Do Indicators Really Work?

My goal throughout this blog is to share with you the tid bits of information that might not be so obvious when starting out. In this particular post I want to talk about technical indicators and how they should and should not be used in your trading.

If you are the kind of trader who feels most comfortable building your own trading system, then all the more power to you. It is the path most professionals take! It makes it all the more crucial that you listen carefully to the advice in this post because you will very likely consider indicators at some point along the way to buliding your system.

As I'm assuming you are already aware, you have many variations of technical indicators. Moving averages, stochastics, MACD are some of the more popular ones, but there are dozens more.

The most important thing i can tell you is to keep your charts CLEAN. New traders have this false sense of security thinking that they improve their ability to predict price moves by packing the charts with 10 different indicators.

There is a psychological rationale that explains why us feeble humans think this way but i'll touch on that in another post. For now just take my word for it and resist the temptation to complicate things. It will only hurt your progress.

Having too many indicators on a chart serves only to confuse you because they often give off conflicting signals. In other words, one might be screaming buy, another might be screaming to sell and yet others will tell you to sit tight! How does a trader handle that much conflicting info?

The simple answer is that they can't. The trader will eventually suffer from a common trading syndrome known as Paralysis-By-Analysis: You are analyzing too many different factors and eventually find yourself acting on none of it. So strip your charts clean with the exception of maybe one or two indicators at most and build from there.

So, we've established that using too many indicators is almost always counter-productive but there is actually another reason so many traders fail with them. The indicators they do use are used entirely the wrong way!

In my next post i'll elaborate with some specific trading set-ups that make use of indicators that i've had some good success with. I'll explain which indicators those are and how you might consider using them to help your trading.

Stay tuned!

The Difference Between a Good System and The Right System

A good system is one thing: a system that has a high profit expectancy.

The right system is two things: a system that has a high profit expectancy AND a system that YOU can trade with consistency and discipline with minimal error.

Before i go any further into different styles and methods of trading, i wanted to take a step back and re-emphasize what i've been mentioning periodocally throughout the blog: YOU MUST FIND A METHOD OF TRADING THAT SUITS YOU AND YOUR UNIQUE PERSONALITY.

You might be asking how that's done or even why you should bother but let me assure you that even though you might not see it now, it will be well worth your time.

Before you ever place your first trade or build or buy your first system you have to do some soul searching. It's important to take a look at yourself and determine what you expect to get out of trading. Determining your objectives is such an important part of learning to trade yet so few take it seriously enough. The answers will ultimately serve as your guide to your perfect system.

Let's take a look at some things you should be finding answers to:

• How much time do you have to dedicate to trading each day?
• How much time will you dedicate to training, which can include personal psychological work, developing systems, reading, etc.
• What are some of your personal strengths and weaknesses? Are you patient? Do you consider yourself the introverted or extroverted type? Are you typically a disciplined person? Do you panic easily?
• Do you have personal conflicts (could be work, could be family or anything else that can arouse emotions with the potential to interfere with trading)?
• How much money do you have to dedicate to trading?
• How much are you willing to lose? How much drawdown are you willing to endure?
• Are you trading to earn a living or build wealth over time? If trading for a living, how much do you need to make in a year to live off?
• What are your return expectations?
• What kind of market conditions would you feel most at ease trading? High or low volatility currency pairs, pairs than tend to trend, range, a bit of both?
• How do you view money management? How will you manage your risk?
• How will you enter trades? Purely technical reasons or fundamental reasons? Combination?
• How exit methodology do you feel is best for you? Trailing stops? hard stops? Technical stops? Do you see yourself going for smaller, more frequent profits or trading less frequently but going for much bigger profits?

I can continue to go on but i think you get the main idea. For a more detailed explanation of this idea, i strongly recommend you read Van Tharp's Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom.

Write down your answers and let them lead you to a system or style of trade that feels right to you and fits your current lifestyle. Too many try to fit the system rather than letting the system fit them. Once all the building blocks are in place trading should be effortless because it's right for you. If it's not right for you then trust me when i tell you that you will eventually find a way to sabotage yourself that will show up in many different forms:

1. It might show up in the form of a lack of discipline, not following your plan
2. It might show up as you quickly losing confidence in a system when it starts losing
3. It might show up as a feeling of boredom, feeling the need to find something more exciting.

You see bad trading is not necessarily the result of a lack of discipline but rather not having the right system to trade with in the first place. Brett Steenbarger in his excellent book Enhancing Trader Performance, mentions that lapses in discipline are often subconcious attempts at moving away from something that doesn't fit to something that does.

So spend some time self-assessing and thinking about your objectives before placing your hard-earned money on the line...you will thank yourself later on.

Forex Signal Providers & Automated Forex Trading

In some previous posts, i was mentioning that one of the most effective ways to trade is by getting a solid grasp on Support and Resistance and Candlestick Analysis. Nothing has changed and i still believe that with 100% conviction. But not all traders are built the same and therefore what i consider to be the best may turn out to be the worst thing for another.

Having said that i would be doing the readers of this blog a serious disservice by not expanding my discussion to other types of trading - which brings me to the topic of this post: Signal Providers and Automated Trading

The fact of the matter is that S&R and Candlestick analysis take time to learn. They probably take more practice than any other style of trading out there. All the literature you get your hands on will tell you that trading has to be kept objective, but trading these methods is considered, by some, to be very subjective and time consuming to back test.

