By Elliott Wave International

More credit is denominated in U.S. dollars than any other currency. What does this mean for the value of the dollar as the credit crisis continues its strangle-hold on the world economies?

Enjoy this video clip of Bob Prechter from an October interview with The Mind of Money host Douglass Lodmell, in which Bob discusses the debt implosion and the value of the U.S. dollar.

You can watch Prechter’s full 45-minute interview here — no sign up required!

That’s an age-old question. While there is no magic formula, EWI Senior Instructor Jeffrey Kennedy has identified five fundamental flaws that, in his opinion, stop most traders from being consistently successful. We don’t claim to have found The Holy Grail of trading here, but sometimes a single idea can change a person’s life. Maybe you’ll find one in Jeffrey’s take on trading. We sincerely hope so.

The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Kennedy’s Trader’s Classroom Collection, Volume 4. Learn how to get 14 more actionable trading lessons — FREE — below.

Why Do Traders Lose?

If you’ve been trading for a long time, you no doubt have felt that a monstrous, invisible hand sometimes reaches into your trading account and takes out money. It doesn’t seem to matter how many books you buy, how many seminars you attend or how many hours you spend analyzing price charts, you just can’t seem to prevent that invisible hand from depleting your trading account funds.

Which brings us to the question: Why do traders lose? Or maybe we should ask, “How do you stop the Hand?” Whether you are a seasoned professional or just thinking about opening your first trading account, the ability to stop the Hand is proportional to how well you understand and overcome the Five Fatal Flaws of trading. For each fatal flaw represents a finger on the invisible hand that wreaks havoc with your trading account.

Fatal Flaw No. 1 — Lack of Methodology
If you aim to be a consistently successful trader, then you must have a defined trading methodology, which is simply a clear and concise way of looking at markets. Guessing or going by gut instinct won’t work over the long run. If you don’t have a defined trading methodology, then you don’t have a way to know what constitutes a buy or sell signal. Moreover, you can’t even consistently correctly identify the trend.

How to overcome this fatal flaw? Answer: Write down your methodology. Define in writing what your analytical tools are and, more importantly, how you use them. It doesn’t matter whether you use the Wave Principle, Point and Figure charts, Stochastics, RSI or a combination of all of the above. What does matter is that you actually take the effort to define it (i.e., what constitutes a buy, a sell, your trailing stop and instructions on exiting a position). And the best hint I can give you regarding developing a defined trading methodology is this: If you can’t fit it on the back of a business card, it’s probably too complicated.

Fatal Flaw No. 2 — Lack of Discipline
When you have clearly outlined and identified your trading methodology, then you must have the discipline to follow your system. A Lack of Discipline in this regard is the second fatal flaw. If the way you view a price chart or evaluate a potential trade setup is different from how you did it a month ago, then you have either not identified your methodology or you lack the discipline to follow the methodology you have identified. The formula for success is to consistently apply a proven methodology. So the best advice I can give you to overcome a lack of discipline is to define a trading methodology that works best for you and follow it religiously.

Fatal Flaw No. 3 — Unrealistic Expectations
Between you and me, nothing makes me angrier than those commercials that say something like, “…$5,000 properly positioned in Natural Gas can give you returns of over $40,000…” Advertisements like this are a disservice to the financial industry as a whole and end up costing uneducated investors a lot more than $5,000. In addition, they help to create the third fatal flaw: Unrealistic Expectations.

Yes, it is possible to experience above-average returns trading your own account. However, it’s difficult to do it without taking on above-average risk. So what is a realistic return to shoot for in your first year as a trader — 50%, 100%, 200%? Whoa, let’s rein in those unrealistic expectations. In my opinion, the goal for every trader their first year out should be not to lose money. In other words, shoot for a 0% return your first year. If you can manage that, then in year two, try to beat the Dow or the S&P. These goals may not be flashy but they are realistic, and if you can learn to live with them — and achieve them — you will fend off the Hand.

Fatal Flaw No. 4 — Lack of Patience
The fourth finger of the invisible hand that robs your trading account is Lack of Patience. I forget where, but I once read that markets trend only 20% of the time, and, from my experience, I would say that this is an accurate statement. So think about it, the other 80% of the time the markets are not trending in one clear direction.

