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The wonderful thing about trading stocks, is no matter what’s going on in the world, and in the markets, there are always relatively simple and predictable trades to be had.

When non-traders find out what I do for a living, they usually ask me how I cope with the unpredictability and stress. I simply tell them that trading properly is one of the most predictable jobs in the world. That might make it sounds boring, and in many ways it is. Perhaps that’s why I prefer to trade for as little time as possible each day!

Here’s today’s selection of trades:

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At last, a new video! I’ll spare you the details, but I’ve been mostly ‘off-line’ these last few weeks, with internet connectivity problems. I’ve been able to beg, borrow, and steal connections from friends etc temporarily, but nothing beats having your own proper permanent connection.

Anyway, all sorted and back online, so here’s a video of today’s trading - the first post-election session!

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I forgot to mention in my previous post, that the meditation CD set is available as a 21 day free trial.

If you’re at all interested in using meditation to improve your focus and discipline while trading, then I highly recommend trying out the trial of these CDs. If you then decide to go for the whole set, they’re available with a full seven month guarantee, which is pretty impressive.

Here’s the site again: Meditation CD Set

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As promised, here’s the link to the audio meditation program I talked about last week:

I can’t tell you how pleased I am that this system is going public. It’s been one of the greatest secrets of my success for a long time, and now everyone gets to benefit.

Do let me know how you get on if you decide to give it a try. And even if you don’t use this system, but use a different system of meditation, let me know how it works out for you.

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Yesterday I revealed to you for the first time, how meditation - part of my daily routine - has been directly responsible for my success in day trading.

I’ve never talked about this before, for three primary reasons:

1. People don’t generally like to hear that “head stuff” (getting control of your emotions) is so important to success in trading.

2. Although I use it daily, I’ve never really felt comfortable trying to offer advice on the subject of meditation. Just like I can drive a car, but wouldn’t know where to start teaching someone else to drive, so it is with meditation.

3. The structured meditation program I use myself, hasn’t been available to the public, so there was little point in me telling you about something you couldn’t get.

The third point is what is about to change though, as the program I use is going to become publicly available on Monday next week.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about it, then I’m going to give you a meditation exercise you can do right now.

MEDITATION FOR THE LAZY

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m naturally a very lazy person. I like shortcuts. Anything that avoids effort sounds good to me. The meditation program I use is right up my street.

You see the trouble with a lot of these kinds of exercises, the ones you find in library books, is that they require quite a lot of mental effort and discipline. You have to learn the exercise, then actually do it. My trouble is remembering the right steps, doing them in the right order, maintaining concentration, and all of this without falling asleep!

The meditation program solves these issues. It’s an audio system - in other words - something you listen to. And if we want to keep things simple, that’s basically all there is to it. I stick the CD into a player (or select the track on my iPod if I’m using that), sit back, relax, and listen. No effort involved - wonderful!

3 TRACK MIND

Of course, below the surface there’s quite a lot going on. Feel free to skip this explanation if you’re not interested in the technicals…

The audio tracks in the program have been designed to synchronize your brainwaves to specific frequencies - which is the basis of all meditation. There’s nothing scary or unnatural about this, we all do it all the time without knowing it - especially when we sleep, or daydream. Using a meditative technique just takes control of the process.

In basic meditation, with practice, you can train yourself to slow your brainwave frequency. This has a massive calming effect, and gets the logical and emotional sides of the brain working in harmony. It’s a very beneficial process, and actually has positive health effects as well as mental ones.

The audio program goes further though. It takes you on a journey through different frequencies. It gets different areas of the brain relaxed and calmed. It’s a kind of mental workout, but in reverse. Instead using energy, it fills you up with energy!

The audio uses three different techniques to work its magic. Firstly, it uses a system of “binaural entrainment”, which is a fancy way of saying you hear different things in each ear.

Secondly, it uses “rhythmic entrainment”, which uses rhythm to relax the mind. Thirdly, it uses “temporal entrainment”, a way of focusing the mind on the other entrainment techniques being used.

