Dave Tromp

In this article, I will systematically investigate the tendency of different Forex pairs to either trend or revert to the mean. I will do so by backtesting a simple trend-following strategy. (Code available on Github. See the end of this article.)

“The trend is your friend.”, is a very well known trading adage. Another thing you read a lot in trading books, blogs, etc. is that the market only trends 20, 30, 40, xx% of the time.

I was wondering how these ideas relate to the Forex markets.

I asked myself the following questions:

Do all forex pairs have the same trending tendency?Are there any pairs that are actually generally more mean-reverting in nature?And which Forex Pairs are generally trending and which ones tend to revert to mean?
The reason I was asking myself these questions, is because I have experienced different behaviors between forex pairs while trading the same strategy.

Some pairs just keep going in the direction of my trades, while others seem to turn around more quic…

So, you want to buy Bitcoin automatically every month, week or even every day? In this article, I will show you three ways to automate your recurring Cryptocurrency buying from very easy, which will require no technical skills, to more complicated ways, that will require some technical skills. Let’s have a look at how to do automated recurring buys of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies.

In this post, I will investigate and show you the ways I know that you can automate your trading without the need to be a professional software developer. In fact, you don't even need to be able to code. The main reason why I trade end-of-day strategies is that I do not want to be in front of my computer screen trading the whole day. Another way not to be stuck behind your screen for the whole day is to automate your trading strategy. when most people think about automating a trading strategy they think about writing code and setting up a server and hooking up some trading APIs.

When you start trading for the first time, it is very tempting to take every trade that comes your way. It is much better, however, when you are just learning how to trade to only ever trade with the trend.

Ok, you see a nice trade opportunity. And you know where to place your stop loss. Now, how about the take profit order? Where do you place it?

In this post, I will show you my approach to setting my initial take profit levels.

So I talked about “What is R in Trading” and why it is so important to understand. I hope I made clear that R lets you focus on and manage Risks by always setting a stop-loss order to take you out of a position automatically if things turn against you. Now, after writing that I was thinking: Where would I place my stop loss? How do I do it? And can I explain how I usually place my stop-loss orders? Interested in knowing how I do it? I will give it a shot and do my best to explain it to you.

The most basic rule I use for placing a stop-loss order on my trades is this:

I want to be taken out of the trade automatically when the market shows me that my initial idea or reason for entering the trade, is no longer valid.

And Why is R So Important to Understand?

R in Trading is an objective way to think about success or failure in a trade. R expresses the (possible) return on a trade as a multiple of the risk taken on by that trade.

In my trading log, I register the amount of R I make. Also in my trading videos and ideas, I always talk about targets, for example, as 2R or 3R. You may have wondered why I am doing that. Why don’t I just talk about pips, points, or dollars risked, won or lost on a trade?

To answer these questions in full, we need to dive more deeply into the concept of R in trading. We will look into Risks, Returns, Probabilities and how these relate. Let’s go!

In the previous post, I talked about why I invest in Gold and Silver. I explained that I mostly buy Silver coins, but there are many ways to invest in Gold, Silver and other precious metals such as Platinum and Palladium.
Here are seven ways to invest and trade in precious metals:
Own and store physical Gold and Silver coins or bars, aka bullion, yourselfRemote storageSpendable Gold and SilverGold and Silver ETFs aka paper Gold and SilverGold and Silver mining ETFsGold and Silver FuturesGold and Silver CFDs Bullion Storing your coins and bars in your own vault is like owning your own private keys in Crypto terms. There are many similarities between owning your own Cryptos fully in your own wallet and holding Gold and Silver in your own vault.
Just the same, security is your own responsibility. In both cases, you are in full control of your money. You are not dependent on banks and other third parties. On the flip side, you are fully responsible yourself for keeping your money/assets s…

I own crypto currencies, because I have come to the conclusion that money as we know it today is no longer sustainable. I have come to this conclusion during the crisis of 2008. At that time I had the intuition / the gut feeling something was wrong not only with our financial system, but more specifically with our money. It took a few years of researching and investigating until I figured it out. The thing is, part of me did not want to believe it was true. And for a long time I did not act upon the intuition and knowledge I had. That changed last year when I decided to put my money where my mouth is and I started to accumulate crypto currencies. Cryptos align perfectly with my expertises: coding and trading. So I went for it... And with success.

Now I want to diversify my holdings more by adding Gold and Silver to it. I buy Gold and Silver as a hedge or insurance against the undwindled money printing of all of the governments / central banks of the world. Money, or actually, currenc…