A couple of weeks back we had a highly enjoyable and educational session for the Q2 Online Traders Forum. The theme was “Trading Strategies”.  The recordings and slides of those sessions are now available. We had three sessions:

Kevin Barry talked through exactly how he trades the 5 Minute chart on Indices and FX with some superb examples of a typical trading day for him.

Martin Walker described a simple trading system that Traders can take and use across multiple asset classes

Paul Wallace talked about Mechanical, Subjective and Discretionary Trading  and provided three set-ups for each style of trading.

If you wish to avail yourself of the slides and recordings then you can do so on the button above.

Trade well!

Hello traders,
I hope life and the markets are treating you all well. We’ve had an interesting start to 2019 and I think it will only become more eventful as the year progresses. As always this will provide either a threat or an opportunity based upon attitude and preparedness.

For the last few years I have run the VTP trading sessions in London and
I am presently setting my schedule for the VTP trading sessions for 2019. As my diary gets compressed I am looking to deliver the various stages in 2 day blocks (apart from Stage 2 which is 3 Day) with follow-up online sessions. This also makes it easier for the attendees to manage their diary.
The VTP was originally set-up to help give Veterans an insight into trading financial markets using three principles that they naturally embrace:
– Process
– Discipline
– Self-Awareness

 
It just so happens that those very same traits are also seen in consistently successful traders. All traders can improve by embracing these traits into their trading. As the project has evolved it’s now my intention to create a wider community of  ‘Versatile Traders’  which I would define as:

• A Versatile Trader has the ability to trade any instrument, in any direction, on any time-frame.

Personally I think the days of someone just being solely a 5 min EURUSD trader are long gone – a good trader now needs to be able to operate where the best opportunity lies. That could be FX, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Bonds or Crypto.

That’s not to say that a trader may not end up focussing on a particular style, asset class and timeframe as their experience increases, however they should have the ability to operate wherever the opportunity lies.

So with that in mind here are the dates for the VTP Stages 1-4 for 2019. They are delivered in a small group between 6-15. If you want to join a particular stage or to know more then drop me a line.
Stage 1: Introduction to trading and financial markets – 21st & 22nd February, London: LTN cost: £297

 
This is the ideal stand-alone introductory course to trading and financial markets. Over several sessions it provides the building blocks to be able to educate a new trader how to operate safely and effectively within financial markets. By the end of the stage the new trader will understand the 4M’s of Trading: Markets, Methods, Money & Myself. They also develop those three key traits mentioned at the beginning: Process, Discipline & Self-Awareness.
There is no requirement to take any further stages – this is a stand-alone stage that will provide anyone with the fundamental basics of successful trading.

 
Stage 2: An introduction to longer-term swing and position trading of FX, Indices and Commodities Markets – 21st & 22nd March, plus Thursday 16th May: LTN cost £397
Leading on from Stage 1, here we focus on longer term trading of FX, Indices and Commodity markets in-line with how I trade myself and for funds. We provide deeper insight into these markets and additional tactics to help build your own successful longer-term trading business.

 
Stage 3: An introduction to short-term, intra-day trading of FX & Indices markets – 18th & 19th July, London: LTN Cost: £397
As the name implies we focus on how to trade FX, European and US Indices from an intra-day basis. Sessions will be based on preparing for your day of intra-day trading of these markets and how to adapt the strategies, tactics and concepts from earlier Stages for intra-day success.

 
Stage 4: On Managing Myself, Trader Performance and becoming a Money Manager – 21st & 22nd November, London : LTN Cost: £397
This stage is split into 2 sections: Half on managing self and the other half on managing money – namely other peoples. You may or may not have dreams of becoming a money-manager however acting as if you are a fund manager is never a bad thing in your own trading business. This whole stage will be focused on what you need to do to build your own trading business that will put you in the right space to be able to seek funding (if that is your wish).

 
In total it will equate to about 72 hours of us working together over the course of the year. As always there is a cost involved. I am fortunate that I am allowed to use a corporate clients location so that enables me to keep costs to an acceptable level.
Stage 1 has always cost £297. The other stages normally cost £447 but for today if you wish to join one of the stages the cost is £397.
In total to attend all parts of the VTP next year would cost £1488. However for those that wish to attend all of the sessions this year then there is an early bird cost which is reduced to £1200 for the year. There will only be 12 slots free so it’ll be on a first-come, first-served basis, with veterans getting priority.
I wish you every success in your trading for 2019. As I said at the start this year can either be a threat or an opportunity for you – its about your attitude and being prepared.  Trade well!
Paul

Hello traders,

So we’re into the back end of April and the Easter holidays (certainly here in Europe) are behind us and allows us to now focus on our trading for Q2. Which leaves us some topics to discuss:

1. How was your Q1? We are now into Q2 so it’s important to look back and reflect upon your performance for Q1. It provided us with some interesting opportunities. I’m a great fan of Quarterly benchmarking and reviews. If you had a poor Q1 then you still have the opportunity to learn from it, amend your approach and refocus your efforts to get you back on track for 2019. If you had a great Q1 then what can you learn from your successes to help maintain such performance? Avoid the temptation to rest on your laurels…or be overwhelmed by euphoria. The ticker has re-set for this Quarter so lets works on making Q2 a great one. If you need help with conducting such a review, or you need an educated sounding board to work off then you can engage with myself for a Trader Development Session to help ensure you’re making progress in the right direction.