All this is wrapped up and “hidden” within a relaxing ambient soundtrack. You might have seen some CDs that use one or other of these methods, but as far as I know this is the only program that uses all three at once.

TICKLING THE MIND

Unlike basic meditation, listening to the audio is a totally passive experience. You don’t need to do anything. No exercises, no visualization, nothing that requires action. Just listen.

The result is something that’s difficult to describe. The first time I used the program, I could only liken it to someone gently tickling the back of my mind. I know that’s probably a really bad description, but that’s how it was!

The first five minutes or so nothing much happened. But then quite rapidly I felt myself falling into a surprisingly deep meditative trance. As I mentioned yesterday, I had already been doing some basic meditation before trying this program, so I was no stranger to this state of mind. But to reach it so quickly and effortlessly was a real revelation for me.

There are a number of audio tracks in the program, and in all they amount to what I can only describe as a a six month brain entrainment program. But don’t be deceived, the results start to show almost immediately.

THE BOTTOM LINE

What this all comes down to is this. Trading successfully requires a solid strategy, and a clear and focussed mind. Only when you have both can you truly reach your full profit potential.

The best way I know of getting your mind clear, is to regularly practice meditation. You can either do this on your own, using time tested exercises, or you can use a program that does the heavy-lifting for you.

Either way, if you meditate for about 30 minutes a day, I guarantee you that you will see a significant increase in your trading performance.

30 MINUTES = $???

How much is 30 minutes a day of your time worth? If you increased your profitability by just 10%, how much would that add to your bottom line each day? Each Month? Each year? What about if you increased profits by 25%? Or more?

And if you’re not yet profitable, do you think 30 minutes a day to turn the corner and start making money is a worthwhile time investment?

AN EXERCISE

As I promised earlier, here’s a simple meditation exercise you can try right now. Please bear in mind that this relies entirely on you, it’s not like the audio system with it’s clever use of technology to do the heavy lifting for you. This exercise will require some mental effort. But the reward should be a great feeling of mental relaxation and clarity. Ok, here goes:

Start by finding a comfortable position. Sitting is good, lying down better. Be somewhere you wont be disturbed. Close your eyes, and count down slowly, from 25 to 1. As you count down each number, try and visualize it in your minds eye. Concentrate on each number.

When you’ve finished the countdown, start to concentrate on your feet. Feel your feet become heavier and heavier, as if they were made of lead. Focus all your thought on those feet. When you feel they cannot become any heavier, move your concentration to the bottom half of your legs. Imagine them becoming heavier and heavier.

Move slowly up your body, repeating the process - your knees, thighs, hips, belly, chest, hands, arms, elbows, shoulders, neck, chin, face, to the top of your head.

The whole exercise should take around 30 minutes if done right. When you’ve finished, you should be in a deep state of relaxation. You can bring yourself out when you are ready, by opening your eyes and saying to yourself “I am wide awake, relaxed, and my mind is clear and focussed!”

Don’t worry if you break your concentration, this is after all just an exercise, and you’ll get better with practice. Also don’t worry if you fall asleep the first time you do this - I did! Again, with practice you’ll slowly gain control.

YOUR CHOICE

I really hope you give this a try. These posts have been a radical departure from my usual videos and charts, so I hope they help!

On Monday, the audio program launches to the public. I’ll put up a post on Monday, with the link to the website. If you decide to give it a try, do let me know how you get on, I’d love to hear from you. And if you decide to just use the exercise above (or any other you might know of), let me know how that works for you as well.

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Yesterday we looked at how taking control of your emotions is essential to success in trading. Rising above the base emotions of fear and greed, and instead, making trading decisions based on strategy and logic, is the only way to have consistent success in the markets.

As I hinted in the previous post, this isn’t something we do naturally, but it can be learnt.

Actually, “learnt” might not be the right word. What we’re really talking about is training our mind.

A MENTAL GYM

If we want to take control of our mind, so that we can more easily make decisions based on logic. then we need to give ourselves a mental workout.

