ezduzzit

Hmm.. I find this to be one of the most interesting questions at this forum thus far. First let me say that all the posted answers thus far were generally right on the button to one degree or another. But, if you will be kind enough to bear with me, I would like to diverge just a wee bit from the opinions expressed here and say that I believe that education is absolutely essential to successful trading. Now, before the rest of you posters and readers here lodge huge storms of protest, let me qualify my remarks just a bit. The education I am speaking of is not normally to be gained at a college or university of higher learning, at least not from most of the formalized courses available. Does that mean that I am suggesting that simple "streetsmarts" is the better way to go? Well, let me give that a qualfied yes and no. Streetsmarts is far from simple and usually only comes after many years of a rough and tumble life where you are forced by necessity to learn through live daily interaction with people (both pleasant and unpleasant) in both personal and work situations. The challenge to gaining streetsmarts is in remaining vigilant enough to discern the lessons being taught. Most people simply get caught up too heavily in the emotions of the moment and miss the valuable lessons, thus seldom ever really learning how to adjust their own behaviors in order to excel in similar situations that befall them further down the road. I am saying you need intense education in at least three areas: 1) Knowledge of the structure of the market(s) you wish to trade (which includes what the instrument is, in what increments it moves, how far the price might move in points or ticks during an average day, what times of day or week or month it exhibits certain repetitive performance, etc., what level of volume can normally be found there on good moves versus moves that have no follow-through, etc.; 2) Knowledge of yourself (your tolerance for risk, how you react to both winning and losing, your willingness to pull the trigger based upon the confidence or lack thereof that you have in your method or trading plan, review of the areas where you make repetitive mistakes and plans to either avoid similar situations or change your response to get a different result, and most of all, an honest and deep understanding of why you are really involved in trading in the first place and whether that reason is truly serious and meaningful enough to put your hard earned capital at serious risk and also to keep you working through the tough times until you reach your goal; and 3) Knowledge of price action (this only comes from lots and lots and yes, even lots more screen time, watching those monitors and getting an internal feel for what happens as price moves across your screen toward, above and below key lines of value, support and resistance, observance of the reactions of the multitudes of traders at those key points of decision where price suddenly leaves its consolidating chop and runs for a new goal on your screen. As regards "screen time", don't just sit there like a couch potato watching a table tennis match on television. You must really focus on what is happening on the screen by asking yourself questions like "Hmm. .why did price break out of that consolidation and all of a sudden come right back to the break out point again once or twice before it actually took off?" Ask yourself "Gee, how often does that happen at break-out points and how can I take advantage of it?" Ask yourself why price moves the way it does. Is it really random as so many claim or is it manipulated by the big money players whose actions leave clues right on your price charts if you just pay enough attention? Hint: if you believe it is the former, you still are in need of a great deal more screen time and you need to ask yourself a lot more questions. You may see price moving up slowly yet it suddenly accelerates. Ask yourself "Hey, who poured gasoline on this fire?" Was it that the stops of the retail traders were clustered at a certain expected point and got hit? Was there yet another acceleration upward after a short pause in price because those who missed the initial move have jumped in at the first or second retracement in the action as they were hoping the move has further to go? When you see these things, constantly ask yourself "What are the pros doing to take advantage of this move?" Surely you realize that if the retail traders are all buying in a frenzy, somebody out there must be selling? Whom do you think that might be? Might it be the pros who accumulated positions in that instrument during the last sell off just 10 or 20 minutes prior when the retail traders were literally almost jumping out of their shorts (pun intended) to get out of the move against them? What about program trading? Surely you have at least heard of it? But what is it? How much of the total trading volume of an average day comes from program trades and if it is truly meaningful (yes, it actually is!) then how can you track it and take advantage of it? During price declines, perhaps you might look for those tipping points or price points in the market where the retail traders realize they are caught in their long positions and suddenly are on the wrong side of the move. Please don't forget that whatever personal preference you might have for playing longs or shorts, price more often than not still moves up via the stairs and comes down via the elevator. Become a life-long student of people. Yes, you can learn some of what you need to know from fine trading psychology books like "Trading In The Zone. " You might even genuinely learn something useful in a class or two on human behavior. But don't fail to pay attention to the almost daily tales of woe from family, friends and work associates as well. If you pay careful attention to what is being said, you will find much useful information about how people react daily toward risk and reward. You will find those same exact reactions played out on your trading charts each day. Lastly, some of you may disagree with the points I have set forth above. That is probably normal for any group of 2 or more people getting together to discuss an idea, but let me say this - for those who feel some other type of education is far better than what has been suggested, I am sure that if you just tell some of the more seasoned traders here at this forum what instruments you trade and at what times of day you will be trading, they will be happy to relieve you of any more of that pesky old stress of trading by quickly depositiing your trading capital into their own bank accounts as you continue to experience that painful string of losses, despite your continuing to do what all the "gurus" told you would work. Happy Trading

