Things I wish I knew my first year of tradingI breakdown some common trading misconceptions and how I conquered them
1) There is no "best strategy"
Strategy is one relatively small part of trading success, most strategies can be profitable other variables such as discipline and emotional control will determine whether you see success.
2) Get comfortable losing
If you are comfortable losing (within the set rules/parameters of your strategy) it will make the aim of becoming more consistent much easier. Your next trade is less likely to be destroyed by PTSD of losing and have less clouded judgment.
3) More trades = More money = False
More time than not taking fewer trades (depending on your strategy and general frequency of trades) will mean you are likely to be more selective and thus make more money. Aim for quality over quantity.
4) Focus on controlling emotions
How I solved this was by journalling, evaluating where I was wrong or making any errors generally made it easier for me to put actions and steps into place to stop them from happening again.
5) Learning proper risk management
Simple enough, without this you will lose all of your money.
Trading Psychology
Your Trading Plan Is Everything You NeedImagine yourself having the perfect trading plan. It suits your psychological needs and lifestyle. Yet, you're not confident in your strategy. Do you follow your trading plan? Or do you close winners early and take a full 1R loss on losers? This is what happened to me.
Why Trading?
I took up trading because it sounds like a very lucrative side hustle. Learning how to achieve a 1% profit can scale my earnings. A 1% gain on a $1,000 account is $10, but the same 1% gain on a $100,000 account is $1,000. This offers significant leverage of my time. This means that if I succeed in building trading as a career, I do not have to survive on a 9 - 5 job, paying me for 8 hours of my day. I can enjoy life wherever and whenever I want. I can take a day trip to Japan for some sushi and be back home at night in my bed to sleep. I want to be a very successful person, having everything I want, not worrying if I can afford to buy the latest iPhone.
The Plan
So my career plan is to build up my prop firm funded account into the 7 digits. Get consistent 4 digits payout per month. Build my personal trading account from the prop firms profits. I built my plan so that I will not deviate from what I want to achieve. I have to follow a step by step method to achieve what I want. There are also contingency plan. For example, if I do not succeed in trading, at least I have my day job as a safety net. Survival comes first. If you worry about putting food on the table or paying your bills, you should refocus your priorities.
This is exactly the same as a trading plan. Your trading plan is same as your career plan. You have your entry criteria. When price gives you confirmation, you take a trade. When price does X, you close the trade. When price does Y, you move your stop loss. When price does Z, you take partial profits. You have a step by step method to guide your trades.
Be honest with yourself. How many times have you broken your trading rules this month? How many times have you deviated from your trading plan this month? My number is 3 this month. Why? Greed. Overconfidence. Hopeful. I was greedy as my trades have tight stop losses and I was expecting price to do what I expected it to do. Everything lined up. Multi-timeframe directions, liquidity, and volume all pointed to a high probability trade. It's near a high-impact news event. My position was in a drawdown. 2 minutes before the news, my trading plan indicated that I should close the trade now. I closed 2 eyes. Went down to the 5 seconds chart. It's 08:29:50. The price is starting to turn volatile. My heart is pumping from all the adrenaline. 08:29:59.. 08:30:00. The price shot up taking me out. What happened next, is as you guessed it. Price went up too fast. Slippage occurred, resulting in a loss of -3% instead of the expected -0.5% if I had followed my trading plan. Yes I still do make mistakes.
Compounding Effect
This 3% loss might seem small to some of you. 1 or 2 winning trades can cover this loss. Imagine if I took 3 of such trades in a week. That's already close to a 10% loss. This will be a huge deal to your trading psychology. The risk of these high-risk trades might seem worthy to you. But they can't give you enough assurance that you will achieve positive results in the long term. There are a lot of uncertainty during red folder news release. Price moves very fast, and might take you out before moving in your direction. Spread increase and could take you out even before the price hits your stop loss.
You are not following your trading plan by taking such trades again and again. You are building very bad habits. You are developing your attitude and habit in a wrong way. You're training yourself to take trades based on gut feeling and emotions. You should be using a solid trading plan which has proven (I hope) to be profitable. You can only achieved this through many hours of backtesting.
Habits are hard to change. By developing your trading attitude in the wrong way, it will be hard for you to be profitable. You're relying on luck in trading, and luck is not a decent trading strategy nor trading plan. Bad trading habits can lead to serious consequences. You could over-risk, over-leverage and even over-trade. You will take on more losses than you wanted. All these compounds your trading account in the wrong direction. What you want is to compound positive actions and bring your account equity upwards. Without positive actions, you are reinforcing negative actions and attract losses.
Deviation From Your Trading Plan
Taking trades that deviate from your trading strategy is a no go, even if it ends up being a winner. This could be a lucky trade. Luck is not a sustainable trading strategy. What if you did this again and the trade turns out to be a winner again? It will inflate your ego and lead to more of such trades. When you luck runs out, you will find that you lose more than you win.
To be successful, you have to identify bad trades and cut them from your trade executions. Many times your trading results will improve by eliminating all the bad trades. Finding ways to improve your risk-to-reward ratio or your win rate is not the only way.
You build success through consistency and repetition. If you’re not putting in the work day in and day out, you will not succeed. To succeed, you have to do it even when no one is watching you. You have to follow strictly to your trading plans. You have to do it when you do not have an accountability partner. One day, you will get your “overnight success” because you’ve been putting in all the work consistently. No one says it’s going to be easy.
Transformation
The day that my trading changed was when I started to plan out what I want to do with my life. I'm 30 this year. How many more decades do I have left? I do not want to slog for another 30 years working in a 9 - 5. I do not want to squeeze in a crowded public transport every morning to go office to do work that I could have done at home.
I have my personal finance all planned out. Next, I planned out my trading career path. Knowing my personal finance ins and outs are the most important criteria in setting my path. I know on average how much do I need a month to survive and for entertainment. Let's say I need $3,000 a month to have a decent standard of living. I know my trading strategy can yield me an average of 2% a month. If I work backwards, I would need a $150,000 account. This can be done through funded prop firm accounts.
I gave myself 1 year to get a funded account, and to get my first payout. I started small. Started out with $10k challenges. The only rule I have, is to follow strictly to my trading plans that I've backtested for hundreds of hours. I gave myself permission to fail. I allocate enough budget for my challenges every month. I failed many challenges. I passed some, but did not manage to clear phase 2 challenges. I tried and tried again.
3 May 2023 is the day of my first prop firm payout. It's only $200 post-profit split. Yet, this shows me what I can achieve by following my trading plans. This shows me what I can achieve by taking the same trades over and over again. Again, I'm still doing the same things over and over again, following my trading plan. Happy to share that I have another profit split incoming in June next month.
Trading Psychology
“There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can, and those who think they can’t, and they’re both right.”
- Henry Ford
Things will never be easy. Think about it. If you want 6-pack abs, it’s going to take you hard work and consistency over a long period of time. People want it to be easy. They crave for instant gratification. The reason why 6-pack abs is so sought after is because it’s hard to get. If having 6-pack abs is easy to get, then everyone can get it. If everyone has it, then it will lose its prestige and value.
Same goes for trading. If trading was so easy like following a trading plan, then everyone will be able to be profitable. Remember that 95% of the traders lose money. Constructing your trading plan might be easy, but executing is hard. What will you do if you're on a losing streak? Will you have the mental strength to execute the same trades that fit your trading plan? Do you doubt your trading strategy?
How A Trading Plan Should Look Like
1. Markup your chart. Mark the areas such as liquidity zone, point of interests, liquidity grab, direction of the market and the demand and supply zones. Do your multi-timeframe analysis here. Remember that high probability trade is to buy at discount levels, and sell at premium levels.
2. Set alert at your point of interests (Where to buy and sell)
3. Write down your analysis on the chart. If the price hits your point of interest, I would expect X to happen. When X happens, I will do Y.
4. When the alert goes off, go back to your chart and see if your analysis in step 3 still holds.
5a. If yes, mark out roughly where your stop loss and profit target will be. See if the RR is decent enough. If yes, then wait for the price to give you a confirmation. If no, either wait for a refined entry on the lower timeframe, or to wait for another confirmation.
5b. If not, repeat step 1.
6. Once price gives you a confirmation, calculate the lot size based on your risk management.
7. Once you're in the trade, you can either forget about your trade and let it hit TP or SL, or actively manage your position. This will depend on how you backtested your strategy.
8. Once your trade hits the TP or SL, journal it. Record your entry, take profit and stop loss. Take screenshots. Record your emotions and feelings before, during and after the trade.
Mentor
Creating a trading plan is 1 part of the trading puzzle you need to piece together. Trading strategy and psychology are other important components. They will make or break you, and your trading account. I have various mentors at different stages of my trading career. They helped me in their own ways, and shaping who I am today. I can confidently say that without either one of my mentors, I will not have found any successes in trading yet. I'd still drift around, looking for the next holy grail.
Stay consistent. Stay safe. Success is just around the corner.
