Speak softly and carry a big stick: mechanisms of contact-dependent growth inhibition (CDI)

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Overcoming Stubbornness

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A large part of being a successful day trader is having the right personality traits, or if not, at least being able to control the opposing personality traits. Human traders will always be influenced by their personalities and their resulting emotions, but professional traders have learned to overcome the emotions that are counter productive to their trading.

One such personality trait is stubbornness. Stubbornness (or obsintance) causes people to become attached to their decisions regardless of the consequences. Day traders need to be decisive in order to make their trading decisions promptly, and then act upon those decisions without any hesitation, but they also need to be flexible and able to react when a decision was incorrect. In order to be successful, day traders need to find the right combination of decisiveness and flexibility for their personality.

Stubborn people usually refuse to admit that they are stubborn, so recognizing that stubbornness is causing problems with their trading can be difficult. Stubbornness usually causes several different trading mistakes, with the following mistakes being the most common. If you are making any of these mistakes in your trading, it is probable that you have some degree of stubbornness in your personality , and that it is affecting your day trading:

Refusing to use targets and stop losses, and certainly refusing to actually place target and stop loss orders Choosing not to follow a trading system, because you know what the market is going to do Holding losing trades until the pain is just too much to bear (or even until your brokerage exits the trade for you, because you no longer cover the required margin)

For any other reason, these mistakes are actually easy to overcome, but not when they are being caused by stubbornness. In order to overcome these mistakes, stubborn traders first need to recognize that the mistakes are being caused by a natural human emotion, and that there is nothing wrong with admitting this. As being stubborn is a form of control, it may help to think that by recognizing the cause, you can have more control over yourself, and hence over your trading.

Once the cause has been recognized, trading in simulation will provide time to correct the trading mistakes without risking any real money. Trade in simulation until you are consistently profitable (by consistently, I mean several weeks, not just one day), and then move to live trading, but be aware of the additional emotion that will appear when you start trading live.

View the original article here

Time and Sales or Tape

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Definition:

Time and sales (also known as the tape) is information that is used by professional day traders to watch the current price movements at its most detailed level. Time and sales shows each individual trade as it occurs, and is usually displayed as a scrolling list. Time and sales can be used as part of a larger trading system (such as a confirmation for an indicator trade), or on its own (as with scalping). Time and sales provides several pieces of valuable information about each trade, and the market as a whole.

The time and sales shows the exact price that each trade occurs at, and also whether the trade occured at the bid (market selling price) or ask (market buying price). This information shows whether there are currently more buyers or sellers, and also what prices they are buying and selling at.

The time and sales also shows the amount of volume that each trade includes (the number of contracts or shares that were traded). This shows whether there are more contracts (or shares) being bought or sold, and at which prices the largest amounts of volume are trading.

By watching the time and sales, a trader can determine exactly where the current support and resistance levels are on an extremely detailed level. Support is shown by the time and sales having difficulty trading below a particular price, and resistance is shown by the time and sales having difficulty trading above a particular price.

Understanding the time and sales is a relatively simple concept, but it takes a lot of experience to be able to trade using the time and sales. Depending upon the market and the time of day, the time and sales can move very quickly, and keeping track of everything can become quite difficult. The more time that is spent watching the time and sales, the more useful the time and sales will become.

View the original article here

Trading Stock Indexes

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

All traders, and almost all non traders, are aware of the main US, European, and Asian stock indexes, because these are the indexes that are reported in the news. However, many traders, and certainly most non traders, do not know how the stock indexes are traded, and often assume that they are traded like individual stocks.

The stock indexes cannot actually be traded directly, and are available for information only (i.e. as a way to track the performance of the markets or a specific sector). Market data is available for the stock indexes, and they can be charted like any other market, but there is no way to make either a long or short trade on the actual stock indexes.

Whenever we hear a trader mention that they are long on the Nasdaq, or short on the FTSE 100, they are not actually long or short on the Nasdaq or FTSE 100 indexes. They are actually long or short on a futures or options market such as the NQ futures market or the Z options market.

Futures and options that are based upon a stock index are known as derivatives markets, because they are derived from the underlying stock index. There are futures and options markets available for all of the popular stock indexes. Stock index futures and options markets are some of the most popular markets for short term and long term traders alike.

Futures and options markets usually move in synchronization with their underlying stock indexes (e.g. when the CAC 40 stock index moves down, the CAC40 futures market usually moves down). It is therefore possible to chart the stock indexes while trading the futures or options markets.

There are some advantages to charting the stock indexes instead of the futures or options markets. For example, the stock indexes are continuous markets (i.e. they do not expire like futures and options contracts do), so traders do not need to update their charting software to a new contract every three months (or monthly depending upon the market in question). Also, the options markets are difficult to chart because they consist of many equally active contracts (with different prices), so charting the stock indexes instead allows a trader to trade multiple options contracts using a single chart.

If you do decide to chart the stock indexes instead of the futures or options markets, note that you still need to update your trading software (your order entry software) to use the appropriate futures or options contract, otherwise, you may find yourself trying to trade an expired contract and wondering why it isn't working.

View the original article here

Ranging and Trending

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Definition:

Day trading markets are referred to as either ranging or trending depending upon the type of price movement that is currently occurring. The descriptions of these types of markets are as follows :

A ranging market is a market where the price is moving back and forth between a higher price and a lower price. The higher price would be acting as resistance because it prevents the price from moving above it, and the lower price would be acting as support because it prevents the price from moving below it. The price range of a ranging market can be small or large, and if the range is very small the market would be considered to be in chop (moving sideways with very little upward or downward movement).

A trending market is a market where the price is moving in a single direction, either up or down, but not sideways. There may be several small price reversals, but nothing large enough to prevent the price movement from continuing in its original direction. A day trading trend may last for a few minutes or a few hours, and longer term trends may last for several weeks or months.

View the original article here