Entries from April 2009 ↓

The most successful floor traders are those that have the most experiance, this is no coincidence at all and should be a pointer for those who aspire to become a good trader.

Here is a good day trading tip, trading can be likened to being a sportsman, such as a golf pro or tennis champion, you need to be trained and in good physical shape. Skills are needed which must be developed over time and practiced until they become 2nd nature. Here are some of the key skills that you must develop as a trader.

1. Technical analysis can be used for futures as well as the more standard stocks, options and bonds that most people trade. This can give you a large edge over other traders who have not taken the time to study the charts support and resistence areas, trendline and patterns. If you want to be a pattern day trader then learning technical analysis is really a must do if you want to trade futures successfully.

2. This is a very basic point but is very important, always have your trading plan prepared before you enter a trade, never try and create it on the fly, you will be musch too emotional. make sure that you have both an entry and exit point in your plan.

3. Keep your losses small!, this is the one thing that every trader must do if they want to stay in the game for a long time. By doing this you will preserve your capital allowing you to trade another day. Your small wins will compensate your small losses allowing your big wins to give you an overall profit

4. Over trading is a big mistake that a lot of amateurs make. Professionals tend to be more patient and wait for the better opportunities to come along, this is called cherry picking and takes both patience and discipline. These are essential skills that you must develop.

5. It is important that you track all your trades and review them to see where you are making the mistakes. This is hard work, but this is what separates the professionals from the amateurs. Unless you do this you will keep on making the same mistakes. The best way to do this is to keep both a daily and weekly log.

6. Only trade when you are both physically and mentally prepared. This is often overlooked but is very important. Do you think a tennis star can win a game when they are tired and mentally not focused?, it’s unlikely. Being prepared means getting a good nights sleep, having your trading station and charts well prepared before the market opens, taking the time each and every day to review your trading plan and rules. Finally you must have the mental frame of mind and confidence that you are going to be successful today in your trading.

7. If you are new to trading futures take the time to paper trade until you are very confident that you are going to make money. You will know when you are ready because you will start to hate paper trading knowing that you could be making real cash profits on a consistent basis.

If you follow these steps then day trading option could be a very successful career for you

Warren Buffet was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska and has become probably the world’s most successful investor. He is the son of a stockbroker and Congressman, and of course everyone wants to learn about his trading secrets.
 
I don’t think that Warren Buffet has actually written a book about his investment principals himself, in that sense there is no Warren Buffet book, but he has from time to time given hints in his annual letters to share holders of Berkshire Hathaway, and in other short notes and reports to the media.
 
However there have been a lot of books written about Warren Buffet by others who have tried to put together the story and ideas behind the man and his fortune.
 
In fact if you go to Amazon and do a search for “Warren Buffet” will find 2,576 books being listed, compare that to “Bill Gates”, who for a long time was also considered to be the riches man in the world, and you only find 11 listings, that should give you some idea about the public obsession with the man.
 
I have only read one of his books called “The Warren Buffett Way”, it was quite hard work and somewhat of a boring read. Much of the content of all these books on Warren Buffet seems to be the same basic information about value investing and being patient with your investments. I don’t think much can be gained by reading more than one of them.
 
Here is a small selection of some of the better known ones:
 
The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition written by Robert G. Hagstrom, Ken Fisher, and Bill
The Snowball – Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
The essential Buffett library
Investing – the Last Liberal Art – by Robert Hagstrom
Buffett, by Roger Lowenstein
The New Buffettology, written by Mary Buffet and David Clark
The Interpretation of Financial Statements, by Benjamin Graham
Value Investing, by Janet Lowe
Robert Hagstrom, The Warren Buffett Way
Mary Buffett and David Clark, Buffettology
Janet Lowe, Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the Word’s Greatest Investor
John Train, The Midas Touch: The Strategies That Have Made Warren Buffett ‘America’s Preeminent Investor’.
Andrew Kilpatrick, Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett, Lawrence Cunningham (editor), The Essays of Warren Buffett
Janet M. Tavakoli, Dear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street
 
Many of these Buffet books are quite large, with many pages that would take a long time to read, and even longer to understand and make any sense of. A better way of understanding Buffet maybe to find investment articles which have summarised the Buffet principals into short concise lessons that can be quickly learnt and applied.
 
One point of caution however, and this is not investment advice, Buffet has made most of his fortune during the years of the great USA bull markets, times have changed and maybe these principals are no longer as effective as they used to be.

One of the best trading courses that I’ve taken was the Top Dog Trading course. At about one tenth the cost of seminars from the big trading seminar companies like Investools, Optionetics, FXTE, Bettertrades (Better Trades), Star Trader and a whole lot more, it delivers many times more real trading education, insights, market wisdom and how to trade rules.

