Category: Traders’ Secrets

Traders’ Secrets is something that everyone would like to know, right?
How is it possible that some traders are successful all the time while others fail to make a profit all the time?
That is exactly what Traders’ Secrets will show you.
Traders-Paradise’s team reveal all trading and investing secrets to you, our visitors.

What will you find here?

How to find, buy, trade stocks, currencies, cryptos. You’ll find here what are the best strategies you can use, all with full explanation and examples.
Traders-Paradise gives you, our readers, this unique chance to uncover and fully understand everything and anything about trading and investing. The material presented here is originated from the experience of many executed trades, many mistakes made by traders and investors but written on the way that teaches you how to avoid these mistakes.

Moreover, here you’ll find some rare techniques and strategies that are successful forever, for any market condition. Also, how to trade with a little money and gain consistent returns. By following these posts you’ll e able to trade with greater success. You’ll increase your profits and your wealth, of course.

The main secret of Traders’ Secrets is that there shouldn’t be any secret for traders and investors. Rise up your trade by reading these posts, articles, and analyses!

You’ll enjoy every word written here. Moreover, after all, your trading and investing knowledge will be more extensive and effective.

Traders’ Secrets will arm you with those skills, so you’ll never have a losing trade again.

How to select trading signals?
Trading signals are important for successful trading but too many of them will confuse you

By Guy Avtalyon

To select trading signals, your beliefs are the most important driver.

You must have the right trading signals to guide you in the intensively competitive environments you will find in the stock market, futures, forex, and options markets.

The challenge is that it is not as simple as finding the best trading signal. Because just like everything else in your trading system, your signals should be based on your beliefs and your trading strategy.

If this is not the case you will have trouble pulling the trigger when you get a signal.

Because of the way you enter and exit the market should be based on what you believe about your trading strategy and how the markets work.

How to select trading signals based on beliefs?

Your beliefs about the market are the most important determinant of your ideal trading system.

The first step to ensure you select a trading signal which matches your beliefs is to document your beliefs about trade setups, entry signals, exit signals, and initial stop losses.
Some traders believe that there is absolutely no value in using trial and error trying all different entry triggers / buy signals/sell signals hoping to find something that works.

According to such traders, trial and error in trading signal selection will result in a curve-fitted, worthless trading system. That can be true at some point.

The influence of trading signals

When you apply the trial and error method, you get a curve showing the past data. You can get a system that works fantastically well on past data but doesn’t work tomorrow or into the future.

Maybe, for that reason, it is better to start with your beliefs and your trading strategy and select trading signals that support these to reduce your chance of curve fitting.

When you change your approach you can found enormous benefits which included:
- Greater clarity on objectives
- Reduced need for optimization
- Greater real-time profitability
- Reduced development time
- Simplified system design
To be clear.

The internet is a wonderful tool, but the vast amount of information and companies/people dispensing forex trading signals and advice can be daunting and confusing to newer traders.

Advanced traders already can recognize what constitutes quality versus hype.

Forex signal services

No one forex signal service will ever meet the needs of all traders, but a good service must.

Few trading services post their performance. There are several reasons for this:

The performance is simply not worth showing as it does little to motivate.
The raw data, no matter how robust, falls on deaf ears.

The first consideration is that looking for a trading signal that generates a profitable trade on its own is nonsensical. You may get the best entry signal ever created. It will be useless unless you adopt this rule as part of your trading system. Also, you’ll need all of the required components working together. Otherwise, there is no way you will make money in the long run.

A complete trading system needs each of the following:

Objectives
Setup
Entry trigger
Initial stop loss
Exits

Money management and Position size rules

The trade entry trigger is just one part of the complete system.

Many people also suggest that it is the least important part of the system. Entry triggers are the area most prone to curve fitting, over-optimization, and random noise in the market.

Actually, how you exit a trade once you are in determines how much profit you make from it.

Remember, simple is better than complex. Fewer rules is better than more rules. Complex trading systems with many rules may not perform well in the future.

Well, it is more difficult to warp fit a simple system with several rules to past data. Hence, if you have many rules and complex manipulations you can easily fit your system to the past data. This will perform it largely useless in the future!

One trader told us: ”Use simple trading signals that fit your trading strategy and beliefs”. That helps a lot.
13th September 2018
Do trading signals work?

2 min read

The answer is Yes!

Of course yes. A successful trader can be a great signals provider.

They work but you have to follow instructions, do right money management and choose a good signal provider that show real performance, not scammers.

Off course there are signal providers which work. Some are even free of costs to you, Some work on a subscription basis. The problem is to find the right signal on these platforms.

Yes, they do. Trading signals work.

But it has to combine with the overall market scenario as well. Awareness about the happening in the financial world on micro and macro levels is important to fully trust a trading signal.

Trading signals always require a stop loss to be put along while following a signal.

Trading Signals are meant to be an assistance, not reliance. One should never ever follow trading signals blindly.

Always do your own research before investing in any asset class be it forex crypto or stocks. Trading signals work as a good confluence for trade setups.

That helps!

Trading signals in Forex trading.

It is possible to find a number of courses for FX signals. There are a lot of websites that are dedicated to such a service, and social media makes it possible for people to share Forex signals free versions and premium versions. There are three main groups of people that are responsible for sending such signals out

Traders
Affiliates
Scammers

And you will see, many of them are scammers but a very few honest people are still out there.

Forex trading signals serve as signposts or indicators of when/how to act on a particular currency. It is important for investors to know how to read signals.

Trading signals work in a variety of designs, from bear/bull designs to geometric shapes, and can bring attention to important currency details.

Why should an investor have to know how to read these things? For the same reason, drivers have to learn how to recognize road signs: if you don’t know what the signs mean, you could end up ruined. Forex signal trading cannot be taken lightly. It is home to a rapidly changing environment where some online brokers manipulate the original data feed to cause errors in the marketplace and earn a profit over them

We show you these groups in the order in which they can be trusted.

It is common to find traders that are looking to share their ideas with the outside world.

