Category: Trading Tips

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

The Superbowl Indicator

I know this might mean a bad year in the stock market for 2008, but I’m pulling …

Take the Trading Long View

One of the most important keys to success in trading is to take the long-run view of …

Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More

A Trade2Win member going by the moniker of bluetipex made posted the following recently in response to an earlier poster …

Did You Freak?

Be honest. Were you freaking out today? For a little while there it was getting kind of …

Use Market Mechanics to Your Advantage

This is an article I wrote for Trading Markets that I thought my own readers would also …

Oh, Woe is Me!

Today was an awful day. Well, sort of. OK. I might be getting a bit dramatic here. …

When Free Isn’t and Paying Makes Much More Sense

One of the things that comes up on a fairly regular basis in the forums and other …

Risking Something Other Than 1-2%

The idea that you should only risk 1-2% of your trading account is a bit of advice which is …

Hedging One Forex Pair with Another

The hedging topic often comes up in forex forums. One recent example was a trader who likes to trade GBP/JPY …

How do you Define Trading Success?

Success is a word that gets tossed around alot in the discussion of trading performance and trader …

Absolutes in Trading Often Mean Absolute Disasters

One of the things that I’ve learned along the way is to be very careful when anyone …

Trading in a Fog

I’m glad I don’t have to actually do any trading today. Thanks to a late night watching …

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Misunderstanding the Bid/Ask Spread in Stock Trading

It’s been my experience that many people don’t really understand how the bid/offer spread plays a part in all markets, including the one for stocks. This post looks to remedy that.

Don’t Swing too Hard

Have you ever seen a baseball player swing so hard at a pitch that he lost his …

A Set of Trading Rules

There’s a post on the Kirk Report blog which offers up 12 Trading Rules. In general terms …

It’s one thing to know what you should do, another to actually do it.

The following quote from an article on the New York Times web site (Can We Turn Off …

Using Bollinger Bands to Identify Reversal Points

I have used Bollinger Bands in my trading and market analysis for a great many years. In …

Millionaire Trader Advice

There’s a new book out which is garnering some attention. It’s title is Millionaire Traders and is …

Modeling the Stock Current Market on 1987

One of the things going around the market these days is the idea that the price action …

Understand from Where Expert Opinions Come

The development and growth of the internet has been a fantastic boon for folks everywhere. Never has …

The value of short-interest

Short interest is an interesting statistic that’s worth understanding. It tells you how many shares of a …

An example of what can really drive the markets

Yesterday was a pretty interesting day in the markets. And I do mean “markets”. Most people will …

The PEG

Most stock market traders are familiar with the PE ratio. That is current price divided by the …

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Where do prices come from?

Want to understand where the prices you see coming across your trading platform come from? The blog post should help clarify things for you.

Close stops do not lower your risk

A lot of new traders fall in to an insidious little trap. Because they hear from those …

Trading competitions are games, nothing more

This week CNBC kicked off it’s Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. They’ve put plugging the stock trading competition …

Make sure your instincts match your environment

Well, my time out west is nearly at its end. It’s back to the Northeast first thing …

The value and usefulness of inflation data

Yesterday the US CPI inflation figures were released. There was, predictably, much talk about the figures on …

Accept and recognize your mistakes

One of the things that can cause major problems in your trading is the failure to accept …

Looking at volatility, historically speaking

There has been a ton of talk in the markets about the lack of volatility lately. Bill over …

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Trading for a Living vs Trading for Wealth Building

This posts looks at how trading for a living and trading for the purpose of increasing your wealth can differ.

Never expand your timeframe

One of the things that falls in to the category of hoping the market is going to …

Fear is healthy, greed is good

In this overly sensitive day and age it is commonly said that in order to get the …

Stop-hunting is NOT the problem some people say

A topic that comes up a lot on forex discussion forums is “stop hunting”, though it isn’t …

Golf and Trading – Learning from Tiger

I’m not a golfer. The extent of my playing has been a whopping total of 9 holes, …

You don’t have to trade you know

I came across a headline yesterday while flipping through the collection of blogs I normally skim. It …

Trade real money, not paper money

In the last chapter of The Essentials of Trading I wrote something that many people would consider …

The easiest and stupidest way to lose money

I did it again. I made a stupid mistake on an order entry yesterday afternoon and sure enough it cost me money.

Keep your head from ruining perfectly good trades

I was recently responding to a post on one of the discussion forums I frequent that I …

Easy stock option trading

Several years ago I stopped trading stocks all together. After more than a decade in the market …

Taking a closer look at trading system win rate

Yesterday I wrote about the three elements needed to assess and compare trading systems (Thoughts on Trading System …

Thoughts on Trading System Performance

I was recently alerted to some commentary on trading system design and backtesting. That grabbed my attention …

Trade Commodities without Trading Futures

In 2006 we saw the advent of currency exchange traded funds (ETFs). They are instruments traded like …

The better you are, the better you want to be

“If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better” – Lindsey Buckingham That’s from …

Trading forex via the stock market

Thinking about trading forex, but not sure you want to the leverage spot forex trading or trading …

Trading as a team activity

One of my personal issues with trading is how individual and solitary it can be. For a …

Cross-over lessons for trading

Are you aware that I coach competitive collegiate volleyball? If not you are now! This time of …

Trading doesn’t just mean stocks

For most people, especially those who either aren’t involved in the markets or haven’t been for long, …

A Little Trading Story

I got an email from Trading Markets yesterday.  As you may be aware, I have been contributing commentary …

Trading Courses: Save Your Money!

The other day I was having a conversation with a guy in the futures brokerage business.  We …