After several weeks of campouts, drones, and sore feet, we are looking at trading with the Market Engine last Monday.

Professional Trader Bibi joins us to share lessons from her journey of learning about trading to trading for a living.

As our children were learning to drive we made a determination that they should learn how to drive a stick shift. So, each time a child was about 15 1/2 years old I would take them to a nearby church parking lot and would begin the instruction. For me growing up I learned how to drive a stick shift on the farm with the farm trucks and tractors out on the open fields. If you've ever driven a stick shift car you know that there are a series of gears, and when the car is not in gear, or when it is in neutral, then the car doesn't move.

I would go through the gears with each child, and practice going from neutral into first gear, and the car would begin moving.. This was generally accompanied with a lot of sudden jolts and jerky actions on the car. Over time the transition from the car not moving, to moving got smoother.

We went to the church parking lot many times with each child and practiced driving the car.

As you know when the car is in neutral it doesn't move much. It can certainly coast a bit, but it cannot overcome any sort of resistance; to do so it must be in gear.

The market is similar, when price is moving in a direction, when it is trending, it is pushing through headwind and hills.

We use a tool to help us determine if the market is in gear or is starting to coast. This tool is a moving average. Now, none of us like to be considered average. A good way to think about this is we are interested in the market when it is above average, or rather above the moving average.

When the market is in neutral, it is not significantly rising above or below the average, or the moving average. So, it is not just that the market is above or below the average that is interesting, it is more interesting when we look at the gap between the current market price and the moving average.

As the gap between those grows, we can see the market is in gear; and of course we want to align with that direction.

In the previous podcast we were practicing with identifying choppy and sideways price movement, and also trending price movement. We did this looking at price changes from day to day, literally looking at each bar. When the closing price of the day is above the closing price of the previous day we could see trending. Some trending prices have higher probability for continuing further toward profit than others do. We also discussed the range of change, meaning the distance price was moving. We saw that there was generally more price movement during trending than during choppy.

Ok, so, let's return to the chart from the previous podcast.

If you don't have a trading tool you can use stockcharts.com (or any other free online tool) for this exercise. In our example last time we were looking at the SPY daily chart. So let's go back to that.

What we want to do here is add a moving average line to the chart. Add a simple moving average line and set it for 8 periods (or days). Ok, our goal is to be able to see when the market is ABOVE average, in this case when it is above the 8 moving average line and price is trending higher. So, the better, higher probability condition is when the price is above the 8 MA and price is going higher.

Make this your first rule.

Practice again covering your monitor (your chart) with a piece of paper, make it colored paper if you can -- no cheating!! Now, look at the days leading up to the edge of the paper and ask yourself these questions: 1. Is price going up in the last 2 or 3 days? 2. If so, is price above the moving average line?

If the answer is yes to both of these you have identified a candidate for a higher probability opportunity.

But - we must practice this alot...and we must agree that we still don't have all the tools before we would execute a trade or enter a position -- but -- we move ahead, step-by-step.

The example we have focused on to this point is for above average, rising markets. As you know we will also want to understand markets that are below average. They are falling. Let's practice that. As you move the paper across your monitor/chart ask yourself:

1. Is price going down the last 2 or 3 days? 2. If so, is price below the moving average?

If the answer to both of these questions is yes, you have identified a candidate for a higher probability opportunity. Practice this over and over, placing the paper over your chart and moving day by day, or bar by bar, and "paper" trading.

I'm sure you will notice that in many cases price movements downward tend to cover more distance in fewer periods than upward price movements.

Practice paper trading using the moving average and where price is relative to it. Keep it super simple. 1. When price has moved above the upward sloping 8 moving average, the car is in gear, go with it! 2. When price has moved below the downward sloping 8 moving average, the car is in gear, go with it!

Take notes of your virtual wins and losses. Now, we need another tool to increase our probabilities. Just doing this exercise alone will reduce your losses significantly. But we need to reduce them further...and we will discuss that in the next podcast.

As I practiced in the car with my kids helping them to learn driving a stick shift, not only was it critical to get the car moving smoothly and to shift into higher gears, but it was also critical to safely bring the car to a stop at the end of the parking lot.

