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Trading Strategies, Psychology
10 Ways to Manage Your Trading Psychology – a Blueprint for Development
Experts suggest that 80% of your trading outcomes can be attributed to your behavioural and psychological interactions with the market. It is your mindset that determines how well you comply with good trading, even if you are sufficiently disciplined to adhere to a written trading plan, have the motivation to even write such a plan in the fi...
6 Practical Steps to Improve Trading Discipline: #3 Create the motivation to consider change
In our previous articles we introduced the SIX steps to improving your trading discipline, offered some guidance on developing “awareness” and explored how to prioritise the trading discipline areas. If you haven’t yet read these articles, perhaps it is worth checking them out before moving onto this one. Step 1 - Awareness St...
The MACD – Useful indicator or just another pretty picture?
The MACD (or the ‘Moving Average Convergence/Divergence oscillator’ to give its full name) is one of the popular extra pieces of information we often see added to charts. The purpose of this article is to clarify what it may be telling you about market sentiment and offer a description as to how traders commonly apply this in their de...
Cognitive Trading Biases: #2 – Minimalisation bias
In a previous article we addressed the concept of cognitive trading biases as a barrier to potential successful implementation of a trading plan in the heat of the action you “press the button” on entry or exit action. This article discussed these biases - “loss aversion” which you can read here (click to read). In this arti...
Trading Time Management (with downloadable audit tool)
Trading requires a commitment of time. For each of us the amount of time we must dedicate to trading activities is limited and justifiably so by other life activities (for of course, we want trading to contribute rather than take away from lifestyle). Despite the importance of checking in on how you are using your trading time, commonly trad...
Quick Trading Tip #1 – Developing patience in your trading
When we first start to trade, or subsequently (as a more experienced trader) when we trade a new symbol or system we are often “excited” as we see a “hope” for better results. We often forget that the development of expertise in other areas we have in life (think about what you do in work now for example), you must invest time, effor...
Avoiding three pitfalls of shorter timeframe online trading
The relative ease of online trading today has not only increased the opportunity of access but flexibility to trade different time frames that can better “fit” around other things going on in life. Trading short timeframes is a popular choice for many online trading strategies. Indeed, the shorter time-frame charts e.g. 15 minutes or les...
Creating a trading edge – Is it possible?
A trading edge is a certain approach or special system techniques that, in theory, gives a trader some type of advantage over other market participants, hence making a trader more likely to achieve positive trading results. Many are cynical about the objective of creating a trading edge, despite the plethora of articles and books on va...
Six Steps to Improve Trading Discipline – #2 Prioritise and Identify your cause
In a previous article we introduced the SIX steps to improving your trading discipline and offered some guidance on developing “awareness” with a downloadable ‘checklist’ for you to complete. Before we start, If you haven’t seen this article, it is perhaps prudent to go now and complete the checklist as this will inform you ...
Getting started with your trading journal – Free Download
Those of you who have attended any of our LIVE Inner Circle education sessions, or participated in our courses, will know that a regular theme covered is the importance and benefits of measuring your trading. One of the key tools we often discuss is the use of a trading journal. For those of you less familiar with this as a concept, a ...
Six Steps to Improve Trading Discipline – #1 Awareness
With very rare exceptions every trader must battle with trading discipline at stages in their trading career. Commonly when we explore trading discipline, there is an obvious focus on what we will term “execution discipline”, that is engaging and following through with elements of your trading plan e.g. adhering to a pre-planned e...
3 Game-Changing Questions You Could Ask of Your Trading Journal Data
In previous articles we have discussed in detail the merits of a trading journal in offering evidence for both: a. How well you are following a trading plan? b. How well your trading system is serving you? (assuming you are already following a trading plan) We have also outlined the importance of “closing the circle” and maki...
5-point checklist for using chart patterns within your trading plan
Chart patterns (e.g. head and shoulders, triangles, double bottoms/tops), are commonly used to assist in trading decision making. If using these as part of your entry approach, their use should be viewed as a specific strategy, amongst others you may use, and so merit a dedicated section within your plan. This article outlines some of ...
Making trading choices – A trading journal?
We frequently refer both in the articles we publish and the weekly “Inner Circle” sessions we present, to the benefits of a trading journal. However, the reality is that many traders make the choice not to measure trading despite the logical benefits of doing so. Whether you do or don’t currently, the bottom-line decision you are...
Avoid the FOUR traps following a major trading capital drawdown
There are few long-term successful traders that at some stage have not suffered a major capital drawdown on their account at some stage. For whatever the reason the major factor as to whether you continue and get back to “winning ways” or continue to see further drawdowns is what you do next. Unfortunately, there are “traps” that...