Many traders feel much more at ease with a method that is 100% mechanical, void of any judgement and subjective interpretation. This style of trading is very practical to program and quickly backtest because trading rules are extremely precise. It is, to this group of traders, the best way to remove emotional interference from the trading equation. These arguements are the primary reasons we see automated trading growing in popularity so quickly.

Signal Providers are now, more than ever, providing complete automated solutions to traders. Essentially, they provide you with buy and sell recommendations and automate the execution of the trades for you on your brokerage platform with the ability to override trades if you so choose.

I wrote an article outlining several things to watch out for when choosing providers and under what cicumstances traders can use them successfully because let's face it - there are many scams out there. I won't rehash it here so feel free to read it here if you haven't already. http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1107835

What i want you to take away from that article is the importance of managing your expectations and CONSERVATIVELY testing everything out for yourself. Question everything and never take anything for granted and you will come out so far ahead of other traders who don't bother. Every action you take should ensure you are protecting yourself.

If you read my article and are 100% serious about my guidelines, then you're ready to give the Automated Forex Trading System by PROSIGNAL a look. I have personally used these guys when i started trading about 6 years ago and they are still around today. They have evolved into something quite impressive as far as automated trading goes.

The way thier automated service works is this: Have a look at the performance data of the 200+ signal providers Prosignal has partnered with and decide which combination of strategies appeal to you the most. You then create a portfolio of providers that PROSIGNAL will trade for you through your brokerage platform.

Why i like PROSIGNAL in particular?

• Creating a portfolio of so many providers allows you to effectively diversify risk
  
• You have the flexibility to trade strategies from only 1 provider to as many as 100.
  
• Loads of statistical data provided to help you decide which providers are best
  
• PROSIGNAL provides plenty of sensible guidance to help you create your ideal portfolio (In my opinion, use a portfolio of providers that offer a profit factor of 1.5 or higher, at least 100 trades on record and a tolerable drawdown relative to total profit)
  
• Performance history also includes live trading results
  
• PROSIGNAL takes education seriously. They have a complete educational package to help get you up to speed on FOREX basics, risk management and trader psychology.
  
• They have phenomenal customer support
  
• Low cost trades.
  

WORD OF CAUTION:
It is very easy to look at the performance pages and get excited. Stay calm and objective and realize that what and how you trade will be dictated by a conservative risk management plan and how capitalized you are. You may or may not duplicate posted results.

In my experience, the posted results are legitimate, Prosignal is legitimate, and you can make money with them. But as with any style of trading, proceeding conservatively and patiently and protecting your downside risk is the only way to go, especially in the beginning. What i like most about Prosignal is that they are very open with this notion. Just decide upfront whether trading a black-box system fits with you. If it does, i truly believe there is no better choice than PROSIGNAL.

FOREX Software: Test Your Strategy !!

FOREX Tester is a brilliant piece of software that not only makes the critical process of testing easier, but more enjoyable, too. You have access to tons of historical data for several currency pairs, which allows you to perform a meaningful and statistically significant test of your system.

It has a complete charting package with various indicators and drawing tools (support and resistance, trend lines, etc...) as well.

In a nutshell, you can manually backtest your system by indicating directly on the historical charts where your trades would have taken place, while the software automatically keeps track of all the necessary statistics described in the previous post

Furthermore, you can tell the software what your money management rules are - basically, what you want to risk per trade. It will then account for that in your profit/loss statement statistics.

FOREX Tester is a truly innovative product that can do wonders for any trader's performance and confidence. Do yourself a favor and check out all the free instructional videos on the site.

You can also give a demo version a try for free. Although the demo version is somewhat limited compared to the purchased version, between that and the tutorials you should have a pretty good idea if it's what you're looking for.

Now, let's fast forward in time a bit and assume you've got a system you've tested. When you view your results, obviously the first thing you will turn to is the total profit. I urge you not to look at your profit in isolation from other important factors such as:

1. Drawdown. This is probably the most important figure and represents how deeply your account equity loses value from a previous equity peak. For example, if you start with $5000 and suffer a few losing trades that brings your account down to $4500, then you have endured a 10% drawdown. You can have a great system that yields insane profits, but how would you feel if on the way to those profits you had to go through a 60% drawdown? I personally cannot endure more than a 20% drawdown, so no matter how profitable a system is, i would never trade it knowing that the potential for this kind of drawdown existed. Reflect on this carefully BEFORE you trade!

2. Largest winner. If the largest winning trade in your testing is responsible for most of your total profit then steer clear. If, for example, you have net profit of $5000 but $4800 of that profit came from a single trade, then the system cannot be considered reliable.

3. Average winners and losers. The software will take all winning and losing trades and calculate their respective averages. The goal is to ensure your average winner is greater than your average loser. This is an important figure in establishing your reward:risk ratio over a series of trades, which is what really counts. As i mentioned in earlier posts, you might have a winning trade only 40% of the time but if, on average, your winners are worth $200 and your losers $75, then your reward:risk is 2.6:1, a very good ratio that would ensure you are still making money over the series of trades.

4. Expectancy. This is what you should be focusing on! It is basically a mathematical calculation that takes into account the accuracy of your system and its reward:risk ratio (also known as an R-multiple) and comes up with a figure. That figure is then multiplied by the number of trade opportunities the system made available. This figure, known as expectancy, allows you to establish how good your system is compared to others in terms of profit per dollar risked.