Their main aim in doing so is to earn a reputation of being a good trader, help out other people, and simply support the place that was once supporting them when they were new to FX trading. Usually, it is possible to find traders that are sharing FX signals free on various forums.

What does such a trader, signal seller try to aim?

Traders try to send reliable signals by performing their own analysis and providing exactly the same information that they are using in their own trades

Affiliates represent another group of signal providers.

You can get free daily Forex signals from this group once you have signed up for an account with a broker using their affiliate link.

In this way, affiliates can still make a commission on the trades you make, but the signals remain free to you. However, not every person has enough time to support both his affiliate business and his trading activities.

So you should be cautious about this group of signal providers.

Sometimes the quality of their signals may drop because they put more accent on their own promotion. But you can still treat such signals with a decent level of trust.

But remember, it is a must to have former testing of their daily free Forex signals on a demo account.

Scammers are the people you should be avoided, because they are only interested in making an affiliate commission from you, or just making you purchase their ‘free’ signals. Such providers usually employ quite obvious methods of attracting clients. They provide a few free Forex signals online and later ask you to buy premium signals.

After you have signed up for free, you will be sent some signals, but they will do the same to the other people that have signed up.

Some of these people are going to receive BUY orders, others will be provided with SELL orders. This way a scammer can split his audience in half.

The first 50% is going to profitable and another 50% will be losing.

So do not fall for scams, as they cannot deliver anything close to the best Free forex signals. Some trading signals/strategies work very well as long as they aren’t “overused”.

You can have a go with them and see if they can produce what they claim. They have to let you know the result. If they can’t, never subscribe to that signal service!

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

11th September 2018
Signal Provider – How To Pick Right One?

Picking the good signal provider can be harder than anyone can imagine. Truly nightmare.

By Guy Avtalyon

A signal provider can help you but also ruin you. Many forex traders use forex signal providers’ services to make money. Traders who struggle to make profitable trades in the forex market can leverage off successful forex traders by using their signals in their trades.

Not every forex signal provider out there is authentic and attempting to make sense of which ones are con artists. And ones which are genuine can be an overwhelming assignment.

Finding the right signal provider is the challenge

Finding a reliable forex signal service can seem like a challenge. There are those signal providers that are professional and transparent.

And unfortunately, there are those providers that do not always have their members’ best interest in mind.

It is up to you. You have to do your due diligence. To be sure that you are working with an honest forex signals provider. The one you can trust and have faith in.

There are several things the trader would consider when are going to pick your signal provider.

A trader should be aware that there are a lot of hardcore scammers in the market. They are working very hard to provide fake, low quality, and substandard forex signals.

Most of these hardcore scammers have no background. Or training in any financial matters. And usually, feed the trader with performance statistics that are imaginary.

But yet convincing to a trader who is not smart enough.

The best way a trader can deal with this problem is by spending at least 5 minutes looking at what other traders are saying about this respective signals provider.

This will help him or her in making an informed and proper judgment.

Another way is by the trader looking at the level of detail contained in the signals provided by the forex signal provider. If he or she realizes that it just entails a few charts with a loss or profitable line, the trader has a reason to think twice before following such signals.

A trader should look for testimonials about various forex signal providers available in the market. A trader should look at what other players in the industry are saying about the available signal providers. This will enable the trader to choose the best provider in terms of accuracy, quality, timeliness, and affordability of the services offered.

What trader should check?

The trader should check the number of TPs the providers have in one trade.

Also, the trader should check how the providers put together the performance statistics.

Check if the providers have a trade by trade statistics.

The bottom line is that any trader who wants to be profitable in the long term should start learning by himself or herself about forex signals through experience and self-training.

If you search for forex signal providers on the web, you will most likely be unable to recognize the sites of scammers from genuine suppliers.

Scammers’ sites are so comparative and competitive.

Sometimes you can feel that clueless forex merchants typically get gotten in the scammer’s site rather than the genuine forex signal supplier. When they understood that the signal is not profiting, it would have been past the point of no return.

The scammers had officially taken the cash and it is past the point where it is possible to do anything.

Signal providers will give you entry and exit signals but remember you have no idea how they came up with the entry and exit points, all you have to do is follow.

With all these promises, you will be tempted to subscribe. That is the moment it will dawn on you that whatever you have subscribed to is a pack of lies.

Forex Signal providers are typically separated into two different groups

It is based on how they generate their trading ideas – technical analysis and fundamental analysts.

Technical Analysts base their trading decisions on chart analysis including support and resistance levels, candlestick patterns, price channels, market structure, or other technical approaches. Many technical analysts have a proprietary method for analyzing the markets. And the highly successful ones have spent many years researching and testing their methodology. All over historical data and in real-time market conditions.

Fundamental Analysts base their trading decisions on economic and news related data. This could be in the form of long-term interest rate analysis, inflation, central bank policy, employment reports, sentiment surveys, and more.

Some are longer-term position traders while many others are shorter-term traders that try to catch volatility spikes after an anticipated news release.

Some traders may think “reliable” means having a high win rate, but that is not really what you primarily want to be looking at.

Actually, win rates are not that important as a metric by itself. You must also analyze the average risk to reward in conjunction with the win rate.

There are strategies with 90% win rates that can lose money and then there are strategies with 30% win rates that can make money.

Another factor to consider is the technology the signal provider is using. Do they have a reliable platform to send out notifications and are there multiple ways for you to receive the alerts? But there is something important also. Do the trading alerts always detail the buy and sell signals, or present stop-loss levels and targets? Or do they only provide superficial information such as entries but no exit details? These are some of the factors you need to consider.

So how can you find out if a provider is reputable and worth your time?

Sign up for a Trial – Sometimes this the best way to get started is by signing up for a forex signals trial. You may get a real sense of the quality of service by diving in and taking a test drive. Many signal providers offer a 1 or 2 week trial for members.

Join their Email List – Another way to find a provider is by joining their email newsletter. You will find the value that they provide for free. So, you can evaluate whether their premium forex signals service will meet your expectations.

Check their Track Record – Every single reputable FX signal provider will implement a performance record detailing their published trades. This is a good way to find their average pip profit per month. Their risk parameters, average win percentage, and other related metrics.

