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Most traders or investors who want to get into trading eventually start using a scanner to help them find day trading and investment ideas.Simply put, its a computer scan of stocks in the market designed to highlight issues meeting certain conditions in real time or end of day.Now scanners are not all bad, they are useful to sort through the noise of the market as no person can watch 2000 stocks at once.  The biggest issue is the simplicity of what can be scanned for - everything is a true or false, yes or no answer.

The problem is the market never deals in absolutes.  Its always in shades of gray.When condition W and condition X happen, the stock price goes up sometimes.When condition Y happens and then condition Z also, it often sells off in price.  The problem here is not the flag – that is fine – its that a basic scanner does nothing to tell you of the qualtity of what you are scanning for.  One huge thing no one thinks about is every single stock is unique - they have their own personality which changes slightly over time, but is based on the people who trade the stock on a regular basis.  Just because a scan works on IBM and seems to call when it will move up does not mean at all that it works on Walmart.  Or Walmart may need a third, fourth, or even fifth confirming thing at that same time in order to be reliable.Or in addition it needs something counted and other stuff tracked that happens prior to a scan condition being true.  On and on this type of stuff can go, all of it really is not talked about.

This is why more and more traders are looking for an intelligent day trading robot that is able to track statistics on what it is watching in real time, learn how to adapt to changing market conditions, and basically put scanners to shame.  What sets them apart is a day trading robot is able to use statistics and other tracking devices to turn on certain filters, adjust the parameters, or learn to not trade in certain situations.  The key to using a day trading robot is to realize that its simply a tool.  It is not your road to riches nor is it infallible.  It is basically a more intelligent market scanner that is actually able to trade and track the status of signals that it finds - a scanner just finds the signals but tells you nothing about the quality.

A word of caution - avoid any and all trading robots that claim to trade penny stocks (pink sheet and bullitin board names).I have never witnessed or read about a single one that can prove it can make anything on its own without the pumper volume from the broadcast.  This does not mean they dont exist, just from my observation these prey on people looking for a get rich scam to throw some money at.  And throw away they do.  Most of these types will have some kind of cool video showing how it works to find “hidden” chart patterns, then they show the next day the stock going up.  First off - do a little research - look at the symbol in the video, go to the date they are talking about on a chart and look yourself.  Most of them literally have no volume AND have no price pattern at all.Often these types of stocks have major gaps in the daily chart where no trades happened at all in a whole day.  I would love for them to show me how a computer can read patterns in data that does not exist - the reading is false and made up, that is why.  The volume spike comes as a result of the robot's followers all trying to buy an illiquid stock.  If these things are really good – make a version that is different than the one they are distributing, meaning no one has that copy, and put a different stock list in there.I want to watch it pick a penny stock in real time without it able to broadcast this fact to others and watch what happens.I am fairly certain I will be staring at a blank screen as nothing much happens.

The most successful floor traders are those that have the most experiance, this is no coincidence and should be a pointer for those who aspire to become a good trader. Day trading can be likened to being a sportsman, such as a golf pro or tennis champion, you need to be trained and in good physical shape. Skills are needed which must be developed over time and practiced until they become 2nd nature. If you want to learn how to day trade you must be prepared to put in the effort. Here are a few of the key skills that you must develop as a trader.

1. Technical analysis can be used for futures as well as the more standard stocks, options and bonds that most people trade. This can give you a large edge over other traders who have not taken the time to study the charts support and resistance areas, trendline and patterns. Learning technical analysis is really a must do if you want to trade futures successfully.

2. This is a very basic point but is very important, always have your trading plan prepared before you enter a trade, never try and create it on the fly, you will be much too emotional. Make sure that you have an entry and exit point in your plan.

3. Keep your losses small!, this is the one thing that every trader must do if they want to stay in the game for a long time. By doing this you will preserve your capital allowing you to trade another day. Your small wins will compensate your small losses allowing your big wins to give you an overall profit

4. Over trading is a big mistake that a lot of amateurs make. Professionals tend to be more patient and wait for the better opportunities to come along, this is called cherry picking and takes both patience and discipline. These are essential skills that you must develop.

5. This is a big day trading tip, it is important that you track all your trades and review them to see where you are making the mistakes. This is quite hard work, but this is what separates the professionals from the amateurs. Unless you do this you will keep on making the same mistakes. The best way to do this is to keep both a daily and weekly log.

6. Only trade when you are both physically and mentally prepared. This is often overlooked but is very important. Do you think a golf star can win a game when they are tired and mentally not focused?, it’s unlikely. Being prepared means getting a good nights sleep, having your trading station and charts well prepared before the market opens, taking the time each day to review your trading plan and rules. Finally you must have the mental frame of mind and confidence that you are going to be successful today in your trading.

7. If you are new to trading futures take the time to paper trade until you are very confident that you are going to make money. You will know when you are ready because you will start to hate paper trading knowing that you could be making real cash profits on a consistent basis.

Remember that the markets only trend for about 20-35% of the time, the rest is either sideways or very choppy, if you want to do trend trading to win you must be fully prepared when the opportunities arise.