If we elaborate on the above example, which assumed you have a system that wins 40% of the time and loses the remaining 60% of the time. It also assumes the value of your average win to loss was $200:$75 or 2.6:1. Let's also assume there were 100 trades taken over the test period.

The formula is simply this:

Expectancy = (% winners x r-multiple) - (% losers x r-multiple)
(0.40 x 2.6) - (0.60 x 1)
1.04 - 0.60 = 0.44
0.44 x 100 trades = $44 expectancy per dollar risked

Use this formula when deciding which systems to trade and you will have a discernable advantage over the countless other traders who focus solely on the accuracy of a system. Always trade in favor of expectancy and NOT accuracy

Please do check out Van Tharp's excellent and practical explanations on this essential topic

Until next time, i hope you enjoy the many benefits FOREX Tester brings you
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FINAL WORD OF ADVICE: Keep your system simple! As complex as this world of trading may seem to be, the irony of it all is that success stems from simplicity. Don't litter your charts with countless indicators to try and explain and capture every market movement. If you use them at all, keep it to 2 indicators at most or you run the risk of having a curve-fitted system that perfectly accounts for history but is worthless going forward (more on indicator combinations in future posts)
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Your FOREX Trading System - How To Know You've Got a Winner.

As traders we must feel comfortable living life on the right edge of the chart, where what happens next is unknown.

As I mentioned many times in earlier posts, attaining a proper mind-set is key to long-term success. That said, a key mental characteristic of professionals is confidence; confidence that their systems will be profitable, confidence to pull the trigger despite not knowing how the next trade will turn out and confidence to trade their system with the utmost discipline even when faced with many consecutive losses.

A bit of a paradox if you ask me. How on earth can someone have confidence in a future outcome when, by definition, the future is unknown? That’s the mark of a true professional…to be able to march confidently in the face of uncertainty.

Suffice it to say that most people do not start out with that degree of confidence in the markets and most are not willing to do the necessary legwork to acquire it either. But that doesn’t have to be you. Take the advice in this article to heart and you’ll be trading with the mind-set of a pro in no time flat!!

Since no one can know what will happen in the future the only benchmark you have to work with is what’s happened in the past.

I am assuming that you already have a system, either one you purchased or one you’ve devised yourself, complete with entry, exit, stop-loss and risk parameters as we discussed earlier. So you’re armed with a system and have high hopes but what do you really know about the dynamics of your system? If you haven’t backtested it then you know nothing about it except its rules.

Too many traders get their hands on a system and simply assume it will work. They blindly place their trust in the system without truly knowing where they stand with it. This is why you MUST back test. By testing it you will give yourself an idea if the system can work in the future. It is the only fighting chance you have with a system before you put money on it. If it doesn’t work in testing, don’t expect it to work going forward either.

Whatever you do, PLEASE don't just take my word on any system suggestions i make in this blog! You have to make your own assessments, even on the ones you believe to be top-notch. I have saved myself fortunes by rigorously testing any system I get my hands on. And it is through this tedious, time consuming process you gain your confidence to trade a system, especially during rough times.

So, how exactly do you go about backtesting and what information do I need to get out of it?

First and foremost you have to get your hands on loads of historical data. Some advanced brokerage platforms provide it with their charting and other times you need a separate piece of software. Once you get it, this is the info you need to analyze from your backtested data:

1. Total number of trades you tested (I recommend a minimum of 100 trades over several market conditions)
2. Number of winners
3. Number of losers
4. Accuracy. (What percentage of trades turn out to be winners)
5. Value of winner. (What each winner was worth in dollars, on average)
6. Value of losers. (What each loser was worth in dollars, on average)
7. Maximum number of consecutive losses
8. Maximum number of consecutive wins
9. Maximum drawdown (what percentage did your account value lose from a previous equity peak)
10. The mathematical expectancy of your system – ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL CONCEPT

Now that I’ve told you why you have to backtest and what you have to get out of it, what about HOW? That is a good question to which there are a couple of answers. You can manually backtest or if your system is completely mechanical you can program it. I'll discuss each option and where to find the right resources for each in the next post.

The premise here is that even though past results are no guarantee of future performance, it’s fair to at least assume that if a system performed well over a long period of time in the past that the odds are favorable it will continue to please going forward. This is the way you acquire the necessary confidence to trade a system!

This is a crucial topic and I have lots more to say about interpreting your results, expectancy (what's that?!?), win/loss distributions (huh?!?!), software you can use to facilitate the process and actually make it fun. Until then, be well!

MONEY MANAGEMENT - How NOT to Lose Your Shirt (Part 2)

Let's start with a concrete example. If we take a look at this chart again of the EUR/GBP we see it is caught within a descending channel, trading up near the resistance.

Let's say we decide to enter a SHORT trade if the next candle that prints is bearish (red). I'm not sure why but the currency prices have been cut off. Let's assume we eventually enter the short at a price of 0.6740. We decide to place our protective stop loss at some point above the resistance line, say, at 0.6770. Our profit target will be set at the bottom of the channel at approximately 0.6620.

What does this translate to?

We are taking a 30 pip risk (0.6740-0.6770) for a potential gain of 120 pips (0.6740-0.6620). This is a reward:risk ratio of 4:1, meaning we stand to gain 4 pips for every 1 pip of risk. This is a fabulous ratio! How do we decide how many contracts or lots we trade on this trade then?

