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The continuous feedback loop of a successful traderDo you know what’s more important than winning in trading? It is knowing exactly why you actually won . Why? So that you can do it constantly. Needless to say, it is equally important to know why you lost when you lost. The successful trader is constantly winning money, no matter the conditions. The economy may be in recession … or not … Algorithmic trading may be accounted for most of the trading volume . The volatility may be over the edge or down to ridiculous levels due to the summer holidays. So what … these are all part of the job . You need to make money because this is your job and if you complain and blame external factors for your poor results then think about choosing another profession. Many would ask how is that possible … to constantly make money in ever-changing markets? Among the other 999 little things, your overall strategy is built upon there is one directly linked to your consistency. That is the continuous feedback and adjustment loop of your trading approach . This is where your post-trade analysis takes place and where you should find out WHY you won or lost. For a discretionary trader, this feedback loop is not an easy thing to put in place, but it’s crucially important to have it. Because, the more useful you want the feedback, the more accurate the analysis should be. The difficulty of building the whole feedback mechanism is finding a fine balance between the depth of the trading details you take into consideration and the time and effort needed for analyzing them. From personal experience, I can tell you that you may fail to have a useful mechanism if you are too superficial. You might as well get lost in “analysis paralysis” as well as if you go too deep. That level of needed compromise is somehow personal. You know you’ve reached it when it can answer the following questions: 1. Is your selection technique giving you enough opportunities per your time frame? 2. Are your entries able to give you the price moves you want? 3. Are your exit techniques able to cut your losers short and let the winners run? If the answer is “No” to any of these questions then you need to ask the next question “Why?” and dissect the effectiveness of that particular technique. Be ready to do the required adjustments if necessary. There is a point in a trader’s career when being able to answer these questions alone will be more useful than an advice from the mentor. From that point on you can be on your own. Best regards! Mihai Iacob
BITSTAMP:BTCUSDEducation
by Mihai_Iacob
27
The Cost Of Missing Your Best TradesWhat if your best trades were the ones you frequently do not enter? There are not many positives in missing trades because it's money you're not adding to your trading account. You're losing more than money when you don't enter your best trades. Let's dig in. Lost of confidence 😫 If you've ever said to yourself, "Why didn't I take the trade?" It's because you saw the setup. Your rules were met, but something inside of you couldn't push the button. It could have been your own thoughts. You could have feared losing the trade in result losing money. Either way, you lacked the strength to push the button. It's ironic how one button determines the fate of your abilities huh? Hear this, you can begin doubting your ability as a trader when you don't take your setups. Remember that your eyes see first and you must take action regardless of your personal thoughts or feelings. You used logic to see the trade so use it to enter the trade. Then let the trade tell you if you were wrong or right. Risk of losing trades outweighing the trades you don't enter. Have you ever looked at your trade journal just to realize you could be profitable if you'd enter all of your trades? Most traders I consult with hesitate the moment they realize they have a good entry. Did you catch that? They don't question the analysis. They question themselves the moment it's time to hit the buy or sell button. Like most traders, you're good until you have to show up to take action. This is common, but can also be the reason why you may not be seeing more profits than losses. Revenge Anyone? Revenge is a strong feeling. Taking action to get revenge results from the feeling of losing something so precious and your money is precious to you so it's only fitting you have a right to want it back. However, money loss doesn't always come from trades you've enter. Consider this: You see a trade. This risk to reward is 1:2. So you know you have a chance to double the amount you risk. You're excited. You see the outcome. So, you put a monetary value on the trade and realize if you win the trade you can win $1000. If you lose the trade you can only lose $500. Something happens. You never enter. It could be for varying reasons. You weren't at your chart because you got busy. You got called in to go to work. Price reach where you wanted to enter, but you didn't like what you saw. Either way you're not down $500. You're at a loss of $1000. That leads me into my last point. The cost of missing your best trades setups is the risk of making the money you desire. That $1000 could have