I have traded only four days in the week of November 15th. And the total of the four days’ profit came to $561. Below is the detailed daily report:
Monday, Nov 15th, 2010

Tuesday, Nov 16, 2010

Thursday, Nov 18, 2010
I struggled in the morning and lost all the money that I had gained that morning. The reason was that I had a few losing trades that ate up my initial profit and this made me upset. So I entered more trades that with no solid due diligence analysis, and consequently, I lost all …

Today I found two stocks that established nice Grade A patterns–Walter Energy, Inc. (ticker: WLT) and Deckers Outdoor Corporation (ticker: DECK). WLT had developed a nice 45 degree uptrend pattern in the early morning, and DECK, on the other hand, had developed a triangular uptrend pattern. If you don’t know what I mean by “Grade A” patterns, please visit my Stock Pattern Grading articles in Part A, Part B and Part C.
Here are the 5-minute charts for WLT and DECK:

These two stocks both have large daily trading volumes and a …

I often remember that my teacher once said: “Day Trading is a boring business, but it is profitable”. The more I get into day trading, the more I can understand his words. All you need to do in day trading is follow the routine: get up in the morning at 8am, turn on the computer to check the market news at 8:30am, fill out the watch list ,and then wait till the market opens at 9:30am. And then check the stocks to find potential trading patterns, see if they develop …

First of all, let me cite a quote from Markus Heitkoetter of Trading Markets.com, “The biggest enemy to your trading success is not the market. It’s YOU. And you are your biggest enemy because of your emotions. A profitable trading strategy is not enough on its own. You must also have the right mindset if you want to be one of the only 11.5% of traders who actually succeed.
In the day trading business, allowing your emotions control you will lead to serious disaster. Therefore, you …

In this last article of the series, I’m going to look at what is perhaps the biggest mistake of all, and yet should be the easiest to overcome.
Mistake Number Seven – Not Taking Action
For every trader who opens a brokerage account and starts placing trades, there must be a hundred more who had every intention of doing so, but for one reason or another, never actually took that step.
It’s a blindingly obvious statement to make I know, but you cannot make a profit from the markets if you don’t actually …

If you’ve been following these lessons through so far, you might by now be wondering if this trading thing is really worth it. What with all the planning, testing, and continued effort, it perhaps seems much more complicated than you first thought.
Mistake Number Six – Over-complicating It
It’s easy to get caught up in the details, but if we take a step back for a moment, trading really need not be complicated at all. Finding a strategy to work with can take as long or short a time as you like …

By now you might be thinking that this trading business requires somewhat more effort than you first thought. And you would be right! In fact, that’s the subject of today’s lesson.
Mistake Number Five – Not Putting In The Required Effort
It’s a strange phenomenon that seems almost unique to the field of internet trading; people believe that they can read a book, open an brokerage account, and start making huge amounts of cash just like that.
I used the analogy of an airline pilot in the last article, so lets continue with …

Right – we’ve looked at strategies and planning, so now we’re ready to trade right? Wrong! At least, we’re not ready to trade live.
Mistake Number Four – Not Testing
Trading is a great business, it offers potential levels of income and freedom that most people can only dream of. So it’s quite natural that having got the groundwork out of the way, the novice trader is eager to get clicking those buy and sell buttons and see the profits roll in. But hang on – the preparation isn’t over yet!
Imagine for …

So far we’ve looked at how not sticking to a strategy, and not planning our trading will inevitably lead us to loss. Now I want to talk about one aspect of planning in more detail – money management.
You’re probably thinking that’s a really really boring subject, but before you decide to skip this article, let me say that money management isn’t just about making sure you survive long enough to turn a profit, it can also open up whole new trading opportunities to you.
Mistake Number Three – Not Understanding Money …

By studying at the most frequent reasons for failure, we can avoid making the same mistakes as the crowd, and thus turn these negative points into positives. In this series of articles, I will be looking at the seven most common mistakes I see made by traders.
Mistake Number One – Switching Strategies
or “The Hunt For The Holy Grail”
The holy grail of trading – we’ve all looked for it – the super system that never loses. We’ve searched forums, read books, been to seminars, discussed in chatrooms, but the secret system …