DbPhoenix

Checked out your website. Can I really become a professional trader in only 30 days? How much does it cost?

Something to look at:

If P, Then Q If asked to evaluate the truth of this statement, "If you traded MSFT during the month of May, you made a profit," most people would start the process of evaluation by trying to think of people they know who traded MSFT during May and made a profit. Then, on coming up with one or more examples, they would evaluate the statement as being true. In other words, they would first look for confirming evidence. If there were even one person who traded MSFT during May and did not make a profit (even if the evaluator didn't know of this person), the results of the evaluation would be false. The logically correct way to evaluate the statement above would be to look for cases where MSFT was traded in May and profits were not made. If you can think of even one example, you've disconfirmed it and know it's false. The process of assessing statement validity by looking for confirming evidence often leads people to false conclusions. This can be an especially serious impediment to trading success, because you're constantly evaluating your trading plans, technical signals and indicators, news, etc. The views you form as a result of your evaluations are ultimately what you base your decisions on. If your views are made up of fallacies, your decisions will inevitably be wrong, resulting in losses. Suppose you've developed a technical analysis method that you believe will give you excellent indicators. If you evaluate the effectiveness of this method by only looking for cases where it works, it's possible that you'll identify 10 instances where it works just as you expected. But there might be 40 instances where your method doesn't work, and you'll be ignoring these. Through your biased evaluation, you'll come to the conclusion that your method is very effective, and in fact, will set yourself up to be overconfident about it. Traders tend to be particularly vulnerable to this difficulty in evaluation because they're usually evaluating trading plans or methods they think might yield them great profits. They naturally want to see perfect results, thus pushing them even further to look for confirming evidence. When evaluating a theory or statement, it helps to play devil's advocate - try to come up with a proof for why the theory or statement is false. Remember to always be objective, and evaluate from the various sides before coming to any conclusion. --Innerworth

Just click "annotate" at the bottom of the chart. When the new window opens up, place your cursor on any given day and it'll tell you everything you want to know.

May also be worth noting that while volume was the same or slightly higher on the Naz than on Tuesday, the volume of advancers was not. Edit: And don't overlook the midpoint of the high to low the first three weeks of November: 1200.

