Not everyone knows that a universal philosophy actually exists in the business of trading. Importantly, in order to be successful in the long run, this needs to be clearly understood and firmly burnt into the trader’s psyche. Anybody can place a few profitable trades—randomness will take of that. But to maintain that run of success…

The act of completing a trade, in essence, is very simple. A trade is simply executing a buy order, holding the ‘open’ position for a period of time and then executing a sell order. Selling short would be the opposite. The physical act of a trade is very simple. The two transactions (buying and selling)…

Focus on, enjoy and love the execution process and outcomes will be positive; focus on the outcomes and the opposite will happen; they will be negative over a large sample of trades. This is yet another trading paradox, the degree to which you focus on outcomes will be the degree to which you will be…

For more than 10 years I have had thousands of ‘wannabe’ traders come along to listen to trading methodology demonstrations, with the great majority saying: “Just give me a trading system that is good enough for me to make money—I have no problem with the psychological side of things.” Wrong, wrong, wrong! The psychology, that…

One of the major challenges that unsuccessful traders need to overcome is to recognise or admit that they are making trading errors. Even though their trading results will always be a stark reminder that they are not making money in an environment that is an endless stream of opportunities to enrich ourselves. (Trading in the…

Following on from the interview with Kel Butcher the week before last and last week’s topic on applying knowledge, I would like to discuss the importance of the role that discipline plays in trading. Discipline is a critical technique that we use in life to build and ingrain habits. We require discipline to engender change…

Knowledge is mandatory to be a successful trader but knowledge alone does not guarantee success, much more is needed. The application of new knowledge requires that repeated experiences of the new awareness be executed many times over. Discipline is required to repeat the experiences in the face of fear and of unsuccessful individual outcomes. A…

As a believer in the philosophy that ‘timing the market’ is more important than time in the market (although both are necessary), we must endeavour to learn a number of new trading specific paradigms and prevent some of our old societal paradigms from impacting our trading. I’ve written about some of these paradigms in previous…

This posting was recently brought to my attention. It originates from an international trading site and is repeated here verbatim. Trader John lists in point form the 38 steps it has taken him to become a successful and profitable trader. I think this is a very pertinent article as it outlines in a simple yet…

The old saying about ‘making hay while the sun shines’ applies as much to trading and actively investing in the markets as it does to making hay in the spring time for farmers or other life endeavours, hence the saying. Farmers know that each year in the spring time is the ideal time to make…