Write down your own trading goals for the year.

Answer these questions.

How many trades would you like to take this year?
How many trades do you expect to be winners?
How many trades do you expect to be losers?
What trading strategy will you work and improve on?
What percentage return on your portfolio would you like to achieve?

If I were to sum-up the most essential traits to be a successful trader, I could list 5 of them. You’ll find that self-reflection and self-preparation is all it takes to join the 5% of successful traders out there. Today’s article is going to be a lot of fun, because I need you to help me. I want you to write down these 5 traits on a piece of paper and rate yourself out of 10 (1 being lowest and 10 being highest) what level you’re on… The higher the level, the better you’re suited to trading success. If you find that you your results are at a low level, then make sure you keep reading BlackStone Futures newsletters in the next few weeks because I’ll be helping you develop the mind of a successful trader. Let’s get to them…

Over the last few years we’ve seen a dramatic rise in derivatives trading. The top financial instruments to trade today in this world are in fact, Spread Bets and CFDs. In Singapore, London and even Asia we are seeing brokerage houses move to these derivatives on a weekly basis. Today I want to highlight my top five reasons why Spread Trading is the way to go…

There are times when you’ll go through the inevitable drawdown (a drop in your portfolio value after one or a series of losses). Not only does your portfolio drop in value but also, you’ll need to make up a certain percentage return to recover your portfolio back to what it was. But what is that percentage return needed for recovery? This is what I’m going to help tackle today. Here’s a formula you’ll need to calculate the percentage gain to make up for the percentage loss in your portfolio.

This formula will identify the minimum win rate you’ll need to keep your portfolio in the green. A win rate is simply a percentage of the sum of your winning trades divided by the no. of trades you’ve taken. The beauty about this formula is you’ll need nothing more than your risk to reward ratio to calculate the minimum win rate you’ll need. The formula is as follows.

Highly confident traders don’t take the easy road. They know that the things that are scary to do, are often what’s needed to succeed as a trader. For example… When a trade is going your way, the easy thing to do is to get out of the trade for a measly premature profit. The scary thing to do, is to hold onto the trade until it hits your take profit level, knowing that it could turn around and hit your stop loss. Unfortunately, you need to do the latter. This way you’ll not only follow your trading strategy but you’ll also bank a bigger profit which is what you need to achieve for your portfolio.

Start with the main index. If your watch list includes the top 30 stocks listed on the JSE, then you’ll need to first open the JSE All Share 40 index chart (ALSI). On your Meta Trader 4 platform, you’ll see the ALSI as ‘SA40Fut.a’. You’ll then look at the price-action of the chart to see how it moved while you were away. Jot down and identify the market environments the ALSI endured and then ask yourself this crucial question. “What trading environment is the ALSI currently in and which direction is it more likely to head from here?”

Over the last few weeks, I’m sure you’ve enjoyed the public- holidays one after another. With Human Rights Day, Good Friday and Family Day come and gone, I’m sure you have created wonderful memories filled with food, drink, family and friends. But as a trader, this can be disorientating. And eventually, you’ll need to get […]

Today’s reality is that you just need to walk down the street on any given day to see the extent to which social media has taken over our lives. Eyes and ears are glued to cell phones and tablets and, among the younger generation, social media has simply become part of the daily routine. Like […]

As we saw a lot of the financial markets migrate from open outcry to electronic trading, so we saw less importance in Fundamental Trading and more emphasis in Technical Analysis Trading. Many traders, including myself, hold the belief that the fundamentals are priced in the technical. Despite this, there are still some days that fundamental […]