To figure that out we need a few pieces of information:
1. Account balance, which we will assume to be $ 7500.00
2. What percentage of this account do we want to risk on a trade (1% or $75.00)
3. What is our stop loss in pips: 30 pips

Then we plug that info into this nifty little calculator:
» Adjust the position sizing Mataf.net:

What this will reveal is the maximum pip value you should be trading. The results show that each pip should be worth a maximum of $2.50 in order for you to lose a maximum of 1% should your stop of 30 pips be hit.

I'm not sure what broker you deal with so check their pip values for a single mini contract of EUR/GBP. It should be worth approximately $1.80 per pip. So that means if you trade 2 mini contracts on this trade, you will be trading a pip value of $2.60 - slightly over the recommended $2.50. So, it's best to be conservative and round down to 1 contract.

Play around with the tool and see the changes in pip values according to the parameters you enter.

The above money management methodology is called the Percent Risk Model. It is the one i like the most as it allows you to equalize your dollar risk no matter the size of stop you use. For example, whether if i have a trade on that has a 30-pip stop loss or a 100-pip stop loss, this model adjusts your position size accordingly so that your risk in dollars stays consistent all the time.

There are many other models of money (risk) management that you may feel more comfortable with but the important thing is that they all must be able to put the power of compounding returns on your side. Too many traders start trading and arbitrarily place single contract trades without regard to the power of compounding. I cannot say enough how powerful the impact is on your bottom line.

Which reminds me, i want you to have a look at these guys:

Trader's Club is a highly reputable training group/program for aspiring, struggling and experienced traders alike. They make no claims of instant riches, only that riches are within everyone's reach if you do the right things. Have a look and decide for yourself if they are right for you.

But if you do one thing, sign up for their FREE VIDEO SERIES on risk management. It will drive home everything i've said, only far more effectively. They will send you 4videos (1 per day) explaining all elements of the topic and how to properly implement the power of compounding returns. Specifically it illustrates through live account shots how a $1000 account grew to over $11,000 in about 1 year.

Finally, i strongly advise you to read through Van Tharp's book on the topic here:

This is an authoritative industry resource on system development and does a superb job of describing different money management (AKA position sizing) styles and the impact each style has on trading results. Check out the chapter on position sizing and read it over a few times. You will be stunned at how much of an impact it has on your results. No trader ever questions its importance after reading Van's work.

MONEY MANAGEMENT - How NOT to lose your shirt!

Let's take the previous post one step further.

We talked about one way of timing an entry (after the Spinning Top candlestick formed near the resistance line we went short). We also talked about where to exit the trade if profitable (near the opposite support line) and where to exit at a loss (above resistance line).

But what about how much to risk? How large a position do you put on? How many pairs do you trade simultaneously? These are actually the more important questions.

You see the simple fact of the matter is that trading is and only ever will be a pure numbers game.

A good analogy is the coin-toss. We all know that the odds of any individual toss coming up heads or tails is 50/50. But what are the odds of the coin landing on the same side 6 or 7 times in a row? If you toss the coin long enough, the odds are pretty good that you can get those kind of streaks.

Here's an enlightening statistical chart that drives the point home as it relates to trading:



Print this chart and put it somewhere that you will always see it. Use it to remind yourself that even the most robust systems will have losing streaks. Depending on the nature of the system, many professional traders' winning trades account for about 40-50%. Looking at the table, you can see that over the course of 50 trades there is about a 30% chance that the trader will hit a streak of 6 consecutive losses.

Once you get used to support and resistance trading your accuracy can go as high 60-70%. But even at 60% accuracy you run about a 17% chance of hitting 6 consecutive losses over your next 50 trades.

It is not even a question of if you hit a losing spell...it's WHEN you hit it!

What do you do then if your otherwise robust system hits a losing streak and you're risking 15-20-25% of your account on each trade? BUST!!!! You have a great system that can do well for you but you lost because you were risking too much!

How on earth are you supposed to make money then, you ask? How do professional traders do it then if some of them have only 40% winning trades?

Simple...proper money management (AKA risk management)! They hold on to their winning trades long enough such that over a long series of trades, the value of their winners far outweigh the value of their losers. In other words, if a trader is only winning 40% of the time but his winners are worth, on average, $200 and his losses are worth only $75, then the trader is making money over time. That's the real secret!!! The pros aren't trading for accuracy nearly as much as they are trading to ensure the VALUE of winners outweighs the losers.

They also trade position sizes (lots or contract sizes) small enough to ensure that they survive the eventual losing streak.

Traders make millions in spite of poor accuracy because they have the discipline to respect the relationship between what they risk on a trade and what they stand to gain. They never look at either factor in isolation. They will have the discipline to let a trade go if the potential gain is too little in relation to what they stand to lose. You have to be able to do the same.

It's hard because we are psychologically wired to want to be right all the time. But as i hope you are beginning to understand, successful trading is NOT about being right all the time...it's about making as much as you can when you are right and losing as little as you can when you're not. So, how do you get over this psychological dilemma? It's surprisingly easier than you think but the answer goes beyond the scope of this particular post (...to be continued...)

So, the bottom line question: How much should i risk on my trades?

