I want to become a floor trader! How do I become one? (CBOT, NYSE, CME, NYMEX)
I’ve always been passionate about stocks, commodities, currencies, and trading the financial markets as a whole. One of my aspirations is to become a floor trader.
What’s a floor trader you ask? Well, have a look at this video first:
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comments (5)Fundamental Analysis & Technical Analysis - Food for Thought
In the world of trading and investing, there’s been a constant battle between fundamental analysts and technical analysts. One party says fundamentals are the ones to look for while another party objects and say technicals are the only one needed.
Well, here’s what I think:
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Why Most Fail in Stocks & Commodities - Traders’ Perspective
This is a video that I found on YouTube as to why most traders fail to succeed in trading stocks and commodities.
The person in the video is a floor trader based in Chicago.
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)Trading the UK FTSE 100 Index Contract-for-Difference (CFD)
I’ve been researching ways on how to trade London’s FTSE 100 Index.
What I like the most about the FTSE 100 is that the profits derived are in Great Britain Pound (that goes to losses as well!). Also, trading hours for the London market is also pretty convenient for me.
I managed to draw up a plan last week to make this venture a successful one.
This time, I shall be day trading the FTSE 100 through Contract-for-Difference (CFD). My trading hours will be from 6.00 PM till 2.30 AM. No positions will be held overnight.
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)CFD Trading/Share Trading: Costly Mistake
A number of days ago, a trading signal was generated and I placed a limit order with my online trading platform.
Usually, with my limit order, I include a “time of expiry” in which, if the order was not filled by the specified date and time, the order will automatically be purged. For that particular order, it was supposed to be filled by the close of the trading day, or I’m not getting on board at all. However, I was too lazy to type in the date and time of expiry. I though, nah, I’ll just check back later.
Guess what? I totally forgot about the order. It was in the system for the next few days and was eventually filled. The next time I checked my trading platform, I noticed the screen registering a loss of a few hundred dollars. I was like, where the heck did that come from?
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)The Myths of Trading
In this article, I shall be addressing a number of myths about trading of financial instruments (i.e. stocks, FOREX, commodities, and etc.). This is based on my own personal opinions.
TRADING IS GAMBLING
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comments (5)It depends on how you conduct your trading. If you based your trading decisions on coin flips, or rumours, then yes, you are gambling.
However, if you based your decisions on Technical Analysis or Fundamental Analysis, then it’s not gambling. In other words, you need to have a trading plan and be able to explain why you entered a trade.
The LT Seminar. Pure B.S.
Wondering what B.S. means? It means, Bull Shit.
I recently received a DVD of an organisation presenting a seminar about trading. Let’s refer to the seminar as the LT Seminar. Not going to name names here.
It was a two-hour presentation and I thought to myself, hmmm, might be able to learn something new here.
Indeed, there were bits and pieces of new things I discovered, but all in all, I thought it was pure crap. It was a classic sales pitch of nothing more than to get new clients on board.
They pitched the idea of trading financial securities (stocks, FOREX, commodities, and etc.) and presented the audience with their so-called “amazing” trading system. To join them, you need to only pay 10 grand. Yup, ten big ones! $10,000…
Looking at the system, I suspect that it’s nothing more than a hyped up moving averages. A knowledge that you can get by spending 30 bucks at your local bookstore.
They claim that trading is easy and simple, and it only takes minutes per day and you’ll make truckloads of money! Get real! If it was that easy, we would have had many people becoming millionaires by becoming traders. Many books that I’ve read refute this belief. A majority of people wanting to become traders have failed.
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)CFD Trading: What can be traded with CFD
The best thing about CFD is that there are a wide range of products that can be traded from one single account. No more having different accounts for stock trading, FOREX trading, futures trading, international stock trading, and etc.
Here are some of the products that I’m able to trade on my trading platform:
- Domestic Shares
- International Shares
- FOREX (Spot and Futures)
- Metals (e.g. Gold, Silver)
- Energies (e.g. Crude Oil)
- Other Commodities (e.g. Coffee, Pot Belly, Orange Juice)
- Money Market Products (e.g. Interest rate products, Bonds)
- Stock Indices (Dow Jones, FTSE 100, S&P ASX200)
- Binary
- Options
Of course, I do not trade every single one of the above mentioned instruments but I still think that CFD is a wonder of the world.