The techniques we have been practicing apply to markets that are moving and also to those that are slowing down!

What is the relationship between price and the moving average when you see a trend that is ending? They get closer to each other, right? What other observations do you see?

So, we can assert that as the distance between price and the moving average grows, the market is shifting into a higher gear in a certain direction. And, as the distance between them decreases, the market is shifting into a lower gear, and is going slower. It doesn't mean that is the end of the trend, but we take note and make appropriate changes.

As I practiced with my kids teaching them to drive the stick shift it became evident that you don't have any siblings in the car with you. So, pick the right trading partners to join you. In an upcoming podcast I will be interviewing some professional traders and some brand new traders. They will share their experiences on discovering the secrets to high probability trading and investing in the markets.

Until next time, practice with identifying the trending and choppy situations with the 8 period moving average.

Hey everybody, this is Grant Larsen, thanks for joining another episode of Financial Investing Radio!

It's another beautiful morning and the markets made some great moves this week.

You know, I was thinking back to when I was a kid we lived in Northern California for a while. I loved that place, it was just outside of Sacramento, and we had a lot of fun with easy access to the mountains there, and the lakes and rivers in the area. One of the things my dad did was grow a garden. He was expert at this as he himself spent some time farming growing up.

Anyway, one day we were in the garden weeding...which I hated doing. As we were weeding my dad asked me to something, which I didn't want to do...I mean I was already weeding, why would I want to do one more thing that I didn't want to do. So, I did something really stupid and I talked back to my dad. I was about 6 years old at the time.

My dad patiently asked me to stop talking back and to go do the additional thing that I didn't want to do. Instead, I talked back to him, AGAIN. He stood up and started walking towards me. The thought entered my mind that I could outrun him! So, I stood up and started to run across the back yard. He tried to catch me. I realized that if I jigged to the right and then jigged to the left, he couldn't catch me, he couldn't turn as fast as I could! So I did this for several turns and it seemed to be working well for me.

Then I had another thought, 'hey, if I can beat him cutting back and forth like this, I bet I can beat him in a full out sprint'!

You know, when you are doing something stupid, often the next one or two thoughts in your head are often just as stupid! I mean, I just wasn't thinking about the consequences. Where was I going to eat later in the day, or where would I sleep that night? How would I fend for myself and generate income?

But I wasn't thinking about any of that, so I started off for the back corner of the house and beat him to it. All I had to do was to make it to the front yard, and then off to freedom down the street! Or so I thought!

As I turned the corner at the front of the house he caught a hold of my collar and picked me up off the ground. My little legs were still moving in the air and all my dreams of freedom vanished before my eyes!

Wow...was I being stupid!

The markets are a bit like that - when it runs back and forth, a quick cut up, and a quick cut down...it is hard to catch it. Once it stretches out into a direction it is a bit easier to catch.

There are some characteristics of sideways/choppy action that can become profitable. But before we get there, we need to practice putting our mind into two modes.

Mode #1: choppy Mode #2: trendy, or trending

The skill we need to practice is successfully identifying each mode.

I'm not talking about looking at a chart of some stock or other instrument and being able to see when it trends and when the trend stops. That's pretty easy to do. We make investment decisions when we cannot see what is beyond the right-hand side of the chart.

So, a skill we need to develop and practice is identifying the current market conditions, and the probability of the continuation of that market condition.

So, let's practice together, get a chart of something you want to invest in or trade. If you don't have a trading, or investing account and the trading tools, just open a web browser and go to one of the free sites, like stockcharts.com.

On that site, towards the top of the web page, enter a symbol for a chart, let's pick SPY. Put SPY in the top of the chart and hit enter or click the Go button. This will bring up a Daily chart for SPY.

What do you observe about trending days vs choppy/sideways days? Write down your observations.

Here's three observations to add to your list.

1. On sideways days the highs and the lows stay very close to the previous day's highs and lows...can you see it? Stop for a minute and train your eyes to observe the behavior of choppy days, what else do you see? Write down your observations. For example, how many days does it go sideways before it begins to trend?

2. For days trending up, the close of the day is above the close of the previous day. Take a minute and train your eyes to recognize that. What else do you notice about trending up days? Again, be sure to write down your observations.