The answer will largely depend on how robust your system is (which i will be discussing in a future post on testing) but it is safe to say that a beginner should be risking nothing more than 1% of his account value on any single trade.

In the next post, i'll introduce specific styles of money management. You decide which one is best for you. It doesn't really matter as long as some form money management is actually put to use. I will also show you a neat little tool to help you calculate your contract sizes given your account balance, % risk you want to take, and your established stop loss level.

The best FOREX trading system

This post is a little long but i implore you to consider it seriously and take your time. This is probably some of the most important information you will come across as far as system development is concerned. So please bear with me.
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The title may be catchy but truth be told there is no such thing as the BEST system - only what's best for you.

In my experience, however, trading on what's called Support & Resistance in conjuction with Candlestick Analysis have proven to be one of the most reliable forms of trading out there. There are several techniques to isolate support and resistance on a price chart but the basic definition no matter what is as follows:

SUPPORT: A price point on the chart for which the market has historically had a difficult time moving below.

RESISTANCE: A price point on the chart for which the market has historically had a difficult time moving above.

Definitions aside, i do not want to bog you down with a technical explanation of Support & Resistance and Candlestick Analysis. The recommended reading from previous posts should have you up to speed on that. But a couple of online resources that i have found particularly helpful in putting it all together, that are dedicated strictly to candlestick trading can be found here:
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Click Here! - an amazing e-book that explains the essentials of candlesticks and gets you profiting sooner rather than later.

Great resource if your education budget is limited, too!!
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This course is really the cream of the crop of candlestick courses. Very reasonably priced considering the sheer volume of quality information in there and saves you loads when compared to buying the program's individual components. No stone is left unturned with this course and convincingly demonstrates why candlestick analysis has been around for 4 centuries. Master the information in this course and you will have a discernable edge over so many others who don't have the time or inclinination to dedicate to learning this wonderful art.

Oh and one final thing...don't be thrown off by the fact the author talks about stocks or commodities during his analysis. It doesn't matter! Candlesticks have been around so long because they are adaptable to absolutely any market.
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What i really want you to understand is WHY these 2 forms of trading work so well. I want you to clear your mind of all those indicators and the dozens of variations that you've been reading about, and focus on ONLY these 2 things for now. These 2 methods alone can make you rich over time without ever having to look at another method in your life. There! You should now be able to breath easily knowing that there is all of a sudden much less to learn.

So, what makes these 2 methods of technical analysis so powerful? Simply put, they capture the essence of market psychology. They tell a very clear story of what the market is "feeling" as a whole and what the market is likely to do next.
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Set-ups from some of my previous trades will make this very clear:


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Look at the first chart. Did you see how price tended to bounce around very specific price points and had a hard time getting away from them. I simply used the top resistance line in conjuction with a Spinning Top candlestick formation to tell me that this was a likely turning point.

So, that's a potential entry point. What about a stop loss? A stop is ideally located at a point that would tell you that the trade will likely no longer work. When you enter a short position, you basically want the currency pair to drop or lose value. If it goes up or gains value then you're losing money. How far up does it have to go before you decide to pull the plug and take your loss? If the pair has moved up a reasonable distance above the established resistance line, then it is more likely that the pair will continue going up. Best to get out and preserve your capital. What about a profit target? How about at the bottom of the range where price is likely to re-bounce?

This above was just a simple illustration of how you need to think about planning a trade. There can be many variations in the time frames you use, how you can enter the trade, how you can exit it and set stops. But in essence the basic steps do not change:

- Search for a set-up on a suitable time frame
- Look for entry point on that set up
- Set a suitable stop loss
- Look for exit point.
- Be disciplined and do not change plan mid-trade.

Now look at the second chart. This is just text book set-up!!! Look at how many times price has challenged these trend lines!

These are not some well-picked examples and as your own research is clearly indicating, these are only a couple of common variations of how Support and Resistance can be used. These kinds of trades litter the charts on all time frames. You just have to train your eye to see them by practicing. And these points help keep your trading adaptable, helping you pick out both range-bound (like this case)and trend trades (like the second chart)

You need to realize that reactions to these areas of S&R are not just flukes. They become important reaction points because they reflect the very basic human emotions of fear, greed and regret. This is what drives the decisions of most traders. Price has a memory is what they say, and i believe it to be 100% truthful.

Think about it, if you fail at something it is a very basic psychological response to associate a repeated future attempt with that previously failed attempt and, consequently, hesitate. Alternatly, if you do not try again, you will no doubt regret it if the attempt would have proved successful.

Most technical indicators you've been reading about are lagging or REACTIVE in nature, meaning they are a derivation of what the market has already done. They have no predictive power per se, except that they may be self-fulfilling (if many people are looking at the same thing then it could come true). Now I'm not suggesting indicators don't work as a means of trading, I'm just saying i personally don't use them often. When i do, i don't use them in the traditional sense (more on that in the future)

Support and Resistance and Candlestick analysis are PREDICTIVE. They reflect the market's emotions and illustrate with high probability what might happen next.

Again, please take this advice seriously...You would be doing yourself and your trading career a huge favor by focusing your study of Technical Analysis on these 2 topics. I have only touched on the power of Support and Resistance and Candlesticks in this post and i hope i have convinced you that it is worth further study.