Beginning traders, for want of any better way to get started, usually start out as what we call "pattern" traders. That means they scan their charts each day for what we call "high probability set-ups" that reportedly put the odds in your favor by taking a trade only when those particular patterns appear on your screen. If that is where you have started let me advise you to focus on just one or two patterns for the time being. Regardless of all the nice little rectangles, triangles, pennants and wedges they love to refer to, once you take a look inside those cute little lines, you will spot mostly only two real price patterns, either M's or W's. The M's are supposed to indicate a topping out of the market and potential reversal whereas the W's are supposed to represent just the opposite (a bottoming and potential reversal.) Now please recognize that some traders who have either failed at either recognizing or trading those patterns will warn you off patterns altogether and perhaps even say they are total poppycock and hazardous to your trading future. Please take that advice with a bit of caution. Remember, anything that tons of other traders follow almost religiously, including patterns, fibonacci support and resistance, floor pivots or whatever have you, has value as it leaves clues as to market direction and action. Just realize that the big traders often play those positions opposite to the way the small retail traders do. For instance, the big boys are busy accumulating contracts in many of the down moves while the retail traders are selling out to them cheaper and cheaper as the market moves down, then lo and behold they stop buying and the selling dries up. What happens then? Well the buying starts in the opposite direction and of course the big boys then sell and thus distribute the contracts they accumulated back into the market for some nice tidy profits as prices rise. There are however at least another two sides to that equation (beyond patterns) and they are support and resistance (sometimes loosely associated with the term "value") and momentum/volume in the market that is either supporting or resisting the action at hand. As Soultrader and others in this thread and elsewhere have intimated, you would be well advised to learn about price action. Unfortunately, telling that to a newbie is tantamount to telling them they would succeed in trading if only they would just learn how. What is price action after all and how the heck does one learn it and make use of it? Ahh... there's the rub. There are perhaps untold ways of approaching the markets, but almost all of them boil down in the end (if you wish to be very successful at it) to learning about value, about extremes beyond value and also about support and resistance that you might encounter between the two. If no one has told you before today, the big institutions and professional big money players mold and move the markets, whereas the retail traders like you and I generally provide the money that goes to fill their bank accounts. That is why the smarter traders here will tell you first to learn how to stop losing money before you focus on making money. All this is a long winded way to tell you that you must study and learn who moves the markets and how they do it. After much testing of magic indicators strategies and much frustration you are likely to eventually come to the same conclusion, either learn all you can about market value and support and resistance or get yourself out of the markets before your account is vaporized. You might do well to think of your trading screen (price chart) like a battlefield. There is a battle fought there every day between the bull army and the bear army. Your job is to learn about the artillery and troop concentrations (lines of either support or resistance) and make an assessment based upon what you see happening in front of you - the price action - in conjunction with those support and resistance lines and what is likely to happen as the battle between the bull army and bear army rages on closer and closer toward one of those points on your screen. I first suggest you learn all you can about pivots and support and resistance, especially as it concerns what happens when the price action either bounces off of them or goes through them in either direction. Additionally, you need to always think about three things before each trade, once you understand the structure of the playing field: trend, timing and momentum or volume. Is there a trend or is the market chopping to and fro in a fairly tight range? Please understand that very few people successfully trade chop in a consistently profitable manner, very few. I must add however, that very few people who mostly only play "break-outs" (wherein they try to immediately pounce on the breakthrough of price through some formidable line of resistance or support) fare much better. The smarter and more consistently profitable traders are often waiting for proven establishment of the next trending movement. Remember that although a market only trends about 15% to 20% of the time, once it begins it often goes on longer than most traders expect. Timing is your next consideration (and please remember you can eventually do all of these things in just a few seconds as your experience takes hold) and you will probably have to look to your assessment of whether the move is breaking out of known and accepted "value" to new heights or new lows and if so.. you assess your third issue which is momentum or volume. Has the action reached an area on the screen where the big players have been lying in wait to pounce? Is price breaking through the daily pivot in a new direction? Has it passed R1 and seems as though people are piling on in a race to the next line of resistance at R2? These are questions that can only be properly assessed once you both understand the structure of the markets as noted above and have spent ample screen time in observance of what normally happens at such junctures so that you have some feel for what happens more often than not in similar situations. Trading is a profession, much like learning to become a surgeon or an airplane pilot. There is a lot at risk and you don't jump in and put money or lives on the line without knowing what you are doing and having an experienced understanding of how best to protect your patient, your crew or in this case, your capital, at all times. After plenty of study and lots of screen time you are ready to begin thinking in terms of probabilities. Don't worry about being right more often than being wrong. Focus instead on controlling your losses. Just like in a battle, you only commit your troops when you truly believe that you have an advantage over the enemy. As soon as you notice you are wrong in your assessment, cut your losing positins without mercy. Do not make a habit of waiting for them to eat their way all the back to your stops.You don't need to be in the market all the time, but you must be in the market when your rules or signals/triggers tell you to be there otherwise, just keeping losses small won't be enough, as you won't be in the market when those big moves come along. Anyway, I have gone on way too long here and I am all tuckered out, so I will wrap this up here and hope that there was at least a tiny morsel of something useful for you here in all this typing. Happy Trading This is an excerpt from the discussion located here.

