Our strategies are discretionary but this doesn't mean we're trading randomly. There are specific rules on which we take our trades & strict money management guidelines we follow on our model account (you can learn them in our courses). Our objective is to offer a live example of how to trade an account profitably over a longer period of time while keeping the equity curve steadily positive & the risk below a reasonable level of 1.5% of the account balance.

a) Trading Strategies - Technical or Fundamental?

We are technical traders, and therefore most of our trades are based entirely on technical reasons. We do however take fundamentals into account & watch carefully for any events that may interfere with our trading.
Our strategies are based on short-term price action, indicators & chart patterns. Before we take a trade we analyze the big picture (D1, H4 charts), then decide on the entry, stop & targets on smaller time frames (M30, M15).

b) Short-term or Long-term?

Our approach is generally short-term - we open & close trades within the same trading session. This currently applies to aprox. 80% of all the trades we take on our model account.
Even though we are not scalpers, if our strategies or money management rules indicate we need to get out of a trade we may exit a position with only a few pips profit or loss. This is rather an exception. We do not place any trade with the intention of taking only a few pips - usually we aim for 20-100 pips per lot.

c) Money Management, Lots, Risk, Targets

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of money management for steady equity growth & risk control. In view of offering our members an easy to understand model of MM, we are using the following settings:

- the account opening balance is $10.000 (november 2009) .
- the trading lot is 1 mini lot ($10.000 per entry) - what we will usually refer to in the room as "1 lot".
- A trade is usually opened with 2 mini lots ($20.000 taken at once or 2 X $10.000), allowing for scaling in & out of positions.
- The effective leverage we use is therefore 1:1 per lot (we use the same lot size as the initial balance on our account), adding up to 2:1 per trade.
- The pip value for each lot is $1 for pairs denominated in USD (like EURUSD, GBPUSD, AUDUSD), making it easier to calculate our stops/targets & control the overall risk.
- The maximum risk for each trade is 2% of account equity.
- However it should be well understood that this does not create any obligation from our part & does not constitute a promise or a performance guarantee.
- The trading lots may be adjusted on a monthly basis according to the performance of our account.