Using your Guide: a step-by-step approach
Seven Days Ahead provides trading advice suitable for experienced traders. You will already have your own trading style. The power of the Guides lies in the way we help your trading talent to find expression by finding you the greatest possible number of trading opportunities.
But not everyone will be familiar with our presentation and style. Here are some straightforward pointers to get the best out of the Guides:
1. Familiarise yourself with the layout
The Guides are best viewed online. If you are not a subscriber download a recent example. We have built in links to enable you to navigate around to the areas you are most interested in.
2. Find the markets that are moving on the cover of your Guide
A glance down the cover of the Guide reveals snapshots of our trading stance in each case:
Where we are SHORT (bearish) or LONG (bullish), the market will be about to move or is already moving. Those markets are immediately attractive, but they may be running their course. Only the detailed analysis behind each headline will show if there is more to come in the move.
The markets where we are SQUARE (no view either way) still need to be studied because no market remains dull forever. Waiting and watching a market builds valuable insight into how to trade it when finally a pattern completes.
So it is important to read all the markets.
3. Use the cover links to drill down to the detailed analysis
The Technical Trading Guide, Commodity and FX Specialist Guides
These guides use Classical Bar Chart technical analysis to build your understanding. We begin with the broadest relevant context.
Typically, that means studying the shape of the monthly bar chart over the past few years. Then we look at patterns within that period – the weekly bar chart over the last few months. And then the daily bar chart over the last few weeks.
We always seek evidence that will help the trader: charts of related cash markets will be included if useful information can be gleaned. Yield charts may be studied as well as price charts; spot charts as well as futures charts.
Daily Stocks Indices Guide, Daily Bonds and Short Rates Guide
These short-term technical guides use Candlestick analysis to combine maximum information with maximum clarity in a single daily snapshot of each market. Fibonacci levels of close support and resistance levels add vital added short-term levels to trade around.
The Macro Trading Guide
This guide explains the macroeconomic forces driving the markets within each broad economic area and the likely market response to future data releases.
And then we study market sentiment in each trading market to check that it is correctly aligned to drive the market in the direction we are predicting.
In each case a complete picture of the forces influencing the current price action can be built.
That picture may be complex. Our job is to clarify. We take a short-term trading stance, a medium-term one and a long-term one. We evaluate the uncertainties surrounding our views. We point out critical levels for stop-losses. In both guides we give the trader the twin benefits of powerful analysis: tradable predictions, and workable risk control.
4. Think about your strengths as a trader
All the Trading Guides aim to provide profitable opportunities for the widest range of traders. But to make use of those with maximum effect, the trader must know his strengths. And that means knowing himself.
- Psychology: Your unique history and trading personality will dictate which of our trading recommendations you will be comfortable with. Some successful traders will specialise in our lower-risk, lower-return trades and others will be equally profitable with the higher risk, higher-return trades. In our experience some traders limit their opportunities by trading too narrowly. The benefits of a portfolio of trades rather than running just one at a time are well documented. But again, the desire to run and manage such a portfolio depends on your psychology.
- Trading capital : Which of our strategies you follow will depend on your available risk capital. Whether you run a portfolio of trades or one at a time, the less capital you have, the less you can allow the aggregate position to go against you. With more capital you can take longer-term views with looser Stop Losses. (But even short-term traders learn to study the longer-term charts to ensure their influence is beneficial.)
- Trading time: Whether you are checking positions continuously or occasionally, our longer-term predictions favour those with less trading time than others. And since longer-term views suggest larger moves, that can be very profitable. Our short-term views can help to time an entry into a long-term move, but are mostly used by those with the time to stay close to the market and react quickly when opportunities arise.
5. Enter the market
Having decided to trade you will be aware that there are many ways to enter the markets using a variety of brokers and spread-betting companies. Needless to say, great care should be taken to ensure they are reputable and financially sound.
We rarely enter the market without placing a Stop-Loss order at the same time. While there is no firm rule about where to place these, we can help by pointing out the critical resistances and supports in the chart guides.
The Macro Guide helps you time your entry before or after important market releases by assessing their likely impact.
6. Running your position: Market Updates
We undertake to support you week by week with the Guides, and intra-week Market Updates.
Currently three per week, these articles introduce Seven Days Ahead's analytical techniques by highlighting fast-changing market situations as they arise throughout the week.
All of our ideas and strategies are followed up and continually re-assessed. If we think a market has run its course we will say so. We want to get you into the market and out – with a profit.