One mismanaged trade can be the ruin of any fortune -- and often is. Investments can be a problematic prospect, especially for the average investor ...
One mismanaged trade can be the ruin of any fortune — and often is. Investments can be a problematic prospect, especially for the average investor whose only aim in to grow his or her nest egg. Indeed, in some regards these investors are the backbone of the industry. That being said, they can also be some of its most dramatic victims.
Many go-it-alone investors, in an effort to thwart cruel fate, prefer to add a new dimension to their investment strategy: time. To the uninitiated, this means they prefer to trade in futures. This means investors can utilize traditional commodities or E-mini index funds to leverage the projected value of commodities at some point in the future — hence the name.
Given the fact that futures trading is not bound by the open and close of Wall Street, an investor can enjoy the privilege of round-the-clock trading via any global exchange. To be sure, the futures trader does not look to New York as much as he or she looks to the Second City, Chicago. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is the mecca future traders turn to seek their fortunes.
The only conceivable downside, short of not having a clue, is cash in hand. While futures allow for greater investment flexibility, they require ready access to significant amounts of liquid capital. That is, they require access to cash — and lots of it. This is so because should your E-minis drop below the CME margin call, you will be required to ante-up, as it were. You can’t take your place at the roulette wheel unless you can afford to buy the placards, you see.
With a handful of E-minis, some commodities traders can reap a veritable financial whirlwind. What futures promise — and often deliver to the savvy strategist — is the potential for dramatic gains. Of course, this is subject to training and it would be in the best interests of the would-be futures traders to enroll in a futures trading course before embarking on too rigorous a trading regiment.
Heed the better part of your common sense and enroll in a reputable prior to frittering away your hard-earned nest egg.
Looking into trend following indicators which is a way that people will use to invest in the stock market. This strategy will be used to compare how stocks have done in the past, the trend of ways they have moved on the stock market.
With this method you will watch the way that the market goes and invest according to those movements in the past on the stocks. You will look at current market price for the stock, moving averages, and also any breakouts that have happened in the past.
Traders aren’t forecasting how the market is going to flow, but they will follow a set trend that has been going on. Looking into three components to figure out the strategy. Price of the stock currently, market volatility and equity levels. They will know before getting the stock how much will be bought and how much they will spend on it.
Not a method that will be used on new stock that hasn’t yet established any trend, but on those old standbys that have been around for a while. Price is always a top consideration when using trend following indicators. When a trader is using this method they will try and use indicators to figure ups and downs in the market.
They should know when the trend will continue until, and how much they will trade during that time. If the market becomes more volatile they will reduce the levels of trading this will be to cut losses. Price and time are the most important things for trend following indicators.
With trend following indicators you should be able to answer the following questions. When you enter the market, how many shares you will trade at a time. Money that will be risked for each trade, how will you cut your losses on a trade, and what to do when the trade becomes profitable?
Great Britain was finding it difficult to stay within the tight exchange rate band set by the European Monetary Union (EMU) in the early’90s. One person who made history with options was George Soros who is famously known as the man who broke the Bank of England.
George Soros is a famous name in the world of investing. He had always believed in contrarian investing. Contrarian investing means doing exactly opposite of what the crowd is doing. George Soros had this intuition that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue British Pound. So he bought call options on German Marks and put options on British Pound. He made a bet of $10 Billion by leveraging all the assets in his hedge fund.
Bank of England had made a number of public statements regarding its intention of staying within the EMU. However, within a few days of the speculative attack on the British Pound, Bank of England was brought to its knees as it was unable to sustain the immense selling pressure on the British Pound. Bank of England was forced to devalue British Pound in view of the speculative attack on the British Pound.
In a matter of a few days, George Soros made a cool $1 Billion profit on his bet. Can you make such a bet? Maybe not but this one example show the immense power options have if used correctly. Options are risky; there should be no doubt about it.
Options contract give you the right to buy or sell an underlying security like stocks, futures, commodities or currencies at a price before a certain date. This price is known as the Strike Price. This date is known as the Expiry Date. However, in European Style options you can only buy or sell on the expiry date not before that. Most people who trade options lose money, plain and simple.
Time factor is very important when valuing an option. Further out the options contract is from expiration, you will have to pay a higher premium. As the options contract approaches the expiration date and if it is out of money, it loses its value very fast.