gone a long way for you. It could have covered a car note. Paid your utilities for the month. Added more leverage to your trading account. Either way it meant something to you, but you can't feel it because you feel like you missed out on it. I get it. I've been there. You're not alone. You are learning something though. You're learning you don't want to keep missing these setups so you're going to do something about it. I have 3 suggestions for you. Let's see if you've thought of these: * Adjust your timeframes so they fit your schedule *Set pending orders *Trade less pairs so you can focus on your best setups Hear me well my dear friend, you may not always enter your best setups, but you can miss less. Keep your trading easy for you. Don't overthink the entry. Don't tell yourself you're wrong. Trust me, the market will tell let you know if you're doing things correctly or not. I pray you enjoyed this reading. If you have please like the post and share it. Please share your thoughts below. Many blessings to you, Shaquan ❤️
by ShaquanLopez
Gut feeling in trading.I hear many traders talking about gut feeling, especially when referring to very good traders. I hear them saying that you will, at some point, feel what the market will do next. Many explain it as a sixth sense or cannot it explain it at all. I say to them the explanation behind is a much simpler one. Gut feeling in trading, in most of the cases, is nothing else but subconscious pattern recognition. There is nothing magic here, it is simply related to how the human brain works in day-to-day life. The trader looks at his screen for thousands of hours. Every day, he tries to analyze the price movements, while the brain stores the information in an abstract way into neural maps . Millions of neurons fire and wire together and create complex memory banks which include associated emotional responses. Day after day after day, these memory banks are reinforced and restructured until the neural maps are hardwired. This process is all subconscious. The part which is even more interesting is the way the human brain retrieves the needed information stored in those complex neural maps . This mechanism is also done subconsciously and this is why many label it as “gut feeling”. So, when a trader instantaneously “feels”, in an apparently strange way, what he should do when he sees a particular market event, his brain has subconsciously identified a store pattern. You may ask yourself: So what? What difference does it make knowing this? I say it makes. When you understand how your brain works you should also realize that you have at your disposal an extraordinary working instrument, but this will not guarantee your success by itself. Those neural maps need quality data. Programmers are accounted with the saying “garbage in garbage out”. It’s the same with the human brain. If you don’t put the true intellectual effort in your day to day market observations, if you don’t approach what you see from multiple angles, if you don’t analyze your own emotional reactions, then your neural maps will be built on superficial data. You will only reinforce all sorts of ineffective pattern recognition processes, no matter how long you stare at the screens. By contrast, if you do it right, your “gut feeling” will evolve and become very valuable. Evolving as a trader is not only a function of how much time you spend trying. What really matters is what you are really doing and how you are doing it. This explains why so many traders cannot become profitable even after years of trying. They are caught in inefficient and superficial ways of looking at the market. So many retail traders rely exclusively on technical patterns. They don’t understand what really moves the markets and how those patterns are formed. They spend years and years switching from one technical indicator to another, without realizing they are unconsciously accumulating only superficial data. Some realize the trap … most don’t
OANDA:XAUUSDEducation
by Mihai_Iacob
17
The Evolution of a Trader | 3 Milestones 📈 Hey traders, In this educational article, we will discuss 3 stages of the evolution of a trader. Stage 1 - Unprofitable trader 😞 The unprofitable trader has very typical characteristics: -total absence of trading skills Most of the time, people open a live account simply after completing some beginners course like on babypips website. Being sure that the obtained knowledge are completely enough to start trading, they quickly face the tough reality. -no trading plan Having just basic knowledge, of course, they do not have a trading plan. Why the hell to have it if everything is so simple?! All their actions on the market is just gambling. They open the positions randomly most of the time, simply relying on intuition. -poor risk management In 99% percent of the time, the unprofitable trader does not even think about risk management. The position sizing, stop placement and target selection are completely neglected. Trading performance of the unprofitable traders is characterized by small wins and substantial losses and negatively trending equity. Stage 2 - Boom and bust trader 😶 Usually, traders reach boom and bust stage after 1-2 years of unprofitable