Category: Trading Tips

Articles and comments intended to help teach trading and investing to new and novice market participants.

Conspiracies, Regulations, and Trader Paranoia

Last week I posted No More “Hedging” for Forex Traders to discuss the pending NFA rule which effectively …

Shifting from Trade Signal Follower to Trader

Trader Rob from north of the border in Canada (at least that’s north of the border for …

Forex “Hedging” Continued

In yesterday’s No More “Hedging” for Forex Traders post I pointed out a new rule from the …

Stop Getting Hung Up On Stops, Targets, and Risk/Reward

“Is 30 pips a good stop?” “Should I use 50 pips as my target?” “Your risk/reward ratio should be …

5 Things to Do Before Trading

I came across a post on another blog which outlines the 5 things to do before investing …

Be careful with mean reversion trading

Mean reversion. That term comes up in trading and investing from time to time. It basically means …

Why are stocks and the dollar trading inversely?

One of the questions that’s come up a few times of late on the discussion boards is …

Being a Focused Trader

Here’s an email from a member of my mailing list which brings up a lot of the …

Thoughts on CANSLIM

Last week I received an inquiry from a fellow member at Trade2Win. I have your book and …

Individual Stocks are Bad

There’s a post on the Moolanomy site about the subject of investing in individual stocks. Which makes …

Which to Choose: CFA or MBA

I got a question via a comment to my Trading Jobs – Making the Transition from a …

Picking a Good Business School

The question of business schools (meaning MBA programs) comes up on a fairly regular basis on the trading …

Picking the Right Market to Trade

Here’s a question I know a lot of new traders have – or at least they should …

Trader Tax proposal in Congress

In case you have heard about this yet, there is a proposal in Congress to introduce what’s …

Selecting stocks and ETFs suitable for trading

Picking the best markets and vehicles to trade is a major part of developing your overall trading …

Insider Trading Secrets and Conspiracy

Under the category of “Don’t Get Sucked In By This” I offer part of the contents of …

Trading Simply and Using the Right Trading Tools

The other day Brett Steenbarger referenced a post by Trader X in which he talks about simplifying …

Using Unusual Options Activity to Predict Large Stock Moves

Options have become an increasingly larger focus among stock market traders of late. Recently a question came …

Afraid to Trade? Build Your Trading Confidence

Confidence is a HUGE factor in trading. On the one side, the lack of it can create …

Want Trading Advice? Answer These Questions

If you’re a new trader asking me for advice about how you should move forward I’m almost …

Borrowing to Fund Your Trading or Investing

I’ve recently been thinking about some things related to my own personal finances in regards to taxes, investing, …

Defending Options Trading Against Blogger Attack

A fellow trading blogger wrote some things which really irked me. I’m not going to say who …

One Trader’s Path – Guest Post

One of my list members answered the call to contribute some thoughts on trading and trader development …

Happy Accidents are Rare in Trading

Brian Shannon at AlphaTrends recently wrote the post Bad Trade Gone Good (with some luck). In it …

Choosing Day Trading

Ray Barros, in his post Day Trade?, brings up the subject of why people choose to become …

One Question Before Investing in that Stock

The Jutia Group blog recently suggested the One Question You Need to Ask Before Buying Any Stock Now. That …

Good Trading Goals: Focus on what you can control

Alex at My Trader’s Journal got me thinking about objectives with his 2009 Goals blog post. In …

Dangerous trading myths which aren’t so dangerous

I’ve been receiving a series of emails from a person trying to get me to sign up …

Keeping things simple in your trading

Beanieville posted Don’t Let All Those Technical Analysis Gurus Confuse You on Tuesday with the primary suggestion …

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? …

The difference between discretionary and system traders

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

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Leading Indicators vs. Lagging Indicators

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

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 …

Traders as Investors

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

Very, very, very bad trading!

The following posting was pointed to me. I think it originally came from Craig’s List. The poster’s …

Lehman and company, like bad carry trades

In the forex market there are tons of strategies which basically boil down to being carry trades. …

Does coaching of trading psychology, require a successful practitioner?

Picking up on the thread from Those Who Can’t Trade Teach, ducati998 authored Selling education and trading methodologies. Actually, he’d entered …

Some thoughts on new traders and their development

Ray Barros included his beliefs on trader development in his recent Plan & Personality post. Here they are: I …

Keeping Perspective – You’re Not “A Trader”

One of the things everyone who trades needs to do is to keep things in perspective. Trading …

Picking apart more trading rules

A member of the Trade2Win forum posted the following set of trading rules. I love it when …