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Secret of Success in Trading: Patience, Emotions, Psychology
I vividly remember how I started to trade 8 years ago, how I was learning, and the things that I was doing.
Contemplating my old self, I notice a dramatic shift in my mindset in regard to trading.
Staring at the charts and desiring to make money on price action, I wanted to become a consistently profitable trader. Making the priorities, I decided to sacrifice my time on studying technical analysis, totally neglecting trading psychology and risk management.
Learning different trading strategies, I always came to the same result: the account went blown and nothing seemed to work.
Strategies of fancy traders on YouTube, strategies from best-selling books on Amazon, nothing could produce any penny.
Not giving up and pursuing my ultimate goal, I came to the conclusion that I set my priorities absolutely incorrectly.
To be honest, I always thought that trading psychology (like psychology in general) is s*cks. Moreover, I considered risk management to be kind of obvious, banal topic not deserving much attention.
Learning risk management techniques, applying them in day trading, I finally saw a glimmer of hope.
Reading a dozen of books on trading psychology, contemplating my mistakes, and observing my behavior I noticed so many wrong, incorrect things that I did on a daily basis.
With time and practice, my mindset shifted.
I realized that most of the strategies that I applied and that seemed losing to me, in fact, were decent.
It turned out that mastery of technical analysis is not enough for profitable trading. Instead, that is just a tiny part of what must be learned.
Now, when my students ask me about the most important things to learn & study in trading, I always say:
trading psychology and risk management go first, technical analysis is the secondary.
❗️ Do not neglect these topics and give them due attention. They are an essential part of your success in trading.
🤔 Do you agree with the pyramid that I drew?
What is an "R"? Discover the Most Popular Way to Manage RiskUsing R multiples is one of the most widely used strategies by professional traders for managing risk and tracking results. The R multiple concept is extremely easy to use and implement into your own strategy. With this simple idea, money management will become a breeze! If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear them!
3 Essentials to Start TradingA very warm welcome to this video which is all about the 3 Essentials to Start Trading .
This is for all of you out there that may be new to trading, that haven’t got a feel for the market yet and haven’t got started and maybe you’re asking yourself ‘What is it I need to do now to get myself up and running?’ We found out of the 20,000 plus traders that we’ve mentored over the time that we’ve been running live trading seminars and running these start up basecamps, what generally tends to happen is you get traders who want to get up and running, want to start now and want to know what they need to do?
So we broke it down into three essential things that you need. The first one is knowledge . You need some knowledge of what you’re going to be doing in the market. In a nutshell, what that means is you’re going to need to know exactly what to do, when to do it, what the pips pricing means, when to buy and sell, you need a profitable trading strategy – all of these things are knowledge. Knowledge can be acquired in many different ways. One of the things that we recommend strongly is reading the right kind of books. There is a fantastic list of books that you can get and these are available on our Facebook page. You’ll be able to see the types of books that we recommend you read. The other thing to be very careful of is the wealth of information out there on the Internet. What I would strongly recommend is to find a trading mentor that can guide you through on a step by step basis in a custom environment that is suited around you, ideally on a one to one basis. That would be the best way to learn and be mentored in the financial markets. You need to have the right knowledge but don’t get immersed in all of the knowledge available on the Internet because there is so much junk out there. Having seen 20 years in the markets between myself and Thiru we’ve seen all of these traders that have come to us and they’ve got all of these deeply ingrained habits in them which are so hard to shift and they think that they’ve accumulated so much knowledge but actually a lot of it is just completely useless. So you really need to work with someone who can give you the guidance that you need. That’s very important and I strongly recommend that. So that’s knowledge. Get around the right people, the right guidance and the right types of books.
The second thing that you need is a broker account . With a broker account what you need there is a facility to be able to buy and sell the market. Let’s say, for example, you have invested already £15,000 into a trading account. That trading account needs to be with a broker, ideally regulated in the country in which you’re trading. If you’re not sure about how to select a broker account, check out my video on how to select a broker where we talk about three essential things that you should look for personally when a selecting a broker. That will give you the facility to be able to hit the trades, to be able to enter the market, and buy when your strategy and your set up gives you that signal to do so. Once you’ve accumulated the right knowledge you need the right type of broker account.
The final thing that you need on your journey is a mentor . This is so critical and I can’t overemphasise how important it is to have the right trading mentor because the right trading mentor will make the difference between being hugely successful and just feeling demotivated. A mentor is someone who has been there, done that and got the T-shirt! That is, they have an established track record, they’re transparent in their dealings, and they’ve got logs that can verify everything and you’re comfortable working with them that they will push you to get you to the next level of goals. It is really important to work with a mentor. There are two things actually that have a deep impact on our lives. One is the books that we read, this falls under knowledge, and the second is the people that we associate ourselves with or the company we keep. In this case, that’s your mentor. You need to have someone around you who has been there, done that and who is actually living the knowledge and not just talking about it. Look for people who walk the walk.
If you have these three things, you have all the tools you need to get up and running and to be successful in the markets and ingrain the right types of habits and that’s what we’d love to see for you.
So give us your comments, give us your feedback and keep in touch. Until the next time, as we always say, stay disciplined, follow your plan and Trade Like a Master.
Team at MastertheMarkets
Learn Why Most of the Traders Fail
The evidence suggests that only a very small proportion of day traders makes money year over year.
There are certain patterns which may separate profitable traders from those who ultimately lose money. And indeed, there is one particular mistake that in our experience gets repeated time and time again. What is the single most important mistake that led to traders losing money?
Here is a hint – it has to do with how we as humans relate to winning and losing.
Our own human psychology makes it difficult to navigate financial markets, which are filled with uncertainty and risk, and as a result the most common mistakes traders make have to do with poor risk management strategies.
Traders are often correct on the direction of a market, but where the problem lies is in how much profit is made when they are right versus how much they lose when wrong.
Bottom line, traders tend to make less on winning trades than they lose on losing trades.
Humans aren’t machines, and working against our natural biases requires effort. Once you have a trading plan that uses a proper reward/risk ratio, the next challenge is to stick to the plan. Remember, it is natural for humans to want to hold on to losses and take profits early, but it makes for bad trading. We must overcome this natural tendency and remove our emotions from trading.
That will help you to be a consistently profitable trader.
✅LIKE AND COMMENT MY IDEAS✅
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Learn How to Improve Your Forex Trading 🔝
Whether you're new to Currency Trading or a seasoned trader, you can always improve your trading skills. Education is fundamental to successful trading. Here are some tips that will help hone your Currency trading skills.
⭐️Plan How You Will Trade
You may have heard the adage, "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." This is particularly true in Forex speculation.
Successful traders start with a sound strategy and they stick to it at all times.
⭐️Most traders fail because they make the same mistakes over and over. A diary can help by keeping track of what works for you and what doesn't. Used consistently, a well-kept diary is your best friend.
⭐️Patience
Once you know what to expect from your system, have the patience to wait for the price to reach the levels that your system indicates for either the point of entry or exit. If your system indicates an entry at a certain level but the market never reaches it, then move on to the next opportunity. There will always be another trade.
⭐️Discipline
Discipline is the ability to be patient—to sit on your hands until your system triggers an action point. Sometimes, the price action won't reach your anticipated price point. At this time, you must have the discipline to believe in your system and not to second-guess it. Discipline is also the ability to pull the trigger when your system indicates to do so. This is especially true for stop losses.
⭐️Realistic Expectations
Even though the market can sometimes make a much bigger move than you anticipate, being realistic means that you cannot expect to invest $250 in your trading account and make $1,000 each trade. Although there is no such thing as a "safe" trading time frame, a short-term mindset may involve smaller risks if the trader exercises discipline in picking trades. This is also known as the trade-off between risk and reward.
Trading is nuanced and requires as much art as science to execute successfully, which means that there is only a profit-making trade or a loss-making trade. Warren Buffet said that there are two rules in trading: Rule 1: Never lose money. Rule 2: Remember Rule 1.
Stick a note on your computer that will remind you to take small losses often and quickly rather than wait for the big losses.
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How To Trade For A Living?Have you ever thought what is it like to be living life without a day job?
I'm sure many of you have the same experiences as me. Let's take a trip down the memory lane.
A life without a day job. That's nice. You don't have to wake up at 7am to prepare your day, dragging your feet to the washroom to washup. 7.45am you're out of your house, getting ready to squeeze in the public transport. Looking around you are people similar to you, scrolling through their phone, watching Netflix, or closing their eyes trying to get some last minute rest before the 9 - 5 grind begin. I sure think about it every time I need to go office instead of working from home. I have a dream of enjoying a life without day job, and I don't want to leave it as a dream.
When I found out about trading on YouTube, I thought how easy trading was. I just need to draw some demand and supply, some trendlines and wait for breakout. Take a long or short based on the confirmations given and I'll be rich.