Google them – Yes, simply Google them. Are they mentioned in any important trade publications or articles? What type of social following do they have?

Do everything possible to find with whom you are dealing. Just don’t be one of those naysayers.
Check it, try it, test it, and make your own conclusion.

10th September 2018
Trade signals – What Is It and How To Use?

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2 min read

Trade signals are simply when someone is making a trade call. Either to buy or sell a security or other asset, generated by analysis.

They show you that it is a good time to buy or sell a particular security.

So if they believe an asset will go higher or lower, they will tell you via some kind of message, email or software. After that, it is up to you to follow or not to follow.

Actually, trading signal is a alert that is based on technical indicators.

Trade signals come in a variety of forms. They can be bull or bear pennants, rectangles, triangles, and wedges, as well as head-and-shoulders chart patterns. Trade signals may also bring attention to abnormal volumes, options activity, and short interest.

There are lots of trade signals

As anyone can make calls, the challenge often is finding one run by an actual trader. These type of services exist in the institutional world as well. They just tend to be a little more accurate than ones you find available to retail traders.

Market Signal is an unintentional or passive passage of information or indication between participants of a market. For example, If a firm issues bonds it indirectly shows that it needs capital and also desires to retain control. Thus instead of equity capita,l it prefers loan capital. It is based on technical indicators. And usually is the sign for when to sell or buy a particular product.

It also brings the attention of users to the other options available, abnormal growth and short-term interests.

Trade signals in volatile markets

Using signals in volatile markets can help to point out opportunities to the investors. Also, they will signal them if they disappear.

There are usually two ways to deliver market signal: send news and activity. The market signal expects to deliver consumer, rivals and outlet member. And the earlier studying of the market signal which is mainly a concentration of signal’s influence.

For instance, it is the price signal where costly products make the customer think it is made of high-quality raw material.

That is a kind of advertisement in which the main aim is to make the customer think that a certain enterprise has more advantage.

Every company doesn’t market in a static environment, the competitor and member of the outlet will make prediction and reaction to enterprises, their decisions process is a dynamic market mechanism.

Trade signals in Forex

In Forex, traders are using trade signals all over the world to aid them in making critical decisions about their trades. They are one of the most important tools a trader has, and almost all traders choose to use them in one way or another.

There are many types of signals systems, some are offered for free while others for a fee but take in mind that a trustworthy service should include information about taking profit and stop loss configurations.

A forex signal is a suggestion for entering a trade on a currency pair, usually at a specific price and time.

Who can generate the trade signal? Human-analyst or an automated Forex robot supply a subscriber of the forex signal service. They are usually sent via email, website, SMS, RSS, tweet.

The majority of signal providers focus on supplying signals based on technical analysis and a minority work on fundamental analysis or price action.

Technical analysis, such as Ichimoku and candlestick charting, show both short and long-term price trends giving the signal provider flexibility in supplying a range of trade options.

The fundamental analysis gives longer-term trade ideas. Price action gives extremely short-term trade ideas, often more suited to scalping.

Trade signal in the stock market

The signal in the stock market is developed by George Lane. It is an indicator that measures the relationship between an issue’s closing price and its price range over a predetermined period of time.

A short note about George Lane (1921 – 2004): He was a securities trader, author, educator, speaker, and technical analyst. He was part of a group of futures traders in Chicago who developed the stochastic oscillator (also known as “Lane’s stochastics”). This is one of the core indicators used today among technical analysts. Lane was also President of Investment Educators Inc. in Watseka, Illinois, where he taught investors and financial professionals basic and advanced technical analysis methods. He popularized the stochastic oscillator.

Stock trading signals

Stock trading signals are simply the implementation of a trading system or method.

The actual signal is given when a traders system determines all criteria necessary for a new buy. Signal are met now and a new buy order can be placed by the trader.

Stock trading signals are most often associated with technical analysis. This is a study of price action and derivatives of price action.

An example of a technical analysis price indicator may be a Moving Average or MACD. Traders can receive stock signals on thousands of trading methods.

Trading stocks can be extremely lucrative when you are able to find trading signals that are proven to be effective. Trusted stocks signals help you predict the market investing in stocks. Doing that with live trading signals sent directly to your device, in the app. With this, you will be able to get live rates on hundreds of different assets.

How does it work?

The software scours social media and accumulates posts, comments, etc that include keywords of interest. All this data is then filtered and crunched to produce interesting statistics. Showing the true public opinion using their words, giving an in-depth insight into public minds.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

9th September 2018
What is Speculation? Trading or Gambling?

3 min read

The definition of speculation says:

The speculation involves trading a financial instrument involving high risk, in expectation of significant returns.
The motive is to take maximum advantage of fluctuations in the market.

Who are speculators?

Speculators are prevalent in the markets where price movements of securities are highly frequent and volatile. They play very important roles in the markets. Because they can absorb excess risk. And provide much-needed liquidity in the market by buying and selling when other investors don’t participate.

What is speculation?

Let’s be clear.

Speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more worthy in the future.

Speaking about finance as a field, speculation is also the practice of engaging in risky financial transactions. In an attempt to profit from short-term fluctuations in the market value of a tradable financial instrument.

Rather than attempting to profit from the underlying financial attributes embodied in the instrument such as capital gains, dividends, or interest.

Not one speculator pay attention to the fundamental value of a security. Instead, speculators are focused purely on price movements. Speculation can involve any tradable good or financial instrument. Speculators are particularly familiar with markets for stocks, bonds, commodity futures, currencies, fine art, collectibles, real estate, and derivatives.

Why speculators are important?

Speculators play one of four primary roles in financial markets, besides hedgers, who engage in transactions to offset some other pre-existing risk, arbitrageurs who look for profit from situations where fungible instruments trade at different prices in different market segments, and investors who seek profit through long-term ownership of an instrument’s underlying attributes.

Why wouldn’t we consult history?

The appearance of the stock ticker machine in 1867, removed the obligation for traders to be physically present on the floor of a stock exchange. Since then, stock speculation went through a dramatic expansion through the end of the 1920s.