Also, bear in mind that different CFD providers offer different products but usually, the basics are the same.
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comments (8)The Life of a CFD Trader: Missed opportunities
If you were a Contract-For-Difference (CFD) trader or a share trader, which one is more “painful” to you?
1. The trade that you entered goes wrong, hit your stop loss, and you lose money; or
2. You have spotted a winning trade but you did not get on board because of some mistake you made and you miss out on a huge gain?
For me, number 2 is much more painful. Why? I don’t really mind about number 1 because I have a capital management model put to place, limiting my loss on every trade (assuming nothing serious happens of course). I also have accepted that losing money on bad trades is part of the life of being a trader. Remember, there’s no systems or methods out there that gives you 100% success rate!
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)New Project on Contract-for-Difference (CFD)
Hi all!
I’ve got an announcement to make. I’d like to introduce a new blog project of somebody close to me entitled “Pumpy’s CFD Trading Journal“.
Basically, the blog is a journal of a 5-year-old little elephant in trading Contract-for-Difference (CFD).
In that blog, you shall follow Pumpy in his quest to achieve financial independence through Contract-for-Difference (CFD) trading.
Have a look at the blog, bookmark it, and add it to your blogroll if you don’t mind. Pumpy told me that he will link back to your blog/website!
Visit Pumpy’s CFD Trading Journal here at http://babypumpy.blogspot.com
Have a look at my CFD Trading articles to learn more about CFD.
- CFD Trading : An Introduction
- CFD Trading/Share Trading : Setting Stop Loss
- CFD Trading/Share Trading : Stop Loss in Perspective
- CFD Trading/Share Trading : Being Long and Short (Concept of Short Selling)
- CFD Trading/Share Trading : Short Selling in Perspective
- CFD Trading/Share Trading : The 2% Rule
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The Risk of Phone Brokering
I used to be involved with a an association called the cashflow club in my university. Basically, the club gathers like-minded people, have discussions, seminars, and etc. We also had this thing called Cashflow 101 nights where we play Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow 101 board game.
Anyway, on one of those nights, one of our members, shared a rather interesting story. Below is the story. The story might be altered a little bit, but essentially, they’re the same.
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CFD/Share Trading: The 2% Rule
To be a trader, one fundamental topic that needs to be understood is risk management. Yes, the stock market is risky, but with proper risk management tools, you can limit the risk.
One risk management rule that I like (and use..) is the 2% rule. What this actually means is that on every trade, you are effectively risking only 2% of your total trading capital. Let me give you an example.
Assume you have $10,000 as your trading capital. 2% of that is $200. Have a look at the chart below. After analysing the charts, you have decided that there’s a line of support at (1) which is $19.06 and will place a stop loss (refer to my stop loss post) here. Assume the current price is $19.30 The difference is $0.24.
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)CFD/Share Trading : Short Selling in Perspective
I’ve explained about short selling in an earlier post. I hope you have concluded that having short selling in your trading arsenal is an absolute must. I read somewhere that if you do not understand the concept of short selling and have never short sold before, then you can’t call yourself a trader just yet. This is open to debate, but well… I do agree with that statement.
Here I’ll be sharing a real-life example of short selling that was executed by me last week.
Filed under CFD Trading/Share Trading | Comment (0)CFD/Share Trading : Being Long and Short (Concept of Short Selling)
Anybody who is an investor or a trader knows that to make money in the market, you have to “buy low and sell high.” This is when you buy, for example, shares at a low price and sell them later at a higher price to get some profits. This is what we call as being LONG. In other words, you’re buying.
Being LONG is absolutely fine but how about when the market is trending down? How do you make money then? Aha! That’s when SHORT SELLING comes in.
CFD Trading/Share Trading : Stop Loss in Perspective
As you all may have heard in the news, Wall Street got belted last evening. New York plunged due to the fear of investors of further credit crisis. The Dow fell by about 362 points or 2.7%, one of the biggest falls of the year.
In turbulent times such as now, being in a possession of a good trading plan is a must.
In this post, I’d like to take an opportunity to put stop loss into perspective.
This week, I had two open positions on shares CFDs. One was in the red (loss), and another one was in a profit position. This morning, I had exited on both positions. The first one was because my stop loss had been triggered and the second one, I exited voluntarily.
Let’s talk about the first one.
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