No shortage of news about doomsday scenarios, negative outlooks, economic stress lately. Yes, there is a reality out there, and it’s been tough for many in the West, and even worse in the East. Which reminds us all that there is always something, however little, that we can do to make this world just a little better.
So if you have been trading for some time, you have no doubt realized what we have: you can’t trade the news and expect to be profitable. At the simplest level, by the time we read the news, wherever, it’s all been baked in. We’re surely the last to know. And even if we knew, the market’s reaction to news, good or bad, tends to be random. (But even if our guess about market direction happens, by luck, to be correct, the increased volatility surrounding the news event will, more often than not, stop us out on smaller accounts. So there you go.)
So what can we do as traders? A few ideas come to mind, for starters:
Remind ourselves that we are technically motivated directional traders. Which means, we rely on the study of past price behaviour to predict future prices. Which is good: price is the ultimate market internal. Economics, politics, opinions, talking heads are all external to the market. Most of that stuff we won’t need: what we need is already on our (Remek!) charts, we just need to learn to read it.
Remember that as directional traders, the only thing we can’t trade is a flat line. We can go long, we can go short. We have, we do and we will.
And the overarching principle: we have a trading plan, a trading methodology for a reason. Our trading plan should include a plan for any market regime that may come our way. What is our job? To follow our plan.
So here are two examples from this past week when we did just that: two shorts, one on GC and one on the RTY. While the online media was busy doing its job (which is, as we know, to find the news that matches the chart), we only focused on one thing: to follow our trading plan, follow our setups, wait for the trigger, size correctly, and manage open positions as per our trading rules. (Full disclosure: we do all this with our Standalones.)
Not all trades will work of course, we have taken a loser or two lately (our Premium subscribers will recall ZW at this point), but what we do, which is trading patterns drawn by crowd psychology has worked for us, and we have thousands of trades to show for it. And, being 2022, we have computer technology and special purpose-built software to help us be
as lightning-fast,
as consistent and
as objective
as humanly possible.
Read up on our - mostly free - Resources, and test drive our most advanced trading behemoth today! Whether you purchase or go the easy lease route, you might just find you have found the missing piece of your trading puzzle!
Mindful trading!
