Free tutorials on trading strategies, stock investment, investment strategy, systems & tactics of buying and selling, stop-loss strategy, charts & indicators, support & resistance.    

A single Strategy is not nearly enough.  You need several Strategies.  A single Discipline is not enough.  You need a variety of Disciplines.  You must develop your disciplines around flexibility.  The market changes constantly.  Its biases change.  At one time it favors momentum investors, and at another time it hammers them.  Your rules for buying and selling must be adaptive.  If you develop disciplines that are adaptive to the varying whims of the market, and your strategies are suitable to the prevailing market climate, you will prosper.  Consistent profitability in the market is not about how you "feel," or about the fact that a company has a great "story" and that its stock should go up.  Emotions have no place in the equation.  Study to learn tactics and tactical considerations.  For example, what are the implications of a "hanging man" candlestick formation after a long uptrend?  What tactics are worth considering in the placement of rising stop-losses relative to a rising trendline for a volatile stock as compared to a less volatile stock?  Remember that there is either a person or a computer on the other side of every trade you make.  That person or thing is betting that you are wrong.  What tactical difference would it make in the placement of your stop-loss if a stock's pattern suggests the stock is frequently "gunned" near the trendline?  A stock is "gunned" if a specialist sees a group of sell orders (perhaps stop-losses) just below a trendline and he forces the stock down by dumping some shares in order to buy up the shares offered for sale at the lower price so he can resell them later at a higher price.  This is more likely to happen if the stop loss orders for those shares are set too close to the stock's current price.  If this is a pattern for a particular stock, how would you approach the problem?  What tactics do you use to buy breakout stocks?  Do you buy on the breakout, wait for a pullback, or wait for a pullback and bounce?  Even though it takes time, work, and some losses to develope your skills as a trader, you will find that it can be a very interesting and even a fun way to make a living.  Think of it as the world's largest computer game.  The money in your account is how you keep score.  Even a beginner can hold his own if he is careful.  There are a lot of people in the market who have no discipline, strategy, or self-protection systems.  Protect your portfolio with a good stop-loss system.  Do your homework.  If you do these two things, you will be way ahead of most of the people in the market.  

Discipline implies "teach" & "train."  You are not disciplined if you do not study to learn from your mistakes and modify your behavior accordingly.  Discipline means to govern.  You have no discipline until you learn to govern your emotions.  Discipline can involve chastening.  The market will do that for you if you do not exercise the other meanings of the word.  If you are disciplined, you will regulate your behavior so that you do not deviate from your planned procedures.  A Disciplined investor or trader will combine lessons the market has attempted to teach him with lessons gleaned from his past behavior to provide self-generated tutorials that will lead to success-generating behavior. 

Strategy suggests at least a general plan.  However, to be a consistent winner (which does not mean always winning) you need more than simply a generalized plan.  Successful stock market strategies are more complex than that.  You need a detailed blueprint that is designed to gain you an advantage over other participants in the market.  "Strategy" involves adapting means to desired ends.  To this end, real strategies must incorporate at least some general rules of behavior.  Think of your strategy as the skeleton of your enterprise.  Think of your "system" as the organs, muscle, and ligaments of your enterprise.  Your strategy maps out the general structure of your endeavor.  Your system gives life to it.

A "system" is more defined than a strategy.  That is, a system has many subsets of rules that address various contingencies.  Like the ligaments of the body, these subsets work in concert with each other to support the goals of the enterprise.  However, "system" often implies more than a set of rules.  The term may be expanded to include external support systems.  That is, the word may include the set of rules, tools, indicators, and formulas that tell the trader what market actions to take.  Top traders learn the rules of their system like a student of karate practices his katas (combinations of positions and movements) so that they become automatic responses to a combat situation.  Similarly, all the rules of your system must be learned so that your behavior becomes automatic.  Otherwise, the danger is that emotion will overrun your rules.  A so-called "system" without contingency rules is not a real system in the sense of being a money-making blueprint.   Without a system to give life to your strategy, your strategy is dead.

The following tutorials will vary widely in sophistication.  However, we will work on the basics at first.  We are aware that many visitors are beginners.  There is no particular order or progression as you move from one tutorial to the next.  We will simply discuss a variety of issues in a variety of ways.  Some of our content will be taken from Strategy Updates and other communications we had with clients when we were managing investment accounts.  Bear in mind that those accounts were not "trading" accounts.  However, we believe that "traders" and "investors" differ primarily in the length of their holding period and in the amount of risk they are willing to tolerate.  To us, holding on to a declining position after it has broken support involves more risk than selling it and moving on to something more promising.  "Traders" and "investors" can learn from each other.  They both must master the principles of buying and selling. 

We hope you find these discussions (they are actually small tutorials or lessons) to be informative.  Some of these are mini tutorials on various technical indicators that we have found useful and that we may refer to in our larger discussions, lessons, or tutorials.  We may add other indicators or expand on these over time.  We plan on adding descriptions of various trading techniques or strategies to the list of tutorials.     

Though we have been in business since 1988, this Web site is very new.  We just launched it well into this year. 
More tutorials are planned.  The pace at which we add new ones has been slowed because there are some high priority issues that are taking up much of our attention right now.  Tutorials will be added as they are completed. 
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