Archive for: November 2006

Pubs have always been a great place for social networking , where ideas and laughters are exchanged in a more open and sincere way than in any other places. It is this place where I feel sense of equality. It is this place I feel sense of community. It is this place I feel sense of fairness. If you are tired of trading , this is a great place to take a break and meet up with friends. If you are sick of your boss at work this is also a place for some relief. Wishing all a happy and enjoyable festive season ! Cheers.

Did you watch this movie - home alone ? I love it !

Many traders enter the trading business and work from home because we want freedom and independence. However freedom requires a trader to be very highly disciplined. There is nobody to set rules for you at home , and this new-found freedom often results in an actual lack of control and self discipline. Working at home has its own set of rules that must be followed strictly in order for a stay-at-home trader to be successful.

The trader must be able and willing to assert control over his work time in such a way that the interruptions in time and concentration are kept to an absolute minimum and that they relate exclusively to work. In order to take control of your working time at home , you must establish a set of simple , effective rules that you are willing to follow. Some guidelines and rules are : ( these are my lists , you may add or delete to match your personality …

Diving into the Market without an Action Plan …Guarantee lose money !
This is one of the best way to lose money in the market , regardless of which instrument you trade ; regardless of how much your starting capital is. Do not think that oxygen tank will help …

Most people will be like me before , if you do not start with a good trading plan - then you will learn the painful and hard way. Honestly speaking most people will start the trading journey by opening an trading account and set some unrealistic expectations. For me the feeling of having a trading account for the first time in my life was just great at that time , and I started boasting to friends about it. You could very well guess what happened after that ?

Opening an account and start live trading is not the first action plan ! It is the last , education and planning comes first. Trading is a business and a trading plan is a must. The purpose …

Attending Seminar conducted by non-active trader - Guarantee lose money !
Believe it or not , there are people making money trading the stock market , there are people making more money conducting trading seminars. If the guru himself is a successful trader and in his quest to share and teach his strategies to others , then I think that is fine. Not many gurus are willing to give demonstration of live trade in seminar. That is fine too , if the guru is a well known or successful trader with proven track record.

There are some self-proclaimed trading gurus out there making a living time out of conducting seminars on a fulltime basis. This is absurd , as many newbies like me were sucked into some impressive sales presentation , only to find out later that he hardly traded at all. If you are considering taking up Russell 2000 futures seminar or something like that , please do check it out at the forums for some free feedback before signing up , unless you want to challenge this guarantee ……

Many people tell you ways to make money in the stock market. That is difficult to write , because I might be repeating what you might already read before.

In this folder ( How to LOSE MONEY ? ) I am going to write about guaranteed ways on how to lose money , something even more difficult to write … I think , because there is not much references I could refer to. But let me try to give you an account of my exposures in the market environment.

Good luck !

My trading journey at the initial stage was a tough and lonely one. Fortunately , attending seminars allowed me to meet some new trader friends. Some were beginners just like me , and some already had some trading experience. When learning to trade , I must say that it is important to be able to spot some friends who have the “same frequencies”. In other words , my preference is to have someone who has about the same level of trading experience like me. Idea is to ensure that his focus and trading objectives are close to mine.

It is important that this partner has limited trading experience so that his thinking and actions is not clouded by too much information. Being a great market analyst or an accomplished stock market technician is not necessarily the passport to successful trading. Some of the best market analysts are also the worst traders. Good market analyis and forcasting ability is not equal to good trading ability. Just like in NLP - there is a difference …

In the older days when information technology was not as advanced as it is today , many traders depended on tips to make trade decisions. It is still happening today , of course. Tips are pieces of information that come from questionable sources , and usually with no known way of tracing them. Today there are many paid trade signals subscriptions and even tough analysis are done by professionals I treat them as tips too. Do you ? Perhaps you have some better experiences to share ?

However I must also say that there are people who made money trading using tips. To them they got a better way to get more reliable tips. I made some money before based on some reliable tips on companies merger news , but also lost some money on tips that turned out sour.

In reality there is no right or wrong using tips to trade. That is my view , but I make it my Trading Rule not to trade using tips. The argument for using tips …

In layman’s term , perhaps the best definition is that trading strategy is a plan of attack or game plan. We need game plan in all perspective - football matches or any other sports , businesses and so on. Incidentally at point of writing I received a note from Rosalind Gardner , a popular and successful internet marketer about game plan. See how important game plan or strategy is in every aspect of life ?

In trading we need strategies to guide us in our trade execution. Trading is not an instinctive game. Rather , we need to follow a predetermined set of conditions before any final decision or trade execution is made. In the usual case , strategies include some conditions like setup , signals , entry and exit , risk management and so on.

There is no one set of best strategy that fit all traders. I have tried to use a very successful strategy that was developed and used by a trader friend of mine. Surprisingly the end result was a …

I chanced upon this interesting article by Brett N. Steenbarger regarding trading journals.

My belief is that trading is a system , it is a process , just like a manufacturing or factory system. The trading system consists of various components , each of which are interlinked and they are interdependent , just like a car assembly line. My past experience in factory operations tells me that in order for a system to run efficiently and effectively , we need a checklist or a audit system to ensure all compliances are met. Most businesses are adopting the ISO standards for auditing purposes. Because of the Enron scandal , more stringent system like SOX ( Sarbanes Oxley Compliance ) is been implemented in many businesses.

Likewise in trading , I see the need to have a “self check”. As we know trading is a lonely journey. We need to self impose this check. No one is going to audit what we did right or did wrong. Keeping or writing a …

One of the key issues I encountered during my trading journey is information overload , especially during the initial stage of learning. I always felt as tough there were too many opportunities and too many so-called trading gurus , peddling off how-to-make-money with online trading. I believe this is a common problem faced by many beginners too. There are just too many available vehicles to trade … stocks , options , forex , commodities futures ; within which different gurus offer different strategies that they claimed to be world best. I started with the wrong foot , jumping and skipping from learning one thing to another. Eventually I settled down to learn to trade only forex and SP-500 futures. Key reason is the leverage these two trading vehicles provide.

For those who are beginners , considering to learn trading , the advice is to focus on one and only one area. The more information we get the less inclined we will be to act because we will have too many alternatives and , …