That may explain why I believe that for any given time frame, there are only two or three really good trading opportunities. For example, if you’re a long-term trader, there are typically only two or three compelling tradable moves in a market during any given year. Similarly, if you are a short-term trader, there are only two or three high-quality trade setups in a given week.

All too often, because trading is inherently exciting (and anything involving money usually is exciting), it’s easy to feel like you’re missing the party if you don’t trade a lot. As a result, you start taking trade setups of lesser and lesser quality and begin to over-trade.

How do you overcome this lack of patience? The advice I have found to be most valuable is to remind yourself that every week, there is another trade-of-the-year. In other words, don’t worry about missing an opportunity today, because there will be another one tomorrow, next week and next month…I promise.

I remember a line from a movie (either Sergeant York with Gary Cooper or The Patriot with Mel Gibson) in which one character gives advice to another on how to shoot a rifle: “Aim small, miss small.” I offer the same advice in this new context. To aim small requires patience. So be patient, and you’ll miss small.

Fatal Flaw No. 5 — Lack of Money Management
The final fatal flaw to overcome as a trader is a Lack of Money Management, and this topic deserves more than just a few paragraphs, because money management encompasses risk/reward analysis, probability of success and failure, protective stops and so much more. Even so, I would like to address the subject of money management with a focus on risk as a function of portfolio size.

Now the big boys (i.e., the professional traders) tend to limit their risk on any given position to 1% – 3% of their portfolio. If we apply this rule to ourselves, then for every $5,000 we have in our trading account, we can risk only $50 – $150 on any given trade. Stocks might be a little different, but a $50 stop in Corn, which is one point, is simply too tight a stop, especially when the 10-day average trading range in Corn recently has been more than 10 points. A more plausible stop might be five points or 10, in which case, depending on what percentage of your total portfolio you want to risk, you would need an account size between $15,000 and $50,000.

Simply put, I believe that many traders begin to trade either under-funded or without sufficient capital in their trading account to trade the markets they choose to trade. And that doesn’t even address the size that they trade (i.e., multiple contracts).

To overcome this fatal flaw, let me expand on the logic from the “aim small, miss small” movie line. If you have a small trading account, then trade small. You can accomplish this by trading fewer contracts, or trading e-mini contracts or even stocks. Bottom line, on your way to becoming a consistently successful trader, you must realize that one key is longevity. If your risk on any given position is relatively small, then you can weather the rough spots. Conversely, if you risk 25% of your portfolio on each trade, after four consecutive losers, you’re out all together.

Break the Hand’s Grip
Trading successfully is not easy. It’s hard work…damn hard. And if anyone leads you to believe otherwise, run the other way, and fast. But this hard work can be rewarding, above-average gains are possible and the sense of satisfaction one feels after a few nice trades is absolutely priceless. To get to that point, though, you must first break the fingers of the Hand that is holding you back and stealing money from your trading account. I can guarantee that if you attend to the five fatal flaws I’ve outlined, you won’t be caught red-handed stealing from your own account.

Get 14 Critical Lessons Every Trader Should Know Learn about managing your emotions, developing your trading methodology, and the importance of discipline in your trading decisions in The Best of Trader’s Classroom, a FREE 45-page eBook from Elliott Wave International. Since 1999, Jeffrey Kennedy has produced dozens of Trader’s Classroom lessons exclusively for his subscribers. Now you can get “the best of the best” in these 14 lessons that offer the most critical information every trader should know. Find out why traders fail, the three phases of a trader’s education, and how to make yourself a better trader with lessons on the Wave Principle, bar patterns, Fibonacci sequences, and more! Don’t miss your chance to improve your trading. Download your FREE eBook today!

This year, the mainstream financial community is sharing the same sentiment. Here’s how EWI’s Steve Hochberg summarized it [emphasis added]:

At its conclusion, 2011 was marked by back-and-forth stock swings that resulted in essentially a flat market. My Bloomberg screen shows that the DJIA ended up 5.53% for the year, the S&P was flat…while the NASDAQ was down 1.80%. The broadest aggregate measure of stock market performance, the DJ Wilshire 5000, which includes nearly all stocks that trade, ended 2011 down 1%.

