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What is a “Trading Curb” or “Rule 80”?
A trading curb, also referred to as a "circuit breaker" is a mechanism to help prevent the market from crashing during extreme volatility. When they are triggered, circuit breakers either halt trading for a certain period of time, or close the trading day early to...
Range Bars: An Alternative to Time Based Charts
Range bars can be an alternative to time based charts. Time based charts are based on a particular time period such as 5 minutes, 15 minutes, one hour, 4 hours, daily, etc… Each time based chart will produce a set number of bars which corresponds to the timeframe...
Old Problem Patterns – Do They Affect Your Trading?
I've written several articles over the last year about the importance of keeping a trading journal. Besides helping you analyze your trading business, its successes and losses, certain patterns will also manifest themselves as you review your journal. Most traders do...
A Little About ETFs
What is an ETF? To state it simply, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, NASDAQ, Dow Jones, Russell 2000, etc. When an investor buys shares of an ETF, they are buying shares of a portfolio that tracks the yield and return...
Contango and Backwardation
Have you ever heard someone say "The VIX futures are in contango"? Or, maybe you have heard someone say "The VIXfutures are in backwardation". Today we will be discussing a little bit about contango and backwardation. This will give you some knowledge about the...
Technical Indicators 101: Bollinger Bands in a Nutshell
Bollinger Bands are a technical indicator created by renowned technical trader John Bollinger in the early 1980's. There are numerous publications, as well as John's website www.bollingerbands.com, that go into great detail on this popular tool used by many traders....
Technical Indicators 101: Simple vs Exponential Moving Averages
The origin of moving averages can be traced back to 18th Century Japan, and are now used by the majority of traders in some form or another. Those who have studied the early use of moving averages have the understanding that simple moving averages (SMA) were used long...
Option Volume and Open Interest
The decisions of millions of investors and traders affect the price movements in the options market. There are many useful statistics in addition to price movement that indicate what other market participants are doing. This article will focus on two factors many...
Effective Goal Setting
With the New Year upon us, this is the time of year that many of us take a bit of time to reflect on the past year's accomplishments, and renew our goals for the current trading year in order to strive for greater success. This week's article will cover some...
Tips On Planning Your Trading Business; Basics You Should Know.
Tips On Planning Your Trading Business; Basics You Should Know. Do you have a business plan for your trading activities? Do you know how you will structure your business to achieve your trading goals? This article will touch on some important elements to consider when...