Previously, on "Who Wants to Marry a TechniTrader Millionaire?", Martha completely b*tchslapped Howard for suggesting that buy stop limits be set at 1/8 of a point higher than the previous day's high; Dragon, of the infamous "Candlestick BuySignal Gang", ran off with Engulfing White's girl, Shooting Star, and TheBucksStartHere's volume nearly overdosed on its moving average. . .what will happen tonight? Stay tuned and find out on tonight's episode of TECHNITRADER RUNNING DIARY!

Ok, well, things aren't quite as exciting as all that, but I'm learning a lot, and I find myself thinking about this stuff much more often than is healthy for my day job. 20 minutes of work, 10 minutes of looking at stock charts, 30 minutes of work, 15 minutes of reading my TT notes. . .it won't be long before trading as a career won't be an option, it'll be a necessity. Anyway, we're on dvd 4, which as I mentioned before, should totally be dvd 2, since the original 1&2 of the set would be best used by most people as drink coasters.

This dvd started out with Howard back at the podium discussing the actual mechanics of trading. Not just how to make the trade, but the different types of orders you can place and why you should really only be using one type as opposed to the other options. He also talked about how you should determine what your entry price is (once you've found a stock that has passed muster, of course) and how to set certain limits so that if your pick doesn't do what you thought it would do (yes, it happens, believe it or not), you minimize any losses. It's all making sense Howard, and much more interesting and relevant than how the internet works, thank you very much. If this course lives up to what it's billed as (get your trading up to a 75% success rate), then these techniques will increase your profitability to a huge degree. You're basically leaving your upside wide-open (to a certain degree), but setting your orders so that if there's any type of loss, you nip it in the bud right away and move on to another trade. This is where all the talk about "no emotions in trading" comes into play. If you're the type of person that just has to keep making "one more bet" at a losing blackjack table, even though you're getting crushed, just because you can't emotionally accept the loss and walk away, you're going to have a difficult time. Unless of course, you can cut those habits and become a stone-cold trading machine like Martha.

Next, Martha comes back and lectures on finding buy signals using a charting program. The TC/2000 from Worden is what is taught, and you get a month of free service when you buy TT. I understand from numerous posts on the internet that the program is now up to TC/2006 (or something like that) and that it is a widely used and respected charting program. The good news is that TT comes with it's own programs to use in TC/whatever, so you're not out there trying to create your own charts, just using the ones that Martha develops. After Martha pulls some charts using the charting program, we start looking through them for buy signals. She literally looks at 99 charts on the dvd, and honestly, it took no time. Of course, she's really good at it, and it would probably take me 2 days on my own, but still. At some point, you've got to think that you'll reach a level of proficiency that will allow you to breeze through them relatively quickly as well. I will say though, she was looking at some very subtle things in the charts to either keep them in or boot them out. She really didn't find any that she liked that well, but kept a few, mostly, it seemed, for the sake of continuing on with the explanation of the process. One of the tenents(?) I've heard used more than once already is that you should be looking for a reason NOT to trade (i'm not a poker player, but i've heard that same reasoning used for hold'em games. you should be looking for a reason not to play a hand.)

Once we had our small group of buy signals, Martha began explaining indicators. Indicators are what you use to back up any buy or sell signals that you found using your charting program. TC/whatever allows you to look at several different indicators w/ each stock that you are viewing, so it's pretty easy (in theory) to analyze your stock by looking at the candlestick pattern and the indicators all together. We get about halfway through the second indicator and "boom" dvd over. That's another funny quirk about the course. It's like they didn't say, "Ok, let's end this dvd at the end of this section, then we'll pick up with the next section at the beginning of the next one." Someone has just said, "Ok, these dvds should be an hour apiece and we're cutting them off at an hour. I don't CARE that you were right in the middle of a topic. The HOUR is UP." And that's just what they did. And, so, that's just what I'm going to do. It is Saturday night, after all. . .

Next up, dvd 4 (f/k/a ), and all the sweet, chocolately goodness that indicators have to offer. . .

Have a great weekend (what's left of it.)