International Trader’s Expo Event Summary
Hey fellow traders. Last week, I took the opportunity to take a few days off and headed to NY for the popular Trader’s Expo show. Besides the headache of going thru airport security and US customs, it’s always a pleasure to be in New York City. Being close to the action of Wall Street and the vibrant energy of New Yorkers, you feel that you are in the center of the financial universe.
There were a lot of really good speakers at the show and I want to share with you their thoughts about the stock market. Most agreed that the US stock market is going to be in a trading range for most of the year. However, there will be some good trading opportunities but not as good as last year. What traders are doing are buying stocks at support levels and then selling or shorting them at resistance levels. The main theme was you gotta be a trader in this type of market environment as the market will continue to be volatile.
A topic that was talked a lot about was automated trading where you program computers to trade for you. This has become very popular in the past few years as computers dominate trading on Wall Street and I attended several seminars related to this topic. Tradestation Securities, a leading brokerage firm has a very comprehensive platform that allows you to program your strategies and back test them. As well, they will soon be offering a service which allows you for a monthly fee to follow other people’s automated strategies.
Also, currency trading or forex trading has become increasingly popular due to the extreme volatility in today’s forex market. In fact, forex trading is ideal for daytraders who want to take advantage of the ups and downs of the forex markets. There were a lot of vendors promoting their forex brokerage platform at the show and with leverage of up to 500 to 1 with some firms, there’s a lot of opportunities to make a living trading the forex market.
Also, I attended several ETF or commonly called exchange traded funds seminars and the common theme was traders nowadays don’t really trade specific stocks but trade mainly ETF’s or stock market indices. No trader wants to pick a bad stock and due to the volatility, there are lots of opportunities in trading sectors or indices. As well, there were a lot of seminars teaching people how to trade futures instead of stocks. Futures trading is a risky proposition for newbies but provides advanced traders with tremendous leverage on their capital.
Lastly, I attended a few seminars on trading psychology and for those who have traded for awhile will know that your trading mindset is the key to profits in the markets. They talked about managing your emotional capital the same way that you manage your risk capital or money. Don’t deplete your emotional capital as that will cause you to be so frustrated that you will make some very bad decisions in the market. They talked about the #1 EMOTION to be fearful of when trading was the fear of missing out on a good trade. This causes traders to get into a trade that they shouldn’t have. The #2 EMOTION to be fearful of is the fear of being wrong. It’s okay to be wrong and in fact, if you can get comfortable with it, your trading will ultimately improve.
Overall, it was a great educational experience especially for those who trade for a living. It shows that in order to be a successful trader, you need to continually learn about the markets and the tools that will help you succeed. You can find out more info about the show at www.tradersexpo.com.