Next moment, I'm in the live market with my $500 account buying and selling 10 lots of forex pairs. I got lucky on my first few trades, turning that $500 into $1,000. I feel like a god. This is so easy. I'm gona quit my day job in a few months time. What happened next is as you guessed it. I blew up the account with a few losses.
Over the next few months, I tried to take trading seriously. Absorbing all the content on YouTube every single day. Time and time again, I blew my accounts. Maybe trading isn't so easy after all. Think about how many times have you blown your accounts so far?
I tried looking around, from Babypips to Reddit to Forexfactory. I was introduced to copy trading, signals, expert advisors and account management services. I tried them all, losing 5 figures of money in total in a span of 2 years. That's a story for another day.
I took trading really seriously a few years back after signing up for a mentorship which took me to profitability eventually.
Time To See Success?
I worked hard and eventually came up with a strategy with a win rate of 34% and average return of 2.6R. I thought of borrowing money to fund my trading "career", or even just trade full-time without a safety net. My backtest results showed me an average return of 10% every single month. In my mind, I thought that I could be really rich by compounding all these profits. I can't remember why, but I realized it wasn't a good idea.
It was a good decision I didn't go ahead with my plan. What I failed to considered was that a period of drawdown and losing streak can damage my trading psychology. I did not have any live experience back then. On paper it sounded nice, having an average return of 10% every month, I could literally double my account once every few months.
The problem here is that like many of you, I was overly optimistic with my backtest results. You have to understand that a trading strategy accounts for only 30% of your trading career. There are actually many profitable trading strategy out there that are very simple. However, as simple as they might seem, we just like to think that the grass is greener on the other side, always wanting to find the next holy grail with high win rate and high returns strategy.
Meat Of Your Trading Career
If a trading strategy only accounts for 30% of your trading career, where do the other 70% go to? If you've been reading attentively, you will know that the answer is trading psychology.
Trading psychology is an underrated skill that many traders and investors ignore. Even if I give you a profitable strategy, if you do not have a trained trading psychology, you will turn it into an unprofitable one and call me a scammer.
Do you remember how do you feel when you lose a trade? Do you feel sad, angry, and demoralized? How do you feel when you lose 3 trades in a row? Let me ask you again, how do you feel when you lose 5 trades in a row? You start to deviate from your trading plan and start taking bigger positions, hoping that the next trade will help to cover the losses you've made. I don't have to remind you that this is a recipe for disaster.
Without getting your trading psychology in tip-top condition, you are unlikely to survive trading for a living for long.
Trading For A Living
Trading as a full-time trader is very different compared to when you're trading with a full-time employment income. Without your day job, you do not have a steady stream of income. Let's say your monthly expenditure is $2,000 and your day job gives you a steady income of $5,000. You have nothing to worry about. You are not afraid of not able to pay your bills on time, you do not need to be afraid of not having enough money for groceries. You still have leftover money to have fun and invest.
You don't stress over having a steady stream of $5,000 monthly. As long as you don't screw up, you are unlikely to get fired from your day job.
Trading for a living is different. First, you have to ensure that your strategy is profitable. Second, you have to ensure that your trading psychology is strong enough for you to survive in the live market. Third, you have to ensure that your capital is large enough for you to make constant withdrawal, AND compound your trading account at the same time.
Before you say "this is easy" and submit your resignation letter, please take a few moment to understand the importance of this. Are you already trading live at least for a few years? You must ensure that your trading strategy can survive all kinds of market condition - a year is a good gauge to begin with.
Personal Finances
Aside from your trading, it's good that you make sure you have your personal finances in order. Jumping to trading live means that you will forgo your monthly recurring income and solely relying on trading for income, which is not consistent. This is even worse if you are in a period of drawdown.
Imagine you have bills to pay, mouths to feed and debt to pay off. Without any income for a few months, you will feel the stress and pressure start to kick in. This will inevitably affect your trading psychology, leading you to overtrade or even taking trades that don't fit your trading plan.
The most important thing is to ensure you have at least 1 year's worth of your living expenses saved up. Of course if you can save more, it will be better. This is to cover your basic necessities and to pay off mortgage, bills and potentially any medical needs that might arise in the future. Having this stash of money in your savings account will take pressure off your back as you do not have to worry about not profiting from the market. During period of drawdowns, you will be less affected and pressured to make the "right" and "profitable" trades.
Taking It "Slower"
I know it's very exciting wanting to trade for a living by ditching the 9 - 5. You don't have to report to anyone. You don't have to wake up early and squeeze on the public transport. You don't have to adhere to a working culture that you don't like.
I don't like to take too much risk. What I'm doing right now is on top of my 9 - 5 job, I trade. To fit my current lifestyle, I'm trading on the higher timeframe instead of scalping on the seconds or 1 minute timeframes. This allow me to still have a consistent monthly cash inflow while allowing me to trade and build my account size. At the same time, I'm also tackling funded account challenges and have been consistently getting payouts. I want to make sure that I have a decent safety net before transitioning into a full-time trader. It might take me a few more years, but I would rather not having stress and pressure which might screw up years of my progress. It is the time and freedom I will have while trading full-time that I value. If trading full-time means feeling stressed out everyday, I'd rather not do it.
Taking Accountability
While it's easy to say that you will be accountable for your own actions and trades, how many of you are actually taking accountability? Look at your trading journals (if you even have one), look at how many times have you deviate from your trading rules? It is not easy following your own rules when you're alone. No one is watching you. No one is there to look out for you. No one is there to encourage you. No one is there to punish you. You have to do it yourself. It is a lonely path.
Having an accountability partner or a trading mentor changes everything. Not only do you have someone to talk to, but you have someone to be responsible for. Trading can be a lonely journey as you're the only one clicking on the buy and sell buttons. Talking to your mentor can help you discover flaws in your personality or habits that you never knew you had.
Now, imagine you have a habit of taking trades without confirmation but you're oblivious to this. By explaining your thought process of taking a trade to a mentor, you will realize this is a problem that you didn't know you had. Just by eliminating this habit, you see your win rate increase. Profitability doesn't comes from winning more trades. Sometimes, all it takes is just to take fewer losing trades.
I'm currently coaching a mentee - let's call him Andy. Andy has been trading for a few years in the indices and forex markets. Often times, he will make quite a sum of money, only to lose them all back into the market. Why? A doesn't make use of stop losses. He knows that this not a good way to trade. He knows. But no one is there to keep him accountable for not using a stop loss. He does not have a concrete trading plan to follow.
Before the start of our mentorship, Andy admits that he has a gambling mindset which made him lost a lot. This is close to 7 figures of losses, which is really A LOT. Friends and families asked him to stop with his nonsense and stop dreaming about achieving financial freedom through trading. Right now, Andy has a solid grasp of technical analysis skills, as well as risk management. His trading psychology improved greatly from when I first get to know him. He is currently backtesting a profitable trading strategy with a guided trading plan. He will be trading live once he has all the necessary backtested data for him to be confident in trading the live market.
Stay consistent. Stay safe. Success is just around the corner.
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Let me know what are your thoughts and learning points in the comments below so others can learn from you too!
Please let me know what kind of topic you would like to read next :)
Happy weekend!
Swing | Intraday | Scalp: pros and cons of three trading stylesAs we all know, the three most popular trading styles are the following: Swing trading, Day trading, and Scalping.
This educational post is concentrated on highlighting some of the pros and cons of all three techniques.
When it comes to Swing Trading (middle to long-term trading), some of the advantages are less screen time, less anxiety, less risk, and less candle noise. This style of trading is beneficial for those individuals that do not have enough time to sit in front of the charts and execute positions on a daily basis. However, some drawbacks should be mentioned as well. In order to be a swing trader, one needs to master the skill of remaining patient, disciplined and cold-blooded. Swing trades can run from one day up to a week, and hence, it is crucial to know how to sit on your hands and do nothing upon witnessing slow price action, indecision, drawdown and so forth.
Moving to intraday trading, no overnight and over-the-weekend risks can be associated with this style as executed positions are usually closed within a couple of hours when trading the H1 and lower-timeframe graphs. On the negative side, in order to make a living off day trading, a strong psychological temperament is needed along with a sufficient trading capital. If swing trading requires a minimum of a risk of 1-2% per trade, the number is lower for day trading. Hence, a bigger input (capital) is required in order to be able to make decent returns.
Last but not least: Scalping. The fans of this style of trading usually dedicate their focus on timeframes as low as the M5 and M1. Aiming towards capturing 5-10 pip movements, scalpers use smaller lot sizes in comparison to swing and day traders. Nevertheless, this trading style comprises of drawbacks such as indecision and a high degree of emotional state. Since the main purpose of scalping is capturing small price movements identified on lower-timeframe graphics, the noise and confusion is relatively high.
While all trading strategies have their own benefits and drawbacks, choosing a trading style that suits your goals and interests the most is highly linked with your personality. If you are a patient and, at the same time, a busy person, swing trading might be the best option for you. On the other hand, if you have enough time and patience to sit in front of the charts and execute trades on a daily and hourly bases, then either day trading or scalping might be the best variants to opt for.