2. Trading Strategies Session. As always Traders love to learn about new trading strategies. This Saturday morning, 27th April from 0900-1200 we are running the Q2 Online Traders Forum which is focusing solely on Trading Strategies for you to take away and utilise in your own trading. It’s an online event and you can get a ticket here: Q2 Online Traders Forum. The event is being recorded so even if you cant attend the actual day your ticket will get you access to the slides and the recordings of the session. Kevin’s session on intra-day trading with pivots is always worth the entrance fee.

3. Next Social Event – will be Wednesday May 15th – usual time and place – look forward to seeing you there!

4. Website – my team are slowly building my new website – I’ll be adding more trading material to it over the summer months: www.tradingbeliefs.com

Trade well!

Paul

Paul Wallace
FXIC Trader
Trader Evolution Consultant
Tradingbeliefs

Happy New Year to you all traders!

I trust you enjoyed the Christmas break and are all ready and primed for what will be an eventful 2019 in markets.

I thought Id start 2019 with a great piece of insight courtesy of one of my VTP clients. Ee Lyn is a promising trader who is progressing nicely towards consistently profitable  trading success. She is already managing funds and chipping away nicely.  I received an email from her last week updating me on her trading performance for December:

“Here are my trade results for the 2 weeks to year-end. I have kept my Gold trade open over the holiday period as it was in profit and I have been trailing the SL with the swing lows. Should have kept the last CADJPY trade going as well (I closed the trade manually) as my original target was W1 support at 80.50 (8R profit) and SL had been moved into profit prior to Christmas. The first CADJPY trade was entered on D1 chart, and the rest were adding to the position (entering on H1) when the SL for each subsequent position had already been moved to either break even or profit. I now see what you mean about adding to positions!!

CADJPY short +5R
CADJPY short +7R
Gold long still open
USDCHF short break even
US30 short +2.1R
AUDJPY short +5R
CADJPY short +5.4R
CADJPY short +3.7R
US30 short break even

I hope youd agree that’s a strong end to 2018. She’s posted a fine set of trading results and can take some personal and professional satisfaction in her performance.

I have for many years being mentoring folks that the way to make step-change in their equity curves is to look at riding their winning positions by adding to them. I call it “The Brasso Trade”.  As your man George Soros says:

I teach traders a very simple mechanical way to add to their position that also includes risk and trade management.  Now of course it’s much easier to talk about adding to your position than actually to do it so what I suggest is that people start by adding at the smallest amount possible – to get themselves into the habit of adding to their winning trades. Remember that is also very important – we are adding to winning trades. That is a very different proposition from averaging down on a losing trade!

Ee Lyn has very kindly provided me with some screen shots of one of her positions in CADJPY and has allowed me to share them with you all.

I hope it gives you some insight into the power of building a position and how adding to your winning trades is the way forward.  Perhaps you could make it part of your goals and objectives for 2019 to build an adding-on tactic to your trading plan?  I’ll be covering a small element of this in our Q1 Online Traders Forum on Saturday 12th January.

Ee Lyn has demonstrated some fine trading here and it bodes well for her continued success and development as a trader in 2019. I believe she’ll become a truly world-class trader and money manager.

Fellow Traders,

Over this last summer I re-read the trading classic Pitbull by Market Wizard Marty Schwartz. I originally read it about 12 years ago and so it was a pleasant re-read.  After all these years I was able to take some different messages from Marty’s journey.

I can heartily recommend the book as a good read for traders of all levels. Marty is pretty open about his experiences and the roller-coaster ride he went through.

I was reminded that on the last few pages he references a Pogo cartoon which I myself have used many times: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Newbie traders may see that cartoon and be wondering what on earth that has to do with trading?  Experienced traders nod their head wisely and know instinctively how wise the cartoon is!

The longer you trade the more you realise that it is not the market which is your enemy, it is you.  The market is just a mirror the reflects your own strengths, weakness, biases and darker elements of your character!

New traders like to think that they trade in a silo, that all they need is a fool-proof trading strategy that will make money for themselves.  However with time and experience you realise that it becomes about understanding yourself better and subsequently managing yourself better than before.

That’s why every year I run a two-day workshop based on helping traders raise their self-awareness about managing themselves as traders. The idea is to start to show them their blind spots so they can start to mitigate the risks to themselves.

It’s also about helping you spot the signs of a possible performance slump, and more importantly what you can do to recover when you’re in one (and trust me, everyone has performance slumps as a trader – if they tell you that they don’t then they’re lying!)

On Managing Self and becoming a Money Manager is aimed at helping you evolve in your trading towards professional status, whilst building your own trading business.
It will consist of:
– 2 x full days on 22nd & 23rd November in Central London
– 1 x follow-up online session
For a total of 18  hours working together
It’ll will be split into 2 sections namely: Half on managing self and the other half on managing money – namely other people’s. You may or may not have dreams of becoming a money-manager, however acting as if you are a fund manager is never a bad thing in your own trading business. It holds you to a higher standard in your own behaviour. This whole stage will be focused on what you need to do to build your own trading business that will put you in the right space to be able to seek funding (if that is your long-term aim).

So as always there’s a cost implication: the cost for this stage will be £397.  However for viewers of this blog or members of the London or Dublin Traders Network I will be offering a  reduced price of £347 for the 2 days.

There are 4 slots left and as always it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. If you’re interested or want to know more then drop me a line.
Trade well,
Paul
@FXTraderPaul