LEAP stands for long term equity anticipation. Have your heard about the LEAP options? So what are LEAP options? It basically means that the option is much like the regular option except that the timeframe to expire is greater than 1 year. LEAP options are basically long term options. Leap options can help you profit over the long haul. You can use LEAP options in options strategies like the covered calls, straddles, spreads and so on.
Moreover, the buyer of the LEAP options has the right to exercise the option prior to expiration should the price of the underlying stock move in the money. LEAP options are risky because the option writer usually demands a hefty premium for taking on the long term risk. However, LEAP options can be incredibly profitable if used correctly.
See, closer the out of money option is to expiration, faster its value drops. What this means is that the buyer of the options loses the premium that was paid for getting the right to buy or sell the underlying security. LEAP options can be a great trading vehicle for swing traders as they mitigate some of the time decay that is inherent in short term options.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Learn ! Know !
Can autotrading make you rich? Well, it depends on your autotrading system. Many hedge funds and other entities that manage money through forex trading use some form of autotrading in their daily activities. Autotrading is common in the currency trading.
Previously these autotrading programs also known as Expert Advisors or Forex Robots were expensive costing like thousands of dollars and only wealthy individuals or big institutions like hedge funds could afford them.
However, the recent advancement in computer programming has made it possible for professional forex traders to team up with a software expert to develop their own autotrading systems. Many private individual traders have also begun to adopt autotrading to execute their thoroughly backtested and highly optimized forex trading strategies.
The price of these Expert Advisors has also come down to around a few hundreds that can be easily purchased by ordinary investors like you and me. Metatrader platform makes it real easy to program such type of Expert Advisors.
Recent advancements in computer programming has led to the development of trading platforms that allow an API ( Application Programming Interface) which connects the trader’s system to the dealer’s trade execution structure through the trading platform. So what is autotrading? You must have heard or read a lot about the benefits or advantages of autotrading.
APIs requires programming skills on the part of either the trader or a programmer hired by the trader. But once all of the trading rules and criteria are determined by the trader, programming an API can be relatively straight forward for anyone with programming experience. After the specific trading rules and criteria are determined, the trading strategy is backtested with positive results.
Autotrading is almost as simple as flipping a switch to begin the trading process. When this occurs not only trades entered when predetermined technical criteria is met but trade exits in the form of stop loss and take profit rules can also be programmed into the API.
However, an autotrading system should be thoroughly backtested and forward tested to make sure the likely success of the autotrading system before being put on live trading. This creates an entirely self contained autotrading system. So autotrading can actually execute real trades on current real time market prices. When a predetermined signal emerges, the software actually places a trade automatically.
In fact, if the trader has optimized and perfected this type of black and white trading strategy that runs devoid of human judgment, autotrading is perhaps the best way to achieve it. Any nondiscretionary technical trading strategy that has clear cut, unambiguous rules is a good candidate for autotrading. Autotrading effectively eliminates all human biases, errors and emotions in the trading process.
Every month you will come across a new forex autotrading system. The best two forex autotrading systems are FAPT and Ivy Bot. There are a number of successful autotrading systems now available in the market for the ordinary retail investors.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This Cash Printing Service From Heaven! First practice on your Account!
Commodities benchmarks are used to help investors and traders better understand how they are doing compared to the rest of the market. When people know how they are doing compared to the market, they know if they are allocating their money to the right places.
When you use this method to measure your investments, you will want to make sure to use comparable indexes that are relevant to your investment. You do not want to compare your cocoa or coffee investments to nickel or lumber trades, for example. This would not accurately depict how you are doing with your investments. The risk is often higher if you stay in one sector such as lumber though the returns are often higher as well. If you compared your rubber or orange juice exposure to energy commodities, then you would be misled on how well your investments are doing.
One common index used by investors is the CRB index. This gives any investor a very broad view of how the whole range of commodities are doing across world markets. This can be helpful for investors trying to figure out how good their investments are compared to the whole market. When you know how good your investment is, then you know where to put and keep your money in the future. If you find after an extended period of time that your trades or investments are not performing as well as the overall market, then you will know that you should be looking into more profitable areas for your investments.
Another common commodities benchmark for investors is the Dow Jones AIG Commodities Index. The DJ AIG CI is a great index for comparing most commodities, because it is made up of the most heavily traded raw materials in today’s markets. This is one of the most widely used benchmarks also, because it helps investors in ETF’s for example to understand where they are situated compared to average commodity investments.