When you want to train and hone your body, you go to the gym and do exercise. The same goes for the mind. With the right training and exercises, it’s possible to hone your mental abilities, and sharpen your mind.

Of course, these aren’t physical exercises you do in a gym, instead they are mental exercises you do in your head.

So what kind of exercises are we talking about here? Should we all be doing Brain Training on Nindentos? Well, not quite. Those kind of mental gymnastics are fine for improving the logical side of the brain, but we’re talking about getting the logical side and the emotional side to work better together. We want to calm that battle that is forever being waged in our heads. If we can get both sides of our brains working in harmony, then we’re really getting somewhere.

What kind of exercise can do that? Meditation!

BEAR WITH ME!

Ok, I probably just lost about 90% of the people reading this when I said that. But bear with me, because believe me, this is absolutely one of the biggest secrets to my success as a trader.

MR SPOCK

I first learnt this from one of my personal trading mentors. I used to watch in awe as he would sit there and calmly hit the buy and sell buttons, and take the losses with the same lack of emotion as he took the biggest profits you can imagine. Nothing phased him, ever. Imagine Mr Spock from Star Trek day trading, and you have some idea of what this guy was like.

The trader, I’ll call him Mr P because he doesn’t like publicity, was quite open about his meditation. In fact, he used to meditate for one hour a day, every day, before the markets opened. He swore blind that it was the reason he was so profitable.

I wasn’t convinced, but I figured that in the quest for profitability, anything was worth a try.

ANOTHER WAY

Learning meditation is in itself, fairly easy. But getting good at it, as I discovered, takes a lot of time and practice. And getting into a habit (which is absolutely key to making it work), takes discipline.

And herein lies the problem - we’ve already established that a lack of discipline is one of the things we need meditation to help us overcome! It’s a catch-22…

Much like we need structure to succeed in trading, so too can a structured approach help in meditation. I’m naturally a very lazy person, so anything that gives me structure, and makes something easy to do, is a godsend for me. Some time ago I was lucky enough to be introduced to a private system for structured meditation. Because I wasn’t required to think about it, or put in any effort, it suited me down to the ground!

And that’s what really turned round my trading. This structured approach to meditation gave me a way to take control of my own head. It calmed the battle between emotion and logic. I don’t claim to know exactly how it works, but it really does. When I finish my daily meditation, it feels like when you come out of a wonderful deep relaxing sleep. My head is crystal clear, my thoughts are laser sharp and focussed, and my emotions are completely under my control.

When I sit down to trade, it’s almost like I’m running on auto-pilot. I know my strategy inside out, and so I calmly click those buy and sell buttons when the chart tells me to. Sometimes, after a particularly deep meditation, I feel almost like I’m someone else, watching me trade!

HEAD STUFF - SORTED

Now here’s the reason I have chosen to share this insight with you at this time. The private structured program I used, has never been publicly available, it was only ever possible to get it via personal introduction. All that is changing next week.

I’ll tell you more about the program tomorrow, but first let me say something really important. Obviously I’m going to recommend you get this program when it’s released, I mean, it turned me from a so-so trader into a highly profitable one. But even if you decide to completely ignore me, please do think about what I’ve said about meditation and “head stuff”.

Getting my head in the right place was absolutely crucial to my success, and I’ve never talked about that openly before because most people aren’t ready to hear that meditation is a key to successful trading. Charts and stuff are so much more interesting, right? So feel free to ignore my email tomorrow, when I’ll tell you more about the program I use. But please do think about the advice I’ve shared thus far. There are many many methods for meditating and “head stuff”, and I believe that trying any of them can only make you a better trader.

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I’ve decided to share with you one of the biggest “secrets” to my success in trading…

ONLY TWO THINGS

I’ve spoken before about how you need two things to be a profitable trader:

1. A clearly defined strategy to trade.
2. The discipline to trade it properly.

The first thing, the strategy, always gets all the attention. I’ve covered it at length in both my “How to make more…” report, where I talk about the trading triangle of stock selection, entry, and exit. And of course, my Day Trading Freedom books and videos go into even more detail.

