The post below comes courtesy of my friend Blain Reinkensmeyer who runs the very popular Stock Trading To Go blog.

To be a great trader you must be disciplined. Following a set of rules can make the difference between successful story telling versus ruminating on last week’s losses.

Jesse Livermore, one of the best traders of all time, and John Paulson, one of the best traders of the last few years, both have a set of rules they follow religiously. Their success serves as your opportunity to enhance your investment savviness.

Below are the rules of both Livermore and Paulson alongside a bit more background information on who they are (hat tip Minyanville and WSJ).

Jesse Livermore, one of the greatest

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 THE COMMON ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS:  A really good synopsis of Van Tharp’s latest book over at the Kirk Report. 

CONFIRMATION BIAS:  You better put it in your basket of mind games.  You are going to face it whether you recognize it or not.

TRADE WITH AN EMPTY MIND:  or just be stupid! 

TIGER WOODS AND LOSS AVERSION: Playing it safe could cost you more money than the risk.  Just ask Tiger?

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE SYSTEM:  It is more about learning and developing as a trader in order to use the system properly. 

And with the market playing tricks again, some quotes to leave you with:

“Nobody like change except a wet baby.” Mark Twain

“Success gives you the confidence to be patient with your failures.”  Eric Rohmann

“The only worse thing than waiting is

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We have heard about the so called economic recovery for months now and while it is true that markets are higher we have our doubts that any of this optimism is seeping into the real economy.  Because of this we tend to believe that we are headed for a double dip recession, assuming that we ever got out of the first one.

Lately we have started to see renewed signs of a downturn in some of the economic indicators that we follow.  All things employment have been bad with the unemployment rate, exhaustion rate, and unemployment 27 weeks or longer rates up.  Anyone that is seeing an upturn in employment must be on an acid trip as there are no signs of anything but more unemployment.  Just Wednesday we had housing starts come in lower than expected.  One indicator that we follow is the Citi Economic Surprise Index.  They have them

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Chicago, IL – November 18, 2009- Kevin Matras shows how to calculate a stock's price target and how to find stocks currently trading below them. Stocks in this week’s article include AVX Corp. (NYSE: AVX), Macquarie Infrastructure Company LLC (NYSE: MIC), Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM), Shaw Communications, Inc. (NYSE: SJR) and SLM Corp. (NYSE: SLM).

Screen of the Week written by Kevin Matras of Zacks Investment Research:

Today, after a pretty big run up, people are still wondering what their stock's price target is, but now they're wondering how high it's going to go. Either way, it's important for everyone to know how to calculate their stock's price target.

You can do this by using either technicals or fundamentals.

Today, I'm going to focus on fundamentals.

And we're going to use the P/E ratio to calculate it.

Many people use P/E ratios to determine a company's perceived undervaluation or

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Thanks to all of our Trader’s Blog readers, last Friday’s “Introduction to MarketClub” Webinar turned out better than we ever expected! Despite some volume issues and a few other growing pains, we think it was a great success for our first time around.

We want to thank everyone who participated and also for the great feedback that we received during and after the presentation. Jeremy and I are looking forward to implementing a lot of your suggestions (such as incorporating a “live chat” element) and making future webinars as interesting and informative as possible.

This week’s webinar is titled, “Scanning & Using the ‘Trade Triangle’ Strategy for Long-Term Trades.” We would love to have you join us. Click here to register.

If you’re interested in receiving emails about future webinars, click here to join our “How To Use MarketClub Webinars” weekly email

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Today’s guest blogger is “Forex” Joe Atkins the Chief Strategist of OU Forex Trading. He blogged last week about preparing for 2010 and today he dives into what he, and most experts, consider the greatest trading tool of all: Your Mind!

Joe’s latest project “OU Forex Mastery” is now live and there are a number of excellent videos there for you to check out. So enjoy the article, comment below, and learn from his videos.

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I’m a student like everyone else here on the Trader’s Blog. Some students are more advanced or experienced, while other students are not. I’m committed to helping emerging and developing students reach their full potential by providing an educational portal of substance focusing on trading methodology that works.

Besides becoming proficient with any trading methodology, one absolute remains: you must develop above average

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We keep hearing that long term Treasury Bonds are going to tank and that we need to get short before they fall off a cliff.  While this may very well happen, we doubt that it occurs anytime soon.  We are not alone in this view as Bill Gross and the gang at PIMCO seem to agree.  While some argue with his view of a new slow growth period the market does not seem to have an issue with it.  Not only has Helicopter Ben said that the Fed is not raising rates anytime soon, but market indicators are saying the same thing.

One Treasury indicator that we use is the MOVE index which is a  “yield curve weighted index of the normalized implied volatility on 1-month Treasury options. It is the weighted average of volatilities on the CT2, CT5, CT10, and CT30.”  As you can see in the chart below it

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At MarketClub our mission is to help you become a better trader. Our passion is creating superior trading tools to help you achieve your goals — no matter which way the markets move — with objective and unbiased recommendations not available from brokers.

The Trader’s Toolbox posts are just another free resource from MarketClub.

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“One of the most important ways a contestant can prepare for competition is to know as much about the opponent as possible. In trading commodities, the primary opponent is the trader’s own emotions. Once the emotions are under control, the “opponent” is the marketplace.Know your market! While there are many analytical tools which may be applied to all markets, not all markets are identical. Markets have individual personalities or tendencies. It is important to study individual markets to learn

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Happy Holidays! Please enter our Trader’s Blog Holiday Giveaway for a chance to win one of the 12 prizes below.

We will be selecting 1 winner every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting on November 30th through December 25th via phone call from the prize entries we receive. The winner will select their choice of prize from the list below. Once a prize as been selected, it will be crossed off and the remaining prizes will be up for grabs for the next winner. Over $4,000 in prizes!

We will be accepting entries until the last prize has been selected (December 25th).

Enter The Holiday Giveaway Here

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At MarketClub, our mission is to help you become a better trader. Our passion is creating superior trading tools to help you achieve your goals—no matter which way the markets move—we promise objective and unbiased recommendations not available from brokers.

Here’s great news from a member…

“This is amazing!!! I love your videos. Tell you the truth, I’ve tried so many services and they all failed. Now I use your Trade Triangles religiously. The last trade I did was long the YG.J09.E. I made money, but I existed the position too soon! I got scared and closed the position early. Adam, like you said, we must have discipline and follow the rules!” ~ Ali S., Quebec

To send your own success story, please email blog@ino.com. We wish all of our members the best and we look forward to hearing your success story.

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