Either way, it all narrows down to patience, long-term vision, discipline, persistence, and risk management. Choose one or two securities that you like trading the most, do not get discouraged while experiencing losses and moments of hardship, remain cold blooded and long-run oriented.
Investroy
Learn The Iceberg Illusion | The Fallacies & Reality
We often get mesmerized by someone’s above the surface success and don’t factor in all the below the surface opportunity-costs they paid to achieve that success.
This is the ‘iceberg illusion’. It’s been a fav analogy of mine for years. And yet, this just might be a better visual for sport than the ‘iceberg illusion’.
You see… the hyper focus on outcomes is one of the biggest failings (or façades) that comes from social media. It creates a false impression of what leads to success.
We see the success, but not the work that went into it… The unseen hours, necessary failures, setbacks, crises of confidence, the not-now’s (to the countless asks), the loneliness, the late nights and early mornings; and, all the wobbling that comes before the walking—much less running.
There are no shortcuts. There are no overnight successes.
The iceberg doesn’t move quickly. It’s not sped up. It just moves consistently; at often a barely discernible speed.
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Top 5 Tips to Increase Your Profits in Trading 📈
In this educational article, I will share with you very useful tips how to improve your profitability in trading the financial markets.
1. Decrease the number of financial instruments in your watch list. ⬇️
Remember that each individual instrument in your watch list requires attention. The more of them you monitor on a daily basics, the harder it is to keep focus on them.
In order to not miss early confirmation signals and triggers, it is highly recommendable to reduce the size of your watch list and pay closer attention to the remaining instruments.
2. Avoid taking too many positions. ❌
For some reason, newbie traders are convinced that they should constantly trade and keep many trading positions.
Firstly, I want to remind you that the management of an active position is a quite tedious process that requires time and attention.
Therefore, more positions are opened, more time and effort is required.
Secondly, if the newbies can not spot a good setup, they assume that they are obliged to open some positions and they start forcing the setups.
Remember, that in trading, the quality of the trading setup beats the quantity. I advise taking less trades, but the better ones.
3. Let winners run if the market is going in the desired direction. 📈
Once you caught a good trade and the market is moving where you predicted, do not let your emotions close the trade preliminary.
Try to get maximum from your trade, closing that only after the desired level is reached.
4. Open a trade after multiple confirmations.✅
Analyzing a certain setup remember, that more confirmations you spot, higher is the accuracy of the trade that you take. In order to increase your win rate, it is recommendable to wait for at least 2 confirmations.
5. Don't trade on your cellphone. 📱
A good trade always requires a sophisticated analysis that is impossible to execute on the small screen of the cellphone.
A lot of elements and nuances simply will not be noticed. For that reason, trade only from a computer with a wide screen.
Relying on these tips, you will substantially increase your profits.
Take them into the consideration and good luck to you in your trading journey.
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Unleashing the Power of Sentiment Indicators in TradingChapter 1: Introduction to Sentiment Indicators
In the world of trading and investment, understanding market sentiment is essential for making informed decisions. Market sentiment refers to the overall attitude, emotions, and opinions of market participants towards a particular financial instrument, sector, or the market as a whole. It is a key factor that influences price movements and can provide valuable insights for traders.
The role of emotions in trading is also crucial. Emotions such as fear, greed, optimism, and pessimism can significantly impact trading decisions and market behavior. Understanding and analyzing these emotions can help traders gauge market sentiment and identify potential trading opportunities.
Sentiment analysis is the approach used to measure and quantify market sentiment. It involves extracting subjective information from various sources such as social media, news articles, and options markets to determine the prevailing sentiment. The goal is to understand and interpret the collective emotions of market participants.
Sentiment indicators play a vital role in sentiment analysis. These indicators are tools and metrics that provide quantifiable measures of market sentiment. By incorporating sentiment indicators into their analysis, traders can gain a deeper understanding of market psychology and make more informed trading decisions.
In the following chapters, we will explore different types of sentiment indicators and their applications in trading. We will delve into social media sentiment analysis, news sentiment analysis, options market sentiment, and more. Through real-life case studies and examples, we will demonstrate how traders can effectively leverage sentiment indicators to enhance their trading strategies and navigate the markets with greater confidence.
So let's dive into the exciting world of sentiment indicators and discover how they can empower traders to make smarter trading decisions in various market conditions.
Chapter 2: Social Media Sentiment Analysis
Social media has become a powerful platform for expressing opinions and sharing information, making it an invaluable source for understanding market sentiment. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit provide real-time insights into the thoughts and emotions of a wide range of market participants.
Traders can harness the power of social media by analyzing sentiment expressed in posts, comments, and discussions related to financial instruments or markets. This can be done through the use of sentiment analysis tools and platforms. These tools employ natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze and quantify sentiment.
When analyzing social media sentiment, it is crucial to identify the influential platforms for each specific market. Different financial instruments and markets have unique social media platforms where participants share their views and opinions. For example, Twitter might be the primary platform for discussions related to cryptocurrencies, while LinkedIn could be more relevant for the stock market. By focusing on the platforms that hold more influence, traders can gain more accurate insights into market sentiment.
Real-time sentiment analysis of social media involves monitoring conversations, identifying relevant keywords, and applying sentiment analysis algorithms. This process enables traders to gauge the sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral. By tracking sentiment shifts in real-time, traders can make timely trading decisions and take advantage of emerging trends or sentiment-driven price movements.
To illustrate the effectiveness of social media sentiment analysis, let's explore some case studies. In one example, a trader monitors sentiment on Twitter for a particular cryptocurrency. By analyzing the sentiment expressed in tweets, the trader identifies a surge in positive sentiment accompanied by an increase in trading volume. This information serves as a signal to enter a long position, anticipating a price increase driven by bullish sentiment. The trader successfully profits from the sentiment-driven rally.
In another case, a trader uses sentiment analysis of social media discussions to identify a sudden increase in negative sentiment towards a stock. Recognizing this shift in sentiment, the trader decides to exit their position or tighten their stop-loss level to protect their profits, anticipating a potential price decline. This proactive risk management based on sentiment analysis helps the trader avoid potential losses.
By incorporating social media sentiment analysis into their trading strategies, traders can gain a deeper understanding of market sentiment and improve their decision-making process. However, it is important to remember that social media sentiment analysis should be used as one piece of the puzzle alongside other forms of analysis to build a comprehensive trading strategy.
Chapter 3: News Sentiment Analysis
News plays a significant role in shaping market sentiment. Positive news such as strong earnings reports, positive economic indicators, or favorable regulatory developments can create a bullish sentiment, leading to increased buying interest. Conversely, negative news such as poor economic data, geopolitical tensions, or negative corporate announcements can generate a bearish sentiment, resulting in selling pressure.
News sentiment analysis involves analyzing the sentiment expressed in news articles, press releases, and other sources of financial news. The goal is to extract the overall sentiment conveyed by the news and understand its potential impact on market sentiment and price movements.
There are various tools and techniques available for news sentiment analysis. These tools employ natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze the sentiment of individual news pieces. They assign sentiment scores, such as positive, negative, or neutral, to quantify the sentiment expressed in the news.
Financial news headlines are particularly important as they often convey the key sentiment of an article. Traders can focus on analyzing sentiment in news headlines to quickly gauge the overall sentiment without delving into the complete article. This allows for efficient scanning of multiple news sources and provides traders with timely insights into market sentiment.
Incorporating news sentiment analysis into trading strategies can be done in several ways. Traders can use sentiment-triggered trade entries, where they initiate trades based on significant shifts in news sentiment. For example, a trader might enter a long position in response to overwhelmingly positive news sentiment regarding a particular stock, anticipating a price increase. Alternatively, news sentiment can serve as a confirming factor for technical analysis. If technical indicators suggest a bullish trend, positive news sentiment can provide additional confidence in the trade.
Let's examine a case study to further illustrate the application of news sentiment analysis. Suppose a trader is analyzing the sentiment surrounding a company's earnings announcement. Through news sentiment analysis, the trader identifies a strong positive sentiment across various financial news sources. This positive sentiment indicates high market expectations for the company's earnings results. Based on this analysis, the trader decides to enter a long position before the earnings release, anticipating a favorable outcome. When the company exceeds expectations and reports stellar earnings, the positive sentiment is reinforced, resulting in a significant price increase. The trader profits from the sentiment-driven rally by making a well-timed trade based on news sentiment analysis.
Chapter 4: Options Market Sentiment
Options trading provides valuable insights into market sentiment as it reflects investors' expectations and sentiment towards the underlying asset. By analyzing options market sentiment, traders can gain a deeper understanding of market sentiment and potential price movements.
One commonly used sentiment indicator in options trading is the put/call ratio. The put/call ratio compares the volume of put options, which give traders the right to sell an asset, to the volume of call options, which give traders the right to buy an asset. A high put/call ratio suggests bearish sentiment, indicating that more traders are betting on a price decline. Conversely, a low put/call ratio indicates bullish sentiment, with more traders anticipating a price increase.
