Market Analysis

It's 9:00 pm. After a long day at work, Jimmy sits back with his laptop on his lap and an episode of Desperate Housewives blaring in the background. He's in the mood to do a bit of scalping and he has just opened a short GBP/JPY position. His trade is up for the moment, and he tells himself he'll exit manually once price reaches his target. But wait a second, what's this? Eva Longoria in a skin-tight dinner dress?!! He stares at the TV with eyes wide open, unaware that in the three minutes he

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill Part of the definition of "rule" is that it is a "governing action" or "procedure." When you consider governing action, it really encapsulates the way that rule-based trading relates to results-oriented trading. This is because rules are essential to the trading process. Actually, if you are trading either without rules, or if you are not following the rules that you have established,

Adding positions to an open trade is an advanced trading technique that, although potentially risky if not done correctly, can magnify profits exponentially. But just like every other aspect of trading, this technique can have a strong psychological effect that may hinder your trading performance. Adding to Losing Positions Whether you're "averaging down" on a long position or "averaging up" on a short position, adding to a losing position is a technique that we don't normally recommend

Have you ever emerged from a trading session in a fog and found yourself looking over the trading carnage of violated rule after violated rule and heard yourself say, "Who made those trades?" And, as the fog lifted, it became clear that you had been trading like a crazy person? It was like someone or something had control of your mouse and you felt as if you were in a trance; a negative trading trance to be exact? Well, if this or something similar has happened to you, then listen up...you are

It had happened before, actually many times before. Jim looked on with a feeling that swung like a pendulum between helplessness and anger. He felt helpless because he had violated his rule despite the fact that he had so often said that he wouldn't. He felt angry because he had let himself down. What happened is that he had moved his stop. He had moved it four times in this trade to be exact and the price action had still moved against him. To make matters worse, what would have been a small