Everyone wants a shortcut to learn day trading or any other kind of short term trading – someone to teach them the “secret sauce” that will take 10-20 years of experience and allow them to come up to speed in a few months. If you needed brain surgery, would you want the guy who got his degree online in 6 months OR the guy who spent 10+ years in med school + residency + specialization? Is that even a fair question?? Well, it's lucky for everyone that trading is far harder than brain surgery … not really but it can seem like it. In actuality there are really some positive things you can do to dramatically decrease the learning curve, BUT there is no holy grail solution or indicator that can ever ever replace experience. That is learned. The key to winning is doing things that will cause you NOT TO LOSE.

First off, you really need to treat  day trading as a profession. This means act like its a real job and your only way to make money. You will need a dedicated computer for trading only, with 2 monitors - a single monitor cannot show enough data. Older computers are fine for some things, but do not try to use an older computer that is underpowered for trading. I can assure you that computer will fall behind of the task. There is nothing worse than data that falls behind (lagging) as you cannot tell where price is actually at. Trading is super data intensive, make sure you have a computer with at least the following specs:

1. A minimum dual core chip, ideally you want a quad core chip. Each core on the chip can run a separate application, and this really lessens the chance the computer will stall out. Make sure the chip has a decent amount of L2 cache. If you dont know what this is, ask a local computer nerd, they will help you.

2. A minimum of 2gb of memory, the more the better, and the faster the better. If you want more than 4gb you will have to use a 64 bit operating system. Make really sure before you do this step that whatever software you plan on using is compatible. You should be able to get by with 2-4gb fine. The faster the memory the better, but no need to really pay up for special memory.

3. An add on graphics card from Nvidia OR AMD. Make sure the card can handle at least 2 monitors. You do not need a high end gaming card, you should be able to get something decent for about 100-150 bucks easy. Do not rely on the built in graphics on the motherboard, they are notoriously underpowered for any graphics intensive software. Trading is extremely graphics intensive - think about real time charting, indicators, order entry, bid ask in real time etc - it adds up.

You will only need this on your main computer that will be traded on and used for charting. You want 1 dedicated screen for order entry and 1 screen for charting. If you have older computers, those are fine to use for surfing the net, checking news, IM chat and other stuff. I would always keep your trading computer as uncluttered with add on applications as possible. You do not want to be in the unfortunate predicament of the computer crashing or locking up during a trade.

Just like a real office, you need a dedicated space that will serve as your trading center and workplace. It needs to be setup no different than a desk in a normal working environment - phone, lights, supplies, computer, printer etc. Remember to succeed, you really have to treat learning trading as a real business, not some kind of hobby. A hobby is fine, but you cannot expect to become an expert unless you treat it seriously. When you are in a trade or watching a setup to enter, don't let outside junk distract you. This means chatting on the phone to friends, watching tv shows, and doing other things while “kind of watching” the market. If this type of behavior would not be acceptible in a normal office, it will not cut it for trading either.

Once your office is setup, you really need to get serious about learning how the market works. The internet and free blogs are a great source of information, but you should not expect to learn everything online. Go to amazon.com.or other sites like Trader's Galleria - search for the term "charts" or "stock charts". You want a beginning book and an advanced book on charting. To learn to trade you have to understand the mechanics of how price moves, which means you have to learn to be an expert at charting. This can and will take some amount of time, and is not easy. But as you get more proficient, it becomes much easier to add new ideas and concepts because you have the background framework to understand them.

Expect learning charts to take about a year to get good, but in a month or 2 you can get a good start. Again, do not fall into the trap of thinking “if I throw some money at this, someone will show me secrets and shortcuts”. If you don't have the foundation to understand what is going on, no amount of shortcuts will fix that since you dont understand the underpinnings of how stuff works. One word of caution - do not attend any seminars until you have at least mastered basic charting - your money and time will be wasted. When you think you are ready for the advanced book, then you can consider attending a seminar to learn more. Again here there is no substitute for experience. You will need to watch the markets every day, even if its just for an hour or 2 (until you decide its a career move you can make).

You need to watch the market live and then once the market is closed, go over static charts as well. If your time is impacted because you have another full time job and cannot watch the market here is a secret: Get some screen capture video software (records your screen to video) and an external usb hard drive, probably 500gb will do. Set up a real time chart of the market and a few stocks on your screen before you leave for work. Set up the software you are going to use for recording to save to the external usb hard drive. You can set up a macro (there are free programs out there that can do this, search Google) if you are not home when the market opens. Set i to record at least an hour of video of the market open and any charts you have open. Then when you get home at night, you can play this back in real time and work on watching for chart patterns. If this does not appeal to you, some of the brokerage firms or data vendors have market replay that can replay parts of the prior day for you.