Deb... I have read the various responses to you here of late and I have a few observations. First, what is the driving force behind your desire to trade Forex versus perhaps the e-mini futures markets? ForexMadeEasy (no matter how it is spelled) is an absolute oxymoron. Let me preface my remarks as clearly nothing more than my own opinion, but I think Forex is one of the hardest markets to trade successfully that you will ever come across. It is almost entirely dominated by professionals working for huge multinational banks, institutions and hedge-funds and it is an absolute man (and woman) eating jungle for the inexperienced trader. It is also highly subject to an absolute horde of fundamental report releases that drive it to and fro as well besides being a true 24 hour market (unlike the e-mini futures which are on Globex 24 hours but only thinly traded outside of the pit hours.) Forex is, in my humble opinion, a market that can quickly decimate your account if you continually attempt to day-trade it. Even the best independent traders have since learned it is far more advisable to swing-trade the Forex market if they wish to survive long term. That having been said, let's move on to more of the nitty gritty, shall we? Beginning traders, for want of any better way to get started, usually start out as what we call "pattern" traders. That means they scan their charts each day for what we call "high probability set-ups" that reportedly put the odds in your favor by taking a trade only when those particular patterns appear on your screen. If that is where you have started let me advise you to focus on just one or two patterns for the time being. Regardless of all the nice little rectangles, triangles, pennants and wedges they love to refer to, once you take a look inside those cute little lines, you will spot mostly only two real price patterns, either M's or W's. The M's are supposed to indicate a topping out of the market and potential reversal whereas the W's are supposed to represent just the opposite (a bottoming and potential reversal.) Now please recognize that some traders who have either failed at either recognizing or trading those patterns will warn you off patterns altogether and perhaps even say they are total poppycock and hazardous to your trading future. Please take that advice with a bit of caution. Remember, anything that tons of other traders follow almost religiously, including patterns, fibonacci support and resistance, floor pivots or whatever have you, has value as it leaves clues as to market direction and action. Just realize that the big traders often play those positions opposite to the way the small retail traders do. For instance, the big boys are busy accumulating contracts in many of the down moves while the retail traders are selling out to them cheaper and cheaper as the market moves down, then lo and behold they stop buying and the selling dries up. What happens then? Well the buying starts in the opposite direction and of course the big boys then sell and thus distribute the contracts they accumulated back into the market for some nice tidy profits as prices rise. There are however at least another two sides to that equation (beyond patterns) and they are support and resistance (sometimes loosely associated with the term "value") and momentum/volume in the market that is either supporting or resisting the action at hand. As Soultrader and others in this thread and elsewhere have intimated, you would be well advised to learn about price action. Unfortunately, telling that to a newbie is tantamount to telling them they would succeed in trading if only they would just learn how. What is price action after all and how the heck does one learn it and make use of it? Ahh... there's the rub. There are perhaps untold ways of approaching the markets, but almost all of them boil down in the end (if you wish to be very successful at it) to learning about value, about extremes beyond value and also about support and resistance that you might encounter between the two. If no one has told you before today, the big institutions and professional big money players mold and move the markets, whereas the retail traders like you and I generally provide the money that goes to fill their bank accounts. That is why the smarter traders here