But that’s not what I want to talk about here.

Instead, I want to talk about number 2. The discipline to trade properly. The ability to control your emotions, to be able to pull the trigger when the strategy tells you to - even when that means taking a loss. What I call “the head stuff” - because it’s all about controlling what goes on in your head.

HEAD STUFF

This is the bit that hardly ever gets talked about in trading books. Perhaps that’s because it’s not as sexy or exciting as looking at lots of profitable charts.

Perhaps it’s because it’s something that’s little understood by most traders. Those who get it, usually do so naturally, and those that don’t are left to fend for themselves.

Whatever the reason, the point is this: Getting your head in the right place is absolutely essential to success in any form of trading.

As Charles Ellis puts it, “If you can’t control your emotions, being in the market is like walking into a heated area wearing a backpack full of explosives.”

WHO’S IN CONTROL?

Have you ever sat in front of a chart, and known that you should hit the buy or sell button, but for whatever reason, you couldn’t do it? Maybe because it meant taking a loss, and even though you knew that the loss might get bigger, you hung on anyway “just in case” it came back to you?

Or maybe because it meant taking a risk on a trade, and you were afraid of losing the profit you had already made on a previous trade?

There’s no shame in this “trigger trouble”. It happens to us all, and the thing is, it’s not our fault!

You see, it’s the way our brains are physically wired up that causes us this kind of problem. Our brains are basically split into two parts - logical and emotional. Those two parts are constantly doing battle, each one vying for control of our actions.

Back when we were all living in caves, hunting, and being hunted, our emotional responses were essential to survival. Basic fear and greed are what got us out of the caves each morning to go hunting, and got us back in there when we were under threat.

But although we’ve evolved into sophisticated creatures, with the capacity for logical and structured thought, those old base emotional responses are still there, hard-wired into our brains.

So you cannot help but have this battle in your head every time you’re about to pull the trigger on your trading screen. Logic says “Do it!”, but emotion says “Are you sure about this?”

The trick is to get logic to win each time, and to win quickly. Only when trading decisions are based on logic and clear strategy, instead of fear and greed, can you hope to be consistently profitable.

CONTROL YOURSELF!

Of course, controlling your emotions and letting logic win is one of those things that’s a lot easier said than done! If it was that easy, we’d all do it and there wouldn’t be a problem. Yet clearly there is.

Fortunately, there is a solution. You can train yourself to control your mind. I first learnt how to do this about seven years ago, and the effect on my trading was profound.

This post has already got longer than I intended, so I’ll stop here, and continue tomorrow, when I’ll tell you how you can take control of your mind, your emotions, and your trading.

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We certainly live in extraordinary times. The markets are just getting more and more profitable. This last couple of weeks has been really exceptional, I don’t think there has ever been a better time to be a day trader.

After the last few ‘long only’ videos, I’m back to normal today. As it happens, all of today’s trades ended up being shorts. YHOO looked good for a long at one point, but the entry never confirmed.

Many have asked me about shorting and what we can and can’t short. Essentially the temporary ban applies only to financial stocks, but your broker should carry a full list. The banks made some amazing moves today, but alas they cannot be shorted. Still, there was enough action in the non-financial stocks…

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Here we go again, another day, another crisis, and the mainstream media are having a field day.

No wonder I’m getting flooded with emails all asking basically the same question: “is it over for day trading?”.

In a word - no! In fact, it’s rarely been so good. Volatility = opportunity, and right now we have more than our fair share.

I’ve recorded a special video (below) which explains why these are good times for day traders. I hope you find it useful.

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Today’s video is short and sweet. Well, kind of, except there’s no “short”. As with the previous video, I’m on a mission to prove that even with temporary shorting restrictions in place, we can make a profit.

So here’s just over an hours trading for you, condensed into under 5 minutes of video, and only taking long positions:

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