The Dow’s action masks a strongly negative stock market performance overseas. For instance, in U.S. dollar terms, the Euro Stoxx 50 Index was down nearly 20% in 2011, with the FTSE down almost 6%, the French CAC off almost 20% and the German DAX down over 17%. Asian markets were also hit hard. The S&P Asia 50 lost over 15%, the Nikkei declined 13%, the Hang Seng was off 20%, the Shanghai Composite ended 2011 down over 18%, while Australia was lower by 14%. All were down in euro terms, too.

But not to worry: a recent USA Today article notes that a “quick survey of New Year’s prognostications from investment strategists suggests stocks might deliver the double-digit gains that they have put up, on average, over the long term. A snapshot of 2012 year-end-price targets from five firms shows an average gain of 10.5% for stocks.”

Very optimistic, indeed!

Except, when have we heard that kind of talk before?

Hochberg continues:

The “10.5%” forecasted gains for the coming year is interesting because it is almost exactly the average forecasted gains for stocks for 2011, as the subheading in the following Barron’s cover story from December 2010 shows.

That’s right. A year ago, forecasts for stocks in 2011 were just as optimistic as they are now for 2012 — and largely for the same reasons: improving economy, recovering real estate and jobs markets, and a host of other “better fundamentals.”

From an Elliott wave perspective, the reason 2011 mainstream financial forecasts fell flat was simple: Stocks don’t follow the economy. It’s the other way around: The economy follows stocks.

What’s Really Ahead for 2012? There is a lot of optimism building around the stock market, but is it based on sound analysis or hope created by recent economic news reports? Elliott Wave International has released a free report to help you navigate the markets and prepare for what’s ahead. You’ll get hard facts, 25 eye-opening charts and 14 pages of straightforward commentary that will help you see the “big picture” so you can position yourself for the years to come.

Download The Most Important Investment Report You’ll Read for 2012 now.

By Elliott Wave International

Do your decisions rely on data, or do you go with your gut?

Think about your most recent auto purchase. Was it based on meticulous consumer research or did you go with a model that “felt right”?

How about the last time you had to assemble something? Did you read the manual first or just figure it out as you went?

What about your most recent successful stock market trade?

Consistent trading success demands independent thinking and emotional discipline.

Jeffrey Kennedy, our Chief Commodity Analyst and highly-respected tutorial instructor, says:

I just cannot stress enough how you have to manage your emotions whenever you’re on [a] position.

Field dependence can sabotage you unknowingly when you’re trading, because you’ll see a trade signal, the trade will be there, but “it just won’t feel right.”

[It's] one of those things that can sabotage us if we’re not aware of it, or, more importantly, [don't] have a well-defined methodology and the discipline to follow it.

In footage from his trading course in Las Vegas, he goes on to discuss the psychological profile that makes “the best trader:”

Learn more about managing your emotions, developing your trading methodology, and the importance of discipline in your trading decisions in The Best of Trader’s Classroom, a FREE 45-page eBook from Elliott Wave International.

Since 1999, Jeffrey Kennedy has produced dozens of Trader’s Classroom lessons exclusively for his subscribers. Now you can get “the best of the best” in these 14 lessons that offer the most critical information every trader should know.

Find out why traders fail, the three phases of a trader’s education, and how to make yourself a better trader with lessons on the Wave Principle, bar patterns, Fibonacci sequences, and more!

Don’t miss your chance to improve your trading. Download your FREE eBook today!

By Elliott Wave International

The bursting of the “debt bubble” which started in 2008 is far from over.

It’s the financial story of our age and it’s happening before our eyes. The full scope is hard to keep up with because it’s unfolding at various levels.

The top level is the sovereign debt crisis:

• National governments: Several in Europe and even the U.S.

• State and local governments: services slashed; vendors waiting to get paid.

