won't bring you anywhere
And that's why trades need to be managed because we're playing against the house (exchange) & competition (i.e. SMART-MONEY - understand bankers/funds with real advanced financial education) that want us liquidated.
I'll keep bringing a few articles like this every week because it helps me clarifying my thoughts AND giving back to the community makes me feel good about myself somehow :)
I want to teach you guys every aspects of what makes a great trader and how to get there.
This is the most challenging and the most rewarding job at the same time
Thank you for reading
Dave
Cognitive Biases in Forex Trading
This article explores the cognitive biases in forex trading. The biases discussed in this article can play a significant role in any form of speculative trading and investing, not just forex trading.
A cognitive bias is a systematic flaw in how we think. Cognitive biases are present in every decision we face.
Anchoring Bias.
People rely too much on reference points from
the past when making a decision for the future -
they are "anchored" to the past.
Loss Aversion.
This is when people go to great lengths to avoid
losses because the pain of loss is twice as
impactful as the pleasure received from a win.
Confirmation Bias.
The confirmation trap is when traders seek
out information that validates their opinions
and ignore any theories that invalidate them.
Superiority Trap.
Many traders in the past have lost large sums
of money simply because they have fallen prey to
the mentality of overconfidence.
Herding.
Many traders in the past have lost large sums
of money simply because they have fallen prey to
the mentality of overconfidence.
Pay close attention to your decision making to spot the fallacies.
What do you want to learn in the next post?
Swing-Trading: Real-Time Signals ✅Our swing-trading strategy is based on the timeless and success proven strategies developed by stock market legends like Jesse Livermore, William o' Neil and Mark Minervini - 3x US investing Champion 🍾🍾🍾
In this video, I go through the details of our swing-trading strategy and explain how to get free access to Real-Time-Trading signals.
Why my indicators are open-source, and why yours should be tooThis post explains my mindset of why i publish only indicators and only under open-source.
A common opinion is that if an indicator or strategy is publicly known, then it cannot be profitable. In economics theory, this is known as the efficient market hypothesis(1), which states that once a strategy is widely adopted, it is integrated in prices and hence cannot be profitable anymore.
Hence, it is a legitimate question to ask: are any of the open-source indicators useful for professional trading?
I do not believe in magic bullet indicators, those that are claimed to indicate when to buy or when to sell. I don't think any indicator, or even any set of indicator, can reliably do that over the long term in any market without human intervention to decide at some point when the signals are true or false positives. Likewise, i do not believe automated strategies can reliably be profitable.
Hence, my focus is to design indicators that can help reveal hiddee structures or simply help in visualizing faster and more easily market's data. As profitable traders know, the raw price action still rules above all, with volume and order flow being the next best metrics, but we can design indicators to give us an edge in terms of time spent analyzing the market, and this is what all my work is focused on: to save me time and reduce interpretation errors. And maybe it can be useful to you too.
Indicators are merely a tool, and no two people will use them exactly the same. Just like giving a fishing rod doesn't make the recipient a fisher, i don't believe that just because indicators are free or open-source they lose their utility. The whole world is fishing, yet any competent fisher can still catch fishes, because they know where, when and how, it's not just because they have a fishing rod, and arguably, the fishing rod is only a necessary tool, but not the most important thing that makes them competent fishers: what makes them competent fishers are skills.
In summary, i am trying to help in understanding the market, not in predicting it. Assessing likelihoods and probabilities of future events and knowing what you can do are your job and depend on your skills solely. If you don't know how, there are free online tutorials(2) to get started, but nothing replaces experience acquired through hard work.
For example, one of my favorite ways to visualize is to encode sentiment related infos as a coloret bar at the bottom, or by highlighting the background. These representations may be simplistic, and that's the goal, anybody can understand them intuitively without even looking at the description, yet they can encode very complex and heterogenous information.
The human brain remains the best informational system when it comes to integrating huge volumes of heterogenous data, as the financial markets generate. So my indicators are meant to boost brains, not replace them. Even artificial intelligence bots have a hard time being profitable (i know, this is my original field of expertise, they require near constant monitoring to avoid potentially catastrophical errors and tweakings to adapt to the market). There is simply no shortcut to hard training when it comes to becoming a good, profitable trader.
Hence, even if my indicators are, I believe, vezy helpful to understand the market and can gice an edge, and ecen though I use several all the time, to be honest, you likely won't get any benefits if you don't know what you are doing, if you are inexperienced with trading.
The above explains why i think publicly available indicators can still be useful, but not why i publish under open-source, which is anither step beyond free but clised-source publication. Truth is, I am marvelled by the open-source spirit in the TradingView community, which is the biggest database of open-source financial indicators ever. As I strted above, these indicators are unlikely to be profitable on their own, but that's not the point: sharing indicators is sharing an idea, a concept, a blueprint, that can then be developed further, or be food for thoughts for a whole new indicator, or just broaden your horizons of how you view the markets.