3. For days trending down, the close of the day is below the close of the previous day. For these trending days, how many days does it trend in one direction before the trend stops?

One of the key points here is to pick one thing to invest in and get to know it well; and to be able to answer these kinds of questions (and more) about it.

Ok, just using the observations we talked about, take a piece of paper, it may need to be color paper, or maybe you can use your browser to do this...and cover up the majority of the days on the right side of the SPY chart we are looking at.

Now, looking at the days leading up to the edge of your paper (or your browser), and using the three observations we wrote earlier...what would expect the next day or two days to do? Uncover the next day and see if you are right? Now for that day, apply the three observations and ask yourself about the next day. Continue to practice estimating the behavior of the days you cannot see.

Are there some things you should add to your observations? If so, write those down.

Do this over and over again; paper trading, not with real money, but practice alot and write down your observations. These will provide the basis for your rules in the future.

Let's try some other observations...do you notice anything about the range of movement...meaning the size of the candles or the bars. When are the candles or bars larger and when are they smaller?

Often the bars are smaller in their size when price movement has slowed down or is going sideways. This is important to note. So, get to know the general or average size of movement that the bars are when price is trending. And compare that to the general or average size of movement of the bars when price is going sideways.

Keep a running average of the previous several days, 3 to 5 days is a good number. What you are taking an average of is the distance between the OPEN and the CLOSE on EACH day, for the previous 3 to 5 days. You are looking to understand how far price is moving. As you calculate this you will notice the average distance of price movement on any given day increases as it is trending and decreases as price movement slows down. But confirm this for yourself.

This helps to quantify in our brains what our eyes are seeing. I use small tool to help me keep this running average. You can certainly use a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet for this.

Now, there are other factors to consider besides this exercise before you actually trade or invest...but, this part needs to become second nature. And so we train ourselves and our minds to look quickly at current price activity and it sets the tone for other factors that need to be reviewed, which we will discuss later. But this is a first step in identifying choppy markets and trending markets; to help you know when to stay out and when to enter.

As you see price move out of a choppy area, you will often see that it comes back to the choppy area and touches it just before it takes off in a trending direction. This is an important observation to make. Look for that on the chart.

Developing the skills to recognize the areas where price is bouncing back and forth in a choppy range and when it moves beyond that range is a key step to catching the market.

When I was a kid, as I rounded the corner of the front of the house I could see some clear spaces ahead of me to run to. My dad could see that too, and he was able to catch me as I was heading off for freedom...in a trending direction...as I broke out of my choppy action.

Now, practice identifying the same thing on the charts!

Until next time, avoid the chop, and don't talk back to your Dad!!