The number of shareholders increased tremendously. Let’ say, from 4.4 million in 1900 to 26 million in 1932.

Whether speculation has a place in the portfolios of investors is the subject of much debate. Some investors believe the market is always fairly priced. They are thinking about speculation as an unreliable and unwise way to profits. Speculators believe that the market has a lot of variables and each of them is the opportunity for capital growth.

The view of what distinguishes investment from speculation and speculation from excessive speculation varies widely among pundits, legislators, and academics.

Speculation as higher risk

Some sources note that speculation is simply a higher risk form of investment. Others define speculation more narrowly as positions not characterized as hedging.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission defines a speculator as “a trader who does not hedge, but who trades with the objective of achieving profits through the successful anticipation of price movements.”

The agency emphasizes that speculators serve important market functions. But defines excessive speculation as harmful to the proper functioning of futures markets.

Frankly, some speculation is necessary and unavoidable.

Why?

In many common-stock situations, you can find substantial possibilities of both profit and loss, and the risks therein must be assumed by someone.

True?

Many long-term investors, even those who buy and hold for decades, maybe classified as speculators. Of course, excepting only the rare few who are primarily motivated by income. Or the safety of principal and not eventually selling at a profit.

We already conclude the trading is art.

But we have to admit that speculators are real artists.

Yes, we know that some market pros have the opinion that speculators are gamblers. But as we said above, a healthy market is made up of not only hedgers and arbitrageurs, but also speculators.

Economist John Maynard Keynes said that speculation is knowing the future of the market better than the market itself.

And you know who Keynes was. This giant of finance, English economist, journalist, and financier is best known for his Keynesian economics, theories on the causes of prolonged unemployment.

He developed, so-called, Keynesian economics during the 1930s in an attempt to understand the Great Depression. Keynesian economics is a theory of total spending in the economy (called aggregate demand). And its effects on output and inflation.

A Keynesian believes that aggregate demand is influenced by a host of economic decisions, both public and private and sometimes behaves erratically.

Let’s go back to speculations.

Speculation usually involves more risks than investment.

That’s true.

But, everyone has to recognize the price-stabilizing role of speculators. One who tends to even out price-fluctuations due to changes in the conditions of demand or supply. Only because they have better than average foresight.

One of them explained the benefits of speculation. Victor Niederhoffer, in his book “The Speculator as Hero” wrote:

”Let’s consider some of the principles that explain the causes of shortages and surpluses and the role of speculators. When a harvest is too small to satisfy consumption at its normal rate, speculators come in, hoping to profit from the scarcity by buying. Their purchases raise the price, thereby checking consumption so that the smaller supply will last longer. Producers encouraged by the high price further lessen the shortage by growing or importing to reduce the shortage. On the other side, when the price is higher than the speculators think the facts warrant, they sell. This reduces prices, encouraging consumption and exports and helping to reduce the surplus.”

The art of speculating covers a wide range of trading tactics. Including pairs trading, swing trading, employing hedging strategies and recognizing chart patterns. Speculators are well skilled at fundamental analysis. Including spot over- or under-valued companies, the amount of short interest a company holds. And, analysis of earnings and other SEC statements. A speculator with skills and good performance knows that the short-term movements of the investment markets are largely tied to world events.

According to the Los Angeles Times, baby boomers are trying a new investment strategy for their retirements accounts.
Instead of the passive investment strategy that most employees use, an increasing number of people have turned to speculate. In an attempt to catch up on shortfalls in their retirement accounts.

How to become speculator?

Every trader who wants to become speculator has to spend many years of learning, watching, practicing.

Such one must learn how the market behaves and watch how favorite stocks react to market events.

For many traders, the book, “How to Make Money in Stocks” by William O’Neil, is a value for learning the art of speculation.

This book and many others provide ambitious trader practical tips on trading and risk management.

Speculation popularity is spreading rapidly because of the easy access to world investment markets through online brokerage portals.

But speculation is difficult to master, so you have to learn a lot if you mean to become speculator one day.

After you have a continuous track record of success through both up and down markets, it’s time to consider speculating with real money.

Successful speculating takes a lot of skill, time and experience to master. Most people who work outside of the financial industry don’t have that.

That’s why the speculators are real artists.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

7th September 2018
Scams – How to avoid scams in trading and investing
Scams in the world of trading are not rare, so pay attention to the following situations.

By Guy Avtalyon

The intent of all the scammers is to get hold of your money. Scams come to us with many faces, different forms, but all of them have one goal: to make us poor. They are getting us to reveal our personal details, steal our information, or make us to voluntarily give them cash.

At first, everyone thought the Internet was a safe place. But we all can become an easy target for evil actors who want to steal our personal data.

How to recognize scams?

Criminal minds can reach into our private lives, our homes, and our work offices.

And there is little we can do about it. Attack tactics and tools vary from traditional attacks from malicious software to ingenious phishing scams. They are usually developed in regions where justice can’t easily reach out to catch them.

The forex market involves very active trading of over $1 trillion each day, with futures and currency options, it is closer to $5 trillion daily. The market does not have strong regulation, although things have started to improve recently.
Let’s say, everyone wanting help in making money in the stock market will be interested in finding a trading system.

There are plenty available.

Unfortunately, there are so many humbugs in the trading system.

How to separate the legitimate trading systems from the scammers?

Based on research and experience, here are some good ways to mark trading system scams:
- Do your own research. There is no need to be in a hurry when you have to invest your own money. You should first read up on the steps of investing. Make sure you know at least the basic setups of trading and investing. Be very cautious with online trading.
- Choose a trading system. Successful trading systems can be a hedge fund or mutual fund. If you want to invest in something that has clear systematic knowledge-based information, you have to pick some trusty trading system.
- * Examine a trial period. An investment scam often does not include trial-periods or customer satisfaction. Before you invest your money, you should invest your time in researching the terms and conditions of the item.
- * Check a broker report. It has to be registered, so you may get reports that include information such as qualifications, reliability, and employment history. This can help you to spot any previous problems or concerns before investing.
Cybercriminals will pull you to believe you can make money easy and fast on the internet. They’ll promise you plans and methods of getting rich quickly. It is quite simple especially when someone is in a difficult financial situation.

