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 Sam brings over 15 years experience of equities, forex, options, and futures trading which began when he was on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He has traded equities, futures, interest rate markets, forex, options, and commodities for his personal interests for years and has educated hundreds of traders and investors through seminars and daily advisory services both domestically and internationally. Sam has been involved in the markets since 1991 both on and off the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He has served as the Director of Technical Research for two trading firms and regularly contributes articles to industry publications. Sam is known for his trading, technical research, and educational guidance.
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Scanning the Planet for Low Risk/High Reward Trading Opportunities, Part 1
Online Trading Academy offers its students global opportunity when it comes to speculating in markets. This means true diversification. Most investors have their portfolio split between equities and bonds. What most people don't realize is that there are two major problems with this approach. First, no matter how diversified the equity portion of your portfolio is, global equity markets typically move in the same direction. Instead of diversifying across global equity markets to decrease portfolio risk, this approach actually increases risk, but most investors never realize this until it's too late. This type of investing also requires global equity markets to increase in value for the investment to appreciate. Once again, this is high risk investing as markets can decline for long periods of time such as Japan's multi-year equity meltdown not long ago. The ideal market speculator (short term trader or longer term investor) diversifies based on objective risk and reward and speculates in non-correlated markets which offers clients true diversification and constant low risk / high reward opportunity.
Being the lead instructor/trader in the Extended Learning Track (XLT) - Futures Trading and Forex Trading programs at Online Trading Academy, one of the most enjoyable aspects of my daily routine is scanning the global markets with students for the low risk / high reward opportunities we require for trading. We focus on pure supply and demand as seen in the price action (candles) alone. We don't have different strategies for different markets or different market environments. We simply apply one high probability strategy across global non–correlated markets which means identifying a supply and demand imbalance wherever it is around the globe. Students understand that their job as an active trader is not to wake up each morning and trade, it's to wake up each morning and apply our rules to look for low risk, high reward, and high probability trading opportunities. When we find them we take rule based action and trade. When we don't, we don't trade. We always have a mix of day trades and swing trades as well as longer term position trades when they arise. We move from country to country and continent to continent searching for our picture of low risk, high reward, and high probability trading opportunity and it is truly a fun experience.
When I began trading from home many years ago, I was amazed at the fact that I had the ability to trade the global markets from my fingertips. These days, it's even more amazing as new markets such as Eurex and others have come on the scene. Volumes are huge, commissions are low, and the playing fields are more level than they have ever been, and so on. It's great to be a trader.
Next week, I will have a follow up letter on the advantages and disadvantages of these markets for your review. For now, here are some (but not all) of the markets we learn about, analyze, and trade in the Futures XLT and Forex XLT.
With our focus on quantifying supply and demand across global markets and a team of XLT students scanning for imbalances (opportunity), it is really amazing where globalization has taken us. Again, next week I will expand on this topic and list many of these markets with the details that show the pros and cons of each market.
Have a great day.
Sam Seiden – sseiden@tradingacademy.com
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