Therefore, I decided to stay in this spirit and publish all my indicators under open-source. I am very grateful for the giants on which shoulders I stay, and I am eager to hear feedbacks on my work, so we all further our collective understanding of markets!
Enjoy, and be safe!
Tartigradia
(1) Timmermann, A., & Granger, C. W. (2004). Efficient market hypothesis and forecasting. International Journal of Forecasting, 20, 15-27.
(2) cobie.substack.com
Do That BEFORE You Start REAL ACCOUNT Trading
Here is the list of thing that you should learn in advance before you start trading on a real account.
1) Open a demo (practice) account and learn to execute trades without making errors
2) Study the methods of great traders and financial minds throughout history - Jesse Livermore, W D Gann, Charles Dow/Dow theory, Paul Tudor Jones,Richard Wyckoff.
Learn their methods and employ them. Learn their mistakes and avoid them.
3) Focus on learning, not winning. Forget about money and profits. Think about developing a winning strategy and a winning trading mindset. Always be open-minded. Observe. Be flexible.
4) I recommend reading the following books. These books will help you to start to think like a trader and realize what you are getting yourself into:
a) "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre
b) "Art of War" by Sun Tzu (Not a trading book but an old book on rules of war and how to protect yourself from being outsmarted and defeated by your enemies)
c) "The Trading Methodologies of W.D. Gann" by Hima Reddy
d) "Time Compression Trading: Exploiting Multiple Time Frames in Zero Sum Markets" by Jason Alan Jankovsky
e) "Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude" by Mark Douglas
5) Watch YouTube videos. Absorb all the info you can as the more you know, the more the pieces of the puzzle fit together later on. You can learn the basics of trading on your own and then when you are ready to take your trading to the next level.
To win the game, you need to develop your thinking and how you participate in the game. You are in a market trading against professional traders. The beginning traders in the market are not your competition-they are incidental. You need to trade with the professional traders who run the market.
I wish you luck on a battle field!
Please, like this post and subscribe to our tradingview page!👍
TradingView & Trend-TemplateIn this video I explain how to integrate Minervini' Trend-Template into your daily stock screening routine.
This concept can be applied to all other securities including Commodities, FOREX and Cryptos.
The links to other relevant tutorials in this context (Stage-Analysis and Trend-Template criteria) are shown below.
What is really up with the Funded Programs?Before we go any further, I want to state that
1) This post is NOT PROMOTING ANY prop firms/funded trader programs,
2) I do not hate or have anything against any prop firms/funded trader programs, I am just sharing my understanding from what I have read and experienced, and
3) Info here is not complete. If you choose to embark on any programs, please make sure you do your own due diligence.
Traditional Prop Firm
Typically refers to a group of traders that focus on buying and selling financial assets with the firm’s capital. The trader uses that firm's money to trade and in exchange receives a small wage and a large percentage of the profits. In practice, proprietary trading firms provide the capital, proprietary technology, training, coaching, and mentoring for you to become an elite trader.
Funded Programs
There has been an ever-increasing number of funded trader programs, marketing to retail traders about the huge profit-sharing potential (75-90%) when they become "a funded trader." And all that is required is paying for and passing an evaluation/testing period. You would pay anywhere from $84 to $184 for a $10,000 account and it could go as high as you want (almost)
A trader in the evaluation/testing period would have
- Profit target of 8-10% in phase 1 (typically 30 days)
- Profit target of 5% in phase 2 (typically 60 days)
- Daily drawdown of no more than 5%
- Overall drawdown of no more than 10-12%
From my experience coaching retail traders, newbie or average trader has an account size of no more than $10,000. This makes the idea of being funded to trade become really attractive, limiting the downside while almost maximizing the potential. However, there has also been a lot of negativity about these funded programs;
- the evaluation and actual trading accounts are demo accounts
- the company makes more money from traders failing than from profitable traders
- some traders claim to have never received their payouts
Are funded programs scams?
Again, I have not evaluated ALL funded programs to say this, but probably not. (Do your own due diligence!)
Companies running funded programs are likely just deploying a good business model, addressing a pain that most retail traders have (funding their account) and filling that gap.
Should you jump into a funded program?
There is a lot more information (more than discussed above) that needs to be considered before you jump in. A brief checklist:
1) Do you have a profitable trading strategy to deploy? ( if you don't have a profitable strategy, keep reading, learning & testing )
2) Have you used it for at least a year? ( avoid using funded programs as a testing ground, it can get costly! do it on a demo or even a $1,000 account first )
3) Does the strategy meet the max drawdown conditions? ( 5% a day, 10% total? For example, a martingale strategy is not likely to work )
4) How likely are you to bend your trading rules? ( rules set by the programs are set in stone, a breach even by the slightest and you would have failed )
5) Is it the right time to start? ( are markets in consolidation, on a holiday period, or super volatile with no clear trend )
Remember that the average annualized return of the S&P500 is 11.88% (1957 to 2021). Trying to make 8-10% in 30 days and then 5% in 60 days just to pass, tends to put the trader under a lot of stress. How do you perform under significant pressure?