will tell you first to learn how to stop losing money before you focus on making money. All this is a long winded way to tell you that you must study and learn who moves the markets and how they do it. After much testing of magic indicators strategies and much frustration you are likely to eventually come to the same conclusion, either learn all you can about market value and support and resistance or get yourself out of the markets before your account is vaporized. You might do well to think of your trading screen (price chart) like a battlefield. There is a battle fought there every day between the bull army and the bear army. Your job is to learn about the artillery and troop concentrations (lines of either support or resistance) and make an assessment based upon what you see happening in front of you - the price action - in conjunction with those support and resistance lines and what is likely to happen as the battle between the bull army and bear army rages on closer and closer toward one of those points on your screen. I first suggest you learn all you can about pivots and support and resistance, especially as it concerns what happens when the price action either bounces off of them or goes through them in either direction. Additionally, you need to always think about three things before each trade, once you understand the structure of the playing field: trend, timing and momentum or volume. Is there a trend or is the market chopping to and fro in a fairly tight range? Please understand that very few people successfully trade chop in a consistently profitable manner, very few. I must add however, that very few people who mostly only play "break-outs" (wherein they try to immediately pounce on the breakthrough of price through some formidable line of resistance or support) fare much better. The smarter and more consistently profitable traders are often waiting for proven establishment of the next trending movement. Remember that although a market only trends about 15% to 20% of the time, once it begins it often goes on longer than most traders expect. Timing is your next consideration (and please remember you can eventually do all of these things in just a few seconds as your experience takes hold) and you will probably have to look to your assessment of whether the move is breaking out of known and accepted "value" to new heights or new lows and if so.. you assess your third issue which is momentum or volume. Has the action reached an area on the screen where the big players have been lying in wait to pounce? Is price breaking through the daily pivot in a new direction? Has it passed R1 and seems as though people are piling on in a race to the next line of resistance at R2? These are questions that can only be properly assessed once you both understand the structure of the markets as noted above and have spent ample screen time in observance of what normally happens at such junctures so that you have some feel for what happens more often than not in similar situations. Trading is a profession, much like learning to become a surgeon or an airplane pilot. There is a lot at risk and you don't jump in and put money or lives on the line without knowing what you are doing and having an experienced understanding of how best to protect your patient, your crew or in this case, your capital, at all times. After plenty of study and lots of screen time you are ready to begin thinking in terms of probabilities. Don't worry about being right more often than being wrong. Focus instead on controlling your losses. Just like in a battle, you only commit your troops when you truly believe that you have an advantage over the enemy. As soon as you notice you are wrong in your assessment, cut your losing positins without mercy. Do not make a habit of waiting for them to eat their way all the back to your stops.You don't need to be in the market all the time, but you must be in the market when your rules or signals/triggers tell you to be there otherwise, just keeping losses small won't be enough, as you won't be in the market when those big moves come along. Anyway, I have gone on way too long here and I am all tuckered out, so I will wrap this up here and hope that there was at least a tiny morsel of something useful for you here in all this typing. Happy Trading

