Tag: Mark Douglas

A traders engine is….

What best helps us make money as a financial trader?

Is it:

  1. a fantastic strategy
  2. time on our hands to be able to trade
  3. enough money to trade with
  4. an environment without distraction
  5. the correct equipment and support software
  6. to be able to trade objectively, all the time

The list could go on. And of course, we could argue that all the above have a part to play, to some degree or other.

However, from our lessons, it is the final item that takes the biscuit.

To trade objectively (or in the zone, or from a ‘now’ moment perspective) is the engine of the whole process.

I have read ‘Trading in the Zone’ by the late Mark Douglas several times, and it was only the last read where, for me, the so-called ‘light’ came on.

I probably need to gain a certain level of traders experience before I was able to grasp what Douglas was telling me.

Posted on by Day Trader 0

Slow Trader Fund

Our Slow Trader fund has sat on the fence for a few months waiting for me. Not being a boom and bust trader, I have traded small while developing our ‘probability trading’ technique.

A trader needs to achieve a level of profitability through consistency before increasing trade size. The technique provides that, now it is up to me.

It may seem a bit odd that I’ve moved away from trading a market, US stocks, which has increased this year as an index 20 percent or so. The UK shares not so much at 6 or 8 percent as an index.

To day-trade profitably I need to give it (day trading) all my attention. Having trades open in other areas and time frames were a distraction for me.

Why have I chosen day trading despite the many stories that tell us not to trade this way? Bizarrely, it is ‘control’. As a probability trader, we accept that we are day trading a market that is random. In other words, we recognise that anything can happen.

If we except that anything can happen, then we accept the risk. We agree that the market is only about a price that can go either up or down. In ‘probability trading’ we also recognise the heard effect; where specific things happen that can give an observant trader an edge.

Despite the simplicity described, it has taken me a couple of years to combine price action trading and money management, specific entry and exit techniques, and group it all, test it exhaustively and call it probability trading.

Fund contributors that think the share market, and particularly the US stock market, are to continue climbing throughout 2018 ought to withdraw their funds from Slow Trader and head that way.

After all, that is the market, with you, that Slow Trader initially entered.

If you stay in the Slow Trader fund, and to do so you don’t need to do anything else, you become part of a probability day-trader fund. Our advantage: we are not concerned about a good or a bad year for stocks and shares; we trade a currency pairing in the short-term, with an edge; with (to quote Mark Douglas) rigid rules and flexible expectations.

We have developed a day trading strategy that allows us to take money consistently – day in, day out.  We scale-up though when we’re ready.

Posted on by Day Trader 0