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August 25, 2020
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New Approaches to Options Trading!

Join Rob Roy, in September to learn innovative new approaches to options strategies that can improve your trading profitability!

Available Times: Sep 2nd and 3rd at 8:00PM EST

We’ll be taking options strategies you may already know… and teaching you the latest approaches to setting up trades.

Session 1: Fine-Tuning Strangles for Max Profit

- Why we prefer Strangles over Straddles for trades that profit regardless of whether the market moves up OR down!

- And much, much more!

Session 2: Butterflies as a Low Cost Directional Play!

- The Butterfly Spread is generally used in sideways markets... however, we’ll show you how to make them directional!

- And much, much more!

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Top Stocks for Hurricane Season 2020 by Ian Cooper
Keith’s Outlier Watch List by Keith Harwood
TradeWins Author Team

 

 

Tomorrow, you could begin doubling your account every single month starting with one letter.

The letter will come from a 20-year trading professional named Ian Cooper. He says, “In 2017, following my trades you would be doubling even tripling your account some months. Let me show you how.”

He will show you exactly what to do... and he’ll give you the blueprint for just $1.

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What Is The Edge?
by Jea Yu

Trading Full Circle A word that consistently gets thrown around by traders is the "edge," and the notion of traders possessing it. Once an edge is attained, it is assumed that vast riches accompany this acquisition.

The reality is much different. The very definition of an edge means that one has found an unpopulated niche. This is fleeting at best. The nature of the market is to discover, expose, and then populate every possible working niche until it is completely saturated. This idea lends itself to the notion of capacity, threshold, and most importantly…

In every endeavor, there is a boom, bust, rebirth, and saturation cycle. Day trading is no different. The 1998 to 2000 era of Internet mania was the day trading boom cycle, the good old days. Electronic trading had gone mainstream and every other person dreamed of being a day trader. Those were the days of the 30-point intraday ranges on AMZN, BRCM, JDSU, and so forth. It was absolutely an amazing time. Stocks made phenomenal moves in quarter- to half-point increments. The fraction based pricing made for a lot of fat profits for scalpers, brokers, and market makers alike.

The bear market didn’t kill day trading. It was the decimalization system that killed day trading, along with the pattern day trading rule, which is total BS. Granted, there was very little, if any chart reading involved or even necessary in the old days. Nasdaq Level II was all you needed.

The Most Common Question

How long does it take to make it as a trader?

The is the question posed to me by newbies all the time. The answer is: between now and never. As much as I want to give a straight answer, I can't. There is no standard college course and exam that you can pass to be a trader. It boils down to the individual in every way, except for the quality of training he receives. How does one even determine when a trader has finally "made it"? If you want to be a trader, hit the buy button. Congrats – you made a trade, and now you're a trader.

The markets are constantly shifting paradigms pertaining to tradability and environments. There were lots of people who made a living day trading in the years between 1999 and 2001, only to get snuffed out once the environments changed as decimalization kicked in, ECNs got bigger, and Nasdaq Level II transparency all but disappeared.

As mentioned earlier, enduring desire and effort – supported by another main income source to stave off desperation and risk capital – are the ingredients needed to support oneself in this endeavor. There is one very key paradigm shift in the day trading endeavor. Since there are so many participants in the markets, the windows of transparency are often in the pre-market and opening 45 minutes. It is possible to make a living or secondary income trading only one or two hours a day and then turning off the screens. In fact, the notion of full time trader is a misnomer. The less you trade, the more opportunities you have to lose money against the ocean of better equipped, better informed, and better capitalized opponents. Until you start up your own billion-dollar hedge fund, your goal will be to pretty much pickpocket the market and run away before it figures out what you've done. The more you keep going back and overtrading, the more likely it is that you will get slaughtered.

This boils down to your own motivation for pursuing trading. Is it for the money, or for the rush? This is a loaded question. If it's for the money, then the question of desperation comes into play. If it's for the rush, then ego comes into play.

I believe that the best way to motivate someone is to show him worst-case scenarios so that he is aware of what not to do. The whole positive attitude mentality is that of sheep. You will find most of the things that human beings are taught to do in order to excel in other endeavors will lead you to fall right into the abyss when it comes to trading.

The Upside to the Downside

Thanks to technology, books, DVDs, seminars, software, and simulators, one can become well-versed in trading much faster than ever before. The learning curve can be shortened at a cheaper cost these days. This is one of the benefits of trading today's markets.

"Making money is not the hard part, keeping it is!"

Back-testing has never really appealed to me, since results can be curve fitted. There are many variables that are tough to factor in when back-testing, such as: market trading environment, fading, wiggle room for any particular stock, execution slippage, share allocation, and sector or futures convergence, to name a few.

The market is the worst loan shark. They make the credit card companies with their 30% interest rates look like humanitarian relief organizations.

The market loves to give you a quarter knowing you will eventually give back a dollar or more. Even more devious, the market will fool you into thinking you earned that quarter through skill and training. It's the same underlying theme mentioned earlier; in every battle, there is an opponent and a victim. The victim usually thinks he is winning because the opponent lets him think so.

The Ideal Trading Mindset

There was a posting on a trading message board, posted by a trader, that perfectly encapsulates the essence of the ideal trading mindset. He wrote:

"When I get up in the morning and start off the day, I shut off the computers as soon as I make my $400. That's it. It's that easy. The problem is most people don’t or won't shut it down for the day. The market will give me a little bit of money every day and my job is to take it and not get greedy. I come from a place where I know how hard it is to make $150,000 a year. No one will give me the opportunity to make $400 in an hour and then give me the freedom to enjoy the rest of my day. This is how I have averaged 100k a year for the past 5 years. I am tickled at how nice it is…"

This is the way to approach trading.

 
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