The Top 10 Mistakes Traders Make

Achieving success in futures trading requires avoiding numerous pitfalls as much, or more, than it does seeking out and executing winning trades. In fact, most professional traders will tell you that itโ€™s not any specific trading methodologies that make traders successful, but instead itโ€™s the overall rules to which those traders strictly adhere that keep them โ€œin the gameโ€ long enough to achieve success.

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The Percent “R” Indicator: How to Make it Work for You

Jim Wyckoff The Percent Range (%R) technical indicator was developed by renowned futures author and trader Larry Williams. This system attempts to measure overbought and oversold market conditions. The %R always falls between a value of 100 and 0. There are two horizontal lines in the study that represent the 20% and 80% overbought and …

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Technical Traders Should Still Examine Fundamentals

Those who have read my features know I base the vast majority of my trading decisions on technical indicators and chart analysisโ€“and also on market psychology. However, I do not ignore certain fundamentals that could impact the markets Iโ€™m trading. Neither should you.

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Swing Trading: Making $$$ in a Sideways Market

By Jim Wyckoff “The Trend is Your Friend” is a tried and true market adage that is indeed one of the most valuable futures trading tenets. However, history shows that most markets tend to move in a non-trending, or “sideways” fashion more of the time than they are in a trending mode. There are several methods …

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Spread Trading

By Jim Wyckoff Spread trading in futures markets does not get a lot of attention among speculative traders. However, many traders do employ this method of trading because it can be less risky and less expensive than trading straight futures contracts. It is beyond the scope of this article to provide all the specifics of …

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Simplicity Has Sharpened John Murphy’s Skills

“My work has gotten better due to simplifying my approach,” John J. Murphy, the veteran technical analyst, author and CNBC resident technical analyst, told a group of equities and futures traders attending the Technical Analysis Group (TAG) XVIII trading conference sponsored by Dow Jones Telerate in New Orleans. Murphy said he relies heavily on five …

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Selling Options: The Real Story

There are old sayings in the futures industry that go something like this: โ€œEighty percent of all options on futures expire worthless.โ€ And, โ€œThe only way to make money trading options on futures is to sell them–not buy them.โ€ Neither one of these statements is accurate. This educational feature will focus on the advantages and …

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Seasonality in Markets: One More Tool for Your Toolbox

Two of my favorite trading subjects are cycles and seasonality. In this feature, I’ll discuss seasonality in agricultural markets. I want to start out by emphasizing that seasonality or cycles, by themselves, do not make good trading systems. However, they are great “tools” to add to your “Trading Toolbox.” Seasonality in agricultural markets is a …

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