trading. At some moment, winning trades start to compensate losing trades, brining non-trending equity. Such traders have very common traits: -not polished trading plan Being unprofitable for so long, traders start to realize the significance of a trading plan. Sticking to the set of rules, they notice positive changes in their trading performance. However, trading plan requires to be polished and modified. It takes many years for a trader to identify all its drawbacks before it starts bringing net profits. -lack of confidence When one starts following a trading system, confidence plays a substantial role. The fact is that even the best trading strategy in the world occasionally produces negative results. In order to not give up and keep following such a system, one needs to build trust in that. The confidence that after a series of losing trades, the strategy will manage to recover. Such a trust can be built after many years of trading that strategy. Stage 3 - Profitable trader ☺️ That is the final destination. After many years of a struggling trading, one finally sees positively-trending equity. Winning trades start to outperform losing ones, leading to consistent account growth. Profitable trader is characterized by iron discipline, confidence and consistency. He knows what he is trading, when and why. His trading plan is polished, he fully controls his emotions. He never stops learning and constantly develops his strategy. Knowing the 3 stages of the evolution of a trader, one can easily identify at what stage he currently is. That will help to identify the things to be focused on to move to the next stage. At what stages are you at the moment? ❤️If you have any questions, please, ask me in the comment section. Please, support my work with like, thank you!❤️
Education
by VasilyTrader
21
How can we profit after BoJ's intervention?Yesterday, after more than 10 years, the Bank of Japan intervened in the market. UsdJpy pair was very volatile and has a 550 pips daily range from top to bottom. However, thinking of previous interventions, yesterday's volatility represented around 2.5% if we take into consideration the daily close when in the past we had 5% moves... But, what do we know from previous interventions? First of all, they never worked, in fact from the past 11 interventions, BoJ was able to maintain "the move" in only one case, and that time wasn't a BoJ intervention, but a joint intervention in the markets alongside other central banks. Second, and most importantly, we can profit from this. So, how can we do this: 1. As I said, we know that BoJ intervention doesn't work and the pair resumes its previous trend. In UsdJpy we have a clear up trend and in such a case we should look for buying opportunities. Using only support and resistance we can see that under 140 we have a very good level of support. So under 140, we should look for buying opportunities. Considering the resistance provided by the intervention, we can set a take profit in that zone. Considering a hypothetical trade, if we buy at 139.50 with a take profit at 145.50, we have a potential 500 pips profit. As a stop loss, we can use a large and comfortable stop loss of 250 pips, which still gives us a 1:2 risk to rewards ratio, or, be more aggressive and use 138 as a stop loss and, in this case, we have more than 1:3 R: R. 2. Using the ceiling given by BoJ yesterday, which is 146. So, also a hypothetical trade: sell around that zone, set a stop loss of 150-200 pips and as for target, we choose the 140 support. In this case, we count on 2 things: first, we are backed by BoJ which "said" very clearly yesterday that is not comfortable with UsdJpy above 145, second, a lot of people will sell or close their buy positions there, using the same reasoning, putting pressure on the pair. P.S: Keep in mind that levels provided in this article are for the sake of example, not specific points where to buy or sell. Regards and best of luck! Mihai Iacob
Education
by Mihai_Iacob
11
Successful traders think like chess playersEvery day I get many questions from traders and more than half of them are: "What will X asset do today, will it rise or fall" or "Do you think X asset will reach Y price?" With very few exceptions, I say "I don't know". Surely my interlocutor will think that I don't want to tell him/her or that I'm an idiot. In fact, the correct answer is another: "I don't care" And now, dear reader, you will think not that I am an idiot, but a complete one. But bear with me a little more and let me explain using a real trading example on EurUsd Let's say we consider taking a trade on this pair so, we ask ourselves what do we know about it? 1. Fundamentally the USD is favored 2. The trend is down for more than a year. So, we want to trade in the direction of the trend and sell this pair Looking closely at the chart we see that EurUsd is contained in a downwards channel and recently found support in the 0.99 zone. Last week, the pair corrected and reached a high at 1.0150 and reversed exactly from the channel's resistance, leaving a nice and strong bearish engulfing on our daily chart. Going further with our judgment, where do we want to sell this pair? Now, considering my approach, I see a good place to sell in the 1.0030-1.0050 zone. So we set a sell limit order in that zone (Remember, professional traders use pending orders) We also consider at this moment the point where our bearish outlook is negated. We get 1.0150 for our stop loss. Now, using again my personal trade, let's say we set the selling order at 1.0030, with a stop loss at 1.0150 we have a potential loss of 120 pips. We know that every pip move on EurUsd represents 1usd for 0.01 volume, so 12usd potential loss on 0.01 trade for our trade. Now, let's consider volumes. What potential loss are we "comfortable" with? For the sake of example let's say 120 USD, so a 0.1 volume. Now let’s see where we can take profit. 