Trading the Easy Way

Easter already eh? Astonishing how quickly it comes round again! If you're having a break from your usual routine, I hope it's an enjoyable one - I hide during Easter because it's just too busy and slushy to go skiing and too early in the season for fishing. My rocking chair on the terrace, clutching a nicely cooled Warsteiner, suits me just fine over the long weekend, poor hard done by old fellow that I am.
Anyway, enough of my troubles, which are undoubtedly of not the slightest interest to you - as I said above, I hope you are having a great break.

Whither the markets? It's not looking too healthy for the bulls across the pond at the moment, for sure, with markets looking pretty weak and getting weaker, but as I've suggested so often, 'denial' is an incredibly strong emotion and will prop things up a lot longer than we might imagine could (should??) be the case.

I suspect that will be the case too in Europe and another 'pop' at higher numbers among the major indices would come as no surprise at all - rumours of the death of the bulls are premature. (Although I stick to my overall prediction, make no mistake: most major stock markets are heading very distinctly down over the coming months and years, and any further potential for significant rises meantime will be very limited.)

There are a couple of charts below for you to study, but before we move on to these, might I just say a word or two about 'ownership'?

This isn't a 'sermon', I promise, but just a wee reminder at a time when the marketplace seems awash with 'trading advisory services' aka 'tipster services' and some of you have been seeking my views thereon.

I don't want to bang on too much about this, but TTEW is NOT about being a 'trading advisory service' of ANY description.

My aim for the whole project is to give you 'ownership' of your trading. Note the wording: 'YOUR trading' - not 'MY trading'. Note too the term 'Ownership.'

There's nothing new of course in what I'm getting at: here is a wee paragraph from an essay written in 1869 by John Stuart Mill (Senior official in the East India Company, economist, Liberal MP.....)

"He who lets the world choose.....his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape - like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, must....use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self - control to hold to his deliberate decision."

That piece could have been written specifically for traders, could it not? (It was actually written as an argument against paternalism.)

If all you seek is a 'potentially paying hobby' with a low to non existent level of personal input, then ownership of trading knowledge and skills is probably of little importance to you and perhaps TTEW is not the place for you, because it involves that out of favour four letter word called 'work'.

If however your aim is to become financially independent via trading, then by definition that too means 'independence from Ian Williams', and I see my role as no more than that of a mentor to keep you on the right track, as it were, while you conduct the hard work of research and acquisition of knowledge that is essential to success.

You have heard the cliché a thousand times of course, but it's the easiest way to make my point so here it is again: "Give someone a fish and they eat for a day. Teach them how to fish for themselves and they can eat for life."

I'm trying my best to teach you how I myself trade, but that should really only represent a starting - off point for you as you acquire your own skills - after all, I plan to retire one day and if all you have ever done is hang on my every word, what will you do then?

If you read the excellent book 'The Disciplined Trader' by Mark Douglas (hard going but worth the effort - mentioned in the TTEW manual) he makes some excellent points - much better than I can - about 'ownership' of one's trading decisions and how if you don't understand the parameters of someone else's 'system' you'll never be able to stick with it through runs of losing trades. Nothing could be more true than that - in fact some of the top traders interviewed by Jack Schwager in his 'Market Wizards' series say exactly the same thing.

Anyway, end of sermon - honest!

But still in reflective mode, here's an email received from one of you I thought had 'vanished' for good - reproduced here in full with his kind permission - thanks, John. Perhaps it may prove helpful to one or two of you.

"Hi Ian - I know you haven't heard from me for a long time ..and it's not because I've lost interest in the markets..it's just that I've been trying to do things for myself whilst, of course, religiously reading your wics each week.

Anyway, I wanted to drop you a line to tell you that my trading has improved considerably. I think it's probably to do with my attitude as much as anything else, not that I'm in any way devaluing what you have taught me. Basically now, I am a great deal more patient. I trade far less per point and as a result I don't get worried if I have a loser. I also don't worry if I have only 4 or 5 trades going at any one time whereas I always used to want to have the maximum 12. Also, I have set my targets a good deal lower. Whereas before, I wanted to earn so much per month to make it my living (and failed miserably) now I treat it more as a hobby (although a serious hobby) and have set a target at making enough money to take my family on holiday this summer. I could go on ..because there are so many little things I have changed.

So really this email is to thank you yet again. If ever you had a student that was doing so badly and that has now started to change things around ..it must be me! I'm glad I stuck to it when really I wanted to give up. So please tell your new students that are having a difficult time not to give up. I constantly look back at the wics etc and the notes from your seminar (which seemed to go by in a flash) but I enjoyed immensely. In fact, my next target will be to purchase your dvd course because I realise that will contain valuable information that I probably have forgotten since we met at the seminar.

Thanks again, Ian.

Kind Regards.

John."

Now I promise I have changed nothing on the above message, and I'm reproducing it here because the guy concerned has really, really gone through the mill with TTEW. He has been just SO determined to make trading work for him - too determined in fact, because he tried to go 'too far, too fast' and reaped the consequences. But the great thing is that he has now quite clearly taken full ownership of his decisions for himself, and as a result of that I have little doubt that over time, he WILL arrive at financial independence through trading. Well done to him.

On to today's charts, then, and they're both suitably annotated below.

Till next weekend,

Ian.

PS - a number of you have been asking about my Forex course - it has been completed and is now with the publishers and obviously subject to their scheduling - it shouldn't be too long now before they release it. Also, having received a fair bit of demand, I'm currently looking at writing a TTEW course for commodities trading (sugar, coffee, metals etc etc) and that should be on the go by autumn some time - I'll keep you posted.

.'IMPORTANT NOTICE: These WICS charts are for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. They represent only MY understanding of what is happening in the market for any particular share, stock, commodity or index. In NO circumstances should they be construed as recommendations to trade. If I choose to trade what I see, that is MY decision. YOU must, in turn, come to YOUR OWN conclusions about what action, if any, YOU might choose to take'.

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