Once again I am purely a robot trader.Part of the reason is that my day job does not allow me to use company Internet or computing resources for the purpose of earning revenue. This is a sensible restriction even if my use would only have been to let me view charts and enter trades.Now I use the Internet at work purely to watch how my robot is doing. I don't enter trades, I can't access or

The Economic Crisis No One Saw Coming: A Convenient Untruth


August 9, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

The single most convenient untruth about the 2008 (and counting)
financial crisis is that it was unforeseen. For two years policymakers
have insisted "There was no way to know ahead of time" that
the liquidity boom would come to a screeching halt. Back in November
2008, in fact, the usually tight-lipped Queen of England herself
publicly described the turmoil of international markets as "awful" and
openly asked a panel of experts from the London School of Economics "Why
did nobody notice?"

Her Majesty is right: Most financial authorities did
NOT notice the crisis before it was too late. Comedy Central's "The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart" of all places provided the
most poignant evidence: A March 2009 video montage
shows executives and economists from the world's leading financial
firms repeatedly forecasting continued upside strength in stocks,
plus renewed bull market growth in financials -- right as debt
markets came unhinged and the US stock market headed into a 50%-plus
selloff.

Dubbed the "8-Minute Rap" (after the "18-Minute
Gap" of Nixon's Watergate tapes), the Daily Show video feature
sent an equally powerful message, as the clip
below makes plain.

Yet even as the mainstream authorities failed to detect the
economic earthquake moving below their own feet, somebody did "notice" well
in advance. That person was EWI's president Bob Prechter.

The clip below is from a 2007 Bloomberg interview.
Clear as PLAY, the foreseeable nature of the crisis emerges from
Bob's October 19, 2007 interview.

As the historic trend change began to unfold, Bob issued this
timely insight:

"We've seen the first crack in the credit structure
with a huge drop in commercial paper... These are the harbingers
of a change toward the downside for the stock market, commodities
including oil, and the debt market itself."

Don't believe the convenient untruths. Get objective market
analysis today. Download
this free report that contains valuable market forecasts directly
from the desk of Bob Prechter.

This
article, The Economic Crisis No One Saw Coming: A Convenient Untruth, was syndicated by Elliott Wave International. EWI
is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff
of full-time analysts lead by Chartered Market Technician Robert
Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional
and private investors around the world.

7 Ways to Become an Unsuccessful Trader

Q&A with an experienced Elliott wave trader reveals seven common trading mistakes.

August 12, 2010


By Elliott Wave International


To be a successful trader demands knowledge.


If you'd prefer to become an unsuccessful trader, you can start by making the following common trading mistakes, detailed by a professional who spent 25 years in portfolio management, trading and forecasting in the financial capital of the world, New York City.


In 2002, Wayne Gorman, long-time Elliott wave trader and current head of trader education at Elliott Wave International, left his 35th floor Manhattan apartment and moved to the quiet of North Georgia. He's been sharing his knowledge and skills with aspiring traders ever since -- in both online seminars and before live audiences around the world.


Wayne graciously agreed to a Q&A about trading mistakes. In his interview, Wayne reveals seven common mistakes traders make.
--------


EWI: Could you name two mistakes frequently made by stock traders?


Wayne Gorman: (mistake 1) The first big mistake is the flawed logic of extrapolation. Many traders and investors assume that a trend will remain in force until an "event" comes along to change it. But market trends are not like billiard balls on a pool table. This false assumption will put you on the wrong side of the market more times than not, especially at major turning points.


(mistake 2) The second big mistake is to suppose that news events drive market trends. In fact, the opposite is true: economic, political and social events lag market trends.


EWI: What are two common mistakes among options traders?


WG: (mistake 3) One common mistake is to buy puts or calls that are way "out of the money," with no other transactions to compliment them. Unless your timing is absolutely perfect -- and who has perfect timing? -- your chance of success is low. It’s like buying a lottery ticket.


(mistake 4) Another common mistake is to buy options with too little time left to expiration. With less than one month to expiration, the time decay begins to accelerate and the chances of success diminish.


EWI: Please name a frequent mistake among traders who aim to catch the beginning of a particular Elliott wave.


WG: (mistake 5) In the middle of a corrective pattern, it's common to run out of patience while waiting for confirmation of a trend change. You have to give corrective patterns time to unfold before you jump in. This requires discipline, and a solid understanding of the many ways corrective patterns can unfold.


EWI: What's the biggest misconception among traders about using Elliott waves?


WG: (mistake 6) Too many traders think Elliott wave is a trading system that tells you exactly where to enter and exit a particular market. That's the biggest misconception. The reality is that it's an analytical and forecasting tool, which helps you develop and use your own trading system, based on your own personal risk tolerance.


EWI: What technical indicators do you believe traders over-rely on, and why?


WG: (mistake 7) Traders tend to over-rely on momentum indicators such as RSI, Stochastics and MACD to precisely spot turning points. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, markets can stay overbought or oversold a lot longer than either you or I can remain solvent.


EWI: How would you characterize today's market action, and do you teach courses that address this environment?


