In the field of financial speculation, the boundaries of pain and pleasure are constantly being tested.

It's always puzzled me why so many people enter the financial markets believing that by simply reading a couple of books on technical analysis, or attending a weekend seminar, they would be equipped to begin a career in financial speculation.

Similar to life or other careers, traders evolve through their experiences (good or bad), or perhaps because what they seek from the markets changes.

The New Year is always a time for reflection and looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead. On Wall Street, it's also when the performance of money managers is measured against the major market averages, and bonuses issued commensurate to those results.

The equities markets have been on a tear lately; all the major indices are at, or near, multi-year highs. This is good news for so-called investors as they are generally long-only market participants. For those of us that trade on a shorter term basis, however, this type of market presents some challenges as well as opportunities – seen only if you look inside the daily and weekly candles.

Over the last several weeks, my inbox has been bulging with questions from readers of Lessons from the Pros, and Online Trading Academy students alike.

There are many lessons from the golf course that can be directly applied to being successful in trading.

There's an old saying that you can never go broke by taking profits. I believe that statement to be true, as long as the profits outstrip the losses by a ratio of at least five-to-one.

In an effort to give some perspective to the often asked question of whether to look at the overnight price chart (otherwise known as Globex), or stick to viewing only the day session information, in this piece, I'm going to show the different ways to look at both sets of data.

Summer is typically the season where market participants have things other than trading on their minds. Even more so, this vacation season, as the cloud of uncertainty hovers over the market. This lack of interest has been manifested in the low trading volume the market has experienced over the past several months.