I hope you had a good weekend and are fired up for the trading week ahead.
I went off to the Cotswolds with Mrs Market Maven with the hotel paid for courtesy of our Tesco club card vouchers. We’d never been there before and found the place to be absolutely stunning. Very picturesque and you can see why the tourists flock there.
Must be a pain for the locals though, we hit virtually traffic jam going on the way there. We took one detour to hit another traffic jam. I apologise for the language wafting out of my car window if you live in the local area! Well worth the trip though.
I get a fair number of emails each day, so I thought it would be useful to share a selection of these questions and my answers with you. The first one deals with the prevailing question: manual or robot trading?
Manual trading versus robot trading
Q.
I’m considering either to order the Back Dog Trading Software or Forex Robot Trader system, please advise the one you prefer out of these two.
A.
It looks like Black dog changed their web address: Its now: http://www.blackdogforex.co.uk/
http://www.forexrobottrader.com from Don Steinitz appears to offer a number of products. There is an auto trading robot and some manual indicators. I am highly sceptical of bots and would always recommend manual trading over a bot.
I’ve no experience of his manual stuff, but will take a look at doing a review at some point in the future. I would recommend BlackDog though, not least because of the tremendous support and community around it.
I’m put off by forexrobottrader because they are selling a bot that claims to make no losses. The only way a bot can do that is if it uses some sort of loss recovery/ martingale money management strategy which this one obviously does. You can see this with the open trades with some being down over $1000 compared to the average profit about $30. In effect, the bot has no stop loss. It’s irresponsible and no doubt will wipe out an account at some point.
Q.
Dear Mr David Evans, Could you please point out the major differences between trading on a Meta Trader Platform and a conventional (available with most of the Spread Bet companies) Platform. Also what is or are the most suitable Time Frames for Day Trading. This is because I do not like to have a trade open Overnight or by the same token over the Weekend.
A.
The difference is that most meta trader platforms are mainly forex, but some also do indices and some US stocks. Spread betting platforms offer charts for virtually any market.
Most spread betting companies platforms are web based while meta trader is separate software.
Meta trader has a bigger following across brokers, with lots of custom indicators and expert advisors while spread betting firms offer very little customisation.
Suitable times for day trading, it depends on your strategy or system. You can have very successful systems that hold all day and close before the end, or just scalp over 10 minutes. The most popular time frame for short term trades is to use 5 minute charts.
Q.
Hi Dave ,can you tell me if you have looked at the Churchill Straus system at all?
A.
I’ve no direct experience. It all looked a bit fishy to me and they never returned my emails.
However, here is quite a useful forum thread which I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of. Click here:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/general-trading-chat/54568-churchill-strauss.html
Q.
One other thing Dave, I was wondering if you have ever covered the subject of spread betting as your only source of income and if this changes the ” tax free ” rules that currently apply.
If you was to spread bet for a living with no other source of income would this still be totally tax free??
A.
It seems to be a grey area. My understanding is that you could argue the toss in your favour if it came to it, but continuing to maintain some form of taxable income would be an advantage. This is my approach and so far I’ve had no problems.
In some ways its important not to be put tax concerns before trading profits. If you are making substantial profits, it would be well worth contacting a knowledgeable tax accountant, it which case it might be a nice problem to have.
Q.
Hello Dave. How are you? Have you come across Omni Trader on your travels?
Answer for all – I haven’t actually and my requests for review access have so far been rebuffed. Can any kind member help me out here with some feedback on Omni Trader?
If you’ve a question, comment or feedback on anything. Don’t hesitate to get in touch.
My trades
Still out of the market on my S&P 500 index trades. I think I’ll wait until we get a significant move above or below the 1000 level. Even then I’m wary of the fakeout. Depending on the size of the move I think that’s how I’m going to play it. Wait for the big move and trade a pullback.
Got hit for 6 on one trade last night but have made a fair dent in that deficit this morning with a couple of trades on the EUR/ JPY which is fast becoming my favourite pair. It seems to have the range of movement of the GBP/ JPY but with a spread of just 3 pips.
What’s your favourite pair if you have one?
This week’s hot trading buttons
It’s been a pretty quiet week and this will remain the case until tomorrow with the release of the Bank of England inflation report alongside a speech from governor King in the morning. Following this we get the latest rate statement from the US FOMC. No change is expected but Bernanke’s comments will be listened too closely.
Thursday brings some important US data with retail sales and unemployment claims. Friday has a number of middle tier announcements with US CPI top of the pile.
Trading wisdom
“So many people want the positive rewards of being a successful trader without being willing to go through the commitment and pain. And there’s a lot of pain.”- Bill Lipschutz