In addition to the ones i suggested in earlier posts, there are literally dozens more books you could read on the topic. Books are great but in my almost 7 years trading, i have not seen an online resource as credible and dedicated to the study and implementation of support and resistance as this:



This program is so worth its weight in gold as it goes way beyond the call of duty as far as quality information. A large part of this course is dedicated to the topic of this post, but it also looks at so many other things to help kickstart your trading career. It is a COMPLETE package from A-Z. This is by far one of the more credible programs in the industry today.

I cannot give you a magic formula here because there is none. What i have shown is a very basic approach to trading support and resistance that is no more or less valid than any other variation you will surely come across. That is the beauty of S&R...it's so dynamic. Experiment with what you read in the recommended resources and test everything (more on testing systems later). You will find your niche!!

FOREX Trading Systems

As i mentioned in a previous post, trading systems are not nearly as important as your mind-set and ability to manage your risk. But make no mistake, you still NEED a system! A proper mind-set and good risk management are meaningless without a system to apply them to.

In layman's terms, all a system is is a methodology on which you decide when to get in and out of trades. It is meant to keep your decision-making process as step-by-step as possible. So how do you build one?

If you're doing your recommended reading, you have most definitly come across different possibilities on which you can build one. Some swear by fundamental analysis, where, in a nutshell, you spend your time analyzing various components of the economy to come up with a decision on how to trade certain currency pairs.

More likely though is that you are reading alot about technical analysis, which essentially operates on the assumption that history tends to repeat itself. Historical prices tend to form patterns that can be used to establish a probable future direction.

There will forever be a battle between the fundamentalists and technicians as to which is better, so let me get it out there now...In my humble opinion, fundamental analysis is completely unnecessary for you to succeed. That's not to say you cannot incorporate it into your arsenal at some point but i know many successful traders who don't bother with it at all.

Fundamentals don't move markets, people do. And people are emotional creatures each with their own unique interpretation of data. It is technical analysis that captures this emotionality so i will focus on this for purposes of helping you establish a system.

If you've read any book on technical analysis you surely must be going crazy by now trying to figure out which indicator to use. Do you use one or a combination? What's better: MACD, RSI, Stochastics, moving average crossovers? Should i trade price ranges or should i try to catch the big trends? Should i take small but frequent profits or should i go for the homerun trades?

I can certainly understand how you can get lost in it all. And it's too easy to get ahead of yourself, seeing dollar signs next to every new indicator that's discussed. So, slow down for a moment and take the time to reflect on a few things that the technical books might not have mentioned:

First, recognize that the act of trading should not be difficult. Learning and preparation take time but when you are ready to trade, it should be easy as pie. And the only way it can be easy is if you accept that trading has to work around your schedule. You cannot alter your life to accomodate trading because it will consume you. So, if you have a full time job then it is unlikely you will be able to day trade, in and out of the market all day long. Time frame is crucial. Trade a time frame that makes sense to your lifestyle. There is a method out there for everyone, but it has to fit YOU!!

Second, know your strengths and weaknesses as an individual. As ridiculous as this sounds it will have a profound impact on which system you ultimatly settle on. For example, if you are a patient and conservative type of person, then you are not likely to select a system that involves hugely volatile movements. It would drive you crazy and you would not be able to see your plan through.

Do not judge the merit of a system based solely on the bottom line. It has to feel right and fit your unique personality IN ADDITION to being profitable.

Alas, this sometimes takes some experimentation with different systems but you keep these things in mind and you will find it.

In the next post, i will try and cut through all the fog with a method of trading that can fit just about everyone. In the mean time, i'd like to recommend the following reads. It captures the essence of what i am saying in this post 10-fold that every great trader always has a system that fits with their personality.

Please do not take this topic lightly as it all falls back to trading with a proper mind-set

Forex Leverage:Traders beware!!

Our previous discussion on selecting brokers would not be complete without touching on the most important thing they make available to you, the trader. And that thing is called LEVERAGE.

Leverage can be a magic word or a painful word depending on how you employ it. All brokers offer it and will often use it as an incentive to attract you: "GET STARTED TODAY! 400:1 LEVERAGE, MINIMUM STARTING BALANCE $250" Wait a minute...i thought it took money to make money?!?! Forex is unique in that it rivals all other markets out there when it comes to the amount of leverage made available to traders.

Picture this: A trader starts with a balance of $1000, places a trade that turns out to be a winner worth 100 pips (a pip, as you have probably already read in your studies, represents the minimum price fluctuation a currency pair can make.)Depending on the type of account this trader has, this 100 pips could represent $1000profit. How about that!! A profit of 100% on a single trade!! INCREDIBLE! It is leverage that makes this kind of return possible.

Is this an exaggeration? Not at all! And it is this potential that attracts so many new traders to this arena. It is possible. But it is also what sees most traders leave significantly poorer than when they came. Leverage is what makes this market most attractive but misusing it makes it most dangerous as well. And unfortunately way too many traders misuse it.

Let's get specific here. I'm not sure how up to speed on this concept you are, but this article provides a pretty complete picture of the idea:

(So you have a more involved understanding of the article, let me just point out that brokers typically offer 2 types of accounts, a standard and a mini account. The standard account allows you to control lots each worth $100,000 worth about $10 per pip, and minis allow you to control lots of $10,000 worth about $1 per pip.)