What are your views of the funded programs? Share it with me in the comments
I have never thought much about the funded programs. But recently have been considering giving it a shot and live-streaming the trading process daily. Would you join me on the stream?
Stay tuned, it might just happen.
How to pick the best Cryptos ??? 😎JS-TechTrading Masterclass
How to pick the Best Cryptos??
The trend is your friend. This is a very old but true quote.
Why is that?
• The vast majority of big winning cryptos and other securities made the largest portion of their gain in a Stage 2 uptrend
• Evidence that institutions are buying
• Increase probability of success
• Know what to expect under specific conditions – point of reference
Your goal is not to buy at the lowest price – It’s to buy at the right price!
Every crypto and other security go through the same maturation cycle - it starts at stage 1 and ends at stage 4 as shown in the chart.
Stage One – Neglect Phase – Consolidation
Stage Two – Advancing Phase – Accumulation
Stage Three – Topping Phase – Distribution
Stage Four – Declining Phase – Capitulation
Our JS-TechTrading strategy focuses on identifying cryptos and other securities in stage 2 uptrends for our LONG-strategies, and stage 4 downtrends for our SHORT-strategies.
By doing that, we create an edge over long-term investors and less proficient traders. By focusing on cryptos and other securities in a stage 2 uptrend (LONG-strategies), and focusing on cryptos and other securities in a stage 4 downtrend (SHORT-strategies) we avoid losing money or breaking even over a long period of time and we are fully invested when cryptos and other securities are in a confirmed up-/downtrend so that we can accumulate money within the shortest period of time.
Example Bitcoin:
But how can we use technical chart analysis can be used to identify cryptos and other securities in a stage 2 uptrend, and in a stage 4 downtrend?
🍾🍾 3x US investment champion Mark Minervini 🍾🍾 developed the so-called Trend-Template which can be used to screen for cryptos and other securities in confirmed up- and downtrends.
TradingView provides all of the relevant tools to automate this screening process. ✌️✌️ The following section summarizes the technical characteristics which must be met so that a stage 2 uptrend for a stock can be confirmed:
Trend-Template to confirm a STAGE 2 Uptrend
1. Stock price is above both the 150-day (30-week) and the 200-day (40-week) moving average price lines.
2. The 150-day moving average is above the 200-day moving average.
3. The 200-day moving average line is trending up for at least 1-month (preferably 4-5 months minimum).
4. The 50-day (10-week moving average) is above both the 150-day and the 200-day moving averages.
5. The current stock price is at least 25% above its 52-week low. (Many of the best selections will be 100%, 300% or even greater above their 52-week low before they emerge from a sound consolidation period and mount a large-scale advance).
6. The current stock price is within at least 25% of its 52-week high (the closer to a new high the better).
7. Current price is trading above the 50-day moving average (exception “Low Cheat” setups
Trend-Template to confirm a STAGE 4 Downtrend
The same logic applies here:
1. Stock price is below both the 150-day (30-week) and the 200-day (40-week) moving average price lines.
2. The 150-day moving average is below the 200-day moving average.
3. The 200-day moving average line is trending down for at least 1-month (preferably 4-5 months minimum).
4. The 50-day (10-week moving average) is below both the 150-day and the 200-day moving averages.
5. The current stock price is at least 25% below its 52-week high.
6. The current stock price is within at least 25% of its 52-week low (the closer to a new low the better).
7. Current price is trading below the 50-day moving average.
We at JS-TechTrading only consider cryptos and other securities for our watchlists which are meeting all characteristics of Minervini's trend-template. This screening process in itself provides us with a significant competitive edge versus most other traders are doing.
In the next tutorials, I will explain how automated trading robots can be applied to cryptos and other securities on our watchlists.
How To Master Your SleepHello traders and investors,
This week, I'll talk about physiology, but I'd like to relate how I went from being an overly worried, under-slept, overfed, under-muscular person to the MAN I am today.
Let's start with how I conquered my sleep to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night, including hours of REM and DEEP sleep.
Trading after a bad night's sleep is extremely difficult, if not dangerous.
Because we can't think clearly when we have brain fog.
And trading necessitates that we be hyperaware.
I've had trouble sleeping virtually my whole life....
Even if I went to bed early, I usually experienced insomnia, woke up at 2/3 a.m., and couldn't fall back asleep.
It made my life unpleasant by causing chronic mental fog and an inability to be motivated.
I'm happy to report that I've mastered my sleep issues and discovered routines and tools to help me stay and fall asleep.
