Step 1 – Know Your Market
Share CFDs, sector CFDs and indices all have different margin requirements, trading times and spreads. ‘Know the principles of engagement’, ought to be the very first law of trading. Trading without a good understanding of the fundamentals is like attempting to drive a manual car when all you’ve ever driven is an automatic. Things can stall if you become overwhelmed.

Before you begin there are three key facts you ought to know about the CFD you intend on trading:

Liquidity – There isn’t a point in any trader attempting to buy or short sell over and above what is deemed to be normal market size. There have been instances where new CFD traders try and ‘take -on’ a thinly traded market. This usually ends in losses.

Spread – The difference between the buying price ‘the offer’ and the selling price ‘the bid’ of any given security is a product of the prevailing law of supply and demand and not generally a function of 1 market maker. Any market participant should base market analysis on realistic outcomes. Often new traders assess a profitability of a possible trade on one price outcome. This is seeking the result that they need, not what’s realistically obtainable.

Typical Price Action – different securities have their very own distinct price action. Prepare yourself by studying the typical trading activity in the day for a share or index. If your trading plan is based on the closing price only, ensure that you’ll be able to ‘wear’ the intra day losses on the open positions within your account. It is great to look at a collection of closing prices and see the ‘trend’ intact; when prior to the close the market in question was 15% against you from the previous closing price. This factor is amplified when dealing a geared product like CFDs.

Step 2 – Become proficient at using the trading platform
Fat fingers are usually not something exclusively suffered by private traders. Institutional dealers make errors of monumental proportions that dwarf anything seen in the CFD market.

In the long term, taking time to understand the restrictions and additional features of the trading platform can make you money by saving you money in errors. Practice makes perfect; so a suggestion would be to trade a docile security in the minimum trade size, using all orders types including market orders, limits, and stoploss orders. Also make sure you are familiar with the times of the day these orders may be entered, cancelled or amended and how an executed trade will appear on screen.

Step 3 – Understand the trade sequence and your position
Every trader should have his or her own reconciliation process and never rely solely on the software to report your position. One suggestion is to print or write your dealing tickets like an institutional trader. Should you maintain your trading records with the same efficiency as an institutional dealer inside of a bank, you will have a great advantage over the typical private trader who is normally lax in the record-keeping department.

Step 4 – Maximise technology
Make sure that you do not make the 200 versus 56 mistake – i.e. open a $200k account having a PC that has a 56k modem. Broadband has never been more affordable. Stick the dealing room number to your PC. If you only have one phone line then, yes, you will have to log-off to call. At a minimum you will need another phone, whether that could be a land line or a mobile. Whenever a trader has lost internet connection trading opportunities are generally missed. Don’t make a technological glitch the reason for losing money in the markets.

Step 5 – Expect stress and deal with it
Give yourself a break. Trading is stressful. Remember the market is actually right, so if you are wrong, don’t take it personally. The fact is that some of your trades will probably be wrong, figure out how to take your losses. Every trader has heard this a thousand times and yes it is difficult to cut a losing trade only to see it drift back on side minutes later.

The perfect trading philosophy is to minimise losses over time and never to work on the ‘I hope’ school of trading. Ensure of one thing- survival. Should you lose all you money by breaking your individual rules then you can’t stay in the game. Staying in the game even with a reduced trading account balance is better than having to walk away completely.

Step 6 – Look forward not backwards
Crying regarding the past is certainly one of the most typical mistakes of private traders. Regretting trades that weren’t taken is as common as regret for the bad trades that were taken. Get used to the idea that you’ll always be prone to making unprofitable trades and these cannot be avoided. How often have you heard expressions from traders like “I should have, I could have “.

In the financial markets it comes right down to the simple truth – ‘did’. Anything else is irrelevant. Always assess why you’ve got a position in any given security on your books, write on the big white board your stoploss and take profit levels, take time out to ask repeatedly why you’re long X or short Y.

Step 7 – Plan your trade, trade your plan
One of the most important differences between a gambler and an expert trader is the existence of a plan. A trading plan shouldn’t only be a goal list for your trading but should provide enough details to give the trader exact rules for any possibility that could arise. The greater detailed your plan, the less emotional involvement can enter your trading procedure, especially when a position goes against you.

There are no golden rules for being profitable consistently. Be wary of anyone offering a seminar claiming they might show you a method of consistently ‘beating the market’. Most of these folks do not trade or make money themselves. Some of them do make money trading but you ought to ask for his or her trading statements prior to hand over your cheque. This is how any bank or hedge fund hires traders; the traders have to show their history first.

Author John Masterton is a professional CFD trader trading with Australia’s most innovative CFD broker, IC Markets. Ben has published a number of articles on Direct Market Access CFDs including guides and ebooks which you can read and download for free.

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