The Trader's Academy - by Traders for Traders

Generally yes, Mondays and Fridays can be quiet, but not always. It very much depends on how the charts are looking. If the price is trapped in a narrow range between S&R, then that when it's likely to stay, or after a big move when a lot of money has been taken off the table, and no one wants to continue and it's too early to trade the other way...then the price just goes sideways until the new direction can be confirmed. Personally I don't pay too much attention to the day of the week...if I get a good signal to go, I take it, Mon-Fri.

The markets never capture our loyalty for long do they. It's either " You little beauty! " when it's going for us, or "you total bastard!" when it's not.

No wonder then that it treats us with such disdain when we least expect it

The Daily 200ema has been hit, which is my first big support level. Longer term, the weekly still looks set for substantial falls, so it just depends what your horizon is. A pullback from here though would not be unexpected.

" From purely a technical viewpoint, today's big push up in the Dow looks suspiciously like the sort of move in a wildly overextended market where you want to be getting ready to take profits and short. We should find out if I'm right this week I think. The diversion I'm been referring to in this thread still stands, but only if it starts to come down now."

Taken from my Hunchback thread on March 1st for those who want to have a look at it. https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...00#post9620200

The Dow has now fallen 470 pips since I posted that, going sideways most of the time until it cracked today. There is strong diversion on the monthly chart as you'll see I've been tracking on the other thread.

So the question is - Have stocks peaked? well I certainly think they may have, at least for the time being, and we could see the Dow returning to 17,000 or so.

Technically, this is nowhere near as Bearish as it was leading into 2008, but stocks are way more over-extended now than they were then, and all it will take is a banking crises in Europe or the US for this to fall like a pack of cards.

Be vigilant.

I have a good friend who became so disillusioned at his inability to make money in the markets that he decided to chuck it all in and go and marry a reindeer herder in Northern Siberia he'd met online.

He returned a month later because he said the whole place was full of former traders

I am posting this because I have a friend who is in serious trouble with regards trading, and is now telling me he will soon take his own life. Some say that those who take their own lives never talk about it beforehand, yet I had a friend a while back who told me he was going to kill himself, and a week later he was dead. For this reason I am putting this onto an open forum in an effort to do all I can to help.

The person is of course anonymous, and no doubt in a really awful place in his life right now. I have just sent him this response. Perhaps there are other people out there who have been through something similar, who maybe can offer a few words of encouragement, beyond what I have been able to say, because as I'm sure you'll all agree, nothing is worth ending your life for. I thank in advance any supportive comments any of you may wish to leave.

" I just hope you don't honestly mean that, because suicide is final, no way back, endgame. It will mean you'll never shag another woman, never have children of your own to remember you and talk about you when you're gone. All your friends gone, your family gone, not to mention all the suffering they will endure because of it, you could even kill them as well, as there is nothing worse than losing your own child. Nothing is worth ending your life for, nothing. Your life does not have a price tag, it is priceless, and you will forfeit every chance that you will have to get your life back together again. There is always a way out of the gloom, always, and you are a young man with a fantastic life still ahead of you. You have allowed a gambling addiction, and I say gambling because this is what trading has become for you, pull you down to the lowest level that a human can be pulled down to, that of the thought of ending your own life. This at the moment is clouding out everything else - all the positives in your life, all the reasons why life is such a precious gift, and poisoning your thoughts to the point where you now see nothing beyond ending it all. Imagine all those people in the gas chambers in WW2 - their families murdered, often in front of them, everything gone - their dignity, their loved ones, but never their hope. But how many of these people would have taken their own lives before the Nazis did? Very few I am sure. Whilst there was life, there was hope, and the same goes for you. You have so much going for you, your whole life ahead of you to do as you please, and to end all of that now would be the cowards way out. You must fight this low point in your life, fight it with all the energy and positivity you can muster.

I hope just a few of these words will help you to see that suicide is an answer for nothing, and beyond ending your life in the most tragic way possible, it will destroy the lives of all those who love you. "

Wow hardcore CAT. I would say when you are so low, you have had pretty much everything thrown at you but still manage to keep breathing. That in itself signifies strength so while you have breath you still have the fuel to carry on with life. Family won't care about your financial woes and in time it will be a blip. Keep breathing and box on.

Since I struggled hard in similar way as your friend. And I wanted to end it all coz of trading I feel like I gotta write few words as well. And before that I'd like to say that some people talk about suicide and some not. It doesn't really matter in the end. And also I'd like to point out no one can really understand what is going on in the mind in these hard times except the one who is going through.

There's no secret trading literally destroyed my life. I lost friends, long term relationship, passions and many more... It's good to say it was all my fault. There were times when I was really at the bottom and I nearly killed myself. I'm not proud of it. Who would be, right. I can guarantee when the time came I didn't give a sh*t about anything. And certainly not about loved ones. It wasn't act of selfishness. I was just hopeless. Hopeless to see anything good. Let's skip the part why I didn't do it as it's too much personal. Looking back I feel like a fool. I travelled 1600 kilometres back and forth by train to save a dog which was supposed to be put a sleep. And now he's been living with us happily for 4years. I feel like a fool for not realizing how my life would be emptier without him I can hardly imagine. I feel like a fool whenever I read about the kid that died of the cancer or in some horrible accident. I feel like a fool when I see better guitarist who play by his feet coz he's got amputated arms. I can speak only for myself when I say I have all my life before me and yet I don't appreciate it enough. It's sad. I'm sad. And yet here I am. Still swinging. Keep fighting. Some days I still wake up and curse the day as I wish I wouldn't. But I know I'm gonna do maximum to get back on a horse.