How do trading scams work?

This scamming method is similar to the romance scam.

Cyberattackers approach to the emotional side of victims. For example, the false posting of non-existent jobs for a variety of positions is one of the online criminals’ methods.

Using different job types, such as work-at-home, the victim is pushed to give personal and financial data with the promise of a well-paid job. Of course, it carries lots of money in a very short time. For sure.

Never share sensitive financial information with anyone you don’t know well. Scammers can reach you out via phone, SMS, or email. They can contact you, pretending they are from a financial institution or government agency.

They could tell your account is compromised or needs to be updated. These criminals are trying to trick you into giving them your credit card number, Social Security number. This scam is known as phishing.

Keep in mind, your bank or credit card provider will never ask you for personal data in that way. If you receive a suspicious call or email, call the credit card provider or bank immediately to check on your account status.

Let’s go back to trading.

One of the challenges a novice forex investor faces is how to determine which operators to trust in the forex market and which to avoid. Signal sellers are a good example. Some analysts propose that many or even most signal sellers are scammers. A frequent criticism is that if it were really possible to use a system to beat the market, why would anyone that has this information make it widely available?

Other analysts distinguish between known scammers and more reputable information sources such as Metatrader, that offer a well-thought-out signaling service.

Behind these views lies a larger difference of opinion on whether anyone can predict the next move in a trading market. The best way to determine if a signal seller can benefit you is to open a demo trading account with one of the better-known forex brokers. Be patient, and you’ll determine whether predictive signaling works for you or doesn’t.

Some forex brokers do not deal fairly with their customers and defraud them. You should trade with a broker that also handles other stock market trades and is subject to SEC and FINRA oversight.

The forex trade itself may be unregulated, but no broker as the subject of such oversight would risk its license for other securities by defrauding its forex customers.

Follow these signals because such scammers are always coming back. With the same or slightly altered face.
5th September 2018
How to create your first trading strategy

Find how to create your first trading strategy, what to look at and how it differs from investing strategy

By Guy Avtalyon

Okay, you want to create your first trading strategy and, to be honest, I understand your dilemma. You would like to be successful and you want to know, what strategy should you choose to nail it.

Listen, there!

What is the trading strategy?

A trading strategy is a set of trading settings that serve the currency trader or stock to determine whether to buy or sell a currency or stock, where to enter and exit the position. And how much capital they invest in trade, and in doing so, earn a difference in price.

The trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets.
A broker can offer you the opportunity to enter into trades that are multiple times the value of the margin that you place. The market is fluid and you can open a trade or exit from one very quickly, so there is potential to make considerable returns.

What is the investing strategy?

The investment strategy is a set of rules, behaviors, or procedures, designed to guide an investor’s selection of an investment portfolio. People have different profit objectives, and their individual skills make different tactics and strategies appropriate.

To complicated? Wait!!! There are more!

A trading strategy can be – automated (various robots for trading, etc.) – manual (the vast majority of traders use their own trading system.)

We would like to show you some of them which are successful. We will give you a brief description of 5 simple strategies that can help you to maximize your profits:

Swing trading

You can enter a successful swing trade by timing your trade. Do that when is a breakout after a consolidation.
What does this mean? A period of consolidation occurs when a currency pair moves in an almost precisely defined price range. A breakout will occur. What really happens is that the values of the currencies “breakout” the resistance level. If you predict the breakout accurately, you’ll profit from that trade.

A swing trade uses a channel trading strategy. Trades take place between the support and resistance levels of swing highs and swing lows.

Rangebound trading

Here you will need to identify a currency pair that trades within a certain range. Then, you have to identify the support and resistance levels and then time your trade by taking these movements into account.

It is likely that there will not be a big difference between the upper and lower prices of the range. Because of this reason, you could trade in one of two ways.

The first option is to trade within the range which will limit your profits as the price difference is bound to be minimal.

The second way is to look for a breakout from the range. If this happens, you will have to react quickly. You can make a quick profit, but you can lose out. When you see a “false breakout” be extremely cautious because it may mean the market is moving against you so you’ll end up in losses.

Position trading

A position trade is not a short-term trade. It is based on macroeconomic trends. It could run over weeks or months or years. Traders take a long-term position based on an understanding of how inflation or the rate at which an economy is growing, will affect the value of a currency.

If you want to adopt this strategy, you have to stay stick to two rules. First, do not use much leverage. A maximum of 10:1 is quite good in the forex trading. Secondly, the size should be relatively small. This is because you are thinking that some large movement in the relative price of the currency pair is possible.

Carry trade

A carry trade means to enter the trade that could take advantage of the interest rate differential of the two currencies. That means you will be selling a currency with a low-interest rate and buying one that provides a greater rate of interest. Normally, you would choose a currency pair where the higher interest rate currency will appreciate to the lower interest rate currency.

Carry trades can be high-risk. They are based on a combination of technical and fundamental analysis.

Momentum trading

Well, you have to know that the price constantly lies, but momentum tells the facts.
At the simplest level, you can use momentum trading when rates are going up, then you should buy and when they are declining, you should sell and maximize your profits in the forex market.

If you want to implement this strategy, you have to identify the currency pairs that show the greatest momentum and have moved most strongly. It is possible by tracking price movements over a period of several weeks.

Then trade those pairs that show the greatest momentum.

What do you need to be successful in trading?

Let’s go back to the beginning and say a few words about how for every trader is important to use a reliable and robust trading platform. You will need an Expert Advisor (EA). It allows you to conduct backtesting of your trading strategy before you commit your funds. You will need one that functions effectively on your smartphone and your tablet as well, a versatile platform that works well under Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

A system with 100% success does not exist so that you must not expect any of these systems to get your earnings each and every time. But, while following all the rules you can only end up in the plus!

How to create the first trading strategy?

New traders start to learn trading strategies from other traders. They are mirroring strategies from experienced traders. But, how do they get started with their trading strategy?

