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Technical Confirmations Explained

Confirmation is necessary to validate a break of important support and resistance levels such as price patterns, moving averages and trend lines. Technicians and traders define Confirmation in various ways. While market situations vary, below is a guideline of three forms of Confirmation:

  • Percentage Confirmation: Confirmation is present when there is a 3% or greater break of a support or resistance level. Volume attached to the break, while not necessary, lends confidence to the confirmation. The 3% rule is commonly used by long term traders and investors. Short term traders use a lesser requirement to complement trading objectives, keeping risk/reward in line.
  • Time Confirmation: If there are at least three closes above or below a resistance or support level, then confirmation exists. A close varies based on ones trading time frame. Again, volume attached to the break adds significance to the confirmation. (We always write Three Consecutive close +Weekly close must for major upmove or down move )
  • Heavy Volume Confirmation: Volume confirmation presents when there is a substantial surge in volume relative to recent volume, combined with one close above or below a resistance or support level.
  • Combination: If percentage and time confirmations fall short of the minimum requirement, yet are accompanied by substantial volume (e.g. 1.5% close above resistance with substantial volume), that could be accepted as confirmation.

Traders can use this guideline to develop their own requirements for confirmation as individual investment objectives and time frames vary.

Mood Swings

moodIf you do experience mood swings around losing trades, it’s probably because you are evaluating yourself by the criterion of being right–not by the criterion of trading well. It isn’t the losing trade making you feel bad; it’s the perfectionistic expectation that you should always be right. By embracing uncertainty and staying open to learning from it, the threat of losing can turn into the opportunity of rethinking market assumptions.

The Difference Between Gamblers and Traders

Yes, the vast majority of traders are gamblers, maybe the majority of market participants are in fact gamblers. The traders that are gamblers trade with no plan and without understanding the odds are stacked against them. Whether it is buying far out of the money options with no method for profitability or randomly chasing stocks on a whim, gambling is when you risk money with the odds against you and have no edge. The losses of the gamblers is where the majority of the profits come from to the winning traders in the markets who have an edge.

Now the other side is the traders that consistently win by using an edge that gives them an advantage over the other traders. The winning traders are not trading against the casino they are trading against the gamblers. They have become the casino, like the casino they know the odds are in their favor and they will be profitable in the long run. Like the casino has table limits they have risk management to not over expose themselves to any one bet by the gamblers. The biggest problem that gamblers have is their emotions that cause them to always lose in the long term by placing bets based on feelings instead of the odds. The winning traders trade based on probabilities being in their favor and pick their trades carefully based on the best chances of success.

The casinos are built from the losses of the gamblers, the winning traders accounts are built on the gambling of the traders with no plan, no edge, and no risk management.

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