I have not touched on one last thing - charting software. There are tons of them out there. I have my own preferences, but that does not matter. You need to find what you are comfortable with. Some are very complicated and programmable, some are simpler and don’t have as many bells and whistles. If the beginning , I would suggest everyone go with simple. What good is having 500 things you have no clue what they do or how they work?? All that can do is to lead to confusion and add a bunch of things that are too complicated. Just make sure its a fully robust charting package – meaning all charts are live, you can put tick charts AND minute based charts up (not delayed data, live data) AND its not web based. Web based means the program is running in a browser, rather than running as a separate executable. For the most part, you always want a standalone, executable program - they are far faster and speed is money. If your trading platform is integrated with the charts that is totally fine, just make sure its not web based order entry either. Its simply too slow to be of any use. Web based is totally fine for buy and hold, longer term investing. Trading is about time, even 5 seconds sometimes can cost you 50c per share if the market is moving fast. That is a real cost and can cause you to turn what would be a winning trade into a losing trade.

While this was not a tutorial on how to trade, I tried to touch on a few subjects often overlooked when people are trying to learn to trade. They overlook these because they either cost money (charting software, real time data, computers) or they think they take too much time so lets find a way to skip this or that part.

Some costs of doing business are fixed costs and must be bourne in order to be in business. As a trader, data and charting costs are one of many. Often you can get them minimized or waived if you are active, but for probably the first year expect to pay for them as you are learning.

When I started trading Forex markets, I was aware that fundamental analysis would not be a way that I could trade, but analysing charts and their patterns was what I preferred. Search ‘Technical Analysis’ on the www and you will be swamped with what’s available, but after much digging and researching I found Top Dog Trading.

What made me decide to take this course to learn Forex trading?…. A number of things besides the absolute necessity to improve my trading and to halt my run of losing trades; was that I understood what Dr Barry Burns was saying on his website and most of the training is reinforced on plenty of videos which makes it much easier to follow his chart interpretations. The other very important criteria for me is the qualifications of the trainer and author of the training materials. Barry’s CV is superb, a business man who treats trading as a business, he is also a highly regarded speaker and writer.

So I started with his free 5 video course to see if I felt good about his analysis systems.

Leading up to this, I had studied several other courses on technical analysis covering Forex trading but even after all of these felt there were gaps in my knowledge that would minimise my trading losses, all this changed once I came across Dr Barry Burns, I now feel confident that I can make the business of trading a success.

Having completed Barry’s courses I have not only become comfortable in how to execute his methods but also developed a far deeper knowledge of the Forex market & the charts and probably more importantly the money management and personal attitudes that are essential to becoming a professional Forex trader.

In his courses Barry details the analysis rules simply and clearly, then gives real chart examples with all their erratic moves showing how to turn the rules into profitable trades. This is all done via a vast selection of videos.

Provided you follow the principals Barry explores, you will end up with a very profitable ratio of wins to losses with tight control on the losses, so when one does have a losing trade (which even the best traders do) the hurt is not too severe.

Barry’s tutorials are the best Forex trading courses that I have found and I would highly recommend that you give his FREE course a go. This tutorial has 5 videos that walk you through some of the most powerful trading material I’ve ever come across.

I personally took the course, loved it, and gained a vast amount from it and have progressed to Barry’s more in-depth courses. My wish to learn Forex trading has turned out to be very profitable.

Try the Free Course for yourself:

Query ‘Technical Analysis’ on the internet and you will be swamped with choices, but after much digging and researching I found Top Dog Trading.

On starting my foray into trading Share markets, I always knew that fundamental analysis would not be a way that I could trade, but analysing share charts was something I could get my head around.

What made me decide to take the Top Dog Trading course to learn Share trading?…. A number of things besides the overwhelming need to improve my trading and to halt my run of losing trades; was that I had a good feel for what Dr Barry Burns was imparting on his website and much or the instruction is supported by the detailed videos which makes it much easier to follow his chart interpretations. A further qualifier was Barry’s CV; it is what I wished to see, a business man to whom trading is a business, he is also a accomplished speaker and writer.

So I signed up for his free 5 video course on learning to trade to see if I could learn from his teaching style.

Prior to this, I had studied several other courses on technical analysis relating to Forex trading but cannot say that I really gained the understanding of share trading that would allow me to be successful, all that has change having met Dr Barry Burns, I now feel confident that I can make the business of share trading a success.

With Barry’s courses I have not only become comfortable in how to execute his methods but also embraced a far deeper understanding of the Share market & the charts but more critically the money management and personal attitudes that are so intrinsic to becoming a professional Share trader.

In his courses Barry details the principals simply and clearly, then gives real chart examples with all their confounding moves showing how to make the rules work profitably. This is all explained via a huge selection of videos.

Provided you follow the principals Barry explores, you will end up with a good ratio of wins to losses with tight control on the losses, so when one does lose (which all traders do) the hurt is not too severe.

Barry’s tutorials are the best Share trading courses that I have found and I would strongly suggest that you give his FREE course a try. This freebie has 5 videos that introduce you to some of the most powerful trading material I’ve ever seen.

I have completed the course, loved it, and learned a lot from it and have gone on to Barry’s more advanced courses. My wish to learn Share trading has turned out to be very profitable.

Test out Barry’s Free Course for yourself: