While it stopped at 634-635, a number of signs occur:
- It was at a 20-day high
- T&S showed a series of huge buying

The 2 signs do not support each other – one shows a potentially high-risk, low-return trade, the other shows increasing demand.

In times like this, would you be tempted to just go with one of the signs? In this case, the 2nd one which is the right one eventually?

If u do that, u will be committing a mistake called “Subjective Analysis”. It is not the wrong thing to do, but it can kill your consistency.

Subjective Analysis is as good as going with your guts. If you constantly depend on your gut feel, you better make sure that your gut feel is damn good. But you can’t trust your gut feel all the time. Sometimes it’s best that you do nothing at all.

When you develop a system for yourself, it’s best that your gut feel and emotions are kept out. This is to ensure consistency – you’ll do the same thing and achieve similar results over a period of time.

I made too many subjective analysis in the past, which costed me a lot of money. In trading, it’s best not to deal with the unexpected, but the expected. We’re not out to prove that we’re smart.

I saw many young people at the age of 19-25 who are earning a decent income and driving cars. To be honest, I wasn’t really impressed at all.

Instead, I was thinking, is achieving success at a young age really a good thing?

To answer that, I looked at my own journey so far. I have gone into trading, property, eBay, and some other part-time work. I’ve struggled with money many many times.

It occur to me that if I had gone into something and became successful in it, would I go into those other fields that I went into? I had made a 5-figure income when I was 19, would I still sell things on eBay? Would I still work part-time? Would I still go for internship?

I think it’s highly unlikely. If I had achieved success that early, I would have missed out certain experiences in life. I would have never experience money issues and would not value money. I may not have track my personal expenses weekly like I do now. I may not experience the joy and fun of closing my first property deal. I may not have worked part-time and know some people.

Maybe if I had became so successful back then, I would not have the dreams that I have now. Most people have dreams of owning something like a house or car. I have a dream of owning something other than that. I have a dream of creating something bigger than myself. Not something for myself, but something that will create tonnes of value to the society.

Before 21, I was obsessed with earning money. My goal was to become a millionaire. When I got past 21, I realized that wasn’t what I wanted at all. All this while I was asking myself what will I be in 5 years time. Then I started asking myself, what would I be doing for the next 5 years? I think that’s a more important question.

But what about you? Given the chance, would you rather achieve success earlier in life or later? Please give me a comment! Thanks!

Click here to buy from Amazon

People who know me will know that I seldom read books, so when I pick up a book, it has to be a damn good one.

Jesse Livermore is perhaps the most celebrated-greatest trader of all time. I believe that there are some other ‘greatest’ trader as well, but Jesse Livermore is the most well-known one among all. During the crash of ’29, he made a few million within a day. He was called “Boy Plunger” or sometimes “The Great Bear of Wall Street”. You can read more about Livermore here.

Let me tell you more about what you can get out from the book. In the book, Livermore shares his principles and methods in trading. Fundamentally, he is a swing trader in today’s context – his positions are preferably short-term, although sometimes he takes longer term trades(but he never daytrades). His approach is a top-down market-industry-stock-approach, which explains why he was able to anticipate a crash in 1907 and 1929.

Much of Livermore’s methodology are based on the concept of “Pivotal Points” – nothing like pivot points, but tipping points of the market when it either breakouts or doesn’t. When the price of the security(either stocks or commodities) reaches a pivotal point, he waits for the breakout and then enters. He stresses that, in any situation, you must not anticipate the move no matter how sure you are but instead wait for the breakout to happen.

The amazing thing about Livermore’s method is that he doesn’t use any charts, but based his analysis entirely on numbers. He says that charts “are too noisy”. To think that today, we use charts together with indicators, while this guy made his millions without even a chart. Perhaps he has his own unique representation of the price in his mind which only he understands.

But his approach is widely used even till today. First, start with the market. Observe where the market is going. Once the market gives a signal, go to the industries that are showing the same pattern. Then zoom down to the leaders of that industry. At any point of time, he tracks at least 2 stocks, even though he’s only trading one of them. He believes that stocks in the same industry will move together, so u must always be aware of the big picture.

The execution of the trades is what separates him and other traders. His only indications of entry and exit are price and volume. He would record down pivotal points as they form, then pay attention to price and volume when the price goes back to that pivotal point. The pivotal point signifies a high-probability, low-risk point where once you enter, you’re in profit. If you are not in profit after entry, the point is rendered useless and you are wrong in your trade. This is where cutting losses comes in.

He stresses that this pivotal point analysis can only come with experience, because sometimes “feeling” and “intuition” are needed. He also emphasized that every trader must find their own pivotal points.

The book offers very insightful perspective to the market, money management and human psychology. Even if you’re a daytrader trading with indicators, this book will also offer you some insights to fine-tune your entry and exit criteria. If you are a long term investor, you will also benefit from knowing when is the right time to enter the market to maximize your profit target and unnecessary losses.

In conclusion, this is a must-read for all traders and investors. It doesn’t matter if you’re a long-term or short-term trader, bull or bear, fundamentalist or technician, master or novice, you will have alot to learn from the greatest stock trader of all time.

Other than BA, all 5 aerospace firms(excluding TIE) have been consistently beating earnings. Other than LMT, their charts seems to be agree.

All charts have shorter term MA higher than longer term MA, hence they are already in a confirmed uptrend. This is a sector/industry in rotation – money is flowing in.

Now only 1 thing is left - the market.

Nasdaq Composite is now at the level of supply which started right at the time when Lehman Brothers collapsed last year. Due to good earnings from major tech firms, the tech sector has been leading the market for the past week.

