What Is Trend Following? If you look at a selection of charts, it becomes obvious that prices tend to move in particular directions – either up or down – for extended periods of time. Often, there’s no obvious reason why this is occurring but it is. These are trends, and successful traders generate significant profits […]
How to
How To Learn Amibroker In Under An Hour
In this article the aim is to learn Amibroker in under a hour. This is not a comprehensive tutorial but it covers all the features I find most important for trading. If you’ve never head of it, Amibroker is a powerful tool for technical analysis and backtesting. The software lets you scan, plot charts and […]
How Trading Put Me In Hospital
I’ve always liked a bet. After school I would go to the bookmakers to place bets on the football. I used to place accumulators that give you the chance to win big sums. When I was at University I got heavily into poker. Heads-up was my game. It was fast paced and I became quite […]
How To Screen For Stocks With Norgate Data
Long time readers know that I use Norgate Data for most of my backtesting. The data is clean, reliable and links easily with my backtesting software Amibroker. Norgate Data also carries a long list of fundamental data points. The data is not historical but it can be used to set up some very powerful stock screens. […]
How To Use Stop Losses And Profit Targets
I started writing this post last week. The idea was to run a large-scale optimization to see which profit targets and stop losses work best when trading US stocks (similar to the article I wrote on trailing stops). I wanted to find out if it’s better to use a tight profit target or a loose […]
20 Technical Analysis Patterns You Need To Know
Technical analysis is a highly debated subject because academics say that markets are too efficient to be predicted by simple patterns or indicators on a chart. For some, the whole concept of technical analysis is a fool’s errand. However, this viewpoint is not completely accurate. The truth is that technical analysis is such a broad […]
How To Automate Your Trading With Amibroker
Long time users of Amibroker will know that it’s an excellent software for backtesting, scanning and many other tasks. However, automation of trading strategies is not one of it’s strengths. Fortunately there’s a new and simple solution which I discovered in a new class called Trading And Investing Automation For Amibroker. This solution involves linking […]
Top Slicing And Letting Your Winners Run
Watching a trade move swiftly into profit then reverse back can be a painful experience. Psychologically, these are the moments that can cause you to go on ‘tilt’ and abandon your trading plan altogether. When I first started trading I remember jumping on board fast trends in the FTSE only to see them wiped out […]
5 Questions You Must Ask Before You Start Trading
Before you start trading it’s important to be prepared for a long road ahead. Even if you’re born with a natural talent you will still face a number of obstacles that you will need to overcome to be successful. 1. Do You Have Enough Capital? Unfortunately the most passionate new traders are often the least […]
How To 10x Your Momentum Trading Returns
The backbone of personal finance is to save more than you spend and invest the proceeds. The most common advice is to put your money into cheap index funds each month with a simple allocation split. But what if you want to try something more adventurous? Index investing may only provide returns of six or […]
Why Professional Traders Don’t Use Stops
There’s a lot of conflicting information on the web when it comes to stop losses. Recently I saw a YouTube video explaining that professional traders don’t use stop losses because doing so alerts market makers and algorithms to where their orders are. This is mostly nonsense especially in liquid markets with thick order books. The […]
How To Stalk The Best Trades
As a trader you only need one or two good trades to pay for the whole month, sometimes the whole year. You could be treading water for weeks then you catch one big move that pays for all your losses. Because of this, trading books recommend you stay disciplined and wait patiently for only the […]
How To Get Data From Quandl With Python Or Excel
For systematic traders, your choice of data source is important. There is no shortage of options ranging from free end of day data to subscription only real time feeds. System timeframes, markets and budget all play an important role in choosing providers. In this post we are going to take a look at a relatively […]
Beware YouTube Trading Videos
I rarely watch trading content on YouTube but last week I clicked on a forex video that caught my attention. Soon enough, I had fallen down a rabbit hole. My feed was taken over by trading videos and in between were advertisements for signal services and chat rooms promising quick and easy profits. YouTube has […]
How To Scrape Stock Data From Finviz And Google Finance
If you want to backtest trading strategies it’s important to have good quality data. I use Norgate Data for my end of day price quotes and am very happy with the quality and service. However, there are times when I want to scrape stock data from the web. For example, if I want to extract […]
How To Build A Mean Reversion Trading Strategy
This post contains a detailed guide for creating a mean reversion trading strategy. You will learn what mean reversion is, how to trade it, 10 steps for building a system and a complete example of a mean reversion system. Let’s get going! Introduction The two most popular types of trading strategies are momentum and mean […]