The Frugal Family Guide Steve Tuttle NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Mar 16, 2009 Last summer I was at my parents' cabin in rural Virginia and I noticed a dead mouse in a rusty old trap. I tossed it in the trash. Later that day I told my dad about the mouse, and he asked, "Where's the trap?" I told him it looked as though it were falling apart, and I'd thrown it out with the mouse still attached. He looked at me as if I'd punched him in the face. My mom chimed in: "We've had that trap since we got married!" I wasn't sure she was joking, and they got married almost 50 years ago. I sheepishly dug it out of the garbage and loaded it up with cheese again. Now it's become one of those perennial things they bring up every time I go home: "Remember when Steve threw out the mousetrap, mouse and all!?" This is followed by shuddering and head shaking, as they silently wonder where it all went wrong. In today's cratering economy, my parents are looking pretty smart all of a sudden. President Obama talks a lot about personal sacrifice, and we all need to look for ways to cut costs these days. Maybe he ought to consider Bill and Joyce Tuttle as the nation's first thrift czars, because when it comes to pinching pennies and saving for the future, my parents are extreme. Here are some real and true examples: my mom does not use a clothes dryer. "Why would I ever need that as long as we have the outdoors?" she says. (I'd like to answer that: there's nothing like pulling on a pair of frozen Fruit of the Looms straight off the line on a sleeting January morning. Thanks, Mom.) They don't own a credit card. They buy a new car only when they've saved up enough cash to pay for it in full, about every 10 years or so. They have never had cable or satellite TV, even though where they live they get only a handful of channels over the air. They heat the house with wood from trees that my dad cuts down himself. They don't have air conditioning. They buy almost all their clothes at thrift stores. Mom was angry last week because Dr. Phil did a show about shopping at consignment stores. "Oh, no. They'll be all over the Goodwill now," she lamented. My parents definitely don't have the Internet or a computer, and caved on a cell phone only recently. They of course bought the throwaway pay-as-you-go kind for $15 at Wal-Mart so they're not locked into a monthly bill. (When I reached my mom on their cell phone recently, I could hear my dad shouting in the background. "Hurry up. Don't use all the minutes!") During my sophomore year at college, my dad made a special trip down to William & Mary to see me. I thought he was coming to help me buy my first car. I had my eye on a little red Volkswagen. When he left town two days later, I was the proud owner of a blue five-speed bicycle. He persuaded my brother, Chris, not to waste his money on a color TV. Black and white was just as good. We learned not to take him shopping after that. Now this might make them sound cheap, but they are most definitely not. They are thrifty. Know the difference. Last year they treated seven members of our family to a full week at Disney World. They give very generous gifts and collect expensive antiques. But my dad would rather gouge out his own eyes than spend $4 on a latte at Starbucks. Or say the word "latte," for that matter. Our family built the house I grew up in, one section at a time, as my parents saved up enough money. I was about 10 years old when they bought those five acres. After school we'd clear brush and burn it in piles. When it started to get dark, we'd sit on a log in front of the crackling fire and celebrate with little green bottles of Coke and Tastykakes, the chocolate-éclair kind. That has nothing to do with my story, but man, were they good. My mom, who is in her 60s, has been a hairdresser most of her life, and my dad, 72, was a game warden for 38 years. Neither of them ever made giant salaries, yet they've amassed a shocking pile of savings. I would ask exactly how much, but my dad would refuse to answer, and instead would offer to kick my ass for asking. And he could, because he's so ripped from chopping all that wood. They put two kids through college, and they don't have much in the way of expenses now. Groceries cost less because a lot of what they eat is homegrown vegetables and game my father kills. Come to think of it, maybe my parents shouldn't start packing their bags to join the Obama administration just yet. The truth is, you couldn't do a lot of these things unless you live in the mountains, and you like hard work and lots of it. But there are still valuable lessons to be gleaned from their example, which boils down to this: the people who have been living the thrifty life all along, doing the right thing—crazy stuff like buying houses they can afford and saving up money for things they want to buy—are the smart ones now. And they'll be the ones who adjust most easily to a leaner time. While the rest of us watch and worry, my parents, with their paid-for house and their old rusty mousetraps, have peace of mind to spare. It reminds me of the line from "Sharecropper's Son," a bluegrass song I knew growing up: "Landlord told me that hard times were near/Didn't mean a thing 'cause they're already here."

For wj

Keep in mind, tho, that there's nothing special about these lines. Their primary function is to tell you something about momentum. You may find pretty quickly that you don't need them at all, any more than you need them to tell you whether price is going up or down.

If you're past the info posted in posts 4 and 6 and want to move on to a trading plan now, the following may be of help: The Trading Journal The Trading Log

Now as for this chart. That first little line at the very beginning of the day could be considered a demand line since there's no real trend in place yet. However, price quickly departs from this area, and focusing on any extension of that first 5 or 6m line would be of no help whatsoever in either entering or managing a trade. The only line that's going to help you trade price action is one which closely follows the price action. Therefore, the first line is drawn, as steep as it may seem. When it's broken (and it will be broken), that tells you that momentum has changed. You can either exit one contract , exit all, or you can wait to see what happens. Here price makes only a ret, then makes a new high, at which point you can fan out your original line or draw a new one from that point. Your choice. Either will also be broken. When it is broken, again you have a number of choices, but it's important to note that price finds S at the last swing low. This is good. So price makes a new high and the line is fanned out again. Or you can start a new one to track just this segment. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that when price breaks whatever line again, it again finds S at the last swing low. It then stalls at the old high and makes a new one, enabling you to fan your line again. This time, however, the new high fails to hold, and that now becomes R. This is important stuff to know whether you're in a long trade or looking for a short trade. But much of it will likely escape your attention if all you have is that first line drawn during the first few minutes, or any lines that do not closely track the progress of price.