Fun fact 1: Creating your first trading strategy is easy.
Fun fact 2: Creating a profitable trading strategy is hard.

Basically, you have to follow some basic steps while formulating your first trading strategy. Building your own can be fun, easy, and surprisingly quick.

But, don’t expect your first trading strategy will make you rich.

So, what you have to do?

Recognize the real reason why you want to enter the market and have principles.

Before you start creating your own trading strategy, you must have an idea of how the market works. Most importantly, you need to answer this question.

How to make money from trading?

To answer this question you have to read and learn about both technical and fundamental analysis. Avoid get-rich-quick offers. Take care of demand and supply. Never have trust in theories that claim that people are perfectly rational.

Your principles will define your every step in the market, so it is very important to stick with it. It will need your full attention. It is an urge to follow one principle in your first trading strategy. Never choose complicated solutions. The simpler, the better. Trade by the KISS rule (Keep It Simple Stupid).

In the beginning, you don’t want to be astounded by a complex strategy. Besides, a trading strategy with more moving parts is harder to manage and improve.

How to choose a market for first trading strategy?

What do you want to trade: Forex, Options, Futures, Equities?

If you want to trade forex, you have to understand what you are buying and selling with a currency quote. You have to learn about the different models of forex brokers. You have to know how the margin is calculated. If you want to trade equities, you must know what a share means or the difference between a blue-chip and penny stock.

There’s a lot to learn about each market but you can not start to learn until you choose your trading market. The rule of thumb is that you must understand the market you choose to trade.

Define a trading frame

Yeah, I know.

It’s not easy to decide on a trading time frame. At first, you will not know if you like more quick scalping or daily swing trading.

Maybe an idea to try intraday trading isn’t bad. You’ll be able to watch the market for long-term periods. But you have to know, when you trade fast time frames, you get fast feedback which shortens your learning period.

If you are not able to watch the market for long-term periods, start with end-of-day charts. With some effort, you can learn enough to decide if swing trading is for you.

What have you to define?

Entry trigger. – It will help you enter the market without hesitation or demur. Both, bar and candlestick patterns are useful triggers. If you prefer indicators, oscillators like the RSI and stochastics are good solutions also.

You have to plan your exit trigger. – The market can go against you, causing you limitless losses. Having a stop-loss option is crucial. You need to plan when to exit if things go wrong and also you need to plan when to exit if things do go your way. The market will not go in your favor always. That’s why you have to know when is the moment to take profits.

Take care about the position size

Set your risk limit. – Once you have your entry and exit rules sorted out, you can work on limiting risk. The basic way to do so is by position sizing. This means that for a certain trading setup, your position size determines how much money you are putting on the line. If you double your position size, and you will double your risk. You should be very careful about your position size.

And it’s time to choose a tool to determine the trend. – You don’t trade when you see a Pin Bar (shortener for ‘Pinocchio Bar,’ a single candlestick set up that clues price action traders into potential reversals in the market). Trade only when the market is rising, and you should use a bullish Pin Bar to trigger your trade. You don’t trade when you see a Gimmee Bar (price action reversal candle formation). Trade only when you conclude that the market is going sideways, and you use a Gimmee Bar to enter the market.

You have to decide on a tool to help you judge the market context, trending or not, up or down. For example, choose price action tools like swing pivots or trend lines. You can also use technical indicators like moving averages and MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence).

Write down your first trading plan

Write down your trading rules. – It is always good advice. Your trading strategy is still simple and you might be able to memorize the trading rules. But you must write down your trading rules. If you write down the trading plan you will get a robust and trustworthy method. Just in order to ensure discipline and consistency. It also gives you a record of your trading strategy. You will find it useful when you have to improve it.

When you have written rules, you can backtest the strategy. – When you have a discretionary trading strategy, backtesting can be an arduous process. Discretionary trading is decision-based trading where the trader decides which trades to make based on current market conditions, and system trading is rule-based trading where the trading system decides which trades to make, regardless of current conditions. So, if you have a discretionary trading strategy you need to replay the market price action and record your trades manually.

But if you have a mechanical trading strategy and a coding background, you can speed up this stage. Looking through the trades one by one is a fantastic way to develop your market instincts. This can also help you think of ways to improve your trading strategy.

Should you be worried if the first trading strategy is not profitable?

It’s okay. Your trading strategy is not fixed, it is a living thing. As your experience and knowledge grow, your trading strategy will improve. Try to avoid radical changes to your trading strategy.

Your goal is to achieve a positive expectancy with every trade. Not positive profits for each trade. Statistics have to work for you.

One thing is the most important when you create your first strategy and enter the market for the first time.

Don’t be stubborn on the market. That could be the biggest mistake.

3rd September 2018
What Are The Main Characteristics Of Call Options?

Ways to use call options trading to make money

By Guy Avtalyon

Call options represent a deal between a buyer and a seller to buy a stock at an accepted and agreed price. This agreement lasts up until a fixed expiration date. The buyer has the right, there is no obligation, to exercise the call and purchase the stock. The seller is obliged to deliver the stock if the option is exercised.

What are call options in stocks?

A trader would choose to buy a call option if expects the stock is going to rise in the near future. Some traders buy options rather than to buy a particular share because the options are cheaper than stocks.
Call options are limited by time, of course. They have an expiration date associated with them. The same comes with all options.
What are the main characteristics of call options?
No matter if the options is “call” or “put” the characteristics are the same. Both have three essential characteristics: exercise price, expiration date, and time to expiration.

Call options are a kind of a derivatives contract that gives the buyer the right to buy a stock at a specific price known as the strike price of the option and has to exercise it within a defined time frame. The seller has an obligation to sell the stocks to the buyer if the buyer chooses to exercise the option to make a purchase. There is one requirement that the buyer must fulfill – such has to exercise the option at any time but prior to a named expiration date. The expiration date depends on buyers and seller agreement and may vary from three months to even one year.

The seller will receive the buying price for the option, but the amount depends on how close the option strike price is to the price of the stock at the time the option is bought. Also, on how long is a period of time to the option’s expiry date.
To put a long story short, the options price will vary depending on how possible or not possible is for the buyer to profitably exercise the option before the expiry date.