Another important indicator is implied volatility. Implied volatility is derived from options prices and reflects the market's expectation of future price volatility. Higher implied volatility suggests increased market uncertainty and potentially heightened bearish sentiment, while lower implied volatility indicates lower expected volatility and potential bullish sentiment.
Traders can also analyze options-related metrics such as open interest, the skew index, and the volatility skew to gauge market sentiment. Open interest represents the total number of outstanding options contracts, providing insights into trader positioning and sentiment. The skew index measures the perceived risk of extreme price moves, while the volatility skew indicates the difference in implied volatility between options with different strike prices.
To illustrate the application of options market sentiment, let's consider a case study. Suppose a trader observes a high put/call ratio in a particular stock, indicating bearish sentiment. This signals a potential price decline. The trader combines this information with other technical indicators pointing towards a bearish trend and decides to enter a short position. As the market sentiment unfolds, the stock experiences a significant price drop, validating the initial bearish sentiment and resulting in a profitable trade for the trader.
Chapter 5: Fear and Greed Index
The Fear and Greed Index is a sentiment indicator that measures market sentiment on a scale of extreme fear to extreme greed. It combines various factors, such as stock price momentum, market volatility, junk bond demand, and safe-haven flows, to gauge overall market sentiment.
The components and calculation of the Fear and Greed Index can vary, but the index generally assigns a numerical value or category to represent the prevailing sentiment. Extreme fear levels suggest a highly pessimistic sentiment, often associated with market downturns or significant price declines. On the other hand, extreme greed levels indicate excessive optimism and potentially overbought conditions, signaling a potential market correction.
Traders can incorporate the Fear and Greed Index into their trading strategies in several ways. It can serve as a confirming factor for technical analysis, where extreme fear or greed levels align with other indicators pointing towards a potential trend reversal. Additionally, contrarian traders may use extreme sentiment levels as a signal to consider taking opposite positions, capitalizing on potential market reversals.
Let's explore a case study to demonstrate the practical application of the Fear and Greed Index. Suppose the Fear and Greed Index reaches an extreme greed level, indicating excessive optimism and potentially overbought conditions in the market. A trader who closely monitors the index recognizes this as a warning sign and starts analyzing other technical indicators. They observe overextended price levels, declining trading volume, and bearish divergence on oscillators. Taking all these factors into consideration, the trader decides to exit their long positions or initiate short positions, anticipating a potential market correction. As the market sentiment shifts from extreme greed to fear, the market experiences a significant decline, validating the trader's decision and resulting in profitable trades.
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Future Outlook
In conclusion, sentiment indicators provide valuable insights into market psychology and can significantly enhance trading decisions. By understanding market sentiment through sentiment analysis tools, traders can gain an edge in their strategies. Social media sentiment analysis allows traders to tap into the real-time opinions and emotions of market participants, while news sentiment analysis helps traders assess the impact of news events on market sentiment. Options market sentiment and sentiment indicators such as the Fear and Greed Index provide additional perspectives on investor expectations and sentiment towards the market.
As technology and data analysis techniques continue to advance, sentiment analysis is expected to evolve further. Integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can enhance sentiment predictions and improve the accuracy of sentiment analysis tools. This will empower traders with even more robust insights into market sentiment.
To harness the power of sentiment indicators effectively, it is essential to integrate them with other forms of analysis, such as technical analysis and fundamental analysis. By combining multiple perspectives, traders can make well-informed trading decisions and increase their chances of success.
In the ever-changing landscape of financial markets, sentiment indicators will continue to play a crucial role in understanding market dynamics. By staying abreast of emerging trends and advancements in sentiment analysis, traders can adapt their strategies and stay ahead of the curve. Ultimately, by leveraging sentiment indicators, traders can enhance their trading success and capitalize on market opportunities.
Learn The Only Proven Way to Become Rich
1. Money mindset is everything
You need to have a positive money mindset when it comes to creating wealth. Everyone carries a money story and it’s your job to understand what yours is and if it’s holding you back. Reframing your story to a millionaire’s mindset is essential for success because rich people think differently. How to get rich can’t be a passing phase in your life; it takes work and commitment.
2. Millionaires still budget
Hard to believe, but it’s true. Even millionaires follow a budget. The biggest secret on how to get rich and stay rich is spending less than you bring in. There will always be wants that exceed budget limits, even for millionaires, because there is not an unlimited supply of money.
3. Money management is key
Good money management is so important to get rich and stay rich. Money management is a behavior and habit. You need to be mindful of where you are investing and spending your money. There is a specific strategy to growing your wealth and maintaining it and you must follow it like you do a workout regime.
4. Invest your money for growth
Investing in assets that will appreciate over time and provide you with a return on your investment such as dividend or interest payments is smart. The goal is to build your asset portfolio and make it so strong that you can live off the passive income in your retirement.
5. Build your business around your personal financial goals
As a business owner you have more control over the money you make versus being an employee with a set salary. If you want more money in your pockets, you can increase your revenue and your profit margins to ensure you are taking home more money. The more profits you have in your business the more you can pay yourself a dividend or bonus, depending on the legal structure of your business.
6. Create multiple income streams
Smart business owners create more than one income streamas it protects them from fluctuations in the market. That means if one source of revenue dries up due to market conditions, other sources of income can protect you from a loss.
7. CONCLUSION:
The bottom line is that knowing how to get rich is something that is learned. There are no guarantees that if you start a business that you will get rich because even the best business ideas fail due to poor execution. But if you educate yourself and get help in making your business a success, you will increase your chances of success.
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Learn What Will Really Make You Profitable in Trading
What brings the consistent profits in trading?
Talking to hundreds of struggling traders from different parts of the globe, I realized that there are the common misconceptions concerning that subject.
In this educational article, we will discuss what really will make you profitable in trading.
🔔The first thing that 99% of struggling traders are looking for is signals.
Why damn learn if you can simply follow the trades of a pro trader and make money?!
The truth is, however, is that in order to repeat the performance of a signal provider you have to open all your trading positions in the same exact moment he does. (And I would not even mention the fact that there will be a delay between the moment the provider opens the trade and the moment he sends you the signal)
Because the signal can be sent at a random moment, quite often it will take time for you to reach your trading terminal and open the position.
Just a 1-minute delay may dramatically change the risk to reward ration of the trade and, hence, the final result.
🤖The second thing that really attracts the struggling traders is trading robots (EA). The systems that trade automatically and aimed to generate consistent profits.
You simply start the program and wait for the money.
The main problem with EA is the fact that it requires constant monitoring. It can stop or freeze in a random moment and may require a reboot.
Moreover, due to changing market conditions, the EA should be regularly updated. Without the updates, at some moment it may blow your account.
Trading robot is the work: trading with the robots means their constant development, monitoring and improvement. And that work requires a high level of experience: both in coding and in trading.
📈The third thing that struggling traders are seeking is the "magic" indicator. The one that will accurately identify the safe points to buy and sell. You add the indicator on the chart, and you simply wait for the signal to open the trade.
The fact is that magic indicators do not exist. Indicator is the tool that can be applied as the extra confirmation. It should be applied strictly in a combination with something else, and its proper application requires a high level of expertise in trading.
🍀The fourth thing that newbie traders seek is luck. They open the trade, and then they pray the God, Powell, Fed or someone else to move the market in their favor.
And yes, occasionally, luck will be on your side. But relying on luck on a long-term basis, you are doomed to fail.
But what will make you profitable then?
What is the secret ingredient.
Remember, that secret ingredient does not exist.
In order to become a consistently profitable traders, you should rely on 4 crucial elements: trading plan, risk management, discipline and correct mindset.
🧠What is correct mindset in trading?
It simply means setting REALISTIC goals and having REALISTIC expectations from the market and from your trading.
📝A trading plan is the set of rules and conditions that you apply for the search of a trading setup and the management of the opened position.
Trading plan will be considered to be good if it is back tested on historical data and then tested on demo account for at least 3 consequent months.
✔️In order to follow the plan consistently, you need to be disciplined. You should be prepared for losing streaks, and you should be strong enough to not break once your trading account will be in a drawdown.
💰Risk management is one of the most important elements of your trading plan. It defines your risk per trade and your set of actions in case of losses. Even the best trading strategies may fail because of poor risk management.
Combining these 4 elements, you will become a consistently profitable trader. Remember, that there is no easy way, no shortcut. Trading is a hard work to be done.
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Choosing The Right Strategy To Trade And InvestYou have been studying the charts, watching YouTube and courses videos, and reading the content from BabyPips for a few weeks or even months now. You're getting lost with so much information out there in the Internet.
You come across many different terms like smart money concept, ICT, Wyckoff, Elliott Wave and supply and demand. You have no idea on what you should be focusing on. You're deciding which method you should be using to trade. Some people tell you to avoid using any indicators, while others tell you to use indicators so that your trades will be mechanical and you will not let emotions get in the way of your trade.