Will add comments later.

Okay, that's what I thought. But those aren't demand lines. The swing points are much too far away from the lines. Demand lines may be of no value to you, but if they are to be of value, they have to track demand in real time. If demand departs from your line, then you're adrift. I'll modify the chart later and show you what I mean.

Since you keep pushing this blotter business, I will point out (a) that the sort of thing that's being posted to your thread can easily be faked, (b) that even if it's true, no one is going to get anything out of knowing how much somebody else made unless the somebody else provided calls in real time and the reader was there to take or at least log those calls, © that one's P&L, unless he's selling something, is really nobody else's business. If you're having accountability issues and posting your results are helpful to you, then by all means continue to do so. But there's no reason for those who do not have accountability issues to post anything unless they want to prove something to somebody, in which case you're going to need much more than what has so far been posted to your thread. In short, if somebody wants to post there, he or she will post there. If they don't, then suggesting that they have something to hide is at the very least unwarranted. Anyone who is interested in real-time calls and real-time observations and real-time trading is welcome to log in to the TL chatroom. Those who can't be there during the trading day are unlikely to derive any benefit from results that are posted in hindsight. As for Steve46 and Swingfade, this is TL, not ET. Please do not transfer whatever squabbles you were/are engaged in there to here. If this bickering continues, the posts will be moved to another, separate thread, perhaps the Steve46/Swingfade Childish Bickering thread. If that isn't satisfactory, then expect to start racking up infraction points.

The trader should also be very clear about exactly what it is he wants and expects from the website or newsletter or software or whatever and exactly what it is the website etc says it will provide. If, for example, the website or whatever is doing nothing more than making observations and/or providing suggestions, then one is limited as to the complaints he can make. On the other hand, if the website or whatever is claiming that one can make millions in minutes a day by following the website or whatever's suggestions, then one can expect the website or whatever to provide a verified or verifiable track record (the "whatever" also includes chatrooms that "sell" calls, signals, instruction in trading systems or methods and so forth; anyone who is making any claims at all for a system or method or program of any kind in any medium -- software, DVD, CD, etc -- can be expected to provide this verified or verifiable track record. If they won't, or can't, then the trader is in effect buying a used car with no warranty and no opportunity to look under the hood).

If you're looking to hold them until they "start to drop" or "hit a stop" but don't particularly care why, then you have a technical bent and are a trader, not an investor. If so, then you'll likely be more interested in selecting the stocks based on technicals than on fundamentals. The difference between an investor and a trader has to do with how and why positions are entered and exited, not with how long those positions are held. Look then at "swing trading" and "position trading" (or, more accurately, "trend following"). And when you make those decisions, you'll then need to study the how and when of buying or shorting a stock (or ETF or whatever) technically. And if all of this sounds like you have a lot of reading -- much less studying -- to do before you risk your hard-earned cash on those or any other stocks, you're right. But that's the difference between trading and gambling.

You seem already to be conflicted between "trading" and "investing". If you don't know the difference, or if you do know the difference and have not yet decided which path you want to take, you need to make some decisions before concerning yourself with which brokerage to use, much less which stocks to buy (or short). If you're starting at "go", I suggest you look at the following: The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook Standard and Poor's Guide to Money and Investing If you're at Baltic Avenue (or even Connecticut), then you may have a clearer idea of just what it is that you want/need to learn before making any further decisions. If you're not, then consider How to Make Money in Stocks keeping in mind that the author has an agenda, like just about everybody else, in this case to sell newspapers. And though much of the book consists of material "borrowed" from Schabacker, Wyckoff, Loeb, and other "classical" technicians and fundamentalists, credit is not always given. The strength of the book, however, lies in its thematic approach: select the stock (or whatever) based on fundamentals, then choose the moment to act based on technicals. The older the edition you can get, the better, since the early efforts were less influenced by O'Neill's other enterprises. In any case, you're almost guaranteed to find this at the library, or, if not, for only a couple of bucks used at Amazon.