When using a commodity benchmark, you should always keep in mind that you want a relevant investment index for comparison. This is important, because the risk and growth factors are very different in various investments. If you are placing your capital in sugar, then you would not want to compare your investment to LME aluminium prices. If you did this, your sugar trade would appear to have a low return, even if it performed better than the industrial metals.
When you are looking for a commodities benchmark, you want to find an index that is relevant to your investments. An index that is full of relevant investments will increase or decrease in a similar way to your investment’s value. This helps you understand how your investment is moving proportionately to the industry you are involved in. By performing these comparisons, you will also understand the price movements of your investments better.
For commodities investments, you will want to compare your investment to commodity indexes. This will show you if your investment is as profitable as other investments that are of the same risk level.
The best index for anyone who is interested in commodities, is an index that tracks commodities such as CRB. When using these commodities benchmarks, you should always be going for beating the index you are comparing. By beating the benchmark, you will know you are in the most profitable investment available in your industry.
The author, Selwyn Petrov, writes exclusively on and associated matters. Learn more about the fascinating aspects of here.
Point and figure trading in many ways is similar to the support and resistance breakout trading on bar or candlestick charts. The main difference is the look and functionality of the price charts themselves!
Bar charts and candlestick charts show the high low open and close price for a given period. Point and figure charts represent price in a radically different manner from the more familiar bar and candlestick charts. Many forex charting platforms provide the option of point and figure charts.
Point and figure charts do not show any timeframe. This may confuse you in the beginning. Point and figure charts are a pure price action play because these charts generally exclude all other elements like time, volume and open/close other than price. Point and figure trading is based exclusively on price action.
Point and figure charts represent clear evidence of such important technical characteristics like trend, support/resistance and breakouts. Thus a point and figure chart focuses on the behavior of price action which is the most important factor from the technical analysis point of view.
If you look at the point and figure chart you will see many columns with Xs and Os marked in them. How do you figure out what does this means? A point and figure chart has got Xs and Os. A point and figure chart is constructed with a column of boxes alternately labeled with Xs and Os. An X column means that the price has risen in that column. Conversely, an O column means that the price has declined in that column.
When a reversal occurs on any column, a new column is created going in the opposite direction. So there is no time, volume, opens and close on point and figure charts. Only when price moves a significant amount regardless of time will an existing column grow or a new column is created.
How is a point and figure chart constructed? It depends on two variables. Two variables can alter the way the point and figure charts look and act. The first variable is the box size. This is the minimum amount that the price is supposed to move before a new box in the existing column is created.
You will see many columns of Xs and Os in the point and figure chart. X is equal to fixed price increase. Each X denotes a rising trend. For example, price would need to move an additional amount equal to the preset box size before another X would be added to the top of the column if a column of Xs has 10 boxes.
You only need to understand the concept behind the point and figure chart, you can use the charting software to do the actual drawing. Suppose, you are using the point and figure chart. You set the box size on the point and figure chart to be equal to 10 pips on the point and figure charting software.
So 10 pips is box size or the minimum price increase! Now the price would have to move another 10 pips above each X box before another X could be added on top of that X. On the other hand, price would have to move 10 pips lower than the each box in O column to add another O box on the bottom of the column.
How do you decide to add another column to the point and figure chart? The second important variable is the reversal amount. This is the amount of pips the price needs to reverse before a new column is created.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try This Cash Printing Service From Heaven! First practice on your Account!
The first was doing automated Backtesting. Automated Backtesting is easy. The second method of Backtesting is performed manually and visually by the trader. The trader would take the historical data and scroll back in time on a chart and manually apply the trading strategy as if it was in a real time environment.
One of the major drawbacks with manual Backtesting is hindsight. How to eliminate the hindsight factor while doing manual Backtesting? The trader would advance the chart bar by bar in order to refrain from seeing price action subsequent to the trade at hand. This eliminates trading in hindsight that is detrimental to an objective backtest.
The major disadvantage of Backtesting as compared to automated testing is the significant potential for human error in executing simulated trades and recording performance results.
Emotions are your enemy in trading. When you do manual Backtesting, these emotions can cause problems for your Backtesting results. The normal range of human emotions and biases that often interfere with actual trading can be a detrimental factor in achieving objective backtest results. Furthermore, it takes a great deal of work and discipline to simulate trades manually over a large data set without straying from the strict rules of the trading strategy.