Very nice trading James. Now if you could just coax the market to do that just a teensy bit more often, we would all become your close personal friends heh, heh. Happy Trading

Well gosh, it seems I am a bit late to the party in answering this one. When I first saw this thread I thought well heck, I am already 57 years old, I am almost at the accepted "retirement" age and I am wondering "Huh? "Who the heck wants to retire!" But as I got to thinking about it, I think that is possibly a separate question from when do I wish to leave trading behind. I will risk sort of joining into the chorus here with other posters in this thread and say that I think retirement is grossly over-rated. In my opinion it is an entirely outmoded concept. I think perhaps it was never really much more than a dream of some day escaping the "drudge of work and bosses" in favor of the proverbial "Good Life" that must surely be waiting for us in the future if we just slaved and sacrificed for oh, say 40 years or so starting right now. Admittedly, upwards of 85% of people can barely stand going to their particular "jobs" each day, and thus the desire for a future escape, but that is an entirely different discussion for another day and possibly even a different forum. Let's get back to trading itself. Why do we do it? What do we hope to get out of it? What does it extract from us in return? I think most of us could agree that we enjoy not only surviving but also occasionally beating the odds in the market. There is no question we have to treat trading as a business to survive in it, but don't most of us at least somewhat enjoy it as much as perhaps our children enjoy their videogames? Heck, to me it has sometimes seemed like the most fun I could have as an adult without it being illegal, immoral or fattening and it even pays me money in return! But let's be really candid and honest with each other. We all know very well that actively trading day after day definitely "extracts its pound of flesh" from us as they say (for those of you for whom English is not your mother tongue, this is simply an idiom basically meaning we usually must sacrifice a great deal to get what we want in return.) To trade successfully requires intense concentration, a constant willingness to accept being wrong (usually in the form of being punished by the markets in the form of loss of capital and the potential depression that may result therefrom) and almost super-human control of our emotions. Can any of us truly deny that occasional little nagging feeling that the market seems to take great pleasure in occasionally stomping us into the dirt and grinding its boot on our neck? Actually that kind of thinking is exceptionally hazardous to your your mindset and also your trading capital, but it does paint an entertaining picture of the risks, does it not? As I sit here and calmly think about all that it requires to do this successfully, I find myself thinking of air traffic controllers No wonder most of them burn out at an early age! However, if we are willing to admit it to ourselves, even if not to the public at large, in our heart of hearts we know that most of us feel a sort of "addiction" to this game of trading. Yes, I know that many will read that and pooh pooh that whole idea, holding themselves aloft and above such petty feelings about their involvement in this illustrious industry but how many of us can honestly deny that it is somehow in our blood? Let's ask ourselves a question or two. If the key goals and reasons (or the big WHY's) that brought us to trading were suddenly fulfilled, would we stick around hour after hour, day after day intensely studying our monitors, always keyed upon looking for that one high probability trigger to jump on yet another risky trade, in a marketplace well known for gobbling up trader's accounts as though they were candy? Here is a slightly different thought along those same lines. As much as humans love the comfort of "routine" they also crave variety. They say that trading, when done right, is very routine and possibly a bit boring. Once you have spent upwards of several thousand hours in front of the monitors trading back and forth, the fortunate amongst you may eventually have a breakthrough and trading will become much easier. You may get to that stage where instead of fighting to extract your 1 or 2 points a day, you are able to extract multiples of that from the market on a regular basis. What then? Isn't it the struggle and challenge that provides the real zest of trading? Isn't Life designed to be an amazing adventure? Is it desirable or even prudent to plan on remanining tied down to the same old thing, especially in our later years? Each year I grow more convinced that the time we spend with our friends, immediate family and assorted loved ones, enjoying those simple every day moments together is the greatest pleasure in Life. After all, while not wishing to seem morbid at all, I daresay that on your deathbed in the future, there will not be many amongst us who will bother to pause even briefly to think that perhaps they should have put in more hours or days trading. Ok, you have endured more than enough hardship here reading through my lengthy response to the riddle of when or if to retire from trading and it is high time for an answer! YES, I shall most definitely retire from trading I shall only continue trading as long as I can continue to do it successfully and even then only as long as it remains more fun than it is stressful. But I shall never retire from doing something productive with my time, whether you call that work or not. I shall tell you that the only reason I have been able to successfully focus the several thousand hours necessary to achieve a breakthrough in my trading is only because my "WHY" is much bigger than my own self involvement. The biggest reason I trade is so that I can donate an ever increasing amount to charitable foundations that sponsor and provide for children who do not have the benefits in Life that I have enjoyed. To me, that has made all the difference and it is the driving impetus behind why I do what I do in trading. If it were just about money for me or the vicarious thrill of trumping the markets on a more regular basis, I would already be long gone and wasting away on some little beach in Thailand sipping on those cute little umbrella adorned drinks. Thanks for reading and thanks to James (alias Soultrader) for providing us the venue to speak our mind in this great trading forum. I always enjoy reading the comments from the other traders here and find that the more I read, the more I am convinced that we all are very much more alike than we are different. I think that is something to be celebrated and appreciated. Happy Trading

