Make Trading 2017 a Positive Experience – starting the trading year right

Published on: January 01, 2017

As we head into a New Year, we all have plans and aspirations as to how we see that year playing out. Some traders will be fine tuning their plan and others will be looking to make profits for the first time.

Over the next week, many of those plans will be in tatters as keen (but foolish) traders attempt to trade the first week of the New Year. This first week back is generally lacking in volume and direction. Many traders are still on vacation but it’s really the overall expectation of low volume and volatility that keeps many traders (like me) away from the market. It’s a low commitment time.

Imagine someone that has convinced themselves that they will stop drinking and lose weight in the New Year, then on the 3rd January, they drink 3 bottles of wine and eat a whole box of chocolates. At that point, the tendency is to not pick yourself up and double down on your diet commitment but to give up. Same with trading, if you have great plans to do great things and then have a really lousy few days because the market isn’t co-operating, chances are that all of your New Years plans for trading will go out the window too.

Typically, on these slow days, the best and often only opportunity is to go with momentum at the day session open. The markets don’t all open a the same times – we open treasuries, energies, indices then grains (10:30am EST). Many of these opens will be lackluster but some will give you a momentum trade. I won’t be trading it but if I were, that’s where I’d focus.

For those new to Jigsaw, and there are many of you because of our New Year offer – we are going to give you a helping hand. The video “New to Jigsaw Tools” is still the best place to start but this first week will be slow and apart from the opens (as above), the action is likely to be largely neutral. There wont be much to see. So we have decided to take the opportunity to have a ‘get together’. An informal webinar where we’ll take you through the following:

• The ES – Where To Enter – a look at the free course and the philosophy behind it – of understanding short term speculation and trading around it.
• Order Flow Theory vs Order Flow practice – Exactly how much theoretical knowledge you need to benefit from Order Flow and where to get it. Then how you go about getting the practical knowledge.
• Permafading and why you should consider avoiding it – ‘Permafading’ is our term for always betting against the market or always trying to enter on a turning point. We’ll discuss the trade-offs to entering after a turn and also discuss momentum plays you can take.
• Incorporating Order Flow – How to blend Order Flow into what you are already doing in the markets. Avoiding the pitfalls along the way.