Trading Quotes

Most new and unsuccessful traders focus on a very small time frame. They trade for ticks or pips instead of trading the larger trends for points. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

If you are a day trader, you may be sitting in front of the monitor(s) five or six hours a day making quick decisions. If you’re a swing trader (doing trades that typically last a few days) making decisions based on intraday data, you should only have your attention on the markets once they meet the minimal conditions for a trade. You may only have to put in an hour or two a day in front of the monitor. If you’re a position trader making decisions based on monthly, weekly, and daily data, you should only have to spend 30 minutes or so each evening scanning the data and charts for potential setups, or a bit more time if you are a stock/ETF trader and following a lot of markets. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

A very important key routine, even if you are a day trader, is to do most of your analysis and preliminary decision making outside of market hours. Even day traders should start the day with a plan by identifying which markets have the best potential for trade setups that day. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

Every successful trader has a trade record-keeping system to track and record trades with comments, and most unsuccessful traders do not. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

A trade plan does not guarantee success, but lack of one guarantees failure. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

The dual time frame momentum conditions are the best trade filter I’ve discovered in over 20 years. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

I’ve talked with brokers who (confidentially) say more than 95% of their accounts lose money and are closed out within six months. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

If you can’t make money with unleveraged trades, you’ll never make money with leveraged trades. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

Until you have developed a consistently successful trading plan that is profitable on a regular basis, your objective is not to make money but to learn to trade. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

I believe day-trading provides the least return for your time and investment of any time frame of trading. [2009] - Robert C. Miner

When day trading futures, options, or forex, you can use leverage and trade multiple contracts on a rather small account. The average profit should be at least 50% higher than your average loss, preferably even twice as high. In the first four weeks of your trading, you might set your weekly target at $100 per contract. The key element to trading success is having a sound trading strategy that produces consistent profits. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

If you want to day trade stocks, then you need at least $25,000 in your trading account. If you want to day trade futures, then you should have between $5,000 and $10,000 in your trading account. When trading options, you should have between $1,000 and $5,000 in your trading account. If you’re thinking about trading forex, then you can start with as little as $500 in your trading account. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

when selecting a very small timeframe like 1-minute, 3-minute, or 5-minute, you might experience a lot of “noise” that is cause by hedge funds, by scalpers, and by automated trading. Therefore I recommend using 15-minute charts. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

Stop loss and profit-taking exit rules can be expressed in four ways: 1. A fixed dollar amount (e.g. $1,000); 2. A percentage of the current price (e.g. 1% of the entry price); 3. A percentage of the volatility (e.g. 50% of the average daily movement); 4. Based on technical analysis (e.g. support and resistance levels). [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

A good time-stop is three times the timeframe you’re using. If you’re using 15-minute charts, you might want to abandon the trade if neither your profit nor your stop loss is hit after 45 minutes. If you’re using 60 minute charts, get out after 3 hours. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

The more trades you use in your back-testing, the higher the probability that your trading strategy will succeed in the future. 50/100/200/300/500 number of trades have 14%/10%/7%/6%/4% of margin of error. You need at least 40 trades in order to produce statistically relevant results. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

The best trading systems have less than ten rules. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

Usually you can expect the following from a robust trading system: 1. A winning percentage of 60-80%; 2. A profit factor of 1.3-2.5; 3. A maximum drawdown of 10-20% of the yearly profit. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

The perfect balance between risk and reward is 1:1.5 or more – i.e. for every dollar you risk you should be able to make at least $1.50. In other words, if you apply a stop loss of $100, your profit target should be at least $150. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter

Find a system that produces at least five trades per week. [2008] - Markus Heitkoetter