Day trading can be an extremely fulfilling profession when you couple discipline and patience with a good emini system or strategy.  One of those benefits is being able to work from anywhere in the world as long as you are able to obtain a reliable internet connection.  Reliable internet is the only day trading requirement that you need outside of a day trading fundamentals.  We’ve talked about the basics of emini futures trading and even tips on making the transition from simulated trading to cash trading.  Now we would like to share some of our opportunities that we have had over the years with the MAP Trading Strategy.

We keep in constant communication with many of our traders from our world and many have the same passion to travel and see the world.  Many of you have requested to see and hear about our experiences to ensure that it is both safe to travel to these destinations while still maintaining your emini futures trading career intact.  And let’s face it, some you really want the motivation to actually take the plunge.

This is our second group venture out of the United States and we have to admit that it was a great success.  After our company trip to Costa Rica in November of 2009 we decided to go to a place that is more European and exotic.  We chose Buenos Aires because it’s the world’s 10^th largest city, and it’s commonly referred to as the Paris of the South.  Accommodation in Buenos Aires was extremely easy to obtain due to the massive expat and tourist communities in the country.  Internet was not an issue aside from the occasional disconnection in the afternoon.  This didn’t occur often but you can expect it from time to time.

We had plenty of room in our apartment and Chris Dunn and I had very different views about the ideal office.  Chris quickly annexed the office to setup the laptop and the 19 inch monitor.  Our main priority was to test our internet connection to ensure that we could continue to day trade from Buenos Aires.  I made the mistake of purchasing a laptop that could power NASA with an 18.5 inch screen.  It wasn’t that I wanted the office, I just have a different idea of being comfortable.  We often kid how he is the American and I am the Latin with a “more relaxed” idea of a business office.   On a side note, I actually have better performance in my emini futures trading when I lay down instead of sit (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it)

We stayed for about 3 weeks and may plan on returning in the future because it really is a great place to visit.  Some things that we can caution you on is be prepared to eat your lifetime quota of ham.  Argentina tops the list of countries with the most meat consumption.  You will have one of the best steaks in your life, and you will be in heaven if you’re a fan of coffee.  If you have any questions about finding a place to stay or trying to find a reasonable flight, then reach out to us and we will be happy to help.  We had a great conversation over café con leche and tango dancers, you can view that here.

Marcello Arrambide, day trading expert, Emini Academy

Becoming Consistent with Your Emini Trading

This week was a perfect example of how a disciplined trader can average 3+ points a day with emini trading! As you’ll see in the weekly wrap up video below, the volume was lower this week due to the fact that the S&P 500 was stuck in between support and resistance on the daily chart, which created a range bound market throughout the week. While most emini traders tend to get chopped out of the market in a range bound e-mini trading environment, our MAP Trading Strategy setups give us plenty of opportunity. What may be a “trending market” for our tick charts, could just be a channeling market on a larger time frame.

Live Cash Emini Trading Video

Here are a couple live emini trading executions from this week. I often like to demonstrate how we can execute very high probability trades with an extremely small amount of risk. One of the largest reasons I think traders struggle to earn consistent income with emini trading is because some people go for only 1 point of profit, while initially risking 2+ points. Does it really make sense to risk more than your potential profit? If so, I hope you’re winning 90% or more of your trades…

How important is risk management in emini trading?

As you probably already know, I want to have both risk management components in my favor. I think it’s vital to have a winning edge AND a solid risk structure. In this live cash emini trading video, you’ll notice that I start with a maximum 1.25 point risk and have a 2-3 point initial profit target. As the trade develops, I’m able to increase the size of the position while reducing the risk. To boot, the probability of the trade increases simultaneously.  No matter what analysis you use for emini trading, staying disciplined is always key!

If you have found this article it’s because you are trying to learn to day trade or have already made the plunge and need to know how to get started.  When someone talks about the minimum internet speed required to day trade there many misconceptions.  Everyone says that you need the fastest speed available but there comes a point where the internet can’t place an order any faster.  In order to understand the misconceptions of day trading and internet speeds let do a quick review of internet speeds.