These were some real disadvantages of manual Backtesting. However, this provides valuable trading experience although simulated but still a valuable trading experience that no automated backtest could possibly provide. Backtesting manually can provide the trader with the real feel for actually trading the strategy.
Backtesting whether done manually or automatically can be one of the most important elements of building a solid trading strategy. Backtesting can save traders a great deal of time and money that might otherwise had been wasted on trading unprofitable strategies.
You must have heard a lot about the benefits of autotrading. Autotrading is the latest fad especially in forex trading where the number of major currency pairs is only six. This makes programming forex autotrading easy. Any mechanical trading system can be backtested. This leads us to the important question of autotrading. These autotrading systems are popularly known as Expert Advisors or Forex Robots.
The US Stock Market has got more than 50,000 stocks listed with them as compared to the forex market where there are not more than six major currency pairs. This makes programming a stock trading robot a bit complicated. However, during the past decade major breakthrough in computer programming has been made.
Backtesting is one of the most important components of testing an autotrading system. Big institutions like banks, corporations and hedge funds have always been taking benefit of these autotrading systems.
So what type of trading strategies can be backtested and autotraded? Any trading strategy that is rule based and is not discretionary or discrete. These types of strategies are primarily technical in nature, and they must necessarily have rules and criteria that are unambiguous. Backtesting and autotrading are two important components of implementing trading strategies that generally do not rely upon the trader’s judgments or discretion.
In contrast, autotrading actually executes real trades automatically according to a pre – programmed set of instructions that sets trade entries, stop losses, and profit limits. Backtesting allows the trader to determine if a given strategy would have been profitable using past price data, which is an indication of how it might potentially perform in the future.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try This Cash Printing Service From Heaven! First practice on your Account!
A new column is only added when a reversal in an existing column exceeds the reversal threshold. The most common amount of reversal threshold is three boxes or three points.
The reversal amount in pips is 30 pips if the box size is set at 10 pips and the reversal amount is set at three boxes. So in case of a rising X column, price would need to turn back by at least 30 pips before a new O column would be added.
The significance of these two variables, the box size and the reversal threshold should be clearly understood. These two variables make the point and figure chart so effective at representing only the most major market moves disregarding all minor fluctuations known as noise.
One of the best trading strategies in most common use with the point and figure charts is breakout trading since point and figure charts outline support and resistance so well. The point and figure charts are excellent indicators of both trend and support/resistance.
A double top is a potential bearish reversal signal in bar and candlestick charts. Now you must understand that there is a notable distinction between the bar and candlestick charts and the point and figure charts in the interpretation of double and triple tops and bottoms.
However, a double top is a resistance point where traders should be looking for a bullish break to the upside on the point and figure charts. The same difference holds for the double bottoms as well as triple tops and bottoms.
The main method of trading trendlines and pattern on the point and figure charts is through breakouts like the horizontal support and resistances levels on these charts. Charts patterns like triangles are prevalent as well. Point and figure charts also have their own versions of diagonal trend lines which are drawn at 45 degrees.
Point and figure charts give a very clear view of the market movements. Price action is the most important aspect of technical trading. The point and figure charts focus exclusively on the price action.
It is because of this clarity in viewing and interpreting the price movements that the point and figure charts have withstood the test of time and are still popular with traders today as an increasingly relevant analytical tool for forex traders. Point and figure charts had originated in the’th century.
Without the extraneous elements to clutter the picture, point and figure charts excel at representing clear evidence of such important technical characteristics as trend, support/resistance and breakout.
Other data that is readily available on the bar and candlestick charts like time, period opens/closes are generally excluded on the point and figure charts. This leaves only the uncluttered purity of price action. Some may characterize point and figure trading as based upon pure price action.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This Cash Printing Service From Heaven! First practice on your Account!
What is Backtesting? You must have read a lot about the backtested performance of trading systems on websites. With Backtesting, traders can actually test their trading strategies and how well they would have done if executed in the past. Backtesting any trading strategy allows a trader to simulate its expected performance using historical price data.
Now an important question that comes to anyone’s mind is what type of a trading strategy can be backtested? Any trading strategy that does not have any ambiguity in its rules can be backtested effectively. Example of a simple trading strategy that can be backtested can be as follows.
When the DMI+ is above DMI- and the MACD histogram has crossed above the zero line, go long when the 5 period moving averages has crossed above the 20 period moving averages.
When the MACD histogram has crossed below the zero line and DMI- is above DMI+, sell short when the 5 period moving averages has crossed below the 20 period moving average.