• Corporations: financial institutions at home and abroad remain in questionable health. PIMCO Chief tells Bloomberg (9/13) “We’re getting close to a full-blown banking crisis in Europe.” And CNBC reports (9/14) “Moody’s Investors Service said…it downgraded the credit ratings of Societe Generale and Credit Agricole.”

• Individual Households: “under-water” mortgages; “new conservatism” toward spending.

As the credit bubble continues to deflate, the evaporation of vast wealth may follow on a historic scale. Please read this excerpt from the second edition of Conquer the Crash (pp. 94-95):

“…a lender starts with a million dollars and the borrower starts with zero. Upon extending the loan, the borrower possesses the million dollars, yet the lender feels that he still owns the million dollars that he lent out. If anyone asks the lender what he is worth, he says, ‘a million dollars,’ and shows the note to prove it. Because of this conviction, there is, in the minds of the debtor and the creditor combined, two million dollars worth of value where before there was only one. When the lender calls in the debt and the borrower pays it, he gets back his million dollars. If the borrower can’t pay it, the value of the note goes to zero. Either way, the extra value disappears…

“The dynamics of value expansion and contraction explain why a bear market can bankrupt millions of people. At the peak of a credit expansion or a bull market, assets have been valued upward, and all participants are wealthy — both the people who sold the assets and the people who hold the assets. The latter group is far larger than the former, because the total supply of money has been relatively stable while the total value of financial assets has ballooned. When the market turns down, the dynamic goes into reverse. Only a very few owners of a collapsing financial asset trade it for money at 90 percent of peak value. Some others may get out at 80 percent, 50 percent or 30 percent of peak value. In each case, sellers are simply transforming the remaining future value losses to someone else. In a bear market, the vast, vast majority does nothing and gets stuck holding assets with low or non-existent valuations. The ‘million dollars’ that a wealthy investor might have thought he had in his bond portfolio or at a stock’s peak value can quite rapidly become $50,000 or $5000 or $50. The rest of it just disappears. You see, he never really had a million dollars; all he had was IOUs or stock certificates. The idea that it had a certain financial value was in his head and the heads of others who agreed. When the point of agreement changed, so did the value. Poof! Gone in a flash of aggregated neurons. This is exactly what happens to most investment assets in a period of deflation.”

Now is the time to prepare for a deflationary depression by reading the 90-page Free Report titled Deflation Survival Guide. This eBook is now updated with Robert Prechter’s most important analysis and forecasts regarding deflation. You can read this free financial guide right away as a Club EWI Member (membership is free). Joining Club EWI is easy and just takes moments. See the Deflation Survival Guide on your screen by following this link>>

Share/Bookmark

Learn the Best Technical Indicators for Successful Trading

In this free report, you will learn the tools of the trade directly from the analysts at Elliott Wave International. This free report uses both video lessons and reports to teach you how to incorporate technical indicators into your analysis to improve your trading decisions. Get your technical indicators report now.

Share/Bookmark

Dear Trader,

Successful trading doesn’t happen by accident. And it doesn’t happen by watching news headlines and reading company earnings reports. When the markets get volatile and the fundamentals don’t seem to work, it’s time to turn to technical analysis.

Our friends at Elliott Wave International employ the largest team of technical analysts in the world. They have just released a new report to help you better understand technical analysis: Learn the Best Technical Indicators For Successful Trading.

This report will help you understand which technical indicators are best for analyzing chart patterns, which are best for anticipating price action, even which are best for spotting high-confidence trade setups. You’ll also learn how technical indicators can be used to complement Elliott wave and other technical methods.

You get both video lessons and reports from EWI’s expert analysts that will teach you how you can use technical indicators such as MACD, the advance-decline line, trendlines, and Fibonacci retracements. You’ll learn how these technical indicators are so critical to helping you make successful trading decisions.

EWI’s expert analysts incorporate these indicators into their market analysis on a daily basis and they share their methods with you in this report.

Get your FREE report, Learn the Best Technical Indicators For Successful Trading, Now.

Share/Bookmark

By Elliott Wave International

During the past few years, The Federal Reserve has engaged in a “deliberate inflating policy.”