What is the exercise price of stock options?

The exercise price is the price at which stock can be bought or sold when trading a call or put options.
For example, you own call options for ABC company with an exercise price of $50. The underlying stock is trading at $60. It indicates the call options are trading in the money by $10. So, the exercise price is lower than the current stock.

The call options will give you the right to buy the stock at $50 even it is trading at $60. That allows you to make $10 per share if exercise the option. Your profit would be $10 reduced by the premium or cost you paid to the seller for the option.
But if ABS company is trading at $60, and the strike price of your call option is $65, the situation is quite different. Your option is out of the money. You will not profit if exercise that option because why would you like to pay $65 by using the option if you can buy the stock at a lower price for $60.

How many options contracts you can buy?

Each option contract holds 100 shares of the underlying stock. Buying 2 call options contracts, for example, grants the owner the right, but not the obligation, to buy 200 shares (2 x 100 = 300).
Suppose you think ABC Company stock is going to rise over a specific period of time. You may consider buying as many call options as your budget allows you. In other words, consider the trade amount that your account can support. This means to decide the maximum amount of money you want to use to buy call options.

What is the expiration date?

Options do not last forever. They have an expiration date.

But if the stock closes below the strike price and a call option has not been exercised by the expiration date, it expires worthless. And the trader no longer has the right to buy the underlying asset and the trader loses the premium paid for the option. Most stocks have options contracts that last up to nine months. Traditional options contracts typically expire on the third Friday of each month.

What do we pay when trading the options?

When you buy the stock for the stock price, you buy options for what’s known as the premium.

Premium is the price to buy options. In 100 XY call options example, the premium might be $4 per contract. It means the total cost of buying one XY 100 call option contract would be $400 ($4 premium per contract x 100 shares that the options control x 1 contract = $400). If the premium were $6 per contract, instead of $4, the total cost of buying 2 contracts would be $1,200 ($6 per contract x 100 shares that the options control x 2 total contracts = $1,200).

What orders to use when trading options?

Options prices are constantly changing, like stocks.

So, you may choose the type of trading order with which to purchase some options contract. There are several types of orders, including market, limit, stop-loss, stop-limit, trailing-stop-loss, and trailing-stop-limit.

2nd September 2018
The Barriers to Learning About Stocks and how to avoid them

Be objective, don’t expect the success overnight, have reasonable expectations, think in all probabilities.

By Guy Avtalyon

First of all, never base your decisions on emotions, rumors, or rush to the next hot opportunity. This is one of the most influential barriers to learning about stocks.

You will end up losing money as a result. Some investors despite their problems, continue with the same actions and keep getting the same bad results.
Investors have to remove barriers on their path to success. Otherwise, success will never come. All investors must seek to continuously remove new barriers as they appear.

What kind of barriers to learning about stocks you may have?

Emotions

The fear and greed! Many investors experienced the obscure of ability to rationally consider through an investing opportunity. This leads to poor investment decisions and a loss of money.

For instance, it is in an investor’s best interest to sell high and buy low, investors hate to sell winners and are unwilling to buy out-of-favor stocks. Why so many investors hold winning investments too long? When they fall back, they continue to hold on to them, hoping they will return to their previous highs. They even lie that they will sell if the price returns to the level at which they bought it.

Also, there are investors who hold on to losing investments! Okay, they might be in love but why to hold for so long? They have some hope. If they wait and hold longer, their shares will recover. That might happen never.

They can sell to at least break even, very often such investors become losers. Because their capital is tied up in a losing investment and is unable to produce a return. This reduces account balances and expands stress levels.

Most investors admit that holding investments too long is the mistake that was most detrimental to their success.

Less knowledge

Some investors think if you just buy and sell the right stock, you will always make money.

That’s wrong! Totally mistake! Barriers to learning about stocks!

Sometimes, investors can have less understanding of how markets work. That drives stock prices and successful investing performance.

Also, so many investors tend to overestimate their strength to beat the market. As a result, they take on unnecessary risks. People are often drawn to powerful performance, even when it’s not sustainable.

Many investors follow the hottest sector and don’t have a sufficient understanding of the risks involved.

For instance, investors realize they should not overweight their portfolios with too much money in one investment, but they continue to do so. It isn’t rare that people buy too much stock in the company where they are employed, because the company’s available retirement funds and use of options as a part of their compensation package makes this easy.

Barriers to learning about stocks may leave investors with a portfolio that lacks diversification.

Some other investors don’t understand how bonds work, and they avoid them. Few of them realize that bonds hold a preferred position should a company declare bankruptcy.

Many others don’t realize that when interest rates rise, bond prices go down. When it comes to understanding important concepts such as how a central bank sets interest rates and the yield curve, even fewer investors have sufficient knowledge to make rational decisions.

And more interesting, most investors do not know when to sell a stock that has substantially appreciated. They continue to hold the stock instead of selling part of their position.

In that way, they could capture some of the profit and make capital convenient and available for other investments. They can’t realize that as the price of the stock goes up their portfolio becomes even more unbalanced.

The market has the ability to balance portfolios for investors, sometimes to their astonishment. Many investors are confused by the idea that rebalancing entails selling some of the investments that have performed best and buying more quality stocks that have lagged.

Losing the Bigger Picture

Despite many investors like to say they invest with a long-term perspective, they continue to make decisions based on short-term movements and ideas. Most investors believe that setting long-term goals for such things as buying a home or providing for retirement are important. But still, they fail to establish viable financial plans to do so.

Without these plans, their decisions are decaying. Basing decisions on unpredictable market fluctuations can be very dangerous because there is a good chance that these investors will make the wrong decision. That can obstruct their ability to achieve their long-term goals.

When the investors realize that the market has risen, they pour cash into stocks and mutual funds, trying to grab part of the profit the professionals have realized. When the market puts in a decline, some investors panic and sell close the bottom. And very often, this pattern continues, causing such investors to lose much of their capital.

How to remove barriers to learning about stocks

No matter what your barriers are, it is important to put together and plan to remove them. Here are some steps you can take to eliminate these barriers to your investing success. Experts advise doing this.