I agree with the "no bad-mouthing" part. What does it accomplish other than to make the poster feel better (which may not last long)? But as for the "bad review", I suggest that we follow your guidelines 1. Thorough research of the trading service 2. ...personally attend a free trial...and send us feedback. 3. Review of track records. 4. Value of service in regards to level of education. report the result, and let the chips fall where they may, positive or negative.

Actually, I think you'd left by then. I popped in and out for a while. But this may make Monday more interesting. It's unlikely that the Naz will resist the pull of the S&P and the Dow.

TOG pointed this out yesterday in chat, but you were probably busy counting your money.

Resistance & Momentum The classic boom and bust theory of the market is that a given price pattern cycle is initiated by mass mentality or perception of what future price movement will be. As investors establish their opinions (these cycles usually begin with bullish opinion) and the media reports support them, they begin to act on it, inevitably and seemingly causing their predicted pattern to develop (the boom). This confirmation of their opinions bolsters their confidence and is a source of encouragement for them to maintain their positions and to even add to them. As the predicted directional movement forms and the activity slows down, experienced traders come in and set their positions against the mass opinion. The price trend begins to change (the bust). Logically, it would seem that this would be a good point for most people to begin liquidating their positions and taking either some profit or if they were a bit late to enter, to cut their losses short. But this is not what happens. As the price declines, investors tend to hold on, with the hopes that the price will begin rising again or that they'll have an opportunity to at least sell at the price they bought. In general, once people are taught a certain way, and especially when they've received positive reinforcement in what they've learned, they have great difficulty altering their behavior. Even if they see clear evidence to the contrary of what they believe, they will persist in their opinions. Successful traders who utilize momentum in their decision-making are basing their choices, at least partly, on this type of market psychology. The boom created by the mass opinion originally has a form of "inertia" as people receive affirmation about their opinions. At some point, as this momentum slows, the experienced trader realizes an opportunity of optimized probability to take advantage of the market pattern. The resistance to alter one's behavior is what causes the trader to give back unrealized gains and more often than not, to even take realized losses. When you're speculating or have an opinion about where the market's headed, no matter how solid you think your analysis is, it's always only good for a limited time. Recognizing this and realizing how others think and invest will give you the added edge to take advantage of opportunities to make trades with optimized probabilities. --Innerworth

Perhaps no one has reported the posts. If this continues to be a problem, contact me via PM.