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/07/forex_leverage.asp

Spend some time with this article and make sure you fully understand the dynamics of leverage. It may seem like there are alot of calculations to consider before initiating a trade to make sure you don't overleverage yourself, but in reality it doesn't have to be that involved. The above is meant to give you a detailed breakdown of things so you fully appreciate the concept. But when it comes time for you to trade, you just need to keep it simple.

Understanding how leverage will fit in to your overall money management plan is important but let's put things into perspective a little more simply by looking at how most professionals deal with it (and this is really what i want you to take home from all this):

Most professional traders and money managers trade in such a way that they are never risking more than 2% of their total trading capital on any single trade. In other words, if you have a $5000 account, you should never lose more than $100 on any single trade. This means you should probably be trading 1 or 2 mini lots per trade at the most. This will probably equate to about 4:1 REAL leverage (depending on stop-losses you use). This is the most leverage a beginner should use.

Do not let emotions like fear and greed influence you at this early stage of the game. Rest assured there are ways to overcome these basic human emotions in the trading arena that we will discuss in later posts, but for now just trust me. Use leverage conservatively and intelligently.

Place your trades with this perspective in mind and leverage will take care of itself. If the pros do it this way, don't think for a second that a newcomer can use loads of leverage and survive for long. Won't happen.

Where do i start???

The first thing that any aspiring trader must do is to make a commitment - a commitment to acquiring the necessary knowledge BEFORE placing trades. And there's lots of it to acquire. If i had to summarize what you have to learn, I'd list it as follows:

- Entering orders (long orders, short orders, stop losses, etc) on a brokerage platform.
- Reading charts (technical analysis)
- Understand how different currencies behave in relation to each other
- Understand how the news and various economic factors affect your trades and the market.
- Writing systems
- Testing systems
- Become disciplined
- Make a money management plan
- Manage risk
- Learn how to take losses
- Know when and when not to trade
- Control your emotions
- Create a trading plan.

Overwhelmed yet? The list can go on for much longer, so if you are feeling overwhelmed you should be. It's ok! What i am trying to do here is dispel any myths that might be floating around in your head that trading was supposed to be easy. You need to give yourself some time and set daily learning goals. You are going to have to break things down into little tasks. Forget about how much you stand to gain in the market for now and, instead, think about what you stand to lose if you don't learn the necessary things.

Get started by reading a book on the basics. Here are a few excellent suggestions:



Professional traders spend alot of their time reading, and newbies are no exception to that rule. Read everything you can get your hands on. In the markets there is always something to learn. If you get to the point where you feel that there is not much more to learn technically, you will always find there is something to learn about psychologically. In fact, 90% of the books i pick up now are on trading psychology.

I personally prefer reading books because they present information in a condensed manner. You can find everything you need on the Internet but it is scattered and takes time. Books are easier to reference later on (and it starts to look nice on your bookshelf after a while).

Just a word of caution: In the beginning it is very likely that you will feel overwhelmed, especially with the reading you will be doing on Technical Analysis. There are literally dozens of indicators, even more applications for those indicators, combinations of indicators. Just read them over and try and grasp a few of the main ones (Support & Resistance is important). As you practice them on your own charts, they will start to make more and more sense.

And don't worry because we will be talking about each of these factors in detail in future posts.

Until next time...happy reading!

The mind-set of the successful trader

"The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it." Charles Swindoll

The above is a very powerul quote that captures the essence of a successful trader's attitude or mind-set.

Let me give a few specific examples of various trading situations to clarify the point.

- A trader has his 5th consecutive loss. The losing trader will get upset and subsequently increase his risk on the next trade to recoup the losses. Just as bad he might begin holding on to losing trades in the hope that the market will reverse and save him. The successful trader does something very simple yet disciplined: cut his losses quickly and patiently waits for the next opportunity. He acknowledges that trading is a game of probabilities and that losing streaks are part of the game. He continues to manage his risk intelligently.

- 2 traders each set a profit goal of 25% for the year. The losing trader will get greedy and continue to trade believing that trading is easy and more profits are within easy reach. Stops respecting risk management, takes big risk trades believeing that he can't go wrong. The winning trader shuts off his computer and spends the rest of the time with his family, realizing fully that anything can happen in the market and that if he abandons his plan he will very likely get hurt.

The difference between the winners and losers in this game is the winners think and do the things losing traders won't even consider. In Mark Douglas' legendary book "Trading in the Zone", he outlines quite well what these differences are.

This is absolutely essential reading for any trader of any level. I would even go as far as re-reading it several times throughout your trading career. Based on your own experiences you will pick up new gems with every single read...guaranteed! His first book, "The Disciplined Trader" is also quite valuable, but i would start with "Trading in the Zone"



What you should take from "Trading in the Zone" is quite simply that there are 5 fundamental truths (and 7 rules of consistency) about the nature of the market that winners embrace as naturally as they breath. Print them out, keep them in front of your computer and read them aloud every single day. They are:

The Five Fundamental Truths of Trading
1. Anything can happen.
2. You don’t need to know what’s going to happen next in order to make money.
3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge.
4. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another.
5. Every moment in the market is unique.

The Seven Principles of Consistency
1. I objectively define my edges.
2. I predefine the risk of every trade.
3. I completely accept the risk or I am willing to let the trade go.
4. I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation.
5. I pay myself as the market makes money available to me.
6. I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors.
7. I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and, therefore, I never violate them.