Unable to identify which method to use is detrimental to your trading and investing career.
Technical analysis is the backbone of trading in every asset classes, be it stocks, forex, cryptocurrency and even options. What's worse is that you're using the wrong or inefficient methods to analyze the market. By trying to be involved in the financial market, you aim to grow your wealth and hopefully to retire earlier. Can you imagine how much money you can potentially earn from the financial market? You are able to travel anywhere sitting on the first class seats, and able to buy anything you want without any worries for your fundamental needs like food and shelter.
Right Strategy, Wrong Implementation
Without the right tools, not only will you lose your wealth, but you might also need to push back your retirement age by a few years. Do you want to work for a few more years of 9 - 5, or do you prefer to retire and have the option to not work anymore? I'd definitely prefer the latter.
However, the most important thing you will lose is time. Precious time will be lost by using trading with the wrong strategies. Even worse if you are using the correct strategies wrongly. You might discard it away, thinking that it's not going to be a profitable strategy even when you've already discovered one. If you know of the right strategy, you could be earning and profiting from the financial market so much earlier. Don't forget the compounding power of your profits. The later you start to profit from the market, the longer you will see your capital start to compound.
Finding The Holy Grail
There is actually no "right strategy" in the financial market. Some strategies work better than others in certain market conditions. Take for example Wyckoff methodology is good for identifying change in character and signs of consolidation, accumulation, distribution and reversal on 1 time frame. When using the Wyckoff methodology on a trending market, you are essentially trying to catch a reversal which is relatively riskier compared to just trading with the trend. Of course we are not deep diving into the details on how do we use Wyckoff in trading, but this is an analogy that there are different tools to be used in different market conditions. You have to find out what works for you.
Price Fractality
Price will do what it needs to do. Read it again. Then read it again.
You and me are probably not able to control where the price will move. You need millions of dollars in order to do that, and that is usually the order size of big institutional players like funds and banks. You might be able to influence the price of some meme coins if you are a whale with a few tens of thousands of dollars, but let's not go into that.
Have you ever seen price moved differently on the 1-minute timeframe compared to the 15-minute and 1-hour timeframes? You can be looking at an uptrend on the 1-minute timeframe, but it's consolidating on the 15-minute timeframe and on a downtrend on the 1-hour timeframe. Why? Price moves in different fractal. There are many big institutional players trading at different timeframes. They can be positioning themselves for a huge move on the higher timeframes, or they can be scalping their way to profits on the lower timeframes. I have 2 charts below. Are you able to tell what timeframes are they in? Of course not!
Let's say you have the following data from a strategy that you've backtested using Elliott Waves:
Statistics
Total Trades: 100
Average RR: 2.34R
Win Rate: 37%
Do you know that with this result, you're already on the way to profitability if you trade exactly like how you backtested? For reference, you need a risk to reward ratio of 1:2 and win rate of 33% to have a breakeven strategy.
Finding a 37% win rate and 2.34R strategy is already better than majority of the traders out there.
But Keeley, with an average of 2.34R strategy, when can I get a lambo? I want a strategy with an average of 20R so that I can show off my trades on social media.
First, you need to wake up. Second, you need to stay awake.
There are a lot of posts in the social media where you see people hitting 100RR trades and screenshots of their profits and even MetaTrader 4 and 5. There are people who constantly post all these screenshots to garner your attention. I’m pretty sure they have something to sell you. Be it signals, mentorship, copy trading or account management. What you don’t know is the truth behind many of these screenshots. They can be taken on a demo account using big lots and no risk management. With a demo account, anything is possible. If it’s a real account, you have no idea how many losses they encountered before hitting this homerun trade. Some even go as far as getting a white label and show you that the account is “live”, but in fact it’s a demo account since they own the “broker”.
Yes, you can have an average of 20R strategy, but the higher R you're aiming, your win rate will logically be lower. If this is what you want, then you need to ensure your psychology and risk management is very very strong as you will face plenty of losses before the big win. I know many people can't wait for that 1 winning trade that covers the losses due to fear and doubt during a period of drawdown.
Lifestyle Compatibility
Another important concept of trading is lifestyle compatibility.
Let's say you own a bicycle. A bicycle serves many purposes. It can be a mode of transport, it can be used for exercising, and it can also be used in cycling competitions. If you're travelling to work which will take you 45 minutes by train, will you choose to cycle to your workplace? I'm sure it's a no right? There is a time and place for everything.
Similarly, if you resides in Asia and works at a 9 - 5 day job, does it make sense for you to be backtesting a strategy that involves scalping on the seconds or 1 minute timeframe in the Asian session when you're in office working?
Coming back to the example, if you have a 37% win rate and 2.34R strategy, trade it in the live market. If this is a scalping strategy for the Asian session, you are not able to take all the opportunities that present themselves to you. You take trades half-heartedly. You lose trades. You start to cherry pick your trades. You then conclude that this is actually a losing strategy. You discard this strategy and proceed to find the next "holy grail".
What if you actually stick to your strategy, but instead of trading on the 1-minute timeframe, you apply the strategy onto the 30-minute or even the 1-hour timeframe? Remember that price is fractal and most strategies work in multiple timeframes. Since you're unable to concentrate on trading on the 1-minute timeframe, you might get the same or better results on the higher timeframe. Make sure you backtest your system first!
I was always on the lookout for the "holy grail" because I was making the mistake of not finding the strategy that fits my personality and lifestyle. I had a profitable system with a win rate of 12% with an average risk to reward ratio of 10R. However, it did not fit my personality at all as I need to experience a lot of drawdown before I see profits. This also did not sit well with my psychology, especially when I'm taking prop firm challenges. I would also need to be in front of the chart constantly which was not the freedom that I seek once I achieve financial freedom. So this was not sustainable at all.
Before I had this system, I already have a profitable system with a win rate of 40%, averaging 2.5r per winning trade. Like many of you, I feel that even though this is profitable, it just wasn't enough. It was when I had a mindset shift and speaking to my mentor, I began to stick with my original strategy. From then, I started to see real results and my equity curve has been on a general uptrend since, with some periods of drawdown of course. This has also led me to getting my first payout with FTMO on a $10,000 account, with another payout of close to $1,000 coming in June 2023 from The Funded Trader.
This $200 (post-profit split) is just a 2% profit. Imagine what my profit will be if that was a $100,000 account? Yes, it's all talk until it actually happen. It's just a matter of time when I accumulate more of these accounts to fund my personal account.
Mentorship
A mentor can really help to see the blind spots in your life. In driving lessons, you have a driving instructors guiding and providing you feedbacks on your driving. Sometimes, you discover things that you never knew before. You won't know how to park your vehicle properly, you won't know the technique when you need to hit the emergency break. You might know in theory, but you need someone to guide you with the practical. It cuts so much time and effort on your end with the trial-and-errors which you might not even find success in.
There are a lot of scam artists out there claiming to be a trading mentor without delivering any results. Many aren't able to earn a decent profit from the market. A mentor must be able to objectively look at any strategy and tell you what's not working and what you should stop, not just forcing you to use his own strategy. He must be able to talk to you about his own mistakes and show you solid trading results via 3rd party verification such as Myfxbook or Fxblue, and not through screenshots or excel worksheet. He should walk you through development as a person outside of trading.
Stay consistent. Stay safe. Success is just around the corner.
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Please let me know what kind of topic you would like to read next :)
Happy weekend!
How to Trade the Pin Bar Pattern on Forex and Gold 🕯
The pin bar is a powerful price action setup that tells a fascinating story concerning price momentum and the possibility of an imminent reversal in price direction.
A pin bar is a Japanese candlestick that has a long wick on one side and a small body.
Understanding the story behind the pin bar is essential.
📚What does the pin bar candlestick pattern tell us about market psychology?
📉This pin bar followed a strong downward trend, and the presence of a long tail below the body tells us that the market rejected any attempt by overly exuberant sellers to move the price lower. The length of the tail speaks to the strength of the rejection.
📈The pin bar followed by a strong uptrend, and the presence of a long tail above the body tells us that the market rejected any attempt by overly exuberant buyers to move the price higher. The length of the tail speaks to the strength of the rejection.
⭐️The best pin bars are bearish pin bars that form at the top of an extended move up, and bullish pin bars that form at the bottom of an extended move down.
✅Entry and exit is very simple. If you are going short on a bearish pin bar, enter short when the next candle opens and ticks below the low of the bearish pin bar. If you are going long at your fx broker, enter long when the next candle opens and ticks above the high of the bullish pin bar.
❗️Keep in mind that these are general trading concepts that build on the collective experience of traders. Even though a lot of traders believe that these chart patterns have a bearing on the future direction of the price there are no guarantees in trading. Forex & gold trading is risky and you should never speculate with funds you cannot afford to lose.
