Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify One of the bigger issues I always face in training somebody new to the market (or someone struggling) is getting them to understand that trading involves structure. It’s fairly easy for me to spot this issue in a trader (very easy), all I need to do is see three or four of their trades. It doesn’t even matter if they are winning or losing trades. Good traders may have several strategies they know, but typically 90 to 95% of their trades come from two or three concepts. I’ll pick up this discussion from here during the podcast as…
Author: Paul Lange
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify If you are very new, you may not even understand what the question is regarding “what to trade”. And if you have some experience, you may think this is a boring topic. I’m going to discuss the pros and cons of trading stocks, futures, Forex, Options, Crypto, or commodities. They all in the trade long-term, and they all can be good for day trading. If you’ve been around a while this may sound boring because on the surface you probably know some of the pros and cons. But I want to take some time during this podcast and…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify I know the “Three-Legged Stool” concept has a lot of uses as a metaphor. For a long time however, I’ve used it to describe what people need in order to be successful in trading/investing. I have spent some of my prior podcasts discussing what you do not need, what you should never be looking at. I always make that a focus because so many people fail by looking at all the wrong things. You can glance at the slide notes to see a quick title of each of the three legs. I know it to be true that…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify Without a question, the biggest disadvantage we have as traders is being human. Along with all the good things come some really bad things for traders. We come with emotions that do nothing but confuse us. We have hidden demons that we do not even know are operating. In addition, whether you realize it or not, as you develop as a human, you develop ‘biases’. A predetermined view of how something will act. Webster defines bias as “a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment”. Here are the charts to follow along: Chart 1: Chart 2: Chart 3: Set up…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify Trading or investing in the market is a unique profession. The ability to make a former week’s salary in minutes can have even very educated and disciplined people doing crazy things. Just like a construction site often attracts kids, the market attracts successful people. However, the success these people have had does not translate to the market directly, sometimes not at all. Unfortunately, there is no fence we can put around the market as we do around construction sites. People have to rely on their own common sense and the market often strips people of their common sense.…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify This may sound like a simple question but it is actually quite a complex question and it is also a very important one. Is trading subjective or objective, should a good trader be more subjective or objective? What does it mean to be subjective or objective when it comes to trading? When traders first come to the market, they are inherently very subjective. They don’t know what else to be, although they may not characterize themselves as subjective. If they look at a chart, and they may say that the stock certainly can’t go any lower. That is…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify I will make this clear again when you begin listening to this podcast but in case you’re wondering what direction this is going to take or what exactly cookie-cutter patterns are (if you been trading a while you probably know, if not you may not) this podcast will be a scathing ridicule of anyone who thinks are going to make money from cookie-cutter patterns. The term cookie-cutter patterns is one that I use a lot. Don’t think I invented it, but it’s a term used for those cliché chart patterns that people refer to, and the inexperienced trader…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify I am going to bet that this podcast gets fewer downloads than the others. Discipline? Really? What a boring topic. Discipline. It is an important word in most everything we do in life. But in trading it has a very special place. When a new trader discovers that you can make a former week’s salary in a couple of hours it brings about emotions of greed and fear that have intelligent people often doing stupid things. If you’ve only half listened to half of my prior podcasts, I think you understand that technical analysis is the only way…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify I am going to bet that this podcast gets fewer downloads than the others. Discipline? Really? What a boring topic. Discipline. It is an important word in most everything we do in life. But in trading it has a very special place. When a new trader discovers that you can make a former week’s salary in a couple of hours it brings about emotions of greed and fear that have intelligent people often doing stupid things. If you’ve only half listened to half of my prior podcasts, I think you understand that technical analysis is the only way…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify The word Secrets is in quotation marks because I tend to make fun of crazy emails that act like trading or investing revolving around some magic formula or great new strategy. After a long time of working with many traders, one discovers that there are certain truths that cannot be denied. There are four things that are done so consistently wrong by new, and even fairly experienced traders, that each of these mistakes results in bad trades 90% of the time for most traders. If traders would simply follow these four rules, they would eliminate most of their…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify Don’t be scared off by the title, this is not a basic question. I have a very specific definition of what trading (that would include investing as long-term trading) is all about. And it’s not what most people think. I laugh when I hear someone say, Oh, you have to be trading crypto, that is where the money is… Really? The 20 billion plus traded every day on just the NYSE is not enough? Too much volatility is NOT good. Understanding what trading is, or what it should be, is the first step toward making money. Here’s a…
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify The title of my series of podcasts is “What Matters in Trading and Investing”. That is the theme. All of the episodes have built on that, and this one will be no exception. Keeping it simple is not as “simple” as it sounds. That is because in trading, like anything else, before you make it simple, you have to make it complicated. What I mean by that is that you have to fully understand everything about a topic before you can boil it down. Think about a doctor… Here are the Charts to follow along: Chart 1: Chart…