The majority of what follows was taught to me by Andrew Huberman, a well-known physiologist with about 2 million subscribers on YouTube (at the time of writing).
Protocol: Right after waking up
I go to my patio and soak up 10/15 minutes of sunlight.
I'm fortunate to reside in a sunny location.
On cloudy days, you'll have to increase your time outside first thing in the morning to 30 minutes.
This approach is for awaking your circadian cycle and signalling to your body that the day has begun.
It's critical to start as early as possible in the morning.
I conduct a 10 minute HIIT workout on my terrace.
You don't necessary need to do this; going for a walk outside is also a great morning routine.
I've read several times that this early workout is highly useful for letting our brain know that it's time to start waking up the "machine."
Protocol: During the day
- I don't drink coffee after noon.
Some folks do and sleep well.
I'm one of those guys who is hypersensitive to caffeine and can't fall asleep anytime I consume coffee in the afternoon.
- I don't consume junk food nor just eat whole foods.
I eat a well-balanced diet consisting of 60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fat because I work out for 1 hour every day.
I also always eat below or at my calories maintenance - studies show metabolism are the healthiest when we don’t overeat - I don’t want no hormones, health issues - I want to live healthy, rich and for a very long time.
This contributes to the development of my body, charisma, testosterone, and courage.
Courage is essential while dealing with difficult circumstances, especially when our trades are underwater.
- I don't consume alcohol or smoke.
I don't feel smoking is harmful to sleep; I simply don't do it for health reasons.
However, alcohol is known to have a bad impact on our brain and sleep.
Protocol: 2 hours before going to bed
I go to bed around 9:30 p.m. every night.
Going to bed at the same time every day trains our brains to allow us to fall asleep around that time.
The caveat is that anytime I go out at night and go to bed beyond that time, I tend to have poorer sleep quality.
- Beginning with the most important: I am closing ALL of my intraday trades
I don't want my intraday trades to turn into swing trades or, worse, long-term investments.
I don't want to wake up stressed every night to check my trades PnL.
I want to go to bed stress-free.
- Blue light glasses
I still work late at night, so I wear blue light-blocking glasses.
Our brain associates blue colors with "hey, it's still day time."
That is why protecting our eyes from bright lights (even those in our homes) is essential for a healthy night's sleep.
Looking at your TV or computer at night without them guarantees that you won't sleep well, that you'll wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to fall back asleep.
- Self-massages
I use a foam roller to roll my back and neck on, as well as a massage tool.
Eric Berg: shop.drberg.com
I have no affiliation; that product improved my life by allowing me to remove nodes in my back and neck without visiting a chiropractor
- Stretching
Shaolin Monks are famed for being highly flexible; they say flexibility is a sign of an extremely healthy physique, and I couldn't agree more.
Stretching my hamstrings and back on a daily basis greatly fixed my lower back/neck pain.
Protocol: Back/Neck Pain
75% of the persons I spoke with were suffering from back/neck pain.
Some people sleep on their stomach, which is bad for their neck, and they know they should sleep on their side, but they can't fall asleep that way.
Some are extremely stressed and cringe.
Cringing frequently causes neck pain.
I needed a dental tray to prevent my cringing from causing nodes in my neck.
Really a life-saving, or should I say sleep-saving, device.
Protocol: What to Do If You Wake Up in the Middle of the Night
- Self-massage using the foam roller and the Eric Berg’s massage tool.
- Never check your phone or social media
According to Andrew Huberman, checking your phone at night depletes your dopamine for the next 48 hours.
Dopamine is the hormone giving us motivation
How could you manage difficult trades without being motivated?
Well….it’s harder….
Tool
I use an OURA ring to track my REM and DEEP sleep.
It's Bluetooth-enabled and linked to my phone.
Every morning, the OURA app gave me a score; the greater the score, the better my sleep was.
It also distinguishes between REM, DEEP, and STANDARD sleep.
Supplements
Supplements I consider myself to be in a deep level of calm. I follow the dosing guidelines on each product label.
- Magnesium L-Theanone
- Zinc
- Argenin
- Tart Cherry
- I used to take Ashwaganda, but I discovered it reduced my overall happiness/excitement during the day, so I stopped taking it.
How long should you do these protocols before seeing some effects
Talking from experience, it’s a matter of days.
Yeah really, it’s amazing how quick our body and brain adapts to weather great or terrible inputs.
Feeding your body with mostly great inputs leads to a great mind, mood and is the first step at getting shot at being profitable with your trading.
The second step is mastering your anxiety and stress.
Article coming up on that topic on Monday :)
Have a good weekend everyone
Dave
10 Important Tips & Tricks To Improve Trading Skills
In this article, we will discuss ten important tips and tricks that can enable you to improve your trading skills.
A trading plan is a must
Once you have tested the plan developed and it shows good results, that is the time to go full throttle investing in the stock market.
