thinking man’s trader 1.31.12

Trad­ing Ideas Worth Sharing.

Cheers Mate, one party is over and the next one is here already. Happy Aus­tralia Day Jan­u­ary 26.

The two native Aus­tralian ani­mals used in shield, the red kan­ga­roo and the emu, are the only two ani­mals in the
world that do not walk back­wards. This sym­bols speak vol­umes about the nation and its people.

Big Dog Day Trader, The strat­egy bro­kers love to hate. Open code now avail­able
for Bronze Mem­bers and higher only.

View our videos on the Big Dog through its devel­op­ment from these links: Big Dog Basic and Big Dog Advanced.

I out­line the robust meth­ods used in the devel­op­ment of the strate­gies. Locked code is avail­able to gen­eral
mem­bers, only bronze mem­bers and higher have access to open code and
upgrades.

TraderAs­sist® Forum and Inner Cir­cle.  “Tal­ent wins games, but team­work
wins cham­pi­onships” and its TraderAs­sist® that makes the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence in tech­ni­cal trading!

This forum was estab­lished to push up the qual­ity of our cho­sen field. I
view our new forum as an asso­ci­a­tion of appren­tices, jour­ney­man and
crafts­men.  My goal in cre­at­ing the forum is to help traders build a
busi­ness by openly shar­ing indi­ca­tors, strate­gies, plat­form briefs, gam­ing
the­ory and exer­cises to improve objec­tive behav­ior.
It is my view that the only thing the Wall Street and LaSalle Street
insid­ers have that most traders do not is “infrastructure.”Most traders do
not have the phys­i­cal orga­ni­za­tional struc­tures, ser­vices and facil­i­ties to
per­form at a com­pet­i­tive level.  To com­pete you need an office and our
forum’s goal is to be your vir­tual office, pro­vide you with the insider’s
net­work to any­thing you need to suc­ceed.
TraderAs­sist® works to keep the forums a pos­i­tive nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment.  It
will not tol­er­ate nay say­ers, rude behav­ior, trolling, or ven­dor
adver­tis­ing.
It is part of our belief or value struc­ture that even if a trader was given
the holy grail of trad­ing sys­tems that with­out team work and the
infra­struc­ture to sup­port him, the trader would fail.
We firmly believe in open­ness and encour­age shar­ing. The holy grail – the
abil­ity to make a liv­ing at trad­ing the mar­kets — is within you. The
tan­gi­ble files you down­load, the trad­ing plat­form, rules of engage­ment,
bro­ker­age back office, risk man­age­ment and the advi­sor you choose are only
part of it.
We expect our mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate and become a part of the com­mu­nity.
Help your­self by help­ing oth­ers.
You’ll need to reg­is­ter in order to view the con­tent of the threads and
start con­tribut­ing to our com­mu­nity. It’s free and sim­ple, and we will never
resell your pri­vate information.

The TraderAs­sist® Uncom­mon Sense Ways to Increase Your Chance of Suc­cess Trad­ing Futures

_1. Don’t treat it like a job! _ You are cre­at­ing a busi­ness, not a job for
your­self. A busi­ness con­tin­ues to earn money even when you are not “hands“
in it, while a job does not.
Don’t be a lone-wolf. To build a com­pany you need to be able to share
respon­si­bil­ity, man­age­ment, risks and rewards with your busi­ness part­ners. A
good com­pany is built on good man­age­ment teams. My per­sonal phi­los­o­phy is to
always have a part­ner or right– hand man in every­thing I do, to share the
load. The vast major­ity of us that get into this game are mav­er­icks, rebels,
ego mani­acs and con­trol freaks. But that is in direct con­fl­cit with the type
of behav­ior needed to win. A suc­ces­ful trader needs to build trust and
share. Stop being greedy, a smaller per­cent­age of prof­its is bet­ter than
100% of all the losses.

_2. Know what you don’t know!_ Iden­tify your skills and areas where they are
lack­ing and resource the areas where you are lim­ited out to fill the gaps.
Like Clint East­wood says “A man has got to know his limitations.

_3. Enlist and recruit people_ that are not only bet­ter than you but who are
good in their area of spe­cial­iza­tion. It’s easy to say but tough to do ,
avoid the “pre­tenders “at either extreme, the “yes” man, who does noth­ing
but blow smoke and the nay sayer who is noth­ing but a crit­i­cal, not a doer.

_4. Cash Flow Is More Impor­tant Than Your Mother._  Lack of cash kills
com­pa­nies. Make sure you have enough cash to get you through the first 6 to
12 months. If you are trad­ing for a liv­ing, keep your full time job until
you build up some trad­ing prof­its. If you are trad­ing to sup­ple­ment your
earned income, no dif­fer­ence, keep work­ing until you have horded a good pile
of cash. I can hear the mav­er­icks and “Top Guns”out there with­out a wing
man, want­ing to be on their own and be there own boss. You need to believe
me, next to the trad­ing exchange or team you cre­ate your pile of cash is you
next best friend. Gen­er­ally I would say I want my traders to see at least a
50% gain in cap­i­tal, if not a dou­ble, before they con­sider quit­ting their
job. If you are out of work due to the WFC, you have worked and this is the
key, you have saved money, then you prob­a­bly have enough finan­cial skills to
man­age your own busi­ness and work it into a pos­i­tive cash flow sit­u­a­tion.
If you are play­ing with house­keep­ing money, the odds are stacked against you
as trad­ing will bring out the faults in your personality.

_5. Set a goal and take action._ When you know where you want your futures
trad­ing account to be in 5 years you can plan how to get there from day one
and you have a real chance to get where you want to be. With no defined and
doc­u­mented goals, how will you track your per­for­mance, drive your busi­ness
and know when you are on tar­get to reach your goals or not? Envi­sion your
suc­cess and keep your focus on it.

_6. Key on a team effort,_ you will not need to put in long days, don’t be
lazy, and work smart. Do not expect every­thing to run smoothly or always go
to plan. Be flex­i­ble with your think­ing, but also be pre­pared to beat the
odds and suc­ceed when all signs are point­ing to defeat. _“Remember
noth­ing­can take the place of per­sis­tence.  Tal­ent will not; the world is
full of unsuc­cess­ful peo­ple with tal­ent.  Genius will not; unre­warded genius
is almost a proverb.  Edu­ca­tion alone will not; the world is full of
edu­cated dere­licts.  Per­sis­tence and deter­mi­na­tion alone are omnipotent.”_

_7. Take prof­its off the table, don’t be greedy,_ be smart, take
prof­its when you hit a goal, salt some of the profit away in other
investment.

_8. Take man­age­able risks _– not wild bets.Takes man­age­able risks, where
they can influ­ence the out­come, not wild bets, where their result is a
ran­dom uncon­trolled event.

_9. Most of all, have fun _and enjoy the trad­ing, have a pas­sion for it,
unless you do you will not last long.

Great and Many Thanks,
Jack F. Cahn, CMT