Larry Levin's Blog – January 2013 Archive (10)

The Handoff

baton

If you’re a fan of the summer Olympics, I am sure you have watched plenty of track events – especially the exciting 400 and 800 meter relays.  Four athletes run in each event and hand a baton off to the next athlete until the race is complete.  Although the handoffs are usually done without mishap, it still happens from time to time; they can be simply sloppy to an outright drop of the baton that disqualifies the whole team.

In the…

Secret Trading Tip #4

How to Determine When the Market is Really Trending

How often have you looked at a chart and tried to determine whether or not the market is really trending? How many times have you been fooled by your Stochastics or RSI indicators? How many times have you sold because your oscillators were screaming overbought then watched the market dip a little and then continue higher, stopping you out for another loss? One of the most important things…

Secret Trading Tip #12

The Value Area & Your Trading

What is Market Profile?



Each day the market defines a Market Profile (MP), a Value Area (VA) and a Point of Control (POC), all of which are invaluable to trading the following day. Similar market-derived data over longer time frames is also of great value to day traders and other time frame (OTF) traders. Before I expand on this…

Secret Trading Tip #15

Trailing Stops



The topic of trailing stops comes up on occasion in my Virtual Trading Room. They can often cause some confusion, so let’s take a bit of time to clarify what constitutes a trailing stop and how you can use it in futures trading..

Trailing stops are actually stop loss orders that you move according to certain parameters in your trading plan.

Why Move Stop Loss Orders?…

Trillion Dollar Pay Day Loan

payday_loans

Referring to the constant rumors of a Portuguese bailout last year in Europe, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, said “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” 

For weeks the Eurozone ministers lied to the public about the behind-the-scenes bailout that they were working on.  But here in the US the politicians aren’t lying about the next “crisis” and what to do about it, which is the…

Secret Trading Tip #27

Coming Back from a Loss

A friend of mine in the pit had been having a rough time lately when he asked me a typical question among us traders - How do I come back from a loss? Since he had been having a "rough patch" and not just one bad trade, I gave him the following advice that is to be used over a period of time.

First I asked him, "What does your trading journal look like - or maybe you don’t have one?"

He didn’t think it…

Secret Trading Tip #27

Coming Back from a Loss

A friend of mine in the pit had been having a rough time lately when he asked me a typical question among us traders - How do I come back from a loss? Since he had been having a "rough patch" and not just one bad trade, I gave him the following advice that is to be used over a period of time.

First I asked him, "What does your trading journal look like - or maybe you don’t have one?"

He didn’t think it…

Trillion Dollar Pay Day Loan

payday_loans

Referring to the constant rumors of a Portuguese bailout last year in Europe, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, said “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” 

For weeks the Eurozone ministers lied to the public about the behind-the-scenes bailout that they were working on.  But here in the US the politicians aren’t lying about the next “crisis” and what to do about it, which is the debt…

Secret Trading Tip #18

Using the Doji

On a candlestick chart, there is a pattern that technicians refer to as a doji. A doji has top and bottom shadows like a regular candlestick, but has practically no real body. This happens when the opening and closing price are the same, or so close that they just leave a sliver of a real body. A doji looks like a plus sign or cross.

Finding a Doji can tell a technical analyst key things about a market trend

Doji…

Slam

smashed-car

At the end of my last newsletter I said, “In the end, the markets recouped all of their losses thereby giving the microcephalic clown-posse in D.C. another reason to argue like children rather than working on their sickening spending problem.”

At the close of Friday’s market a friend of mine asked “Why would the market fall so hard and so quickly?”  This question reminded me of the Thursday rally into the close and the aforementioned quote,…