Do not lose confidence
Be a learner
Be a learner and practice trading as a new entrant, even if it has been decades of trading for you. Look at trading as a classroom with much to offer and to be taken one thing at a time.
Don't fall for rumours
Treat it like a Business
It is serious business here and requires precision, patience, commitment, in-depth analysis and cold-blooded research.
A stop-loss is essential
Have technology at your side
Trader must be up-to-date on the happenings in the trading world and use technology to know about stock movements, new products, new trading schemes and pre-empt market movements.
Defend your trading capital
Take risks that you can afford
It enables you to plan well and not overexpose yourself to the risks in share market trading.
Be open to new strategies
Never in trading should there be a time that you follow a trading plan that is outdated or rigid to change.
What do you want to learn in the next post?
What Kind of Person You Need to Become to Be ProfitableHello traders,
All the below are based on my preferences, I don't give any financial recommendations and I have nothing to sell you with this article.
I'm sharing content because I see a lot of traders being/becoming broke and I don't want you to be one of them.
Why have I been sharing so many articles so far?
I’ve shared one educational post a day because being a trader is a job.
And a job is the sum of many skills to acquire.
Each skill taken individually won’t make you a profitable trader.
Talking about me and the guys from my trading community, only all those skills applied altogether give us a shot at making money.
Trading is one of the most challenging and one of the most monetary rewarding activity.
Work on yourself first
Your trading profitability is a direct reflection of who you are as an individual.
It’s just is.
If you’re not profitable, it’s because you made some mistakes.
And if you made them, it’s because you didn’t work enough on yourself yet.
Having great trading signals is indeed an essential tool among the stack of tools to have but… this is not enough.
And I’m saying this as someone selling trading signals (and a trading course).
In a past life, when I worked as a back office Quant, we were strongly encouraged to workout, meditate, eat healthy, sleep 7+ hours, having some social life, etc…
Being a trader is first being a human with great habits leading him/her towards nothing else but excellence.
How can someone expects to perform well at such a tough job while being fat and/or sleeping 4 hours a night and/or not controlling his mind/emotions,…
YOU JUST CAN’T.
Trading is hard enough already and the market knows damn well how to take the hard-earned money from people who didn’t work on themselves enough.
Your skills stack
As an entrepreneur owning online businesses, I had to learn about sales, marketing, negotiation, copywriting, accounting, taxes optimisation, coding, hiring, building a company culture, …
Each skill taken separately isn’t enough to bootstrap a business.
All of them used together gave me a shot at succeeding
The same goes with trading.
The reason any very profitable trader I know became profitable after some serious time is because the stack of skills to acquire is consequential.
And I’m not talking about skills we can learn in a short timeframe.
I had to learn how to: (non-exhaustive list)
- Meditate
- Refrain myself from trading when I’m tired or sick or frustrated
- Put my ego side and time to time get back to trading with smaller position size
- Take my profit for the day and get out of my place and go outside
- Eat/sleep properly
- Relax and breath and do some NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest)
- Working out properly and building muscles -> I’m so sure there is a direct correlation for men between our Testosterone level and the courage to enter and manage difficult trades.
- Not be greedy -> One needs to get slapped hard in the face a few times to understand that
- Never anticipate -> many times I cut a trade before the stop-loss or I entered too early front-running some signal(s) - in retrospect, was really a stupid behaviour
- Psychology and Game Theory
- Code trading scripts and trading bots in multiple programming languages
- Listen to the right mentors aka traders way ahead of me in term of net worth
- …
Those skills used altogether compound and made me a very disciplined person - those are my daily non-negotiable behaviours.
If you’re not profitable yet, it isn’t necessarily because the signals you have are bad.
And to figure out if they’re bad or not, you need some trading experience… which comes from….. taking a huge amount of trades for an extended period of time.
Your lack of profitability, comes for most of you from some work you still need to do.
And by the way, each trade you take works on you.
Your trades work on you more than you work on them.
What I mean by that, the more trades you take, the more skilled you get as you keep learning about yourself.
A virtuous feedback loop.
Many traders who lost everything due to a big mistake knew how to make it all back and beyond because…. they already had the required skills.
Conclusion
A red-pilled trader could decide to put his/her money into a 100% trading bot because… learning all those skills is time-consuming.
My advice to that person is…. “Good luck with your endeavour, you’ll likely wreck yourself”
If you don’t trust me… well… I worked as a back office Quant coding trading bots for about 5 years in NYC.
I tested and built more bots than 99.99% of people.
Retail trading bots sellers are selling a concept, a dream which by definition doesn’t reflect the reality.
Regardless of the strategy, it’s unlikely a 100% automated bot performs well overtime as market conditions keep changing.
We’re now in uncharted territory with a very high inflation rate, extreme tensions between countries, an extreme defiance of people of their governments, the WEF, WHO, … (and how could we not blame them seeing what they did to us those past 2 years)
Anyway, what I’m strongly recommending as someone who built non-retail trading bots for a living: learn to trade manually first and then learn how to pilot a bot.