This policy earned disfavor, both at home and abroad.

Robert Prechter said this in the July Elliott Wave Theorist:

“Foreign powers have been irate over the Fed’s deliberate inflating policy. At its outset, QE2 generated ‘a chorus of criticism’ from China, Russia, Japan, Brazil and Germany. It prompted one of China’s three credit rating services to lower its rating on U.S. debt from AA to A+, on the basis that QE2 is a scheme to defraud the Treasury’s creditors.

(Inflation is a scheme to rob everyone.) Whether or not that rating decision was politically motivated, it represents foreign resistance to the Fed’s machinations.”

[Note: The credit rating service in China is not alone in downgrading U.S. debt. History was made August 5 when Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA+.]

External resistance to the Fed’s policies is one thing. But the machinations of America’s central bank are also encountering resistance from within the Fed itself, albeit “behind closed doors.” Let’s return to the July Theorist:

It is not just outsiders who criticize the Fed’s policies. Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig voted against all seven of the Fed’s policy decisions in 2010. He disagreed with QE2 on the basis that it would generate inflation. He went public with his views at a Republican meeting in Washington on December 2. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser have also expressed concerns. Even Kevin Warsh, at that time a Fed governor-at-large who had never failed to support Bernanke, in a New York speech “warned of ‘significant risks’ associated with the program” (AP, 11/9) and expressed doubt that it would help the economy at all. His op-ed piece for The New York Times “expressed deep skepticism” of the plan. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, in a San Antonio speech called QE2 the “wrong medicine” for the economy.

The “wrong medicine” indeed! If anything, the economy seems as unhealthy now as it was before QE2.

In a June 30 CNBC interview, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan himself said, “There is no evidence that [the] huge inflow of money into the system basically worked.”

Prechter has extensively studied and written about the Fed for more than a decade. He has “pulled back the curtain” on the nation’s “lender of last resort” and his findings are more relevant today than ever.Prechter’s research is now available in a Free Report titled: Understanding the Fed: How to Protect Yourself from the Common and Misleading Myths About the U.S. Federal Reserve This special free report is now available for you to read by simply joining Club EWI. Membership is also free, and there are no obligations when you join. When you become a Club EWI member, you gain instant access to a wealth of EWI Educational Resources. Get your Free Report about the U.S. Federal Reserve now by following this link for the quick and easy sign-up!

Share/Bookmark

By Elliott Wave International

As the DJIA fell 2% to close below 12,000 on August 2, one theme rang across major financial websites. This CNN headline summarizes it:

Stocks sink as investors fret over the economy (Aug. 2)

The belief that the economy drives the stock market is common knowledge; it’s Investing 101; the idea gets pounded into investors’ heads, over and over again, by various pundits, daily.

But please allow us to suggest this: Belief that the GDP and other economic measures drive stock market trends is completely and utterly false.

The strength or weakness of the economy does not lead the stock market higher or lower. The economy follows the stock market.

“Stocks lead the economy, normally by months,” writes EWI president Robert Prechter; he has studied this subject in-depth. Here’s an excerpt from our Club EWI resource, the free 50-page 2011 Independent Investor eBook, which quotes one of Prechter’s research papers.

The Independent Investor eBook, 2011 Edition
(excerpt; get full eBook here, free)

Suppose that you had perfect foreknowledge that over the next 3¾ years GDP would be positive every single quarter and that one of those quarters would surprise economists in being the strongest quarterly rise in a half-century span. Would you buy stocks?

If you had acted on such knowledge in March 1976, you would have owned stocks for four years in which the DJIA fell 22%. If at the end of Q1 1980 you figured out that the quarter would be negative and would be followed by yet another negative quarter, you would have sold out at the bottom.

Suppose you were to possess perfect knowledge that next quarter’s GDP will be the strongest rising quarter for a span of 15 years, guaranteed. Would you buy stocks?

Had you anticipated precisely this event for 4Q 1987, you would have owned stocks for the biggest stock market crash since 1929. GDP was positive every quarter for 20 straight quarters before the crash and for 10 quarters thereafter.