So tell your friend he's not alone in this. In fact there are soooo many people struggling the same way. I wish he'd understand, I wish he'd realized that there's a way from this. And this way will make you stronger and better. It needs just the one willing to fight back.

Thank you very much for sharing your experiences nuckern. He'll be reading this, so I don't have to tell him.

Things haven't got any easier, but he's hanging on in there in the realization, I hope, that there's always a way back from even the most dire of situations. I am sure that all of you reading this will join me in saying...

' Mate, we are all with you even though we are invisible. No one is truly alone in this business, and many of us have battled through our own demons, not just in trading, but in life. Hang on in there brother, there are better days ahead, and many of them...just be strong through this challenging time '.

Before I turned 25 I felt like I had all the time in the world. Time was slow, so slow that I could waste time doing nothing. I was searching for this grand purpose, I wanted to attach some kind of purpose to my existence. It all made sense to have a purpose. Then came my 25th birthday, I don't know if it happens to everyone but suddenly I felt like time was flashing by so fast. I realised my parents were getting older, people around me in their 40s and 50s dying from all sorts of illnesses (mostly cancer). Then it dawned on me "life is short, time slips by" life is fragile , it is precious. We're all racing against time, we don't know when it'll be our time to depart. The fact that we're born and experiencing this physical reality is magic in itself. What more do you need ?

For your friend, I was depressed once and had suicidal thoughts (it was personal not related to trading) just know that life itself is too short that we needn't put an end to it ourselves, if our time comes which is inevitable we'll have to go. I'm in my 20s reaching for my 30s, in 10 years I'll be 40 another 10 years 50 and in another decade 60, I'd like to live longer but we don't have a say on how long we'll live. Last 10 years went by in a flash. So I can only imagine how fast time will progress from here on. I am trying to live in the moment and spend time with my family but we often get too distracted with day to day bullsh*t that we forget to cherish what we have, the moments and our experience. Once a moment is gone, its gone forever. As with trading one day I get all winners and I feel like I'm on top of everything the next day I lose it all. On bad days I do feel hopeless, stupid for not getting it. But you know what life is a beautiful struggle. I don't expect it to be all rainbow and sunshine. If you feel desperately hopeless, know that we all had those moments in our journey. If you end it now know that you'll be missing out on some magical moments of your life. Life can be a real struggle at times but when you make it to the other end when you've done all you wanted, I can assure you'll be glad to have made it through all the struggles, it'll be worth it. Trading may not work for you, maybe it isn't for you so what go find something that you're good at. I'm pushing 3 and a half years if it doesn't work for me in another year and a half I'll go and do something else. Don't let this consume your life. Life is so much more than this.

Just drawing peoples' attention to what as I write, is a very perfect looking Doji candle on the monthly Dow. March 1st saw a very telltale ' Death Throe ' Daily candle on the Dow, which I noted on the day in this thread, and since then, the Dow has fallen. A Doji this month, combined with very strong divergence with MACD, could well result in pretty big falls in US stocks going forward, with ramifications right across the board. Be prepared!

One of the main reasons why so many fail ( there are many, but this is an important one ), is that the majority of traders ( at least the ones I know ) fail to see opportunities developing. They therefore fail to catch the optimal point at which to enter a trade, resulting in either missing the trade entirely, or entering at a price where the risk is far greater and greatly increasing the chances of being stopped out.

Timing is everything in trading. Many people can determine support and resistance quite well, but very few can time entries accurately, and this is one of the vital requirements for successful trading unless you are wealthy enough to use overly wide stop losses.

It is necessary to have a pretty good idea what the price is going to do next so that you can be ready to strike when it conforms to your plan.

Never chase the price...set a trap for it and be ready to close the door quickly once the animal is inside.

There were so many people screaming parity for EU last year. I put my bottoming zone in and posted it to clients I do freelance TA for. To date at least, I was right. The price broke through my bottom level briefly, but soon came back.

Those who follow my posts will know that I am fundamentally bearish on the dollar now, though obviously as a day trader, this only has limited relevance.

It seems i'am in a constantly rotating loop...i know i should get out of it and i know the way out. But i just can't enforce the proper discipline to do so and i'am still struggling.Every single day i'am struggling to get out of that loop and enforce discipline in my life and trading but i lack the strength to follow my own rules for more than 2 weeks tops.. I would greatly appreciate if anybody can share their experiences in how to be disciplined. And mmm Thanks in advance for reply

All the best traders I know have one fundamental thing in common - they all have a positive expectation when they put on a trade. Such a quality is vital to trading success, not because it gives you more winning trades, but because they are never afraid to put on a trade when the set up looks right.

Losing traders always have a negative expectation, so when the trade is a losing one, the next trade will will be approached with fear that the same thing will happen again, which leads to self-doubt, bad judgement, mistakes, and failure.

Whatever else you do as a trader, you must have a positive expectation, some would say neutral, but never negative, as this will guarantee failure.

Positivity will ensure that trading opportunities are taken each time they come along, and provided one does have an edge, profit will result.

If you are disciplined/organized in your everyday life, then you should also be at the trading desk. If you are not, then do not expect to be disciplined as a trader.

It is something we all have to be - successful trading requires it. There is no single path to becoming disciplined, as we are all very different. So it is in each and every one of us to become the person we need to be to become successful traders. You become that person, or you do not. Most cannot. Can you? That is the question.

Point me to your friend so I can teach him ho to trade successfully if that will help him stay alive.