Well, there could be 2 possibilities: The current buying is a novice rally and will run out once the buying has stopped. It could also attract new wave of institutional buying and push Nasdaq to breakout from the supply level, leading everyone out of recession.

I have 2 plans ready to be executed if any of the outcome occurs.

In the past I was too focused on simplifying things, to the point where I over-simplified everything.

I overlooked the fact that trading is no dice throw – it isn’t purely gambling. It is professional gambling.

I realized I had made so many mistakes in the past - I was sloppy with trading, I traded with so much emotions thinking that a good methodology can cover my weakness for emotions, I ‘broadcasted’ my trades to people who don’t even care, I taught my methodologies to people who don’t even use it and undermine it, I only tested my methodologies for a short period of time….and the list goes on.

From now on, I’m not even going to put my trades on this blog. I’ve got it recorded somewhere in my laptop where only I can look at and give a damn about.

From now on, I will not talk to anyone about trading, not even friends. I will not share trades, methodologies, nothing. I will pretend that I’ve never traded.

From now on, I’m going into daytrading with a different approach.

From now on, I believe in Swing Trading. I’m going to put real money on the line with Swing Trading.

From now on, I will only talk about the lessons I’ve learnt on this blog. No more winning/losing trades. No more bragging, no more emo crap.

I’ve attained a new perspective on trading and a new level of skill.

I felt like a loser. I don’t know why things start getting wrong when I put real money. When I put paper money, I win 60%. When I put real money, it goes down to 90%.

When I put paper money, I put the trade and go to sleep. When I wake up the next day, I see +180. When I put real money, I put the trade and go watch TV, the next moment, my modem gets d/c, cannot work, my acct goes -220.

I don’t know if this is a matter of emotions? I followed what I did for paper money. Still, shit happens.

I’m really at a lost right now. It feels like 2 years of hard work has gone down the drain and I’m back to square 1.

But then I realized that losing is always not an option, there’s no such thing as play not to lose. No matter what you play, you will have a fair share of losses. Some people get just a fair bit while others get a huge chunk.

If you want to play, get ready to lose. Only those who don’t give up and change will end up as the winners.

Very soon, I’m gonna make back what I’ve lost. I’m gonna make back ten-fold, 20-fold, even a 1000-fold. But for now, losses are all I’ve got.

Here’s the set up:

1) Do you know how much you’re gonna lose? Or win?

2) How many people are using this indicator and the same setting? If many, what edge does it give you? If a few, how do you know it’ll work?

3) What principles of trading is your indicator based on? Do you even have principles when you trade?

Feel free to post any response to the above questions.

Yes. After the “signal” given by the indicators, we shall wait when the price goes to a certain level before we know that the move is “confirmed”.

In the chart above, on 22nd of Sept, I drew an area of support from 613.7 to 614.5. This is what Sam Seiden will call a level of demand where there are more buyers than sellers. Why is that so? Because on the previous day, the price closed at that price but today it gapped up 4 points to the opening. Basically more people bought, causing the price to shoot up.

Let’s see what the next price move is.

The 2 timeframes are different because I just took the 2nd picture today and tick charts only last for 5 days on the TOS charts. Now, where is the confirmation that the price is gonna reverse?

It should be on the 2nd chart when the price reverses back to the same level and held it up, forming what many call the double bottom pattern. So this time round, everyone is happy.

Let’s look at the next pattern:

Same thing here except it was a supply level. The price gapped so much at the opening. So now, when is the confirmation?

If you had waited for confirmation, you would be disappointed by noon. You would think that it’s not your day and closed your trading platform.

What do you think? Is it better to wait for confirmation? I personally think that confirmation is the move that you are anticipating, and once this move is “confirmed” your chances of getting a good trade is reduced. Your odds are leveled once the move is “confirmed”.

People talk about mindset, psychology, but nobody talks about odds in trading. If you ask a gambler to play a new game that he/she has never played before, the first question from this person is “what are the odds?” Often, this odd refers to how much that can be won or lost. They always forgot to ask 1 more question: What are the odds of winning?

That would be a whole different topic but it plays a part. So to confirm or not? The choice is up to you.

Ok, as you can see, I’m not a very big book lover, and I don’t have alot of time to read books, so I make sure whatever book goes into my brain better be really interesting or useful.

In this case, The Best I Could is a very interesting book. It is an autobiography of the top criminal lawyer in Singapore, Subhas Anandan.

In Singapore, there is only a handful of violent crimes committed in its short 40+ year history and small island-terrain, and Anandan has defended about more than half of them.

Anandan goes through his childhood years as a defiant but intelligent student to his Raffles Institution teenage sportsman years to his first few years as a criminal lawyer to getting framed and thrown in jail indefinitely to defending all of Singapore’s highest profile criminals.

It encompasses everything you need in a good movie – rags-to-riches, overcoming the odds, prison drama, court drama, politics – It’s one of those rare books that I read from start to finish without skipping any part.

The book doesn’t just talk about his work, he also mentions certain encounters with some of Singapore’s most celebrated politicians like JB Jayaretnam and David Marshall. From his days in Naval Base to University of Singapore(now NUS) Law School, it feels as though he had witness much of this nation’s history. And by reading his book, I feel like I witness it in his eyes.

I had wanted to pick up another book one day but it wasn’t in stock, so I found this and bought it. The money is well-spent. It opens a new perspective to crime, human rights and morality. Anandan potrays his clients in a different light from the media. Through his encounter with them as “their last hope”, he paints out the human side of the criminals and also the unbalance between law and justice.

I think that every Singaporean should read this book. This man is truly a national treasure. As I read through the book, I cannot help but think that perhaps someday, we ourselves may need someone like him to fight for our justice. Someone who will do the best he could.