Quotes of the day
- “Never chase opportunities. Let it come to you by creating value and building rare skillsets.” ― Johannes Larsson
- “The ability to make wise choices is the most valuable skill a person can develop.” ― Abhishek Ratna
“Skills don’t die; only people do.” ― Anas Hamshari
“A good trader converts his skills to cash.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
I'll keep bringing a few articles like this every week because it helps me clarifying my thoughts AND giving back to the community makes me feel good about myself somehow :)
Thank you for reading
Dave
There is no bottom in the stock without a bottom in the bond
My Dashboard on Tradingview
www.tradingview.com
where I am monitoring the entire bond market in the world with my magma indicator, country by country.
When investing for the long term I first look the bond market before leaping in the stocks.
There are few simple and important rules to follow in this market.
1. Higher Bond yields = Lower Bond Prices = Bottom in the bond market is more bottom
2. Short-mid term bond yields is closing to long-term yields (example 2-Years yield = 10-Years yield) = This means flattening = not good for long-term investment, stay alerting for your paper profits.
3. Short-mid term bond yields is greater than long-term yields (example 2-Years yield is greater than 10-Years yield) = This means inversion = not good, imminent fear of recession (remember: stock market does not perform well during recessions)
4. Short-mid-term bond yields is less than long-term yields (example 2-Years yield is less than 10-Years yield and going lower) = That's fine, economics sounds good for long-term investments
What I see now: United States, Canada, Brazil are countries with the most prolongated inversion areas (highlighted with red circles in the figure above).
5. More prolongated inversion = not good, even more.
Flattening areas (yellow circles) have to be carefully monitored.
Few examples currently are showing good news (green circles) : Japan long-term and mid-term yield curves are fine and in the good direction. Same as in Australia.
What is margin trading & How does it work?
Margin trading is when you pay only a certain percentage, or margin, of your investment cost, while borrowing the rest of the money you need from your broker.
Margin trading allows you to profit from the price fluctuations of assets that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford. Note that trading on margin can improve gains, but increases the risk and size of any potential losses.
But what is the margin in trading? There are two types of margins traders should be aware of. The money you need to open a position is your required margin. It’s defined by the amount of leverage you are using, which is represented in a leverage ratio.
There are also limits on keeping a margin trade running, which is based on your overall maintenance margin – the amount that needs to be covered by equity (overall account value).
Brokers require you to cover your margin by equity to mitigate risk. If you don’t have enough money to cover potential losses, you may be put on a margin call, where brokers would ask you to top up your account or close your loss-making trades. If your trading position continues to worsen you will face a margin closeout.
Hey traders, let me know what subject do you want to dive in in the next post?
BIGGEST TRADING MISTAKES YOU MUST KNOW
While some trading mistakes are unavoidable, it is important that you don’t make a habit of them and learn from both successful and unsuccessful positions. With that in mind, these are the 10 most common trading mistakes.
1 - Not researching the markets properly
Some traders will open or close a position on a gut feeling, or because they have heard a tip.
It is important to back these feelings or tips up with evidence and market research before committing to opening or closing a position.
2 - Trading without a plan
3 - Over-reliance on indicators
4 - Failing to cut losses
The temptation to let losing trades run in the hope that the market turns can be a grave error, and failing to cut losses can wipe out any profits a trader may have made elsewhere.
5 - Overexposing a position
6 - Overdiversifying a portfolio too quickly
While diversifying a trading portfolio can act as a hedge in case one asset’s value declines, it can be unwise to open too many positions in a short amount of time.
7 - Not understanding leverage
8 - Not understanding the risk-reward ratio
The risk-to-reward ratio is something every trader should take into consideration, as it helps them decide whether the end profit is worth the possible risk of losing capital.
9 - Overconfidence after a profit
10 - Letting emotions impair decision-making
Emotional trading is not smart trading. Emotions, such as excitement after a good day or despair after a bad day, could cloud decision-making and lead traders to deviate from their plan.
Every trader makes mistakes, and the examples covered in this article don’t need to be the end of your trading. However, they should be taken as opportunities to learn what works and what doesn’t work for you.
The path to becoming a good trader
When a beginner learns to trade, they progress through stages as they develop their mindset.
The most commonly used learning model for trading is an adaptation of the 3 stages of competence model.
1. Unprofitable trader
This is the first stage that a trader goes through and they do not know that they have a lack of knowledge. In this stage, beginner traders will take their first few steps by downloading a platform, opening an account and begin to place trades.
However, they are influenced by emotion – usually lured by the thought of making a great deal of money in a short period of time.
Either one of two things are likely to happen for traders in this stage:
The trades turns against the trader immediately. They simply lack the experience to deal with the market environment.
