Improve Your Trading with These 20 Rules

Improve your trading with these 20 Golden Rules. But treat these rules as guides; with markets, there is no sure thing. But these will enhance your odds.

• Forget the news, remember the chart. You're not smart enough to know how news will affect price. The chart already knows the news is coming.

• Buy the first pullback from a new high. Sell the first pullback from a new low. There's always a crowd that missed the first boat.

• Buy at support, sell at resistance. Everyone sees the same thing and they're all just waiting to jump in the pool.

• Short rallies not selloffs. When markets drop, shorts finally turn a profit and get ready to cover.

• Don't buy up into a major moving average or sell down into one. See #3.

• Don't chase momentum if you can't find the exit. Assume the market will reverse the minute you get in. If it's a long way to the door, you're in big trouble.

• Exhaustion gaps get filled. Breakaway and continuation gaps don't. The old traders' wisdom is a lie. Trade in the direction of gap support whenever you can

• Trends test the point of last support/resistance. Enter here even if it hurts.

• Trade with the TICK not against it. Don't be a hero. Go with the money flow.

• If you have to look, it isn't there. Forget your college degree and trust your instincts.

• Sell the second high, buy the second low. After sharp pullbacks, the first test of any high or low always runs into resistance. Look for the break on the third or fourth try.
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• The trend is your friend in the last hour. As (if) volume cranks up at 2:00 pm don't expect anyone to change the channel

• Avoid the open. They see YOU coming sucker. I like to wait 30 minutes.

• 1-2-3-Drop-Up. Look for downtrends to reverse after a top, two lower highs and a double bottom.

• Bulls live above the 200 day, bears live below. Sellers eat up rallies below this key moving average line and buyers to come to the rescue above it.

• Price has memory. What did price do the last time it hit a certain level? Chances are it will do it again. But not forever

• Big volume kills moves. Climax blow-offs take both buyers and sellers out of the market and lead to sideways action.

• Trends never turn on a dime. Reversals build slowly. The first sharp dip always finds buyers and the first sharp rise always finds sellers.

• Bottoms take longer to form than tops. Fear acts more quickly than greed and causes stocks to drop from their own weight

• Beat the crowd in and out the door. You have to take their money before they take yours, period.