I hope you’re enjoying the sunshine.
On my trading journey, I’ve stopped off to check out Woodies CCI club (http://www.woodiescciclub.com) a few times. Woodie’s CCI is famous in the trading world as a completely free forum where ‘traders can help traders’.
The CCI indicator is nothing new, but what made Woodie so popular was they way he traded it. Originally he used this one indicator with a few adjustments to trade with, sometimes without even looking at the actual market itself – just the CCI.
Since then there have been a number of developments with additions such as the chop zone indicator and a Weighted CCI and even a turbo CCI.
Woodie’s CCI has also gone mainstream and can now be found automatically built into many charting packages.
But if you step back from this all and question whether Woodie’s CCI actually works, you get a very confusing picture. Just because something is popular or has been around for a while, doesn’t mean it works.
Does Woodie’s CCI trading forum actually work?
I have looked at the chat rooms and used some of the indicators in the past, but never managed to make anything of them. I recently started to look into Woodie’s CCI for a formal review, but found the whole picture so confusing that I gave up rather quickly.
The live chat room is indeed very friendly and useful. There’s some great advice on money management and trading psychology that help protect your account. However, if all this is based on a flawed concept, then all the best money management in the world won’t make a jot of difference.
The trading room moderators encourage you to find your own way of trading and to keep your own stats, which ultimately is a sensible policy. This would be a fine if there was any evidence that the moderators or even Woodie himself is making good money using the methods over the long term.
There’s a great article here: http://tuckerreport.com/articles/magic-indicator/ and well worth the read if you have time. An ex Woodie member shares his direct experience from over three years of trading in the room. His thoughts and the comments from other readers are quite revealing.
I think the lesson with community rooms such as this is to not be afraid to ask difficult questions. If are trade doesn’t work you, ask the moderator or expert where you were wrong and if they were in the trade too. Their answers are quite revealing. Do they provide a different answer each time? Do they say things like “if you’d have just entered 2 seconds earlier” or “it’s up to you to find your own way of trading it”. I find straight, justification free answers can be an excellent sign.
It’s a difficult line to tread because ultimately it might be better to find your own take on a method, one that suits you personally. The important thing is to try to gauge whether the so-called expert is actually trading themselves and making money from it.
One trading room I really do like is Phil Newton’s http://www.trading-strategies.info/. In my experience, his methods work and I’ve always found him to give straight answers to difficult questions.
The jury is still out on Woodie’s CCI, but I’ll be leaving it for a good while. If you’ve any direct experience of Woodie’s Club, then I’d love to hear from you.
I’ve just finished the latest edition of What Really Profits
This month I’ve spent some time recapping on systems and services I’ve reviewed in the past. Some such as http://www.sharemaestro.co.uk/http://www.lstrader.co.uk/ as this is going through a period of fairly big drawdown at the moment. continue to impress. Some others aren’t faring too well and I’m glad I was a little cautious in my review of
As well as the recaps, I also take a look at Forex Trading Made E-Z from retired airline pilot George Smith. It’s an interesting little method, if a little low tech in its approach.
One of my beta testers has done a sterling job in attending a few trading seminars on my behalf recently, enable to put forward a double review for this edition. I cover Kevin Greenhall’s Simply forex training and Investment Mastery from Marcus de Maria.
Intermediate to long term traders might be interested in the Decision Point website. It’s stacked full of useful charts and bespoke indicators that have so far helped call the market very well recently.
If you like fast moving action, then day trading US stocks can be an exciting place to trade. I review the excellent live scanning program http://www.trade-ideas.com/ and their nifty new odds maker program that allows you to back test your ideas at the click of a button.
Finally I crunch some numbers and reveal a simple 3 step forex pattern that could help you get better entries on your trades, avoid more losing trades and know when to grab profits.
It should be with you at the weekend.
As ever, if you want to get in touch about a system or provide feedback on anything, just drop me an email to [email protected]
Keep cool!
My trades
I’ve been eyeing up a good sell off on the S&P 500 for a couple of weeks, but after a couple of losing trades I thought it would be pointless fighting the tape – i.e. going against the crowd, even if I thought things were a bit frothy. I’m was of the opinion that the rally from the recent lows was built on shaky ground – not least because the US banks have been reporting record profits thanks to questionable accounting tricks and one off gains.
My trigger was a move below the low of the last two days. It happened yesterday, but with typical timing, I was out of the office in the afternoon due to a meeting so I missed the whole move. Ah well, these things are meant to try us.
I’m not going to chase and entry from here. I think we’ve flipped to over sold in the short term so there could be a better entry to come.
This week’s hot trading buttons
A relatively quiet day today, with UK CPI the stand out data point. Tomorrow sees the release of the minutes from the last MPC meeting, along with the latest claimant count (unemployment) change data. At midday all eyes will be on the Alistair Darling’s budget announcement. Higher taxes and lower public spending are expected to announced, to help offset record government borrowing.
I read on one website that anything the government announces will be a drop in the ocean compared to the massive debt the UK is in. “Like a toddler slapping a whale” is how one website put it!
Thursday is a busy day with a raft of middle tier European announcements and US existing home sales. Friday brings a number of upper tier announcements; including UK GDP & retails sales, as well as US durable goods orders, and new home sales
Trading wisdom
“The three traits speculators must learn to manage within themselves are confidence, fear, and aggressiveness” – Larry Williams