0.97 zone is the falling channel's support, so there. Looking at such a trade we have 120 pips or 120 USD potential loss with 330 pips or 330 potential profit. This gives us a close to 1:3 risk-reward ratio, a very good one. And now, maintaining the analogy from the title is the market’s “move” turn And the market can do only 2 things at this point: fill our pending order or not. Considering that I don't hold pending orders after NY's close, if the market doesn't reach my level by then, I will remove the order, and tomorrow I will start over again by analyzing the market. The second is to trigger our limit order as is also the case for my trade, and we are in a running trade now. Now, with a trade running is again the market's move. So, what are the possible scenarios? 1. The market rises and hits our SL. Although an undesirable scenario, we knew from the start that it’s a possibility and like every trade, this also carries a risk. We considered it and assumed it from the start and didn't trade more than we could afford to lose in a trade. So, we take it like a stoic and move on to the next trade and market analysis 2. The lovely scenario in which EurUsd breaks 0.99 support and falls to our target. So, our reasoning was correct and we now have a trade that brought 330usd in our pocket, but more importantly we traded disciplined with a good R: R 3. The market falls below 0.99 but reverses. Now we can also consider some action - Move SL in BE and let the trade run - Close half to get some money off the table and move SL into BE - Close all trade In conclusion: As you can see, you don't need to be Gary Kasparov to be a good trader, the market's "moves” being in fact just a few. All you need to do is to be aware of these moves and have a plan for each of them. This way you will not end up wondering every minute "where will EurUsd go, it will rise, it will fall", you will not trade emotionally or recklessly. As Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who failed to plan, plan to fail", but it is not your case, because, as a good trader you always trade with a plan and know from the beginning all that the market can do. Best regards! Mihai Iacob
Education
by Mihai_Iacob
17
NZDUSD LONGS, CHECK OUT MY ANALYSIS AND FOLLOW ME UP :)Here we have a descending trendline which price has respected, one previous breakout occurred however it was a fake breakout. We are also seeing lower highs and lower lows forming with price currently making a new lower low at a previous resistance level at - 0.69200 and this is where price began to become bullish and our moving averages were also bullish on the 1H time frame, all giving us extra confluence that price will be making a new lower high and potentially at the trendline.
Long
by FOREXWITHD
2
Another vital lesson in the markets...Perhaps the most important rule when trading professionally Is that history repeats itself in the markets.. So you may be asking what exactly does this mean? Well its rather simple; Market moves that happened before happen again!... Over and over. The reason is because markets have memory. When price returns to these levels you see similar reactions. Why is this information so important?.. It is Important because it allows you to Make better decisions in your trading. If you know price repeats, you can add it into the formula you use to trade any asset. This is because it works in any setting and is relevant in ALL markets. You will notice no matter the chart you are looking at, there is oscillations and consolidations. These are all based on price action from previous events.
Long
by WillSebastian
Japanese candlesticks are better than any indicator Although indicators can help in the process of constant trading, nothing compares to Japanese candlesticks , which in themselves show who is stronger in the market, buyers or sellers. Using technical analysis in your favor is crucial for understanding what may happen next in the market. But... Japanese candlesticks often give the clearest picture of them all. Learn to read what Japanese candles show. Understanding who is currently dominating the market can significantly help you in acquiring additional mergers that are necessary not only to confirm your pattern but also to determine in advance what the price can do next. Financial markets are a continuous open battlefield of buyers and sellers. Look for a strong side to be with the dominant side in the market. ❤️ Please, support our work with like & comment! ❤️
Education
by SignalProvider
9