Yearly Archives: 2008

Opening Gap – Will it hold or will the market retrace?

A reader of this blog posted a question via comment the other day about trading opening gaps in stocks. …

Can I optimize position sizing during development?

Here’s a second trader question on the subject of evaluating trading system performance test results. Is there a …

Trading system equity performance

A member of my mailing list asked me this question about trading system performance: For the systems …

What is the front futures contract?

The other day I got a question about futures contracts from a member of my mailing list on …

If it’s icy out there you have to take small steps

In case you haven’t heard, the Northeastern U.S. was hit by a bit of snow over the …

Trading During the Holidays

The question gets asked every year around this time: Is it worth trading during the holiday period? …

Can you learn trading by reading books?

Here’s a question that is often debated in trading circles, and I’m sure in other subject areas …

The difference between discretionary and system traders

There are, generally speaking, two types of traders in the markets. One is the discretionary sort. The …

What do you think of X market?

The following note/question came in from a reader named James over the weekend. His question brings up …

Negative T-Bill rates?

Near zero and negative Treasury Bill (T-Bill) rates have been all the talk this week. Here’s a …

Watch your risk when trading multiple forex positions

The other day I received an email from a fellow in which he was describing his trading …

The key concept of The Essentials of Trading

As part of a big set of questions submitted by a reader (I’ve mentioned how that seems …

Markets and timeframes for price distribution charting

I received a set of questions following on my How to identify price targets for your trades post …

How to identify price targets for your trades

The following is an article I contributed to Trading Markets last week that I thought would be …

Are CFD’s good trading vehicles for new traders?

In response to the post I wrote on whether forex is the best market for new traders, …

How do you set position sizing in Metastock system testing?

Developing and testing trading systems is about more than just entry and exit points. It also has …

Forex is the easiest market for new traders, right?

Here’s an interesting question on the forex market asked by a reader named Rod. It’s one I’m …

Trading with Fibonacci methods

I received an email yesterday asking about trading with Fibonaccis. While I’m familiar with fibos, they are …

Efficient Markets: Should you even bother trading?

The question of whether the markets are efficient was broached again by a fellow blogger recently. The …

More trading rules that you might want to ignore

There was a post on the Trading Goddess blog  the other day which included “the four cardinal …

Revisiting the impact of these markets on traders and investors

The other day I asked the question “How have these markets impacted your trading?” (if you haven’t …

The End of Wall Street?

If you haven’t seen it already, there is a fantastic article by Michael Lewis entitled The End …

Is it ok to leave a trade open more than one day?

Yesterday I started answering an email from a reader, covering the part of what he was asking …

Should I use charting software, and if so which one?

It appears that the trend in trader questions landing in my inbox these days is to ask …

How have these markets impacted your trading?

I get a lot of questions from traders and I answer the vast majority of them here …

Taking a Look at Price Distribution Charts

Have you seen a chart like this before? (click to enlarge) This style of chart is known …

Improving your trading by thinking less

Analysis paralysis. We’ll all heard of it. Have we all experienced it? I know I have. My …

Can I build positions by adding to winners?

Over the last two days I have been working through a multi-part query which came in from …

Is it possible to trade only on the monthly charts?

In yesterday’s post I started to answer an inquiry which came in from a prospective equity index futures …

Which mini equity futures contract is best?

Over the weekend I received from a trader what I feel like is really a three-part inquiry. Rather …

The media won’t help you trade or understand the markets

It’s been said before. It will be said again. I’m going to say it now anyway. Take …

Please, please stop saying “the forex”!

I need to let loose a rant here – and offer some advice. Can someone please tell …

Which indicators and timeframe can be best used for scalping?

This question came in from a forex trader named Calvin. I am currently trading forex and wish to …

Which trading systems should I use?

Here’s a trading system question that came in over the weekend: Hello John, I’m happy that you’re …

FBR

Book Review: Fooled by Randomness

People are fooled into believing what is random has meaningful causality

Leading Indicators vs. Lagging Indicators

A question came up recently on the Trade2Win forum about what indicators are leading and what are …

How come you don’t just start trading full time?

How come you don’t just start trading full time? Wouldn’t it be more lucrative then working the …

Where can I get intraday forex data?

Here’s another question (or rather pair of questions) about forex data. I am in need of some …

Do you manage money?

A reader by the name of Mike asked me the other day whether I manage money. The …

A few interesting and worthwile trading and finance resources

It’s another crazy day in the markets today, so let me take some time out to offer …

Where should Fibonacci Lines be drawn from?

Here is one of the more detailed and specific trader questions I’ve gotten in a while. John, …

Where can I find this forex data?

A reader by the name of Tom submitted the following question about forex and related market data.   …

Trading with Elliott Wave, does it work?

Here’s good question that came in from a trader over the weekend. hi john, something that i’m currently …

Something to check out: StockTwits

Howard Lindzon, a hedge fund manager, has been involved in developing a new project called StockTwits. To …

Backtesting isn’t just about evaluating a trading system

Trading via technical analysis is mainly an effort in pattern recognition. Evaluating the price action on a chart …

Is it unreasonable to expect that rate of return in my trading?

A reader by the name of Kevin brings up a question that I know a lot of …

Why were you in that trade?

I want to ask a question of those who are trading the S&P futures. Since the audience …

Traders as Investors

Traders and investors – however you want to define those two groups – don’t often see eye …

Once you’ve suffered a huge trading drawdown, how do you recover?

I imagine this question is one that more than a few traders are struggling with at the …

Where do I put my stops to avoid being taken out?

This trader inquiry was in my email inbox this morning: I would like to know where to put my …