If you would like to read more about this course checkout Top Dog Trading Review

Does everybody need forex trading training or do some people have a natural talent for trading currency on the forex market? You will not be surprised to hear that nobody is born understanding all of the ins and outs of foreign exchange trading. While it is true that some kinds of experience or personality traits can be useful and can mean that you will pick it up more quickly, everybody needs some kind of training if they plan to make a profit.

But there are many kinds of stock day training available these days and it may be hard to judge what is the best. With so many websites, blogs, articles and ebooks available on the internet, often low priced or even free, it is tempting to think that we may be able to pick up all we need to know for dirt cheap.

However, it can be a big mistake to limit yourself to this kind of piecemeal training. There are some great ebooks and free systems out there but others are outdated or never had any success at all. As a beginner you will find it hard to know which ones to trust.

Even the best ebooks generally do not cover everything you need to know. They may focus on one or two strategies that are not necessarily the best fit for your situation. The money saved on training may be lost several times over once you start currency trading for real.

In most cases you will be better advised if you sign up for formal training through a membership site. This is likely to be run by a trading group or an experienced forex trader. They will have set up a step by step process that you can work through from complete beginner to knowledgeable trader.

Beginners are usually attracted to forex day trading by the lure of quick and easy money and most know nothing about it when they start. It is great to have a system that covers pretty much everything and someone who can answer your questions.

Many formal forex training programs have a forum where you can discuss your strategies and results with others. Sharing information in this way can be a great way to learn. In fact, in many cases the forum itself is worth the cost of membership and many people remain members after completing the program just to have this exposure to the knowledge and experience of their fellow traders.

Solid forex training is unlikely to be free except at the most basic level. If you just want to dabble in the forex market as an experiment, without caring too much whether you win or lose, you may be satisfied with free training. The best type of free training is often given a way as a teaser or taster by sites or brokers who hope you will then join them as a paying member. In fact, you can often pick up top level tips this way and a free report from a reputable trader will often be more useful and valuable than a $20 ebook.

Whatever type of training you choose, be sure to follow it exactly. Don’t skip over the first steps hoping to get straight into making money – that would be a fast route to disaster. Test out the system you are being taught, either with small trades or in a demo account. Ask questions. Make sure you get every drop of wisdom from the training you have chosen so that you put yourself in the best position to turn a profit on completion of the forex trading training program.

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There is plenty of opportunity for unscrupulous people to make money fraudulently by launching a forex trading scam. Unfortunately there are always people who will part with money too fast in the hope of making more. However, we cannot assume that a system has to make money for everybody using it in order to be genuine. So what are the signs of a real scam?

1. Unrealistic claims

All websites that are promoting a forex product or service will try to appeal to your wish to make money. That is what forex day trading is about, after all. But if a site promises to make you millions of dollars virtually overnight no matter who you are and without requiring any work on your part, stay clear.

2. Huge earnings on trading account screenshots

It is also common for sites to provide images of their own trading account results to convince you that their system makes money. This is standard practice. A scammer will fake the screenshots using Photoshop, and it is pretty much impossible to tell.

So although having screenshots on the site is not in itself a problem, you shouldn’t pay much attention to them. Even if they are not faked, you don’t know that the person followed the exact system you are buying in order to obtain those results … and even if the figures are 100% genuine, it certainly does not mean that you will achieve the same results.

3. No guarantee

There should be a money back guarantee on any product and you should not have to jump through hoops to get it. Look for a “no questions” guarantee rather than something that says you must have followed all instructions to the letter before you can qualify for a refund. Following the instructions may include investing more money than you have.

If you are buying a downloadable product such as an ebook or expert advisor, you can trust anything that is sold by Clickbank as far as refunds are concerned. Clickbank will always refund these items within 58 days of your purchase.

If you are looking at a membership site or a service, refunds on past payments may not be offered because of the time that the company will have put in to providing the service for you during the time that you were a member. However, you should check that you can cancel at any time without incurring further charges. Don’t sign up for something that locks you in to a contract for 6 or 12 months.

4. Bad press in the forums

All products will show you recommendations and testimonials from satisfied customers. If you want to be sure you can ask for evidence that they are real, and a genuine business will usually find a way for you to contact the person if there is not already a link given along with the testimonial.

But even the worst day trading system will have some users who were just lucky. What you want to know is what the unsatisfied customers are saying. There will be some for every product, no matter how good, and you need to find them and sift through their comments. Are they just unhappy because they didn’t make a million dollars overnight, or was there a genuine problem with the product? Search for them in online forums to get a clear idea of which products are worthwhile and which ones might be a forex scam.

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