Trading Strategy

I suffered a major trading loss recently and I was pondering about my profit and loss calculations. For example, a trading account can start at $500 and be traded up to something like $2000. So that’s a 300% profit on your initial investment. However, what if you have traded your account all the way up to $4000 (or have started your account at that figure) and found you’ve literally burned that trading account down to zero – in your books that would account for a 100% loss.

For Wall Street Traders, high frequency trading is a Godsend. For "mum and dad" investors - sharemarket participants who hold for the long term, this market activity won't disadvantage them as much. However for retail day traders, this type of trading would disturb you. High frequency trading has been credited as being the method big banks and hedge funds such as Goldman Sachs has made a profit in the last year, even with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) happening.

Professional share traders and investors who trade and invest money for a living use sophisticated methods in their line of work one of which is short selling. You may or may not know that you can actually make money in the sharemarket (stockmarket for our American counterparts) anytime - it doesn't matter if the market is trending up and very bullish, stagnant and going sideways or falling in a bearish market situation.

This is the third part of a three part series about getting from analysis to trade execution. The first step in my trading is to decide whether or not the trade is worthwhile. This step was outlined in part one. The second step of trade analysis was examined in part two. In this part we shall look at trade execution. I will also underline the importance of being 100 per cent confident when you execute your trading plan. These are basically the three steps that I undertake to enter in a trade no matter which market I trade, be it the forex market or the stock market.

In the previous post we had a look at the first step in how traders get from analysis to finally executing and committing your capital to the trade, be it forex, stocks or futures. The first step was to have yourself a test to determine if the trade is worthwhile for you. You may have your own methods (send me some ideas!), but I suggested one of my qualifiers as the momentum of the trend line of the particular equity you are looking at.

Unless you’re gambling away your capital at the markets, I expect you as a share trader to be doing some due diligence before each trade - analysing the stock or currency pair before making your mind up whether to enter the trade at all then if the price is trading up, down or sideways. It's all the same deal, the same process whether you trade the US stockmarket, the Australian sharemarket or the forex markets.