Trading Strategies

Volatility Breakout Systems

By Linda Bradford Raschke Breakout systems can actually be considered another form of swing trading, (which is a style of short term trading designed to capture the next immediate move). In other words, the trader is not concerned with any long term forecast or an

Time Tested Classic Trading Rules for the Modern Trader to Follow

By Linda Bradford Raschke This is a list of classic trading rules that was given to me while on the trading floor in 1984. A senior trader collected these rules from classic trading literature throughout the twentieth century. They obviously withstand the age-old

Tape Reading

By Linda Bradford Raschke Sometimes it is nice to reexamine a simple concept when there appears to be overwhelming volatility in the markets. Mechanical systems and patterns are helpful and even necessary for the structure they impose in organizing data, but even

Swing Trading: Rules and Philosophy

Linda Bradford Raschke My style is based on the “Taylor Trading Technique”, a short-term method for trading daily price movements that relies entirely on odds and percentages . It is a method as opposed to a system. Very few people can blindly follow a

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 o

Spread Trading

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 t

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 a

Moving Average Crossovers May Not Be The Best Entry Signals

There are many ways of using moving averages to trade but by far the most common method is to trade when a short-term moving average crosses over a longer term moving average. For example, if the 10-day MA crosses above the 30-day MA we typically assume that we ha

Money Management

Money management in trading involves specialized techniques combined with your own personal judgment. Failure to adhere to a sound money management program can leave you subject to a deadly “Risk-Of-Ruin” exposure and most probable equity bust. With this

Market ‘Noise’: How Seasoned Traders Learn to Ignore It

For many years I was a futures market reporter with the FWN wire service (now called OsterDowJones). I spent time working right on the futures trading floors in Chicago and New York. Most of the time my daily reporting “beat” involved interviewing trad