We had a potential client come to us the other day and ask for help on trading the Forex Markets. Of course I said before you subscribe to our service why don't you take it out for a free test drive for a week to see if you like our approach. You will get a chance to use our web-tools and see real-time how we implement our 5 rules for long, short or out with the FX Trade Hunter Alerts.

During one of my text alerts I began to mention to my subscribers and my trial student how I scale-in and out of an idea. You never truly know if you are going to be right in the markets so I don’t go all-in during the beginning of a trade idea. I enter a portion of my total to start but I am able to put 10x that amount in addition. I want to see how the market feels and if it feels right and I can get my entry spots I will add to the plan. If I start out and prices press against my plan, I don’t have a disastrous loss by being all-in so to speak. A nice hedge for the downside! After many trades made, years in the business and true experience scaling became the best recipe for me. Over the course of the trial week I had more good trades than bad ones and came out on top making over a 100 pips. What struck me as kind of funny is the conversation I had with the new student after the trial. He began telling me what was wrong with what I was doing. He even told me flat-out that scaling-in and out doesn’t work for anybody. I said that I find that interesting because you saw my alerts real-time that revealed how it worked for me. He said but I didn’t get similar results. I could appreciate that, so I asked him how he played the idea. He then told me that he just got all-in at the first entry spot and didn’t make as much when I was finished with the idea. I told him the reason for the difference was because he played it differently. He said, well; the way you do it it doesn’t work.

I’ve been down this road before with students so my true nature to try and help told me to continue. He asked me to go through the scenario again and replay the action and the thoughts in my mind during the trade. I explained to him again how I played the idea and in this case it worked better with a scaling style rather than an all-in style. I was able to get some better prices along the journey of the trade as price action uncovered the better areas in relation to my pre-trade thoughts. Price action never pressed against me enough to force me out and when I was able to enter additional resources in the better spots, I took advantage of the opportunity. The student was forced to live with his original entry because he was all-in and couldn’t add anything more to the idea. I didn’t trash his thought as I further explained that his style at times will produce better profits, because sometimes when you enter its perfect and you go for the ride on the whole lot rather than just a portion like me. There are Pros and Cons to every strategy. However, from 20 years of experience and knowing and trying both styles I found that being perfect or buying the low or selling the high as my student desired, as we all desire is extremely rare in the markets. I just began to focus on trade ideas that were realistic. Making a million on one trade is sometimes what people think is going to happen. I’ve seen the type come and go, they got hot for a month or a year and go bankrupt the next. Every time I do any speaking events I ask the audience how often they buy a low or sell a high. Almost in unison they say that its rare. Then I say why be all-in? I know you see the highlight reels of Devon Hester running back kick-offs for touchdowns making it look easy, but do you know how many kick-offs he takes and doesn’t score a touchdown? And he is currently the best there ever was. How many of you have 4.2 – 40 yard dash speed? No hands go up and if one ever does, I ask, can you still run that fast? The hand drops.

News and television ads only express the extremes; they don’t express everyday realistic life. We are the Walter Payton’s’ of trading; we take hits but keep pressing forward 10 yards at a time. We might not make a first down all of the time but we don’t fumble or get into disastrous go for broke all-in and all-out gambles during the game. Our style provides us with longevity. We just keep coming back and pounding the ball forward. My trial student wasn’t buying it, which I can also appreciate. As a trader and a teacher I realize that I’m not for everybody and that is why we offer the free trial. We give people a chance to see for themselves and then decide. We like that approach and most appreciate the opportunity. I left him with my last response, “Well that’s why we have a market of buyers and sellers and your statement reassures me that I will always find somebody on the opposite side of my trades and it should re-assure you that you will have somebody on the opposite side of yours. Maybe he appreciated that, but I’m not sure as he didn’t say. He also didn’t say anything in regards to making some money anyway from the help of my trade calls, it not costing him a dime all the while gaining some powerful insight from a 20 year veteran.

Steph and I laugh about this type of situation all of the time and say half of the world is on drugs and the other half is not. We also aren’t saying that one-side is right and the other side is wrong either. We know that there are Democrats and there are Republicans. Obama received 64,639,738 votes to McCain’s 56,899,510. Big victory in terms of a Presidential election but there were millions and millions of people that disagreed. This seems to be the normal course of events in every election. I have yet to see a landslide election were there were no opposing votes for the winner, not even close. Results seem to always skew not far away from 50-50 Some people want to trade more, some want to trade less, some want to trade different markets. There are so many choices in our world. What I tried to instill is that we are not that much different. He agreed with me enough to enter the trade. The only thing that I guess fueled this article for me was that his comments flat out said that my style doesn’t work. It didn’t work for him! It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all. We often hear it too many times across the globe that when a person or a group doesn’t agree with something, they try and trash it for all. It's important for you to stand up and voice your opinion but if it's not working for you, change the station! Just begin to ask; are you getting results? If so, charge onward. If not, change it up and try something different. The one thing I commended our trial student about was that his past style wasn’t working and he did try something different. Well, for a week and not really, because he applied his same past behavior to the idea I talked about and wasn’t open enough to try it the way I suggested.

He wasn’t a Walter Payton or Emmitt Smith style of trader and that’s okay. He needs a Gayle Sayers type as his mentor. Now there was a running back with style. He totally dominated other teams as highlight reels to this day still reveal. He was on one side of the field with the ball and the rest of the players where on the other side, amazing! The only problem was that one play as he cut gracefully back and forth he left his knee twisted in a vulnerable position and an opposing player’s hit ended his short career overnight.

Whatever you decide to try; you can’t win, if you don’t play!! Prosperity is at your fingertips! All you have to do is grab it!!

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