New traders take large risks without a basic knowledge of risk management and they wipe out all previous profits and more.
2. Boom and bust trader
Boom and bust traders will realise that successful trading comes down to the psychology of the trader and their approach to the markets.
A basic understanding that you will never be able to predict what will happen in the markets, starts to form. You begin to realise that making money is based on a series of trades that incorporate winners and losers, and that it takes discipline to stick to a system, cut losses short and let profits run.
A trader in this stage will begin to enter and exit the markets whenever their system tells them to, without judgement and despite the emotion they are feeling.
3. Profitable trader
A trader is said to have reached the stage of unconscious competence once they have traded with so much practice that they are able to trade in an almost automatic mindset.
A disciplined approach requires very little effort and has become second nature.
At what stage are you at the moment?
JS-Masterclass: Sell Alerts / RulesJS-Masterclass #10: Sell Alerts / Sell Rules
In recent tutorials, we have covered different techniques and ways to identify low-risk entry points. We have talked about the perfect buy points and several entry patterns.
In this tutorial, we will discuss general rules for selling once we have entered a trade. Also, we will present a comprehensive list of warning signals which suggest to close a trade long before hitting the Stop-Loss.
1. Selling into strength
By far the best option for a swing-trader is to sell into strength. You will feel like a hero once you have mastered this technique!
Here are some guidelines for that:
a) Sell if you have achieved a gain which is a multiple of your risk. The minimum gain before selling into strength should be 2x the risk. Consider selling half and moving stop on remaining position to breakeven.
b) If your profit is more than your average gain and a multiple of your risk (generally 2-3x) consider trailing a stop or selling half and moving your stop up. You could also “backstop” your average gain or an amount you want to lock in.
c) The stock is extended and opens up on a gap; consider selling at least half or trail a tight stop.
2. Selling into weakness
a) The price hits pre-determined stop-loss – OUT… NO QUESTIONS! You will have to stick to this discipline before you will become a successful trader.
b) The stock closes below 20-day moving average, below your purchase price soon after a breakout from volatility contraction pattern; reduce shares when you have 3-4 days of lower lows without supportive action on day 3-4. This increases the odds of a failure.
c) Heavy selling with full retracement soon after low volume breakout. This is a bad signal – get out of the trade.
d) Key reversal on heavy volume when stock is extended – sell at least half.
3. Sell Alerts
Stocks will flash warning signals long before a big decline. Here are some to watch for:
a) Accelerated rate of advance (parabolic “blow-off” price action)
b) After extended move stock moves up 25-50% in 1-3 weeks (12 of 15 days up over 3 weeks)
c) Largest up day since beginning of move (look for reversal or churning over the next 1-4 trading days). This could mean that the stock is in its final leg up and almost exhausted.
d) Largest daily price spread since advance started
e) Largest weekly price spread since beginning of advance
f) Exhaustion gaps (after stock is extended – usually 2nd or 3rd gap )
g) New high on low volume which sometimes indicates the beginning of a phase 3
h) Heavy volume with little price progress (stalling action)
i) Drop below the 50-day moving average line on the heaviest daily volume since beginning of move
j) Largest one-day decline since beginning of move
k) Largest weekly decline on huge volume
l) Downwards action on large volume
Perfect Buy Points: The Power PlayJS-Masterclass #9:
Perfect Buy Points – The Power Play
In the recent tutorials we have some patterns leading to a Perfect Buy Point (Volatility Contraction Patterns, IPO’s – The Primary base).
In this tutorial we will cover the so called Power-Play.
Characteristics of a Power-Play:
1. An explosive price move on huge volume; the stock
shoots up 100% or more in less than 8 weeks.
2. The rapid price run-up could be induced by a major news
development such as an FDA drug approval, litigation
resolution, a new product or service announcement or
even an earnings report, or on no news at all.
3. The stock price then moves sideways in a relatively tight
range not correcting more than 20% over a period of 3-
6 weeks (some emerge after only 10 or 12 days).
Here are some examples:
Be that traderA structure is necessary to actively improve all the skills required to master trading.
Start by rating yourself on a scale of 1 to 100 for all these skills to come up with "stats" as you would have in a videogame.
Next step is to take the same approach as you would to level up in a said video game. Focus on the grind and to complete a couple of "levels" per day. You will see that with this concept in mind you will attain higher stats that you would want for your "perfect build".
Cheers to many pips.
How to Blow Your Account | Step-By-Step Guide 💰 to 🪙
Hey traders,
In this article, we will discuss the set of actions, habits and beliefs that will blow your account.
1. Trades are based on emotional decisions
Behind each trading position must be a reason.
The entry reason of a professional trader is based on a very strict and objective conditions, while an unprofitable trader follows emotions and intuition.
2. Stop loss placement is for losers
A lot of traders consistently neglect placing a stop loss. Remember, just one single trade without that may blow your entire account.