How savers could doom the economy The mainstream theories that are guiding efforts to fix the broken US economy assume people will react rationally. Uh-oh. By Jon MarkmanMSN Money [NB: bold mine] Pramod Kadambi wakes up every morning fearing the world has come to an end. He and his wife don't spend money on anything but essentials. Friends who have lost their jobs visit and cry. He sees war or revolution coming. Gold coins and guns are new additions to the household. An unshaven, out-of-work survivalist in the backwoods of Georgia? Not at all. He's a young medical professional in California earning more than a million dollars a year -- and the new face of the wealthy in America. That makes him the Obama administration's worst nightmare: someone who could help revive the nation's economy but instead has shut down his wallet in stark dread. Over the next few months, a searing debate over paying for the nation's trillion-dollar deficit with new tax increases on the rich will divide the country by class and political ideology. Yet it's becoming increasingly clear that the dispute will be moot as the economy is poised to sink more deeply into a recession and bear market that will provide shockingly less income for authorities to tax. How much less? Maybe as little as half, and fretful savers like Kadambi are part of the reason. Most analyses of the $787 billion fiscal stimulus package and President Barack Obama's spending priorities so far have assumed all the economic theories embedded in the plans by Harvard and Princeton economists in the White House are accurate and unassailable, and will direct federal money to work like magic to restore order if only recalcitrant Republicans and naysayers would get out the way. What's hasn't really been challenged is whether the assumptions underlying the plans' model fit any sort of reality that exists outside the hallways of Ivy League economics departments and whether emotional individuals acting in their own self-interest to save money -- rather than as robotic consumption machines that spend like crazy -- can mess them up. Saving for (and creating) a rainy day Fresh evaluation from Wall Street analysts steeped in economic traditions outside Boston and the Beltway is focusing on the idea that the government's recovery efforts depend too much on people acting rationally in a way that fits historical patterns of calmer times. If people instead ramp up their savings rates to a degree not anticipated by the economists' models, then consumer spending will decline at a rate that that will crush corporate earnings and, in turn, push stocks a lot lower. The resulting loss of confidence will then reflexively cause people to save more, leading to a vicious downward spiral.To understand this scary effect, an obscure but well-regarded model of economic behavior called the Levy-Kalecki formula has begun to gain favor in some circles in part because, since its creation 70 years ago, it has done an unusually good job of forecasting how high levels of saving and a decline in borrowing can lead to the devastation of profits. Plugging current U.S. output figures into a classic version of the Levy-Kalecki formula shows that if households save as little as 7% of their incomes over the next year, the S&P 500 Index could plunge as low as 550, which would amount to a 21% decline in value from the current level. The equivalent for the Dow Jones industrials would be about 5,300. If the wealthy are taxed at higher rates, as currently contemplated by the Obama administration, and savings rates go to 10% per annum, the formula suggests corporate profits will be cut in half from their peak two years ago. Because earnings at the companies that make up the S&P 500 totaled $84.70 a share in 2007, that would mean forecasts of the stock market need to start with the assumption that earnings will sink to about $42 per share. If investors are confident that a decline to that level is just a temporary aberration, they will apply a price-earnings multiple similar to what we see today, around 18, and then you get a forecast of 755 for the S&P 500, which is a little higher than where we are now. But if investors fear earnings will continue to slip, then they'll cut the multiple to as little as 9 or 10, as they did in the 1970s, and if you do the math you get a projection of 420 for the S&P 500, or around Dow 4,000. Yow. Talk like this used to be strictly in the realm of grumpy old men and cuckoo birds, but it's occurring now in smart circles because mainstream economic theories are not adequately explaining consumer and government behavior in this cycle. Wall Street practitioners are thus turning to alternative theories, and the Levy-Kalecki formula -- independently developed by New York physicist-entrepreneur Jerome Levy in 1914 and Polish economist Michal Kalecki in 1935 and then unified by American economist Hyman Minsky in the 1960s -- is helping to better elucidate the relationship among debt, savings and profits. Le freak, c'est chic A key difference between the theories animating the work of Obama's economists and the theories behind the Levy-Kalecki formula are that the former assume people will act rationally in accordance with government prodding and the latter consider the possibility that people will freak out. Contrary to mainstream economics beliefs that people operate with perfect knowledge, Levy-Kalecki assumes that economic participants -- families, officials, workers, investors and executives -- grope about their lives in an atmosphere of uncertainty, develop false beliefs and make mistakes, especially when surprised. While mainstream economics argues that markets and people tend toward a harmonious equilibrium that can be guided by didactic government action, Levy-Kalecki suggests behavior instead tends toward disequilibrium. The difference in policy that must be developed in each case is profound, for the former tends to rely on inflexible formulas while the latter would seek to constantly adjust. The rubber meets the road now in two views of how individuals will react to incentives embedded in the stimulus package. The Obama team apparently believes enough dollars are being applied via government credits, direct spending and state grants to overcome the deep erosion of individual Americans' consumption. Yet Wall Street practitioners who follow Levy-Kalecki tell me that the package falls short by a whopping $1 trillion. Without directly creating private jobs via public-works projects to give laid-off workers new income streams -- and thus help people stop obsessing about a bleak future -- the Levy-Kalecki model forecasts the next year will feature a steep climb in saving, plunge in spending, wipeout in corporate earnings and disintegration of the stock market. Anticipating a collapse One Levy-Kalecki adherent who runs a credit portfolio at a New York investment bank told me he believes that complacent policymakers don't seem to realize the nation faces a grave financial crisis on par with war. If people react to weakening job prospects by stiffing their credit card and mortgage lenders in order to save at a level that will let them survive a financial meltdown, he sees the potential for $6 trillion in lost spending over the next two years."This is what commodity, bond and stock markets are trying to price in right now," said the manager, who asked not to be identified. "Investors gave up waiting for the government to act effectively and are taking down the value of everything in anticipation of collapse." If we were dealing with only a global banking crisis, current policy might have been effective. But the credit drought has sparked what economists call a Fisher debt-deflation spiral, in which companies' long-term cost of funds is too high to provide a reasonable rate of return, so they cut both their borrowing and their investments. The less big companies borrow, the worse banks perform, the less they can lend to smaller companies and the less can be invested in expansion. Rinse and repeat until total implosion in a cycle already beset with individuals similarly disinclined to borrow and spend, as happened in the Great Depression. Levy-Kalecki followers believe the answer to this is massive direct government public-works spending totaling up to 30% of gross domestic product, even if the national debt rises to greater than 100% of GDP from 60% today -- something along the lines that British economist John Maynard Keynes recommended in the Depression. Since the Obama team has shunned that path, the fear now is that only an event similar to the one that bailed out the United States from the Great Depression will vanquish the six-headed beast of rising unemployment and savings rates, falling spending and earnings, debt deflation and corporate dis-investment. That was the intense manufacturing demands of World War II. Hopefully a saner alternative will emerge.

