Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Trading Secrets

By Ahmad Hassam

Trading is not investing. Trading is speculating. Trading can be challenging. Speculating is defined as taking business risk in the hope of profiting from market fluctuations. Successful speculating requires predicting outcomes and analyzing different market situations. It also requires putting your money on the side of the trade on which you think the market is going to go up or down.

If you are a trader, you should appreciate the fact that if you apply the correct techniques for analyzing trades, manage your money and protect your trading account, you can be wrong 70 percent of the time and still be a successful trader. How is that possible? It is only possible by entering a trade where the risk/reward ratio is les than1/3.

Right now forex and gold markets are really hot while the stock market is down. Stock market was a great investment opportunity a few years back. Over time, opportunity keeps on shifting from one market to another. Gold prices are going up. Those investors who entered this trend in the gold market by investing at the right time if they are going to ride the trend till it lasts in the gold market will make a lot of money. At the moment almost everyone is investing in gold as a hedge against likely USD depreciation. Everyone includes countries like China, Russia, India, hedge funds, institutional investors like big corporation and big banks, and retail investors.

Many hedge funds had made a lot of money by investing in crude oil futures in the year 2008. Right now oil prices are down due to the reduced demand in the global markets, this situation may continue for some months or some years but suddenly you will find that crude oil futures have become a great investment opportunity again.

Oil prices will again go up in a few years time as the global economy recovers and demand for oil increases. In trading it is the timing that is of essence. Timing for entering the market and the timing for exiting the market!

Investors and traders make the mistake of focusing only on one market. Many end up spending time on only one market. In reality all the markets are interlinked. Futures, options, forex, stocks, commodities, all markets are effected and in return effect other markets. If something happens in one market, you will find the repercussions in the other markets. Successful trading requires mastering a strategy that enables you to trade multiple markets and multiple time frames.

They do testing, development, put on a million indicators, go and trade live. They do everything they can while spending all kinds of time trying to figure out one market and one timeframe. But then what almost happens is that market starts to go sideways or the opportunity shifts to another market.

You really have to have the ability to be able to adopt the market conditions and not waste your time to really master one market which is critical. There were so many stocks just a few years ago that were incredible to trade that either dont exist anymore or would not trade successfully today.

This is counterintuitive. A lot of people will teach you that you really need to learn the ins and outs of one market. But the problem with that philosophy is that its very difficult to stay with one market and one timeframe. - 22871

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