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Better System Trader

If you’re looking for inspiration, motivation and practical advice on improving your trading results, Better System Trader delivers every week. Each episode brings you an expert trader who shares their own story, along with the steps, both good and bad, that they’ve taken on their path to success. With a focus on actionable insights, the tips and tricks used by the experts contain loads of value, providing you with insanely practical tips and tools you can start using TODAY. Improve your trading with Better System Trader.
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Now displaying: November, 2017
Nov 26, 2017

A few weeks ago we organised a family holiday for December.

We booked a luxury villa in Port Douglas and we’re all really excited to get there and start enjoying the holiday.

Last year the Huffington Post published an article about vacations, and shared a study in a journal claiming that just planning or anticipating your trip can make you happier than actually taking it.

I’m not sure if anticipating a holiday is more fun than actually taking it (I guess that depends on whether you have to take your kids or not...), but there is definitely value in anticipation, which ties in quite nicely with this podcast episode.

Our guest today is John Carter, and John is going to share with us the value of anticipation in trading, and how anticipating market action and the “pain points” of other market participants can give us an edge in trading.

Some of the topics you'll hear are:

  • How anticipating the actions and pain points of other market participants can give you an edge,
  • A simple but powerful mental switch that can crush the fear of executing trades,
  • The subtle clues the TICK and volume data give to indicate if a trend or range bound day could be more likely,
  • How to identify potential false breakouts and how ‘stop runs’ can actually improve your trading results.

 

Disclaimer:
Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Nov 24, 2017

I can’t believe it’s only 4 weeks until Christmas!

We’ve got the Christmas ads running on the TV here already...

The local grocery store has the Christmas decorations up...

And they’re even playing Christmas carols - can you believe that?

At home my 5-year-old daughter is already priming me for what she wants from Santa this year, which by the way is pretty much everything on TV right now!

2017 has gone by really fast and we’re coming into a time of reflection and rest, time to take a break if you can, and so I wanted to take a few minutes in this weeks Trading Thought to talk about balance, both in trading and in life.

Pretty early on in my trading journey I was absolutely consumed by trading.

I lived and breathed it, it was all I could think about and all I wanted to do was quit my corporate job and trade for a living.

By day I was working a full-time job in a bank, and at night I was staying up late to day trade the ES. I joined a trading room and my wicked plan was to get a few hours sleep after my day job so I could then trade the US session during the night, and then when the US markets closed I would have a brief rest before I went off to work for the day.

Sounds crazy right?

Well at the time I thought it was a great plan, but I’m sure we can all see how poor it really was.

You can probably guess what happened too.

It wasn’t sustainable.

I was only able to do it for a short period of time before lack of sleep impacted not only my trading, which sucked by the way, but it also started impacting my day job and it also pissed off my girlfriend at the time because...

I wanted to watch 1 minute bars more than watch a movie with her!

So, at that time there was no balance in my life, and my trading, health, relationships and life really suffered.

In this weeks Trading Thought, I want to share some thoughts from Linda Raschke on how Balance can make us better traders.

Then after that I have a small announcement to share, so take a listen to some nuggets of wisdom from Linda first.

 

Disclaimer:
Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Nov 17, 2017

The Petronas towers in Malaysia are the tallest twin towers in the world at 452m (1483 ft) tall.

Because of the ground underneath the building site, they had to put in some deep foundations, up to 114m (374 ft) deep.

Without these deep foundations, the building would run into problems.

In fact, during construction, at around the 72nd floor, they discovered that tower 2 was leaning 25 mm (0.98in) from vertical, so to correct that lean the next 16 floors were slanted back the other way.

They even hired specialist surveyors to check the lean of the tower twice a day until the building was completed.

Now obviously the foundations anchor the building and keep it from falling over, and even though they’re not visible, they’re probably the most important part of the construction.

When you look at constructing a portfolio of strategies, there are a couple of key concepts, or foundations to consider as well, so that you have a solid portfolio, one that will hopefully weather all types of hostile conditions and produce higher returns with reduced drawdowns.

In this weeks Trading Thought we’re going to hear from 2 guests, who will explain how they construct portfolios and some mistakes that traders sometimes make during portfolio construction, which you need to be aware of.

Take a listen as we start with Gary Hart from Trendfinder Trading Systems explaining the benefits of a portfolio of strategies and we take it from there.

 

Disclaimer:
Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Nov 12, 2017

And we're back for the final episode in this 3-part series on building Mean Reversion strategies with Cesar Alvarez from Alvarez Quant Trading.

In the 1st episode we discussed the goal of Mean Reversion trading, how to select a trading universe, a number of effective techniques to measuring Mean Reversion and how to combine indicators to identify better quality trades.

In the 2nd episode we discussed market classification, trade ranking, exits, order types, position sizing, risk control and much more.

In this 3rd and final episode, Cesar answers all your questions, covering a wide range of topics, including:

  • Mean Reversion in markets outside of Stocks,
  • Controlling risk during market sell-offs, gaps and being overweight in particular sectors,
  • Performance of Large caps vs Small caps,
  • Ranking Mean Reversion setups,
  • Shorting strategies,
  • Readjusting strategy parameters and measuring robustness,
  • Balancing Mean Reversion in a portfolio of other trading styles,
  • Tail risk, leverage, options, performance monitoring and so much more!

 

Disclaimer:
Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Nov 10, 2017

A few weeks ago I got the fright of my life.

I found myself in a situation where I could potentially be crushed by a car, or perhaps even a bus or truck.

Find out what happens and how it applies to tracking the performance degradation of trading strategies (before they kill your account).

 

Disclaimer:
Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Nov 2, 2017

I’ve just arrived back home from a few weeks in the States, I had a great time there but it’s also good to be home.

I’m a bit jet-lagged today so let’s hope what I share today actually makes sense!

A few weeks ago I had the honour of speaking at the ATAA members meeting here in Melbourne.

I presented for about an hour and the topic of my presentation was ‘7 practical tips to reducing drawdown’.

In this weeks Trading Thought I want to share a quick story from that and how it applies to Mean Reversion in low volatility environments.

In part 1 of the Mean Reversion series, Cesar made a statement about Mean Reversion strategies not performing so well in low-volatility market regimes, and I received a number of emails asking what type of strategies DO work in low volatility environments, so...

In this week’s Trading Thought I want to share a quick little sneak-peek into the next Mean Reversion episode with Cesar, due for release in a few weeks, where he answers this question, plus much more.

It’s only short, but let’s take a listen to Cesar sharing what he's found to work in low-volatility market regimes.

 

Disclaimer:
Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

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