A price that’s bouncing neatly between two levels can be a real gift to traders. Just buy at the bottom of the range… and sell at the top of the range. Easy money! Right? Well, there are certainly great opportunities to make money this way… but turning this simple...
There’s something mysterious about gaps… those empty voids on our charts. Sometimes, a gap will cause us to miss our stop level and take a bigger hit on a trade than we were hoping… But gaps can also be used to our benefit – if we understand them a bit better. What is...
It’s vital that you know this simple trading rule if you want to avoid the mistakes of the worst traders – and enjoy the successes of the best. In a moment, I’ll explain exactly how the ‘rule of intent’ works, but first I need to look at what can happen if we go...
Last week I said that the Yen would be the hot story this week – and it’s been anything but boring. The Japanese Yen has been a huge money-spinner for traders in recent years, and there’s every reason to believe it’ll continue to be so… As long as you’re on the...
Is this insanity? No doubt, at some point in your life, some know-it-all has quoted this wisdom at you (perhaps they’ve even quoted it at you over and over again): ‘The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different...
Okay, so you’ve got a signal to trade – great. You might even know where you want to put your stop loss. But how on earth do you gauge where to take profits? How far is the market going to move? You don’t want to get out too soon, and miss out on a big move. But you...
Buy Sell HoldApparently, it’s not just the Brits who love an underdog. Traders around the planet like nothing better than to buy shares that are down on their luck; and to sell off the ones that are on the up. Of course, if you get it right, there’s lots of money to...
Wall St$90 billion in just 3 minutes. No, it isn’t the latest get-rich-quick scheme! It’s how much was wiped of the US markets on Tuesday afternoon in the space of a few minutes. These ‘flash crashes’ are happening more and more often, so today I’d like to show you...
At the sight of a column of sunlight through the clouds this week, my mind has turned to the summer holidays, and then to whether or not I need to lose some weight! The thing with diets is that no matter how much cabbage soup or how many grapefruits they prescribe, it...
In the old movie Duck Soup, Groucho Marx pleads his innocence to his wealthy fiancé, who catches him smooching with a show girl: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” It’s a phrase I can imagine market pundits repeating regularly, as markets again and...
For many people, the Cyprus drama is over, but the repercussions of this will be bouncing around the markets for some time. It’s made many investors (and not just those in southern Europe) question their attitude to risk – and sent them looking for safer, and more...
Zero-risk trading is great for a trader’s ego, psyche, stress levels – and not bad for your trading account either! What are free trades? Free trades are positions with a stop loss set at breakeven (plus the cost of the spread). This is achieved by moving your stop...
Today I’d like to run through a quick tutorial that will enable you to get into trades faster, for better profits. Waiting around for confirmation of a trading signal is a big frustration for traders. Act too fast, and you’ve jumped into a trade on dodgy information,...
You’ve got to love the markets just for their unlimited ability to surprise. No sooner does the sequester strike, taking a cool $85billion out of the Federal budget on Friday night, than the Dow Jones moves to new all-time highs. And the dollar index has climbed. This...
Forex traders can be a perverse bunch – they can thrive on a news story, whether it’s good news or bad news. And while they may curse central banks who jump in to manipulate prices, plenty of forex traders have done very well out of the currency wars going on in Asia....
Today, I’ll tell you about silver… the gutsy little brother, often ignored by traders who are dazzled by his shiny yellow sibling! Silver has had a pretty tough time recently. As you can see in the chart below, it had a meteoric rise between mid-2009 and early 2011,...
While you may feel comfortable trading the dollar… or buying shares on the FTSE 100… When was the last time you bought live cattle? Or platinum? Well, whether you’ve dipped your toes into the commodities markets before or not, there’s no doubt you’ll have heard a lot...
As traders, we’re always being told not to let our egos get in the way of trading. We need to be calm… removed… disciplined… (a bit like robots). But, let’s face it, we’ve all got egos (admittedly, some of us have bigger ones than others!), and they...
Traders talk a great deal about their “plans” and “strategies”, but in reality, when pressed, these can turn out to be pretty vague. There’s no doubt that discipline is important in trading – if for no other reason, we need to be able to track what’s working and what...
According to my reckoning, this article should take around 4 minutes to read. I’m going to make the assumption that, while you read this, you’re not traveling at or near to the speed of sound. So, I’ll assume that a minute for you is much the same as a minute for me....
The word ‘volatility’ tends to cause two very distinct reactions in traders – they either rub their hands in glee at the thought of all those lovely market moves to take advantage of… or they close their positions and run screaming for the hills! The...
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of getting stopped out. I know that it can be a necessary evil … but there are other ways to trade. (Like binary betting, which I covered in detail at the end of last year.) But I’ve also been exploring a different...
The standard protection used by traders is the stop loss. Most traders have a real love-hate relationship with their stop losses. Of course, we must protect our trades in the markets … but, boy, do we hate it when they get knocked! And we hate it even more when our...
It’s that time of year when many of us mull over how the last 12 months have gone, and consider our expectations for the coming year. And here are a few ways I intend to ensure that my trading is on the up and up in 2013 … 1. I will devote more time to money...