* Learn to monitor your performance: Measuring your performance creates a record of what has worked and what has not. This can help you to recognize problems that you repeat. You should record the overall market trend, the sector trend, the reason for making the trade, the exit target, and the trailing stop. Do this for each trade no matter if you sell or buy. This record is very useful in evaluating your investing activities and can be used to identify what barriers you are meeting that obstruct your success.

* After you have measured your actions, you can identify what you have to change: Inspect your past tradings and find patterns that show to barriers to success. Maybe you impulsively buy the next stock without thinking? Does your explanation prove to be wrong most of the time? The key is to identify the investing behavior that inhibits your performance.

Stay focused and avoid barriers

* Stay focused on what you need to change. Like any effort to change behavior, you must remain focused on the actions you take to reinforce the investing behavior you wish to have. If you think you are not focused on how to change your behavior, then take a break from your investing until you recover your focus.

* Determine how you will understand your losses. Keep in mind that losses are part of investing. Learning how to deal with them is one of the most important pieces of successful investing behavior. You have to define what your loss looks like through your stop loss and reasons for the trade. You must accept the loss as part of the trading. Accepting a loss is a trading skill that is a crucial behavior. Making a losing trade ahs to be an acceptable process in your trading strategy, you’ll eliminate the emotion and fear that comes from a loss. You’ll jump to the next opportunity without fear.

* Become an expert at one investing strategy: There are many ways to evaluate the market and select stocks that offer good investment opportunities. Don’t try to understand every perspective on a stock. It is best to get to know one reliable investing strategy. In that way, you will gain confidence in your investing access. This knowledge will form a valid base for your investing. And when you become an expert you can expand your knowledge base by adding a new approach.

Think twice to avoid barriers

* Think in probabilities: The market is in permanent movement. It forces the investor to continually evaluate the risk-reward ratio of each opportunity. You can’t move the market, that’s why you need to rate what is the greatest possibility that will move the market, key sectors and the stocks you are watching. Evaluating what is most possible to happen in the sense of probabilities could help you to make a valid investing estimation.

* Learn how to be objective: Many investors want to believe that the market will do what they think it should do, rather than what it actually does. Any limits you place on the market will usually turn out to be wrong. The market does what the market does. Investors are best served if they maintain an objective perspective. If you are neutral, then you will not feel any pressure to move quickly. You will not be afraid to make an investment decision. And the most important, you will not force your opinion on the market, but rather sense what the market is trying to tell you.

Do not expect this to happen overnight. Removing the barrier is a long-term process. But if you have a defined plan, you will be able to create a program to remove the barriers that keep you from achieving success as an investor.

31st August 2018
How To Start Trading?
Trading the stock market is easy if you know how to start.

By Guy Avtalyon

How to start trading? First of all, never do it on your own. Ask to be advised by some experts. It is always best to access a financial advisor who will tell you how you should invest or trade, established in your financial situation, and risk appetite. Talk to others who invest.
Read books, journals, and newspapers for recommendations. You can talk to your stockbroker for advice but don’t listen to everything he says.
Always take a second opinion as brokers might have vested interests. In the beginning, it is best to go for known brands and big companies that have a good business status.

What do you need to know before you start trading?

Without knowledge, you may feel lost. Let’s make clear the basics because you’ve decided to join the crazy world of trading stocks and shares.
You have to know that shareholders usually have a right to vote at company conferences.

Of course, if you own just one of the three billion Facebook shares don’t expect Mark Zuckerberg to listen to your ideas!
Another thing you need to know is that a company’s shares are indivisible.

You cannot buy fewer than one share.

Shares were pieces of paper that shareholders kept in a safe but since the ‘90s, this all changed to virtual shares. Before you start trading stocks, you have to buy them! You can do this in many different but easy ways.

Some companies allow you to buy their shares directly from them but If you can’t purchase the shares directly or you’re not sure which company to invest in, ask your bank. Also, banks offer an online trading service connected to your existing accounts.

Ask your bank to see if this option is possible. If your bank doesn’t offer a trading service, you can buy shares through a brokerage company. You can find many of trusty brokerages, just do a search. But be cautious. Never pick the first you find, read some reviews, ask around, visit forums.

Brokers buy and sell securities in exchange for a commission. You can set up a simple brokerage account online or hire a so-called ‘full-service broker’ who will trade stocks on your behalf. They can be a consultant or advisor for you. This will cost a little more but it is worth it because you know nothing about shares or stocks or trading or investing.

How to start trading?

So, you want to start trading stocks or CFDs, but you have always remembered three things:
1. Never invest more money than you can afford to lose. With shares and CFDs, there is a risk of losing all the money you have invested.
2. Follow your head, not your heart. Your heart will always pull you towards certain stocks. Stop and think. Only invest in companies that seem able to grow their profits, despite your emotions.
3. Never invest your savings in just one company. ‘Never put all your eggs in one basket,’ as the mantra goes. Place your investments across many different companies.
This way, you’ll significantly decrease the risk of loss, and increase the chance to multiply your investment.

When you set up your online broker account, simply take the leap and make your first trade.

Start with small, 1, 10, or 20 shares that will serve its purpose and bring you in the game.

If trading with real capital isn’t viable, start with a simulator for virtual trading. Numbers of different online brokers offer virtual trading for practicing and learning.

It’s too easy to lose money in a stock exchange, so start with a virtual where the money is virtual, but the stocks, stock prices, are real. Maybe the best way is to start your trading journey with virtual money, understand how they are performing, recognize when you can sell them, is it the right time, etc.

Before you start putting your real money, you would learn the tricks of the trade with virtual money. Take it slow. You’ll need time to understand everything. Not even the most experienced traders know everything. Most important for beginners in trading is to have a trading plan, trading strategy, and to stick to them. Also, never forget to keep up your trading journal. That is an amazing tool. Add to it all your entries, exits, price of assets you trade, at which price you bought it, and at which you sold it. That will provide you a full picture of how successful your trades were. Do it with virtual trading in a demo account, also.
28th August 2018