I’m pretty damn adept these days when it comes recognising bubble tops. But didn’t realise just how attuned I was, until quite recently. For the past six months or so I’ve been working for a friend. Initially, helping him with accounting, but then taking on added roles with marketing and web design (my web skills…
It was in the Buddy Internet shop where my genius first struck. Unbeknownst to me at the time this genius idea would cost a lot in both money and stress levels over the next few years. The idea was innocent enough (albeit rather stupid). It was this: why not buy the FTSE100, before it cleared…
The definition of an outside bar is a price bar with lower low and higher high than the previous price bar. This pattern is considered an important market signal, one often seen at both tops and bottoms on multiple timeframes. Outside bars are also named engulfing patterns. Here’s one on the GBP/USD. In the…
Our personal trading journeys can often feel like mythic adventures, like the one undertaken by Odysseus in Homer’s classic Greek tale. In the Odyssey, it took 10 years for our hero to get back to his homeland of Ithaca. Along the way, he had all sorts of tests of character. My own adventure lasted…
Trading psychology is one of the three core tenets of successful trading. The others being market timing and money management. Hundreds of books have been written on trading psychology, netting small fortunes for their authors. And it’s a fascinating topic, but…… for the absolute beginner, it’s one often avoided until the beginner is already in…
It was 2003 and I had all my plans in place. I’d bought a trading course from the classifieds section of Investors Chronicle (or was it Shares magazine? I can’t remember). It was called Champion Trader and was my first introduction to the exciting world of trading. It taught me all I needed to know…
Funny that most of us get into trading with the goal of doing less not more. And yet no sooner we fund our account and we’re treating it like a slot machine. By trading more not less. This blog would get tonnes more traffic if I simply catered to the masses wishing to day trade….
A common question I’m asked is: when long and a short signal emerges should I place an order for the short side too? Most of the time these questions are about the Harami Inside Bar pattern. But the question is equally applicable to all shorting patterns occurring in rising markets. My answer to the…
Recently a JP Morgan analyst stuck his neck out to make a price projection for bitcoin at $150k. You might think that’s extreme, given bitcoin started at zero only a decade or so back, but it’s actually conservative to other forecasts. Anywhere from 300k, all the way up to …. $1million. I know what your…
The predominant thinking with trading psychology is this: get rid of emotions and you’ll succeed. But, this is a primitive approach to a rather complex subject. The idea you can just lose your emotions and fears through suppression is like trying not to think about sex when an attractive opposite walks past. Unless you have…