Hey traders, let me know what subject do you want to dive in in the next post?
Top 8 Rules of a Pro Trader
Hey traders,
Consistently profitable traders have a lot of things in common. Watching how they act and following their ideas & thoughts we can spot a lot of commonalities among them.
In this article, I have collected 8 trading habits that a trader should have to become successful.
1️⃣ - Continuous Learning 📚
The markets are infinitely deep in their nature.
Trading & constant monitoring of the market always unveil new, uncharted elements and things.
With 8 years of day trading, I can't help wondering how many new things I learn each and every day.
With continuous learning you evolve, you become better and it improves your trading performance & results.
2️⃣- Emotional Stability 🙏
The market is a wild beast who always wants to bite us.
And most of the time it manages to do that:
drawdowns, losing streaks...
Those who trade for at least 1 year know how unpredictable and unstable the market is.
A perfectly looking trading setup can easily turn into a big losing trade.
Of course, that is painful, of course with more and more losers, the anxiety will pursue us, the stress will overwhelm us.
Only by remaining stable and calm, you will manage to overcome the negative periods.
Learn to control your emotions, learn to take losses!
3️⃣ - Constant Practice 💪
Pro traders never stop, they always watch the charts, they always monitor the prices, and follow the market.
Trading requires constant TRADING.
Just spending one single week on a vacation without charts, you can not imagine how hard it is to return back.
The trading skills must be constantly maintained.
4️⃣ - Trade Journaling 📝
Pro trders always assess their past performance & results.
They track each and every trading position that they opened.
Both losing trades and winning trades require analysis and observations.
Only by studying the past results the trader can improve his trading performance and evolve. Only by identifying mistakes & peculiar commonalities, the trader learns to lose less than he makes.
5️⃣ - Anticipation of Different Outcomes 👁
Everything can happen in financial markets.
Pro trader always reasons in probabilities.
He knows that 100% chances do not exist.
Accepting the probabilities the trader (even while opening the trade) is always ready for completely different outcomes and accepts each and every move of the market.
6️⃣ - Flexibility & Adaptivity 🕺
The markets are always changing.
If you were trading before COVID crisis, I guess you feel how the reality among us shifted. With fundamental changes in our daily lives, the markets changed as well.
It is hard to say what exactly has altered though, however, we all can feel it.
In order to survive in a constantly changing environment, one should adapt . One should look for ways to be one step ahead.
To beat an evolving market, the traders should constantly polish their trading strategies, drop the things that don't work anymore, and adopt the new, reliable ones.
That is the only way to stay afloat.
7️⃣ - Selection of Right Markets 📈
The trader always knows what to trade and he always has a reason.
He admits that some financial instruments are appropriate for his trading style while some are completely not.
Pro trader does not wander around aimlessly from one market to another. He has a plan to follow and rules to rely on.
8️⃣ - Realistic Expectations ⭐️
Many newbie traders drop trading just because of wrong expectations.
The desire to get rich quick, to catch 20/1 risk to reward trades without substantial losses is playing a dirty trick with them.
The true trader is not greedy, in contrast, he is humble and the only thing that he wants is simply to win more than he loses and make that amount sufficient enough to have a good living.
Adapting these 8 habits, you will see dramatic improvements in your trading.
And even though most of them require a substantial effort and many years of practicing, trust me, it is worth it and it will help you in your daily life as well.
Would you add some other habits to this list?🤓
Let me know in a comment section.
Let me know, traders, what do you want to learn in the next educational post?
Unpopular trading advice: fall in LOVE with one pair ONLYIn a world where you can love anyone and anything your heart desires, fall in love with ONE currency pair ONLY.
The notion of "the more pairs I trade, the more money I will make" is false. If you wanna be a consistently profitable trader, it is more beneficial to focus on a small selection of securities and master them, and there is a concrete reason for that. Concentrating on one or two currency pairs instead of trading every single major, minor, and exotic pair will be more efficient, less confusing, and more profitable. When you study every single movement of any given pair, you get more experienced at trading it and you make more rational decisions and analyses.
Looking at the chart illustration, we might observe the trading log of all transactions we executed in April and May so far. With 8 trade entries and all of them being EUR/GBP, a total return of +9.6% has been generated constituting an approximate win rate percentage of 70%. Obviously, not every trade resulted in being profitable as we encountered 2 losses and a breakeven closure. Nevertheless, as we always indicate, trading is a game of big numbers and probabilities. Instead of trading 10 securities, we have only been focusing on one single currency pair recently.
One crucial thing that needs to be noted is the following: not always will the one specific currency pair of your choice provide you with clear swing opportunities as the example of EUR/GBP portrayed on the graph. Periods of long and dull consolidations, indecisions, and some other moments will take place and make a derivative unlikeable and less efficient to trade for a period of time.
Therefore, always have one or two other trades on the radar to eventually monitor and analyse along with the currency pair of your preference.
Love will save the world.
Investroy.
Big non-farm data is coming, are you ready?
The monthly nonfarm payroll data is coming soon. Do you know how it will affect gold prices?
The "nonfarm" data is released by the US Department of Labor on the first Friday of each month. It consists of three values: nonfarm employment, employment rate, and unemployment rate, which reflect the development and growth of the manufacturing and service industries. A decrease in these numbers represents a reduction in production by businesses and an economic downturn. Therefore, the following basic rules apply to the price trends of gold:
1. A decrease in nonfarm values indicates an economic downturn, a reduction in production by businesses, and a weakening of the US dollar, which is favorable for gold.
2. An increase in nonfarm values indicates a healthy economic condition, which is favorable for increasing interest rates, strengthening the US dollar, and unfavorable for gold.
In general, if the overall economic data in the United States is weak and the ADP employment data is favorable for spot gold before the nonfarm data is released, the market may start to show a bullish trend for gold prices on Thursday and Friday. On the other hand, if there are signs of economic recovery in the United States before the release of the nonfarm data and the economy is strong, it will be bearish for gold prices, and investors can take advantage of short positions.
Therefore, if the newly added nonfarm data exceeds the market's expectations, the Federal Reserve's expectation of raising interest rates may rise again. However, the uncertain global economic recovery has led to continued expectations of monetary easing by central banks, and the combined effects of these factors have led to extreme fluctuations in gold prices during nonfarm data releases. As a gold investor, you can actively pay attention to the nonfarm market, but there is no need to demand excessive profits from the market. Instead, it is essential to understand the impact of this data on gold price movements.
I will provide analysis and trading strategies for gold and crude oil every day. Please click to follow, maintain your reading habits, and create opportunities for yourself. If you agree with my views, please click the rocket to support me.
COMEX:GC1! MCX:GOLD1! BIST:XAUUSD1!
How To Become A Millionaire | 2 Proven Ways
Seeing people announce their net worth on social media may have you asking yourself, "How do I become a millionaire?" Yet "millionaire" can feel like a huge, unobtainable word. However, the good news is that becoming one is actually more realistic than you might think.
The fast-track method of becoming rich in your twenties is to start a high-growth, high-return business with a plan to exit within five years or so.
But, of course, there's absolutely no guarantee you'll even make a penny, and the risk can often outweigh your other options for building a long-term income.
It's important to have a well-researched idea and a solid business plan before you start, as well as a clear picture of how you'll support yourself when there's no money coming in.
Having said all this, there may never be a better time to start in business than as a graduate. Your responsibilities are minimal and even if it all goes wrong, you've got a wealth of experience to build on and take forward.
With your business, you should either identify a need and fill it or find a problem and solve it. Solving for customer needs and exceeding expectations along the way drives business growth.
A customer need is a motive that prompts a customer to buy a product or service. Ultimately, the need is the driver of the customer's purchase decision.
Learning to solve the problems of people, you can make a huge wealth on that. Just look around and look for the things to solve.
What do you want to learn in the next post?
⌛ It's Just A Matter Of Time📍Journey Of a Successful Trader
No one started as a good trader. Every profitable trader was once a newbie. The journey of a successful trader is filled with challenges, hard work, and perseverance. It begins with a strong desire to learn and a commitment to become an expert in the markets they are trading.
📍The Right Path To Reach The Top
🔹Learn the basics of Trading
🔹Pick a Strategy that you fully understand
🔹Trading plan customized to your lifestyle
🔹Back Testing your strategy and plan
🔹Review your Trades, calculate your expectancy
🔹Demo Trading to build basic knowledge
🔹Live Trading, Manage your risk and emotions
🔹Professional Trader
📍Summary
The first step in the journey is to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. This includes learning about the financial markets, technical analysis, risk management, and trading psychology. Successful traders also develop a trading strategy that fits their personality and trading style.
Once they have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills, successful traders spend countless hours studying the markets, analyzing charts, and monitoring news events that may impact their trades.
👤 @AlgoBuddy
📅 Daily Ideas about market update, psychology & indicators
❤️ If you appreciate our work, please like, comment and follow ❤️
The Breakout Trading Strategy of Trendlines | OKXIDEAS
Hello traders,
In this post i am just showing you a very simple and easy trading strategy especially for beginners, in this strategy i am just using two basic things trendlines and 50 simple moving average which is you can also see in the charts above.