And over the past few days, a number of players have started to agree with my targets: 500 on the S&P and somewhere between 6000 and 4000 on the Dow. As for the Naz, that's a bit more difficult to say. What I find most perplexing is why so few financial "professionals" understand that this is not an ordinary recession, and we won't recover from it in the usual way. It can't be just lack of experience. Edit: As for the Naz, here's a shot:

The quote in its entirety may be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Course-Trading-FT-Traders-Masterclass/dp/0273637398/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235952928&sr=1-3

Your Trading Plan & Your Trading Personality As a trader, you often hear about how the success of your career depends on the quality of your trading plan. What you don't hear is that the process of developing your trading plan can be as important as, if not more important, than the end result. Most traders are consistently swayed into modeling their trading plans on what other seemingly more successful or experienced traders are doing. Whether they make their plans identical to another's, or they just adjust theirs to accommodate someone else's opinions and ideas, the bottom line is that most traders develop trading plans that aren't their own. As a result, they also tend to compare their trading results with those of more successful traders and wonder why they're not doing as well. Working with a trading plan that's not entirely your own can cause you to develop typically unforeseen psychological issues that will be detrimental to your trading success. One of the most obvious of these "side-effects" is the effect on your confidence. Knowing that your trading plan is not your own will never allow you to be completely confident about your plan's reliability, which can seriously affect your ability to stick to it. You'll also continuously struggle with the idea that any success you achieve will not be entirely your own. Feelings of being a "cheater," and not deserving your winnings may creep into your mind and negatively affect your trading decisions. Additionally, your trading plan will be the first to serve as an excuse for your losses, preventing you from taking responsibility for your actions - after all, it wasn't your idea. It's critical that you develop your trading plan based on your own interpretations, analyses, and thoughts, so that it's compatible with your trading personality. Working with a trading plan that you've laboriously developed based on your own knowledge and research will give you the confidence that's key to your trading abilities. It will also encourage you to take responsibility for your decisions, and help you to actively improve your trading plan based on your experiences. Even the process of the development itself will better shape your trading psychology. Additionally, when your trading plan is tailored to your trading personality, you'll find that you can use your intuition to trade more effectively and you'll feel more comfortable in making your decisions. --Innerworth