The dreaded dial up Internet is 56 kbps which means that data travels at 56 kilobytes per second.  That is the highest that data can travel.  True dial up speeds are within 48 kbps to 53 kbps due to interference and other factors.  The next speed available is broadband internet access which has minimum speeds of 64kbps to 2mbps (there are 1500kbps in 1 megabyte per second mbps).  Another avenue that we have available is 3g mobile broadband which “averages” at about 1mbps.  The term average is important because it can fluctuate with carrier and reception coverage.  Don’t expect to get higher than 1.5mbps to 2mbps (absolute max) with 3g mobile broadband.

One important thing to mention is that these are download speeds not upload speeds.  Download speeds refers to how fast you are receiving information and upload speeds are how fast you send information.  Day trading in the stock market only requires minimal upload speeds as you are only placing and adjusting orders.  There is a limit there too since you want to make sure your order is placed correctly.  Working in an environment where milliseconds can pay huge dividends day traders need to make sure that both speeds are sufficient.  The most important however is the download speed.

A group of Emini Academy traders have travelled outside the United States to specifically test the speeds around the world.  One one trip as we were seeing all the Argentina tourist attractions we compared our results from around the world.

The absolute minimum speed that you can use when day trading is 1 mbps.

This will give you sufficient upload speeds to adjust and manage your trades.  Since 3g download speeds are common all over the world you can use almost any wireless carrier and day trade anywhere in the world.  Just make sure you good reception to ensure that you don’t have delayed day trading orders or any data loss while you are trading (be aware of this when using Wi-Fi as well).  With 3.5g and 4g now going live in many countries around the world there will come a time very soon where high speed internet won’t be an issue anywhere in the world.

Don’t stress if you have 1mbps or 2mbps download speed for day trading because that is enough.  You don’t have to pay the extra money for download speeds of 10mbps and even 15 mbps because it is not a requirement.  Here’s one last important tip for people looking to learn how to day trade: For wireless broadband providers in the United States Verizon Wireless provides the best combination of reliability and download speed with Sprint closing the gap with the first 4g network in the United States.

Wandering Trader’s Travels

So July was a great month for emini trading and our MAP Trading Strategy setups!  I’m happy to see that the price support around on the S&P 500 has held us up and actually created a trend throughout the entire month.  As we get closer to resistance of 1,140, the probability for a sell-off incrasees.  I don’t care where the market goes from here, as long as we keep up with the nice intra-day moves that give us our high probabiltiy trading opportunities.

Also, I’m going to be speaking at the Futures and Forex Expo next month in Las Vegas!  I’m going to give away some of my best kept secrets for trading eminis, so come on down.  After all, it’s FREE.  Here’s the link where you can register for the expo – http://www.moneyshow.com/lvfx/main.asp?scode=019638

And here’s more information about my presentation – http://www.moneyshow.com/lvfx/WorkshopDetails.asp?wkspid=151AD82AD5114647AED9576D058503B7

You guys have a great weekend, and I look forward to seeing all you traders at the expo!

Oh, and thanks for all the great feedback about our live trading videos!

So, yesterday afternoon I had some time to get a couple trades on video for you guys.  After a profitable morning, the emini s&p settled out through lunch, then picked up for two nice winners in the afternoon.  I’m all about teaching through practical application, and my favorite way to do that is through showing you live cash trades while I day trade eminis.

Come check out the MAP Trading Strategy for a 7 day free trial of our online day trading course and coaching program.  You’ll get an in-depth education on how we trade, and see how much the MAP Trading Strategy can help you see the market more clearly.  We’re all about trading with confidence, high probability trades, and extreme risk management… Yes, I said “extreme risk management”.  ;-)

As you’ll see in our live trading room, we are obsessed with minimizing our risk and maximizing our reward.  And we do that by looking for a minimum 2/1 reward-to-risk ratio.  Actually, we use a 1.25 point risk ($62.50) and go for a MIMIMUM profit target of 2 points ($100 per contract).  Most traders think it’s impossible to trade with that small of a risk size… and the reason why we can control our risk so well is beacuase of our entry signals.  We get in at a price where we don’t expect to take much heat on it.  For example, on both trades yesterday I was able to get in about 2 ticks off of the “edge” in price.