But the market crashed anyway. Three years after the start of 4Q 1987, stock prices were still below their level of that time despite 30 uninterrupted quarters of rising GDP. Figure 10 shows these two events.

It seems that there is something wrong with the idea that investors rationally value stocks according to growth or contraction in GDP. (…continued)

If you found this insight eye-opening, keep reading the2011 Independent Investor eBook, an educational, powerful and FREE 50-page eBook to help you think independently. Thousands of investors have downloaded the Independent Investor eBook, and it has changed the way they think forever. Now YOU can get this important eBook packed with insightful analysis from 2010 and 2011 Elliott Wave Theorist and Elliott Wave Financial Forecast. — all you need is a free Club EWI password.

By Elliott Wave International

July 28 would have been Ralph N. Elliott’s 140th birthday, so it’s a fitting time to post an excerpt from his essay, “The Basis of the Wave Principle.” There’s nothing like reading for yourself what the discoverer of the Wave Principle wrote about how it works. This essay is taken from the book, R.N. Elliott’s Masterworks. It’s the definitive collection that Robert Prechter collected and published in 1994.

* * * * *
The Basis of the Wave Principle
by R. N. Elliott
First published on October 1, 1940

Civilization rests upon change. This change is cyclical in origin and characteristics. A rhythmic series of extreme changes constitutes a cycle. When a cycle has been completed, another cycle is started. The rhythm of the new cycle will be the same as that of the previous cycle, although the extent and duration may vary. The cycle progresses in accordance with the natural law of movement.

The behavior of cycles has been studied extensively by puzzled economists, bankers and businessmen. In this connection, the conservative London Economist in a recent issue, commenting upon the results of a long study of trade cycles made by Sir William Beveridge, the noted British economist, said:

Sir William’s researches have emphasized once again that the more the trade cycle is studied, the more it seems to follow the pressure of forces which, if they are not wholly beyond the reach of human control, have at least enough of the inexorable in their nature to make the policies of governments resemble the struggles of fish caught in the tides. Sir William pointed out that the trade cycle ignores politics; he might have added that it overrides economic policies.

The causes of these cyclical changes seem clearly to have their origin in the immutable natural law that governs all things, including the various moods of human behavior. Causes, therefore, tend to become relatively unimportant in the long term progress of the cycle. This fundamental law cannot be subverted or set aside by statutes or restrictions. Current news and political developments are of only incidental importance, soon forgotten; their presumed influence on market trends is not as weighty as is commonly believed.

This law of natural change is inevitable, and applies to the seasons and the movements of the tides and planets. It has truly been said that change is the only “immutable thing in life.” Being a natural phenomenon, it necessarily governs all human activities, even the relatively static sciences of biology and botany. Even time and mathematics appear to be amenable to the application of this law of rhythm from the small unit of hours to the great intervals of decades, centuries and millennia. Measuring the behavior of cycles should therefore offer a reliable means of forecasting changes, regardless of the cause, and thus yield handsome profits.

In an independent study of the available data, extending over a period of many years, the writer has observed certain recurring behavior of change in movement. Apparently these changes follow a natural law that inevitably influences the mass. Finally there evolved certain principles, which were carefully tested back over a long period of years.

By 1934, I was able to resolve the various trends of changes in stock prices to a rhythmic series of component waves, which I called a “cycle.” This cyclical rhythm has occurred regularly and repeatedly not only in the available records of the various stock exchanges, but also in commodities, industrial production, temperature, music, variation in color, electric output, population movements to and from cities, etc. In fact, it is manifest so widely, not only in human activities but also in the working of nature itself, that I have termed this discovery “The Wave Principle.”

Understanding of this law enables the close student to forecast the terminations of cycles by means of the market itself. The Wave Principle is not a “market” system or theory. The forecasting principle involved goes far beyond the concept of any known formula….

Learn more about the Elliott Wave Principle and how applying it to your market analysis can improve your investing and trading. Take the entire online course — The Elliott Wave Tutorial: 10 Lessons on the Wave Principle — FREE! Click here to access the 10 Lessons

Share/Bookmark