WG: This is a difficult stock market in the near term. Prices haven't strayed far from where they began in January. The action has yet to break out significantly to the downside or upside. This situation may not last much longer. I can suggest these online courses to deal with the current situation, and to prepare for the next big move:

How to Spot Trading Opportunities, Parts 1 and 2
How to Trade Choppy, Sideways Markets
5 Options Strategies Every Elliott Wave Trader Should Know
Trading the Line – How to Use Trendlines to Spot Reversals and Ride Trends

This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline Do You Recognize These Six Common Trading Mistakes?. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts lead by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.

--

Happy Trading!!

Forex Journey

After talking about the advantages of the full-time Forex trading I’ve felt that it wasn’t fair without listing the disadvantages of such an approach to the foreign exchange market. Only few of the active Forex traders switch to the full-time trading and there are several good reasons for that:

1. It takes time. If you are a successful Forex trader you probably want to spend more time with family or for yourself personally. You earn enough for that but if you trade full-time you won’t have more time than an average non-trader. After all, Forex is good because it can offer a financial freedom, which should lead to more free time, and a full-time Forex trading approach just ruins that.
2. Overtrading. Following the market all day is a straight way to overtrading, which in its turn is a bane of many currency traders. Only emotionally strong and experienced traders will be able to avoid constant overtrading when sitting in front of the Forex trading terminal for all day.
3. Having to trade short-term. If you trade full-time you have to constantly search for the trading opportunities. The long-term trading opportunities aren’t that frequent in Forex and you’ll have to either take the short-term ones too or be bored with a simple monitoring of the market. Both choices are unacceptable for the long-term Forex trader.
4. Dependence on Forex profit. If you trade Forex full-time the chances are that you don’t have any other source of income. This means that if you enter a series of losses you won’t be earning money and you might even lose your initial deposit. If you have a daily job and trade Forex only occasionally you don’t depend on Forex earnings too much. So, if you plan to go full-time you better be sure that you’ll have enough money for living and upholding the necessary account balance even after several huge losses.
5. Focusing on unnecessary things. As it often happens when you have a huge inflow of information, you’ll get a lot of unnecessary data, which will mislead you. If you trade Forex all day, you’ll be trying to find the opportunities in the chart formations and fundamental events that don’t have anything important in them. It’s not overtrading because you’ll soon understand that these opportunities don’t let you trade on them, but it’s still a waste of time, your time, which is precious.

This list says my second and the last word about the full-time Forex trading. Although the number of disadvantages is less than the number of the respective advantages, it’s all about the importance of each of them for the particular trader. It’s up to you to decide whether the full-time trading is for you.

If you have some interesting thoughts or questions regarding the listed disadvantages of the full-time Forex trading, please, feel free to share them using the commentary form.

Installing your trading system on a dedicated server with a full-time connection to the trading server and no need to reboot, restart or be turned off is a great advantage that can seriously enhance your profit results. If you trade with MetaTrader expert advisors there is a great selection of VPS services available for you — starting from as little as $9/month they can guarantee you a 99.9% uptime of your trading robot. This is a list of 5 main reasons to use Forex VPS:

1. Uninterrupted 24/7 run-time of your expert advisor ensures that it uses all the trading signals. You won’t miss any opportunities. Your EA will be also able to close other positions on time and won’t need to store its internal variables in a file to load them after restart — there’s simply no need for it to restart during trading sessions.
2. No need to run the expert advisor from your home or office PC. Now that your expert advisor is trading on a real account from a VPS, you can stop running your MetaTrader platform all the time. You can also safely reboot your PC and turn it off when you don’t use it. And there is no more stress when suddenly you get some critical software error.
3. Because VPS is a dedicated server that runs only your trading platform and EA, it can have a much better performance, processing the incoming data and sending orders much faster than your own PC could do. That can really help to get better quotes, deal with the requotes and use scalping systems.
4. You can choose a VPS, which is located physically close to your Forex broker’s trading server, ensuring even faster connection and order execution. For example, if you trade from New Zealand and your broker is located in United States you’ll always have some network latency due to the distance. But installing your EA on a VPS, which is hosted in U.S., will remove this latency.
5. Usually, VPS can be accessed anywhere from any computer. So, if you travel a lot you won’t need to move your expert advisor from your PC to your notebook or some mobile device. Your EA will always remain on VPS and you will be able to control and monitor it by logging into your VPS control panel from any place with a connection to internet.

Of course, your EA should be a profitable one and your monthly profit should be high enough to cover the cost of the VPS or otherwise there is no point in using it. You can also use VPS hosting for demo testing your EAs but that’s quite an expensive endeavor. If you have any questions or opinions please, use the commentary form below.

I've been through a lot of (non-trading) issues since I last wrote.My family and I have moved halfway across the nation, we've gotten new jobs, and had to take care of a million minor items that occur when you relocate your life. Sorry for the lack of updates.I have been doing a little manual trading here and there.The AUDJPY has been failing in the 87.xx range for most of this month. Greece,

No, that's not a typo. It's a rip-off of a line from the Back To The Future movie. Anyway, this post is another in the series of theoretical considerations with respect to various robot building strategies.In this scenario let's consider fixing our maximum total position size across a specific price range. For example, perhaps we are willing to purchase 10000 units per 1000 pips (remember, I'm