In the Race

Less Than 5 Minutes A Day

There is going to be a learning curve. You have to set up your trading account with a broker if you do not already have one (See Links). If you are new to trading it will take time to learn how to place an order. I will make this very easy. I will send an e-mail when a trade is near, alerting you not to be sleeping. When a signal is given, I will send another e-mail stating exactly what the order is. You can then read the order to your broker. If the order is filled, your e-mail will have further instructions as to where to place your stop and when to exit.

This is a no-frills service. I will not fill up pages with fundamental analysis or comments on technical support areas or resistence levels. We will just let the system pick the trades and stay focused on the finish line.

Gettig into the race may be easy, but staying in the race is quite another challenge. I have developed a money maagement system for this trading program. Please take the time to learn it and use it. It is explained thoroughly under training. Before you go there let me mention an important part of trading any system.

Money Management

If anybody has a vocation that requires personnel management you know about the necessity of three attributes to do your work well. You need confidence, so the people you are managing will follow you. You have to stay consistent in your leading so people know what to expect because they will test you to see what they can get away with and what they can’t. You need discipline to stay with your plan and control every situation that may prevent you from obtaining your goals and objectives.

Money follows good management. Money flees poor management. A fool is soon separated from his money. I have written a lengthy technique for money management under training. I hope you will take the time to read it. There are trades that the Tortoise Trades system generates that will have a very high risk. If your account is not funded enough, the money management system on this site will keep you out of those trades.

Staying confident, consistent and disciplined will require an understanding of the risk and potential of this system. Using the money management system I laid out under training will give you the plan you need. The issue of how many contracts to trade and which trades to take are dealt with in that section.

Over the years of trading I have seen many traders with too small of accounts take too large a risk. As long as the trades were profitable everything seemed to be going well. But as soon as a lossing trade came along the account dropped too much and took the trader out of the markets. If the stops create too large of a risk for your account then you will have to pass on that trade. Don't hope for a profitable trade while taking a very high risk.

What I want to make clear here is my method of exiting a trade with a loss. I believe a trading system should set stops based on market action and not dollar amount. The Tortoise Trade system tells you where to put the stops. If these stops create too large of a risk for your account then you will have to pass on that trade. Do not change the stops to "lower" the risk.

My system has two methods to determine when to get out with a loss. The initial stop I give you I call a Protective Stop. It is pretty far away from the market. Most times it is as much as the profit objective I am trying to get. Most veteran traders will tell you that this is too high of a risk reward ratio.

I use the Protective Stop because there could be a disaster that hits the market and traders panic and want out. The market can move very suddenly and have a very large trading range. This may be because of a big news event or disaster.

What is a disaster? One that I recall right away is Chernobyl’ back in April of 1986. A Russian nuclear plant had an accident and almost had a melt down. We didn’t know how serious it was for awhile, but you can imagine that rumors abounded. Thousands of acres of farmland in Russia could have been contaminated with radiation. The first reports were sketchy. Russia certainly didn’t want the world to know what really happened. The futures market reacted and grains started taking off. I, personally, do not like to be in the market when a disaster like this happens. There are plenty of opportunities to trade under normal conditions with plenty of volatility. My Protective Stop are for times like this.

The other method of exiting a trade is the Primary Stop loss method. This stop is based on a close only stop. This is the stop that I use to determine what the risk is on that trade. A close only stop leaves you pretty unprotected. The market can move pretty far against you before it closes. The purpose of the Protective Stop is to protect against this and is placed as a straight stop that sits in the market. When the stop close only stop is elected then the Protective Stop is cancel and we exit the market on the next day’s open.

This stop loss method I just describe is based on market points not money stops. Before a trade is entered you must determine if these stops create too high of a risk for the size of your account. Conservative money management will keep you from developing losses that deplete your account. Successful trading of any good system is staying with the system long enough and enduring the times when it is not making money. Your success will not only be determine by the amount of money in your account but by what level of confidence, consistency and discipline in money management you can maintain in trading this system.