Going at it alone is great sometimes like when you are using the restroom and maybe taking a shower.  Other times it is best to have a pool resources to maximize everyone’s potential.  There is an incredible amount of information on the internet to learn to day trade.  We won’t get into the details in this article about how to start but we will talk about why you should start with a group.

You don’t need to pay a “trading guru” thousands of dollars to tell you what to do.  There also is a lot of useless information on the web that’s free.  There is a happy medium between quality and price but at the same time that price doesn’t have to be ridiculous.  Whether you pay to be part of a group is not the point.  The point is that the market is always changing and there are always new ideas.  Whether you are a master of your trade or not there is always room for improvement.  The most successful traders are constantly reviewing their results and looking for areas of improvement, but I digress.

When you are part of a group or what we like to call a group of “masterminds” you are able to share ideas between each other and propel yourself to the next level.  This occurs by bouncing ideas off of each other that turn into effective plans which then turn into highly effective trading strategies. Successful traders don’t just keep trading the same strategy for years on end; the market changes, it moves differently, haven’t you heard the motto there is only one constant in life? Change.

If you’re not a master of your trade joining a group of individuals that are will force you to jump the ranks.  A constant reinforcement of great ideas can only mean you will rise to the challenge.  Whether you realize it or not when you are exposed to excellence it has a rub off effect.  Not only are great traders able to share great ideas and develop new ones.  You will begin to see the market in a different way.

The only negative part of being in a group is noise.  When you are trying to aspire to be a successful day trader you will be see many things you don’t understand.  There may be proposals set in place that you are not ready to handle at your level of expertise.  This is why it’s vitally important to have a group that gives you feedback and ideas on your expert level and also provides other ideas that will open your mind to excellence.

Whether it is a group of friends or business partners it’s always best to be part of a group.  A group of successful people will only bring more success.  When you are out of line or start to deviate from your success what better person to coach you than another person that experiences the same thing as you every day?  Consider it.  You won’t regret your decision.

Marcello Arrambide
Head Trainer, Emini Academy
WanderingTrader.com

In today’s blog post you’re going to see how we apply the MAP Trading Strategy in the live market with real cash.  It’s one thing to look at the market in hindsight, but it’s a totally different thing to be able to trade with real capital.

Since we typically trade the morning sessions, I wanted to pull up our video demonstration account to record a few trades from today.  It was a great trading day for our MAP Traders, even with some of our short trades cut pretty short.

The market has been extremely bullish today.  After a nice gap down, the S&P e-mini closed the gap before lunch, gave us a small retracement, then made higher highs all the way up to now (2:36 PM CST).

Also, I know we’ve been away from our emini trading blog for a few days.  We’ve been working on our 3-day Trading Mastery Boot Camp coming up the first week in November… This is strictly reserved for graduates of our MAP Mastery Program.  Also, we only have 46 seats available, so give us a call or register online to guarantee yourself a seat!

Right after our first short trade video, we had a nice long trade.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get filled as much as I would have liked, but it was profitable none-the-less.  The market actually went up much further than our first target, which is pretty typical for these types of high momentum trades.  Had it been in the morning, we would have been trading much higher volume.

In our previous article we gave some tips to ensure your transition to emini futures cash trading was the best possible.  Here are a few more tips on make your transition a seamless one:

Cash Trading Tip #3:  Accept that you are going to lose

Every e-mini trader has losing trades.  You need to accept the fact that you are never going to be 100% ALL THE TIME.  Your goal is to maximize your winning trades and minimizing your losing trades.  If you take a trade you get stopped out don’t over analyze why you lost.  Don’t sit there and wonder whether or not you should have taken the trade.  Focus on the market and look for your next opportunity.  Analyzing your trades is for the following:

Cash Trading Tip #4:  Review. Review. Review

Day trading is a performance activity.  If you don’t review your performance and try to improve then you are not doing your job properly.  You should log every trade you take and at the end of every day review those trades.  At the end of every week you should review all our trades.  And yes, at the end of the every month you should review all your trades.  How about every year?  You get the picture.  Look at trends about what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.   The center of your universe should be improving not feeling bad that you didn’t do well.  If you notice a dip in your performance (after successfully sim trading), then find out why and fix your behavior.