What you will be doing in this strategy just simply go to the 1hr timeframe see the clear trend draw the trendline wait for the breakout when breakout happen now wait for price to retest or just place a buy limit or sell limit order.
I hope you like the strategy this is the trendlines breakout trading strategy.
The one good thing about this strategy is the risk to reward ratio because in this strategy you will have potential to have around 1/3 risk to reward ratio so this means if you placed 10 trades and you lose 7 trades out of 10 and you just won 3 trades out of 10, you will be still profitable so meanwhile you just need to have a 30% wining ratio to be profitable in a long run.
I just advise you that try the strategy open the chart and back-test your chart and trade it on demo live market condition at least for one month and see the results ask the question to yourself can you be profitable? if the answer is yes so probably you know that what to do next but if the answer is no then look it your one month data that you have, make sure to journal your one month data record and try to analyze what mistakes you do what wining ratio you have can you have a little deference to between 30% see your taken trades you will be seeing some bad trades and you don't wanted to trade next time avoid those trades in the next month and just repeat the process be patient one day you will be consistently profitable but if not then don't lose the hope and just try again again and again learn from your mistakes come back and don't do that mistakes again, remember every strategy is good if you practice and managed it.
Just find the strategy that you suit and start the process.
I hope you liked the post, i wish you good luck and good trading.
Practical Insights into the Risk ManagementHey there, amazing @TradingView community! It's @Vestinda, and we're on a mission to deliver content that truly makes a difference.
👉 To become a successful crypto trader, it's essential to have a solid understanding of trade and risk management concepts, such as stop losses, position sizing, and scaling. In this article, we'll explore these key concepts in-depth to help you minimize your risks and maximize your gains in the cryptocurrency market.
Four Risk Management Concepts Every Crypto Trader Should Understand
To effectively manage the risk associated with trading, it is essential to first develop a comprehensive trade management and risk management strategy. Before committing your capital to any position, it's critical to have a clear plan in place to minimize potential losses and optimize your overall trading performance.
Successful market speculation requires effective risk management to preserve capital, which is the primary objective. By minimizing losses and maximizing gains through a comprehensive trade and risk management strategy, traders can achieve long-term success in the market.
One of the key strategies employed by the most successful traders is to minimize their losses while allowing their profitable trades to run. This approach is essential for avoiding disastrous scenarios, such as allowing profitable trades to turn into losers or allowing a single bad trade to wipe out an entire account. By focusing on risk management and trade management, traders can increase their chances of success and protect their capital over the long term.
It's true that implementing the "cut losses quickly and let profitable trades ride" strategy can be challenging, especially for discretionary traders who need to constantly evaluate changes in fundamentals and market sentiment against price movements. However, there are trade and risk management ("TRM") tools and methods available that can help simplify this process.
While these tools and methods may seem complex at first, they are quite accessible and easy to learn. With the right TRM strategies in place, traders can effectively manage risk and optimize their performance in any market condition.
Before diving into trading, it's crucial to understand four key concepts in trade and risk management:
Stop losses: Stop losses are predetermined exit points designed to limit potential losses on a trade. By setting a stop loss, traders can automatically close a position if the market moves against them beyond a certain point, minimizing their losses.
Traders may use price action signals, technical indicator signals, fundamental analysis, or a combination of all three to determine the appropriate level for a stop-loss order. This helps to limit potential losses on trade and is a crucial component of effective risk management.
Position sizing: Position sizing refers to the amount of capital allocated to a specific trade. By properly sizing positions based on risk tolerance and market conditions, traders can optimize their overall risk management strategy and minimize the impact of potential losses.
Position sizing refers to the process of determining the quantity of cryptocurrency to long or short based on the maximum amount of value a trader is willing to lose if the trade fails, also known as "max risk." For novice traders, it is recommended that the maximum risk should not exceed 1-2% of their portfolio for short-term transactions and 5% for longer-term positions.
For example, if a trader has a cryptocurrency account with $ 1,000 and wishes to purchase a token with a market price of $ 10.0 per token, they would need to determine the appropriate position size to maintain their desired level of risk. If their analysis indicates that they should place a stop loss at $ 5.0 per token to limit their maximum risk to 2% of their account, or $ 20.0, then the appropriate position size would be 4 units (40$ position size). This way, if the token's value drops by $ 5.0, the resulting loss of $ 20.0 would equal 2% of the trader's account.
Scaling: Scaling involves adjusting position sizes based on the performance of a trade or the overall market conditions. By scaling into or out of positions based on market conditions, traders can adjust their risk exposure and optimize their potential for gains while minimizing potential losses.
Scaling refers to the practice of dividing entries and exits into two or more orders around a trader's intended entry/exit area to reduce the likelihood of setting an entry too low or too high. This is particularly important because it is nearly impossible to predict the exact price or time at which the market's direction or volatility levels will change.
For example, if a trader intends to buy a token for $ 10.0 but their analysis indicates that it may drop as low as $ 8.0 before sentiment entirely flips bullish, they should consider dividing their entry/exit orders into multiple price levels. This way, they can enter the trade with a partial position if the token's price does not drop below $10.0, but if it drops to $ 8.0, they can scale into a lower average price of $ 8.75.
By using scaling and position sizing in conjunction with a maximum stop loss level, traders can effectively manage their risk and reduce the likelihood of incurring significant losses. While these concepts are relatively simple, understanding and applying them correctly can help traders avoid significant risks in the cryptocurrency market.
Leverage: Trading with leverage involves taking positions that exceed the account's total capital, which can be done through crypto exchanges (CEXs) offering margin trading or some DeFi protocols providing advanced borrowing mechanisms.
For instance, assume you have $ 100 in your account, and you want to purchase 1 unit of XYZ token worth $ 100, creating an open position valued at $ 100. Margin trading offered by a CEX may only require a 10% margin, meaning you only need to invest $ 10 instead of the entire $ 100. You can then utilize the remaining $ 90 to open additional positions, which can be tempting for many traders.
With a 10% margin requirement and a $ 100 account, you can open a position size of 10 XYZ tokens, having a notional value of $ 1000 ($ 100 x 10 units), with the CEX holding the $ 100 in your account as a margin for the trades.
This would make you leveraged 10x, which is considered an extremely high amount of leverage. If the token increases in value by 10% in a short period, the position value would grow from $ 1000 to $ 1100, which means you could double your account value from $ 100 to $ 200 (i.e., $ 100 profit + $ 100 margin). Alternatively, if the token rises by 20% to $ 1200, you would triple your account to $ 300 in value.
Although the potential for high profits may sound exciting, it is crucial to remember the risks associated with trading with leverage, and it is advisable to exercise caution and not get carried away by the prospect of quick and easy gains.
Many traders are lured by the potential profits of leveraged trading, but it's important to remember that leverage can be just as dangerous as it is rewarding. If a trader opens a position with 10x leverage and the position loses just 5%, that would be a loss of $ 50, which is 50% of their $ 100 account.
Additionally, if the position were to lose 10%, resulting in a $ 100 loss, the trader would receive a margin call and would need to deposit more money to keep their trades open.
If they are unable to do so, the CEX will close all positions, also known as being "liquidated". The CEX will use the margin that the trader had provided to cover the $ 100 loss, which means that the trader's account balance would be reduced to $ 0. It's essential to be aware of the risks of leveraged trading, as you could potentially lose everything you've invested.
It's important to remember that leverage in crypto trading is a double-edged sword that can either grow your account or quickly deplete it. While it's possible to make significant profits with leverage, it's equally possible to suffer substantial losses.
As a new trader, it's important to acknowledge that trading with leverage requires expertise and a sound risk management strategy, which can be challenging to implement successfully.
Therefore, it's wise to approach leverage with caution and focus on developing your skills and knowledge before considering this tool.
Here are some recommendations that can help you navigate the exciting but risky world of crypto trading:
First, it's important to be conservative with your risk-taking and to only invest in your very best trade ideas. Limiting your total exposure to the crypto sector to a small percentage of your total liquid capital, starting at 1%, is a good way to minimize your risk.
You should also limit your exposure to a specific crypto asset to a small percentage of your total crypto portfolio, with a 1% to 2% max risk on short-term trades and a max of 5% risk on longer-term positions. Using a stop loss with every position is also crucial to limit potential losses.
Remember, perfect timing is near impossible, so consider scaling into trading positions or "dollar cost averaging" into longer-term investments. Take profits along the way if a trade goes your way. And most importantly, avoid using leverage, which can be a double-edged sword and lead to substantial losses.
Lastly, only invest your capital in your very best ideas, which should be low-risk/high-reward setups on high-probability ideas. Don't force trades when there are no compelling opportunities, and remember that "no position" is a perfectly fine position when you don't see any good opportunities.
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