Hmm.... I haven't come across any physical rooms like these or heard about them yet here in Los Angeles but if they are popular elsewhere then I am sure they will soon be popular here as well if they are not already so. For my own money, I will stick to trading from home. I realize this is just my personal opinion but I somehow just don't think trading is a group activity. It might be ok for a beginner, in more of a classroom environment, but I find it highly distracting once you are trading with your live account. I always avoided trading my live account even in the online rooms for that same reason. I understand many people cannot endure the lonely life of a daytrader, but then perhaps daytrading is either not for them or else they may need to restrict their trading time down to the first two hours of the morning after the open or something like that, so that it is not a burden to get through and the isolation won't have time to get to them. If you can successfully trade live money in a busy group environment like that, then I take my hat off to you. Happy Trading

I have to agree 100% with James on this signals issue. Save your money, your time and your emotions and avoid them like the plague. The only thing you can learn from most of those websites is how to write b.s. marketing copy that persuades the the naive and uninformed to buy worthless products and services. Happy Trading

Well WallStreet.. you would be absolutely amazed at how many people get that frozen deer in the headlights look in their eyes and begin rationalizing to themselves how they just need to hold on a little longer, and oh just maybe buy another few hundred shares as the stock is moving down a little further cuz they just KNOW it is soon going to reach its bottom and bounce up big time and at least get them out at breakeven! That happens every single day and is a sad commentary on trading at times. Let's hope none of us on this forum ever find ourselves in a similar situation and if we somehow do, let's hope we snap out of it and bail while we still have some trading capital left in our account. Happy Trading

Hmm.. emotional intelligence? Well, I don't want to get into semantics and definitions but I sense this subject could be a real toughie! Emotional control is more up my alley. To control your emotions you first have to recognize that you are experiencing them. Once you know that you are in the midst of an undesirable emotion, there are any number of ways of dealing with it, most of them unacceptable when trading. However, as a prior student of NLP you know about pacing, reframing, mirroing and modeling and the like, so I doubt there is much I can help you with there. Everyone is somewhat a product of the sum total of their experiences. However, what you do with what you have experienced and what you choose to learn from it and employ in your life thereafter is what I suppose could be called emotional intelligence. The ones who fail in dealing with their emotions are those who forcibly try to change them through logic and goal-setting, etc. I would also suggest that even professional therapy is most times a lost cause as many of the therapist are more screwed up than their patients. We all have had and will continue to have what we consider bad emotional experiences or events, it is simply up to us to revisit those situations in our mind, reframe them, see them at a distance if you will, and imagine in our mind's eye a different result. Once properly learned, you can control a great deal of what would normally bother you or restrict you from being successful at something that normally stirs up your emotions. I don't know if this is at all what you were hoping to hear from me but it is how I deal with things and it has worked for me thus far. Happy Trading

I am not so sure that overtrading is so much the frenzy for quick money as it is the fear of losing out on trades that appear that others are probably making money on successfully. In all endeavors people hate to be the one who gets left behind. It is a natural reaction. However, in trading this creates what I call "impulse" traders. They do not think in probabilities, nor do they practice and excel in a few set-ups or wait patiently for their set-ups. They see what appears to be a big move starting and they are off to the races. As we all know, they had no other reason for taking those trades other than a feeling or seeing the line on the chart moving up without them, etc. As to cold and unemotional traders... there simply is no such animal. The professionals are simply in far better control of the emotions that hit them in the heat of the trade and even the best of them succumb to a little too much exuberance on occasion that snares some of their dandy profits. Don't ever fool yourself into thinking otherwise and try to force yourself to become this totally emotionless trading robot. You will never get to that stage and will always be thinking those other guys must somehow be a little more or less than human. Happy Trading

Having a mentor, assuming he/she is a good one, can be a very good thing. However, first I strongly suggest you sit down and decide exactly what it is you hope to gain or learn from a mentor. Then have a chat with the few potential mentors you have in mind to see if you get a good feeling about them and they seem amenable to what assisting you in that regard. However, please recognize that you are different than the mentor you will be learning from. Others here have alluded to that by means of indicating you need to glean what you can from them and then personalize it for your own self so that the techniques and methods match up with your own style and personal psychology. Don't try to emulate anyone too closely, or you will find trading a very frustrating endeavor. As one earlier posted made clear, you absolutely will pay for your learning experience one way or the other. Try to find someone with whom you feel comfortable and whom you respect for their abilities. There are lots and lots of self-professed gurus out there but very few who can truly trade in a consistently profitable manner and also impart those skills to others. Good luck with your endeavor. Happy Trading

I actually had pretty decent results within the first week but that improved a significant amount once I got into a regular habit of repeating the program and practicing the techniques. If you don't use it you lose it is every bit as applicable in this situation as in all the others. Just put in a half hour or so per day each day for the first couple of weeks and you should soon see some real benefits. I have noticed that if you have serious enough reasons for doing something, you can accomplish just about anything you decide upon. If your reasons are frivolous or you just decide one day.. oh I think that might be nice to have or do, then you will find it hard going and probably not get what you wanted out of it. Happy Trading

Well, they say that most any desire or powerful emotion that is suppressed strongly seeks and outlet. Perhaps you have found the outlet you needed to relieve the pressure of holding it all in check. I think a little greed can be good as long as you recognize it for what it is and don't let it consume you. Everybody wants to get far enough ahead in life that they can finally just kick back a little and smell the roses and sip a few drinks (with the little umbrellas) on a nice beach somewhere. Some call it greed, others call it ambition. Uncontrolled ambition/greed will dash your hopes almost every time, so perhaps the trick is to give the feeling a little freedom once in awhile so it doesn't hunger for too much all at one sitting. Happy Trading

I agree Soul. There are undoubtedly some actions taken by certain parties that members of the general public might find in bad taste or even unconscionable, yet you will often find those self same people who were so quick to judge others taking similar actions on their own that they quickly excuse away as acceptable. There is just no accounting for the way some people treat other people. Their interpretation of the Golden Rule is that those who have the gold make the rules. That is indeed a shame, but a reality of Life nevertheless. Luckily, we don't have to become one of them in order to become and remain a professional trader. Happy Trading

Ok S.T. that makes two of us that have stepped up to the podium to profess what greedy gluttons we are.. what about the rest of you slackers? heh, heh.. just kidding. They say emotional control and professional mindset are 90% of successful trading. Though I am a newbie I would say they were being conservative. Happy Trading

Yes S.T. I not only have heard of eyeQ. . I own the program and it materially improved not only my reading speed and comprehension but also slightly enhanced my powers of observation. I just wish you and I had developed and marketed that program ourselves! I assure you I did not start out as a puzzle person, it was initially just way to pass the time. However, I soon found it had benefits and have not been able to stop. I hope you find some that you find entertaining. Happy Trading

Well the housing market is already headed toward the cooler and thank your lucky stars if you are not a condo owner heh, heh. I think you are correct in your comment regarding equity in real estate. So many have counted for so long on their R.E. equity being there to bail them out of any crisis that might come their way however, I suspect that is going to be tested here at least temporarily. Frankly, a home should always be considered shelter and an enjoyable place to live rather than an investment, but greed is greed and everybody always wants in on a good thing. Let's just see if things decline deep enough and for long enough to shake out some of the unwanted speculation and ridiculous over-valuations from the market. I have no idea where it will all end up, but then I have my hands full just trying to master the obvious on my trading charts. Happy Trading

Since you clearly do not have a shares account with a broker there in the U.K. FTT's advice of working with your own bank (if they provide this service) or even with Barclays directly to liquidate the shares is probably the best avenue to pursue. Just be sure to explain to them your concerns about a prompt transaction so as to avoid a decline in value and make sure you are comfortable with their answer. If it requires them sending the shares off to a transfer agent or registrar somewhere be sure you get their promise of the settlement amount in writing before you turn over your shares. Oral promises will be denied when the stock drops 2 weeks later and your shares have still not been settled. Happy Trading

Hmm.. I wish I could offer you a succinct estimate of when crude will return to $70 or $80 a barrel or greater, but if I was really that good at projecting price of such commodities, you would have to pay me more than you would make on your trades to get me to divulge it heh, heh. I think we can rest assured that the "oil games" are far from over and that present crude prices won't stay in the cellar for long. I daresay that nobody who really knows the answer to this quandry shall breathe even the slightest whisper to you about when it shall happen. Some say love makes the world go around, while the oil industry execs are quite certain that is pure poppycock because they own most of the world and they know better! Is going long on crude a good idea while it is still in the low $60's? Well I think that comes down to the same three questions you ask yourself before every trade: 1) What is your target profit; 2) How much are you prepared to risk; and 3) How long can you wait? Any of us can hazard a guess after reading pronouncements from the various gurus, but as you have probably already seen, gurus seldom agree on very much. No doubt oil "could" conceivably go down to $50 a barrel soon after you go long. However, I suspect that is not a highly probable scenario. Why is it you want to trade crude? Are you convinced it is going up soon and you just don't want to miss the big jump this time? If you are not knowledgeable in this commodity but you are still intent upon trading it, then find out who has the best record of profitable trade recommendations and take a small position piggybacking on their recommendations and see how it goes. Happy Trading

Having been a banking exec for the past 20 odd years, I would suggest two things: 1) First get hold of a satisfactory confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement (to be reviewed by a competent lawyer) which everyone you speak to will have to sign before they hear a word of your idea; and 2) Seek your initial financing from family, friends and associates. Venture capital firms, even the smaller boutiques, are deluged with requests from budding entrepreneurs and frankly, most of them strongly prefer only those applicants who have some history under their belt of prior successful start-ups. They will, on occasion, take on a new project if an idea is just truly outstanding for its time, however you and/or your partners in this venture will need some background in business planning and management for them to even consider entrusting any amount of capital to your new venture. The items mentioned by others here about a business plan with a budget, etc.. are all on target once you are serious and don't forget, those things are just as necessary for you and your venture as they are to the VC firm. Good luck to you and if you really believe it is a good idea, then don't dally any further and get a move on before someone else thinks up the same idea and gets rich with it! Happy Trading

This is a bit of a loaded question, as to me the comments thus far seem to suggest that a professional trader suffers from a lack of ethics and I simply do not subscribe to that theory at all. I also do not subscribe to the theory that successful traders are emotionless automatons when trading either. There is not a trader alive who is totally emotionless in the heat of trading. The difference is that he or she has learned how to both notice their emotions and control them. There was a study done of professional traders recently, by a prestigious university, that fully supports that belief, despite the common myth to the contrary which most often circulates amongst traders. Also, supposedly everyone has a conscience and although I am certain that includes traders, there are undoubtedly some who choose on occasion not to be guided by what their conscience is telling them. That however is perhaps best left for a spirited discussion about ethics. Happy Trading

Yes well, catching falling knives is second only to stepping in front of freight trains when it comes to hazardous trader entertainment. I suspected all long you were well aware of the risks of averaging down and to be quite candid, we all have played out that scenario several times as we began learning to trade and there is no doubt in my mind that most of us could still admit to taking such a chance (despite the known risks) every once in a blue moon or so. Happy Trading

An interesting poll to be sure, though I doubt there shall be many surprises in either the overall results or the comments. I have seldom been too terribly driven by fear of loss as I am more easily motivated by gain or perhaps greed if that is the only choice here. I have a sneaking suspicion that those who are more heavily motivated by fear are perhaps either struggling more than necessary with their trading because of it or else they have not yet trained themselves to think in terms of probabilities. They say that in trading, the greater issues to watch out for (even more so than fear) are euphoria over your successes and over-confidence (one likely stemming from the other.) I personally struggle on occasion with that exact issue as when I am feeling a little too confident I start making silly mistakes. I have found however, that if I get up and go for a short walk or something physical, the euphoria and over-confidence soon passes and I can return to either take another trade or shut-down for the day and bank my money. Happy Trading

Hmm.. all good thoughts to be sure, but as to your question S.T. of ways to increase one capacity or the other, I find that doing creative puzzle solving works wonders. You develop not only your sense of logic but also your powers of creativity. You have to be selective but you can Google for this kind of stuff under terms like mind games, mind expansion+fun, creative puzzles, etc. I find that when things are "fun" you tend to learn faster and there's certainly something to be said for it being enjoyable. I originally started out doing wooden block puzzles, metal ring puzzles, etc. and it just carried on from there. You would be surprised how you can begin to see relationships between things that others are totally blind to. It also increases your powers of observation. Anyway, I hope that addresses what you were after. Happy Trading

FTT... you might be falling into a really bad habit. That practice could reward you just often enough to make you think it usually works and I assure you it does not. It will eventually skin you alive and leave you mumbling incoherently in the corner about how little trading capital is left in your account. You sound like a nice guy... I would advise against doing that and let the real crazies strap on their super-mittens and catch those falling knives instead. It makes for great entertainment from the sidelines. Happy Trading