What it takes to be a successful trader

Now if you are like most newbies, you are anxious to get started. In fact, you are looking into the currency market because you've seen the kind of money that can be made and you just can't think of anything else right now except jumping on the bandwagon, right? Let me say one thing at this point: HOLD YOUR HORSES!

There are many things that contribute to success in the market place, but too few resources spend their time telling what the most important thing is: MIND-SET (otherwise known as trader psychology)

Your mind is the driving force behind everything, including your trading. It controls your beliefs, your perceptions, your decision-making process and so many other things that will have an influence on your trading. Inability (or unwillingness) to acquire and control a proper mind-set is probably what leads 95% of all traders down the path to failure. As grim a statistic as that is, it is true. Don't doubt it. So, your best bet is to take these next 2 posts more seriously than you will any other post and you won't have to end up in that 95%. It really is up to you.

Trading successfully really can be narrowed down to 3 main things (and each will be discussed in detail in future posts):

1. Method. This is your strategy that dictates when/what you buy and when/what you sell. You need a set of rules to keep your decision process consistent at all times. This accounts for about 10% of success

2. Money. This refers to your money management plan, better known as risk management. It dictates how much you risk on any given trade or set of trades. Important to realize is that you can have a brilliant method, but if you mismanage your risk, you are doomed just the same. This accounts for about 30% of success.

3. Mind. This is the most crucial element and the one that deserves most of the attention. It accounts for the remaining 60%. In fact, many would say that it accounts for as much as 90%.

No matter though. The individual percentages are not nearly as important as your ability to embrace all 3 elements together. Truth be told is that if these things are not all working in concert with each other, long-term success cannot be achieved. You can have the mind of a robot, free of emotion, free of all the natural human biases, and risk too much on each trade and blow up your account! You can have the best money management plan on earth, but if you don't have a sound method of making decisions you will blow your account.

Before going any further please take a moment to manage your expectations according to the 3 success factors. I will be elaborating much more on methods and money management, but in the next post i really wanted to spend some more time on attaining the proper mind-set.

Why FOREX?

What brought you to the currency market? Because the currency market is the best darn market to trade! Ok, i realize that is not a very scientific statement but it is true. Let me elaborate.

This particular market has many favorable features over the other more traditional markets like the stock market. Not only is the foreign exchange the largest financial market on the face of the earth with over $3 trillion changing hands every single day, but it's also the most liquid. In other words, getting in and out of positions is almost instantaneous and you basically never run the risk of being stuck in a trade that you cannot liquidate. For every buyer there is always a seller, and vice-versa.

With this kind of size and liquidity, and the fact that the market operates 24/7, 6 days a week, no single event can impact the market for prolonged periods of time. This, by definition, is a good environment for more steady, trend-like (unidirectional) moves thus adding an element of predictability to this market, which also lends itself well to certain types of analyses (technical analysis).

The foreign exchange market is also unregulated. There is no central office of operations and no formal control. Most newbies might consider this to be a scary prospect but in reality it works out much better. Centralized markets (like stock and futures markets) tend to monopolize the market place. Decentralized markets (like forex), still have a hierarchical, credit approved, structure among the largest banks (otherwise known as the interbank market) and the various market makers (brokers). It all comes together to form a seamless operation.

Now i realize the above paragraph might be a bit confusing but the main point you should basically take from it is that the forex is decentralized in nature and runs just fine. If you want further information on its structure, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/06/interbank.asp

The most important feature of the FOREX is the high leverage it allows you to employ. We'll discuss how leverage can benefit you and hurt you in later posts and how you, as a newbie should approach leverage, but suffice it to say that this capability allows many people to make huge profits with very little capital. Alas, this is probably the single most influential factor bringing people to the currency markets.

So, you've decided to become a currency trader?

First and foremost, congratulations are in order! Although the journey you have decided to embark upon is surely going to be a challenging one, it will also be an extremely rewarding one if done properly.

Before i begin, i want to make it perfectly clear that i do not claim to be a professional. But i have been trading for several years now (since Jan 2003)and i am proud to say that i have reached a point where i can consistently profit. I think that puts me in a position to help some of you out.

If it's any consolation at all, i have been where you are at now...at the beginning! I know how that can feel overwhelming. You want to get started but don't know where to begin. Some of you may feel the need just to get started and see what happens. Some of you have surely come across various programs, mentoring services, signal providers that tell you exactly when to buy and sell, courses, methods of trading, etc, etc...the list goes on. Where on earth do you begin and how do you do this right?

The idea of this blog is to serve one and only one main purpose: to help you get started

It will contain some of my personal experiences, things i did right, things i did wrong and how i got to the point of profitability. But more importantly, how those experiences can help you.

We'll talk about brokers, styles of trading, types of analyses, money management, leverage, mentors, trading psychology, useful books and other resources pertaining to all these topics.

I will do my best to organize it in such a way that each post covers one idea at a time and do it in a chronological fashion from newbie up to the point when you are ready to take your first live trade.

Finally, keep in mind this blog is NOT a course. It is meant to introduce the necessary topics in a brief and concise manner while referring you to reputable and credible resources for you to further expand your knowledge on your own. My ultimate goal is to build this blog up to such a point that the information and resource content will be so complete that any newbie will not need to turn anywhere else. Whatever this blog cannot answer it will likely contain a resource link that can. It is a one-stop shop for everything you need to learn this craft, without driving yourself crazy trying to find it all yourself. So stay tuned!