Are backtested trading systems reliable? Why so much backtested performance is quoted on the websites to prove that the trading system is good? You must know that using the past price data to simulate future results often misleads traders into thinking that their backtested results will also give into similar results in actual real time trading. This one example is just meant to illustrate that any trading strategy having clear cut rules can be backtested with the historical data.
So you should not fall into the trap of thinking that Backtesting may be a perfect method for identifying the most profitable trading strategies. Many potential factors can and will make hypothetical performance and actual performance differ significantly.
Market fundamentals keep on changing. This makes a trading strategy that may have worked very well over the past three years work in an entirely different manner for the next three years as the market changes and evolves. One of the most important facts that you should always keep in your mind is that market changes considerably overtime.
Often technical indicators that have been giving profitable signals in the past are subsequently unable to replicate their performance in the future. This may frustrate you. But this is exactly what makes trading a challenging endeavor.
Secondly in term of trade execution, a trading strategy in real time may be much different from the way the trading strategy behaves on Backtesting. These differences can potentially skew the results.
Backtesting can provide a trader with a reasonable expectation of the trading strategy’s potential worth and usefulness. However, Backtesting is still the best available method for evaluating a trading strategy without actually trading it in real time environment.
What are the methods to do Backtesting? Backtesting can be done by using two methods. The first one is the automated Backtesting. The second is manual Backtesting. Automated Backtesting is the most popular method. Automated Backtesting entails using a specialized program. The trader inputs the specific rules and criteria for the trading strategy into the Backtesting program.
Automated Backtesting is very easy. An entire picture of the past performance is created with the help of that software program. The software automatically applies those rules to the past price data and tallies the past hypothetical profits, losses and other information.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try This Cash Printing Service From Heaven! First practice on your Account!
There are a number of pivot points that you need to calculate. How is the pivot levels calculated? Beginning with the main Pivot Point that is calculated from the previous day’s key price points, the resulting support and resistance are subsequently derived from the following calculations:
Main Pivot Point PP = (Previous Low + Previous High + Previous Close)/3.
Support 3 S3 = Previous Low-2(Previous High -PP). Support 2 S2= PP- (R1-S1). Support 1 S1 = 2PP – Previous High.
The main pivot point is very important. After calculating these pivot points they are plotted on the currency price chart. Trader’s can calculate the current day’s pivot points using the above formulas based on the previous day’s price data.
Breakouts or bounces may be traded with pivot points and they are often also used as profit targets. Once these pivot levels are calculated and plotted, they are used in much the same way as Fibonacci Retracement. Pivot points also indicate whether the market sentiment is bullish or bearish. Traders also use pivot points as reference levels to provide information as to whether the current price is relatively low or relatively high within its expected price range for the day.
You can further refine your pivot point levels by using the S1, R1 and other levels. S1, S2 and S3 as well as R1, R2 and R3 are used as references in pivot point trading. For example, traders may look for long trading opportunities with the view that the price will reasonably move towards equilibrium around the main PP level if the price is near the day’s S2.
Many traders use different time frames in their trading decisions. You can also calculate the pivot levels for a week and for a month time frame too. Instead of calculating the pivot points for the current day you can also calculated the above levels for 4 hour charts as well as 8 hour charts.
You can combine pivot points with the Fibonacci levels as well. When calculating the pivot points for the other time frames just replace the day’s highs, lows and the closing prices with the appropriate time frame highs, lows and closing prices. Both Fibonacci and Pivot Points are excellent technical tools that often encompass entire trading discipline in themselves.
The pivot point can become the target low for the trading session in an extremely bullish market condition. This number represents the true value of a prior session. It is important to understand that especially in strong bull or bear market conditions, it can be used as an actual trading number in determining the high or the low of a given time period.
Traders will step in and buy the pullback until that pivot point is broken by prices trading below that level. A retracement back to the pivot will attract buyers if the market gaps higher above the pivot point in an uptrending market. The opposite is true for the pivot point will act as the target high for the session in an extremely bearish market condition.
Technically speaking, in a bearish market, the highs should be lower and the lows should be lower than in the preceding time frame. Generally prices come back up to test the pivot point if a news-driven event causes the market to gap lower after traders take time interpreting the information and the news. Sellers will take action and start pressing the market lower again if the market fails to break that level and trade higher.
Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try These Cash Printing From Heaven! Learn