Who is this article aimed at? If you have no prior knowledge about trading and want to get a head start in trading or if you are currently unsuccessful trading and have spent thousands of dollars in plug-ins, software and books, this might be for you. What authority do I have to talk about trading and pretend that I will be able to teach you? None and it is the whole purpose of this work and I’m sure you will find this very informative. As usual you will not get fancy buzzwords from me ;) Working for Equis I have quite a bit of training material readily at hand. Add the information freely available on the web; it is quite a bit of information over load. What struck me after spending many weeks of research is that every single one of these trading gurus were saying the exact same thing. Then depending on what they were trying to sell they would adjust their speech, some being more genuine about trading some being full on sales oriented. This is in my opinion, something you should never forget, all these experts do the following: They first look for a trend Then look for a price pattern And wait for a confirmation from a indicator Of course, most experts have their own unique ways of doing things. And in an effort to give the public, us, what we are looking for they offer tons of specifics. The problem with focusing on their specifics is that you will be too focused on the details and you will miss the whole point. The point that they are all trying to make is that you need to define what works for you. Though there are very many that will actually walk you through defining what works for you. An interesting story… As a child, to teach me to tell time, my parents bought me a little puzzle with the hands of the clock. They would move the hands and ask me the time. Being very focused on the details I would count each minute. So if the hands were at 9:13 I would spend time counting each minute up to 13. Because I was so detailed oriented I was to slow and my parents would tell me that I couldn’t tell time. I was getting frustrated so I switched places with them and I would turn the hands of the clock and ask tem to read the time. When I placed the hands at 10:14,the would say : “It’s ten and a quarter”, when I placed at 8:02 they would say “It’s eight”. I then realized that it is important not to focus too hard on the details as long as you understand how it works. How is this story relevant? I attended trading seminars in the past. And I watched numerous training videos, read the books and listened to speakers. In the end of each training material, my comment would be: “It sounds good but where is the magical formula”, this did not tell me exactly what to do. I believe that most people, just like me, are looking for specifics when they attend anyone’s investing seminars. That is, they are looking to be fed specific information (what type of security to trade, what kind of indicators to use, which signals to watch for, etc.). The point is that it doesn’t matter what someone else is using. They may have a totally different trading style that you. It may be ok for them to make 100 trades in a month, where you may be more comfortable trading 5 or 10 times. They may have a lot of money to trade with, where you may have a more modest account. They may have a higher risk tolerance, where you are more risk adverse. The point is that you need to understand why you have picked the system that you have and understand the information that you get from it. When you are armed with that knowledge you will be able to make the appropriate decisions. My final conclusion was that everyone should design and test their system.