Michelle B submits: The Disciplined Trader by Mark Douglas sits near my trading turret in a place of honor. Following rules is very problematical for traders. Having rules, and some traders have many, is not the same as being disciplined. A disciplined trader follows his rules, while a trader who [...]

After reading some of John Carter’s articles in Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine I was looking forward to reading his then upcoming book “Mastering the Trade: Proven Techniques for Profiting from Intraday and Swing Trading Setups“. It was obvious from his articles that John had some good insights into how the markets work [...]

SD Trader left this comment this morning:

I appreciate the overview of your daily trading. It appears you have quite the set up over there. How long did it take you to start trading successfully (and consistently)? I have tried to look this one up in the archives but it appears once you left your old [...]

Here’s a long list of stock trading best practices/rules (It lists 103 items but many are duplicated). Some of my favorites are:

Losses are part of trading. Limit them, accept them and move on to the next trade.
Believe That The Market Is Stronger Than You Are. Do Not Try To Fight The Market.
Capital Preservation Is [...]

I know some of you (Duru) were disappointed with Michael Covel’s Trend Following book because of its lack of detail/trading rules. A friend of mine just sent me a link to OriginalTurtles.org which is giving away the rules to the original Turtle Trading System. They have a very interesting reason for giving the [...]

Moving averages (MAs) are very simple, yet extremely useful tools for investors. A moving average is simply the average of a series of numbers over a period of time which is constantly updated by dropping the oldest value and then adding the newest value and recalculating the average. So a 5-day moving average [...]

Here’s a little something I found at BondTrader’s weblog. He has a link to a page that contains quotes from some top traders:

Success Leaves Clues
There are certain ‘business rules’ that triumphant investors and traders adhere to.
If you were able to model these business rules then [...]

One of my favorite things to do is take a free position and/or lock in gains when I can. Since I had pretty nice gains on most of the positions I initiated yesterday I was very focused on rolling up my stops this morning. I’ve now guaranteed myself (assuming that they don’t gap [...]

I’ve had this rule taped to my monitor for the past 3 years: On gap-up openings, buy above the 10:00 high. That rule has saved be a lot of money. When I started trading, I’d get all excited when I saw the futures flying pre-market. I’d rush in to buy at the [...]

Today reminded me of one of William Eng’s trading rules: Bear markets have no supports and bull markets have no resistance. The market sliced through the mid-May’s overhead resistance as if it wasn’t even there. In doing so, the head & shoulder pattern that I pointed out Friday was invalidated. Led [...]