Cash Trading Tip # 5: Don’t skip trades

I’ve heard of many traders take one winning trade and then want to hold on to that until the end of time.  They stop taking trades for the day and watch the market give them plenty of opportunities.  After watching and feeling sorry for missing out you take the next trade and lose.  How do you think that will make you feel?  Then you take another trade out of emotion and lose again… the downward spiral begins.  You have a trading plan, FOLLOW IT.  Don’t skip trades if the result is positive or negative.  Only stop trading if your emini trading plan tells you to do so.

Marcello Arrambide

Head Trainer, Emini Academy

There is a common theme that has been brought up by many traders:  How do you make that transition from simulated trading to real money?  Everyone one can attest to the fact that trading in a simulation environment is much easier than in a live environment.  The main difference is you have a tangible risk on the line: your money.  Here are a few tips to help you make that transition:

Cash Trading Tip #1: Don’t pay attention to the money:

If you focus on how much money you lost or made in every single trade, then you are bound for failure.  First, you will lose your focus and your human emotion will consume you and the day will be won by the market.  While we are all in this to make a career and a living you have to focus on the market, it moves in ticks not dollars.  Does a football quarterback worry about how much he makes for every game he plays? NO!  He worries about executing every play because that’s what it takes to win.  At the end of the day do you calculate how much money you could have made or lost out on?  Instead of thinking how much money you can make you should be thinking how you can improve your results.

Cash Trading Tip #2: Treat every simulated trade as if it were real:

When you first started to learn how to drive did you start racing the first car that pulled up next to you?  No, instead you start off slow and make sure you follow every guideline.  You don’t want to drive into an intersection without knowing how to drive properly.  Every sim trade should be treated as if you were putting real money on the line.  Staying in this mindset takes intense discipline and determination otherwise you surely will end up in an accident at that same intersection.  Once you learn how to drive properly (achieve consistency in your sim results), then you can continue to get your license (trade in a live environment).  Too often traders start live trading before they have reached consistency in the market which results in a longer learning curve.

Cash Trading Tip #3: Remember why you took the trade:

Sometimes new traders panic at the first sign of a trade starting to move against them.  The market has a gift for making gray hairs sprout faster than raising children.  If you are willing to risk your money at the beginning of a trade, then why aren’t you willing to risk it after the trade starts to play out?  The best way to get over this emotional hindrance is to find similar trade examples, and then re-play them over and over.  The idea is to develop confidence in: your setups, your profit targets, and your trade management plan.  Log those trades in a special “practice trading” folder, and when you have that folder full of similar trades, you will be able to recognize the probability and know exactly what to do when you see it play out in the live market.

Marcello Arrambide

The Wandering Trader

Happy 1/2 year traders!  As the month comes to an end I wanted to do a monthly recap video for you and talk about the “state of the e-mini market”, what’s going on, and what we’re expecting next.  It’s been a hell of a month with volume and volatility sustained very nicely throughout these summer months.

Also, I’d like to thank NinjaTrader for hosting a live training webinar today for everyone.  We had a lot of great training, questions and interactions during the event, and I’m planning on doing a follow up webinar for all you Ninja folks!

Now, on with today’s activity… this morning we had another live trading class and did very well.  The market was poised for a nice pop to the upside, but once it failed the market just tanked off into new lows on the day, week, month, and year!  This isn’t a great thing for the bulls, but great for day traders.  Why you ask?  Well, fear is a much stronger emotion than greed, and when fear hits the markets we get a lot of activity.

I’ve also included a live trading video from one of my two cash trades today.  I only took two trades today since I was teaching a class this morning, but they were both profitable and simple trades.  Listen to my thought process as I move through the trade.  Remember, it’s not about indicators, systems, or strategies… it’s all about your “edge” in the market and if you have the skill to execute on that edge.  That my friends, is the key to profitable trading.

I tried to cut out as much of the “dead time” as possible to shorten the video, and make sure to EXPAND TO FULL SCREEN for the best view!