Every trader/investor must guard himself against drawdowns, which refer to the percentage drop in his account size after one losing trade or consecutive losing trades. For example, imagine that after losing a few trades in a row, your $20,000 account is reduced to $12,000; that would be a drawdown of 8,000/20,000 = 40%. If I [...] Read more »
Definition of perfect Stops and What your financial advisor is hiding from you.
Most traders have had the painful experience of setting their risk stops only to have the price retrace to their stop and take them out before continuing in the trend. Although some traders swear that other traders are "running the stops," actually what happened is the trader placed the stop too tight. Note: At times [...] Read more »
Five Characteristics of Successful Traders
As a former money manager I associated with a lot of other money managers. Some of them were successful, some of them were not and none of them ever taught their systems. They all said I was crazy when I said I was going to teach my system. But knowing what I know about volume [...] Read more »
Japan… I need your help
Words can’t begin to describe my feeling about the situation in Japan. If you’ve ever lost a loved one I’m sure you have an idea…. or if you’ve ever felt an earthquake. I remember the one time I felt an earthquake. I was is Sacramento and one struck in San Francisco and everything in the [...] Read more »
Screwflation
Finally – we’ve got a word for what most of us in the so-called middle-class have been feeling the last few years – Screwflation. As far as I can tell, Doug Kass at TheStreet.com invented it back in Oct of 2010. He defined this way: “Screwflation, like its first cousin stagflation, is an expression of [...] Read more »
Don’t Fumble this Valentine’s Day!
Don't Fumble this Valentine's Day! If you’ve been reading my emails and articles for long you know I place a high value on family. I really enjoy the freedom trading for my own accounts and mentoring other traders gives me to spend more time with my family. I’d go so far as to say that [...] Read more »
Trade Currencies Without Trading The Forex
Trade Currencies Without Trading The Forex Many people, including experienced investors, realize that there is money to be made by trading currencies but have no idea where to start in the forex market. There is, however, an alternative in currency ETFs. These ETFs track an individual foreign currency or basket of currencies by utilizing futures [...] Read more »
Oils ETFs Offer Efficient, Inexpensive Way To Invest
Oils ETFs Offer Efficient, Inexpensive Way To Invest There was a time when investing directly in oil commodities was limited to oil companies and financial institutions. The growth of exchange traded funds in the United States had evened the playing field in a lot of ways, and that includes investments made in assorted crude oil [...] Read more »
Fear, Greed and Money – Short Test To See If You Sabotaging Yourself?
Today it’s time to talk (again) about investing and trading and how your emotions will damage your investing and trading returns unless you have an effective method for circumventing them. I keep going back to this topic because it pretty much determines if you make it as a trader or not. There are lots of [...] Read more »
Roy Rogers and trading
So, while I was hanging out with friends and family the other day, we started talking about when we were kids and the celebrities and TV shows that we followed and turns out I’m not the only one that counts Roy Rogers as a big influence. For those of you outside the US, you’ll have [...] Read more »