3. Set unrealistic goals
There is a common misconception concerning trading: that the equity size is not proportional to potential gains. Such a reasoning leads to various false conclusions.
One who is trading with 100$ account and expecting to buy lambo, will inevitably blow the account.
4. No time for trade journaling
Why to even bother yourself with trade journaling?! It is just waste of time.
Remember, that trading journal is one of that best tools for learning. Constantly assessing your past decisions, you identify the flaws of your strategy and fix that, increasing your future gains.
5. Trading plan is for fools
I know a lot of traders who trade without a plan.
Remember, that the trading plan is your roadmap. Without that, it is impossible to become a consistently profitable trader.
6. Blindly following other's view
While you are learning how to trade, your task is to learn the reasoning behind the trades of the pro's in the industry. Following them without reflections, you are not learning and, moreover, you are becoming dependent. Losing, you put the responsibility on their shoulders instead of yours.
Such an approach will lead you to failure.
Learn to become responsible in your trading decisions and execute your own analysis before you follow any other trader.
7. Who needs economic data
As we discussed many times, fundamentals are the driver of the market. Neglecting the trends and global situation, not studying the news, you will unavoidably be fooled by the market.
8. Indicators are the magic pill
I know a lot of traders, who spend thousands of dollars looking for a magic indicator - the instrument that will make tons of money.
The fact is that indicators are just a tool in your toolbox. Its goal is to provide some minor additional clues to your analysis.
Overestimating the importance of indicators, you will most likely blow your account.
9. Not investing in education
Many traders are spending their money not on education but on fancy tools, signal services, robots and indicators.
However, the fact is that only knowledge gives freedom, only skills can make you independent.
10. Back testing is pointless
Trying different strategies, many traders intentionally skip the back testing part.
Remember, that back testing is the most proven way to verify the efficiency of a strategy, allowing you to save time and money simultaneously.
11. Paper trading does not make any sense
Same thing with paper trading. For some reason, the majority of the traders skip demo trading, quickly opening a real account.
However, the fact is that demo trading is the best, risk-free tool for learning how the market works.
Unfortunately, these 11 fallacies and misconceptions are very common. Analyze your trading and make sure that you are not making these classic mistakes.
What would you add in that list?
❤️If you have any questions, please, ask me in the comment section.
Please, support my work with like, thank you!❤️
My trading setupWas recently speaking with a newbie trader and he was showing me his setup. Highlighting his specialized keyboard and mouse, together with a 49 inch widescreen monitor, and some fancy CPU. All up it cost him more than $5,000.
This led me to think, is a hi-tech premium setup necessary for successful (Profitable) trading? Should you prioritize funds towards a trading setup or into your trading account?
My trading analysis process:
1) identifying broad-based trends based on fundamental analysis
2) aligning the fundamental bias with the technical setup
3) calculation of risk management
This is why I have my trading setup like this, which I've found to be the most effective for me:
- Vertical screen on the side to read long-form news and articles.
- Horizon screen at eye level for my trading platform.
- Laptop screen used to write up my analysis
How do you have your trading setup?
Share a picture in the comments
Special Entry Patterns - IPO'sJS-TechTrading Masterclass : Special Entry Patterns - IPO's
In a previous tutorial, I have explained the general characteristics of a perfect buy point. In this tutorial, we will look at IPO's (Initial Public Offerings) and discuss how to identify primary bases.
IPO's coming out of primary bases can make huge price moves - let's discuss how to find the next monster mover, similar to what stocks like Amazon could achieve after their Initial Public Offering phase.
Perfect Entry Points – IPO’s – The Primary Base
When it comes to investing in IPO stocks, new issues don't play by the usual rules.
Companies making initial public offerings draw a lot of investor attention. That often results in unusual and brand-new chart patterns. Volatility can rise as investors size up demand for the new stock. Yet there are opportunities in these cases, if you can spot the correct characteristics amid the price-and-volume action.
The framework of a good IPO base is simple. The decline from peak to low usually doesn't top 20%, but the most volatile markets have produced declines of up to 50%. The length is often less than five weeks and can be as short as seven days. These two factors alone make IPO bases wayward cousins compared with proper bases, such as the cup with handle and flat base, which need at least five to seven weeks of work.
In an IPO base, the pattern typically starts within 25 days of the stock's first day of trading. Know the important similarities with regular bases. For example, the buy point is drawn by taking the prior high and adding 10 cents. The price gain on the breakout should be strong.
There are ways to evaluate these blind spots, however. Important factors include seeing a shallow correction within the base during normal market conditions, a large increase in price and a close near session highs on the breakout day, and heavy volume on the breakout day and week.
Also, the stock should generally form the base above its IPO price.
Example - ServiceNow (NOW)
The business software company, went public in June 2012, at 18 a share and has built its primary base during the period from the initial offering to April 2013 when the stock developed its first perfect buy point.