Welcome to Financial Investing Radio, where you'll learn the secrets for consistent, high probability returns in the financial markets for additional income to change your life. Grant creates consistent, high probability trading systems for the financial markets and has applied them over the past five years. He's only recently started sharing these tried and true market secrets. As a gift to listeners, Grant is offering his high probability indicators for free. Go to financialinvestingradio.com and download yours today. Now here's your host and trading veteran, Grant Larsen. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. My name is Grant. Hey, on a previous podcast I had mentioned the term reversion to mean or mean reversion. Now one of my listeners commented on that asking for more information, so let me start with that. I thought I'd spend some time there, make sure we're all in the same playing field. Mean reversion is the theory that suggests that price will move back or eventually move back towards the average, all right? This mean can be the historical average of market price. We'll talk about the probabilities of that and so forth. Sort of thinking back, as we were raising our children, near our home there was a place filled trampolines. I think it was called Jump Street. Our kids loved jumping on the trampolines there. They had some trampolines that were horizontal. They even had some that were at an angle. They were up against the wall so you could run up to them and bounce in it. I'd throw you back to the horizontal ones. It's kind of like the markets, these trampolines, right? For example, when we bounce on a trampoline, we go below the static surface of the trampoline, and we propel up. Likewise, as we reach the apex, we fall back down. In the market though, prices don't always revert to the mean, but there is very often mean reversion, so a very key skill about mean reversion is to know how to spot those opportunities. That's because market prices go sideways at least half the time, but the real question is what does it mean in order to have mean reversion? In other words, it's the average of what? Like, over what period of time? I spent some time working through that trying to figure out, you know, do I do this on a five minute chart? Is it on a weekly chart? Is it a monthly? I mean, what's the average that you pick that's going to be most meaningful? Some of that has to do with what kind of investor or a trader we are, but I ran into something that was a huge impact to my trading, and that was to use something called channels, and to use channels in a way that helped me to spot those opportunities of mean regression, so let me explain it this way. A few years ago, we were in the mountains, it was in the summertime, and we were at one of the ski resorts. I don't remember the name of it, but it had something called an Alpine Slide. It's kind of like a bog sled channel where you sit on a sled. There's of course no snow because it's during the summer. You're in a slide or you're basically in a channel. It has sides that come up on the left and the right-hand side. It's open above so that you can see the sky and whatnot, but nevertheless you're in this channel. On the Alpine Slide there's a few things of course you want to know, right? You've obviously got a brake handle. That will help slow you down. As you go down the side of the mountain in this channel, you hit one side of the channel and it knocks you back to the center. Then you hit the other side and again it knocks you back to the center. The market prices, or I'll refer to that as price action, is a lot this way. There's a channel of price movement and what varies is the steepness or the grade of the channel. Now on the Alpine Slide, you would never want to break out of that channel for obvious reasons, right? You could certainly get hurt, but in the market it does this all the time, all right? A price comes along, bouncing along a channel, and then wow, pam. It shoots out of the channel for a bit, and sometimes it returns and comes back into it. Channels on charts is a personal favorite of mine. It takes some practice, but it builds on your experience with drawing trend lines. I'm sure you've already been drawing trend lines, right? As you know, when you draw a trend line, you're looking to connect two places where a price has turned around and gone the other direction. Lots of times we call these pivots, right? Let's say the price was coming down, then went back up, and then later it came down maybe a little bit further and went back up. Those two points where it turns around, each of those points are called pivots. When we draw trend lines, we draw those along those pivot points, right? We touch, we connect the dots, something we did as kids in the coloring books. Well, we do the same thing with channels, so we draw the channel lines that connect the pivots, and we only need two pivots on one side, and one pivot on the other side. Let's say that the channel is going down. Then I want to draw two pivots at the top first, and then I come down to a lower pivot where prices come down and headed back up. I connect the bottom part to that. Then what you start watching for is how the price action behaves within that range, within that channel, all right? Thinking back to this Alpine Slide, we can think of a downward channel on a chart. It's kind of like an Alpine Slide, right? Within that downward channel, price goes down for a bit, and then it actually hits the bottom of the channel and then bounces up, and goes all the way across the channel. Then it gets up to the top of the channel or somewhere near it, and then it turns around and reverts back to the center of the channel. This kind of reversion is more common, the reversion to mean within a channel. It doesn't necessarily mean that prices are going sideways, although that is certainly one kind of channel, no doubt about that, but more importantly it's to identify the channel, the steepness of it. It may be flat, but the steepness or the direction or the angle of the channel can be up, down, sideways. Before we go further, I'd invite you to make sure you practice applying this on your charts. Understanding the range of motion for a particular instrument that you're investing in, in trading is critical. That helps you understand opportunities, you know? If I've got a good opportunity or maybe a not so good opportunity, it's about the location and channels help us to do this, and knowing that when it hits the edges of the channel, then it has some higher probabilities that it will revert or go back to the mean, meaning to the center of the channel itself. Okay, now I want to share a few secrets with you that I've learned about channels and how they've really impacted my trading. I don't invest in trade without them, or to say it the other way, I always invest in trade with channels up, all right? I have a couple of charts and one of those definitely shows what's the current channel that the market's in or does it look like it's breaking out of this channel, and now it's going to create a new channel and go a different direction, but it's critical to know that. Okay, here's three secrets. Number one, one of the highest probability moves of price is near the third point on a channel. What does that mean? Draw some channels and test it out yourself, but let me see if I can draw a picture in your mind, all right? Let's say that we have the channel that's moving down, kind of like this Alpine Slide, right? The Alpine Slide has got edges on both side. The price is going down, but it's bouncing back and forth. To draw the channel we start with the two pivot points on the top where price has turned down, and we draw the top part of the channel. Now we look for one or two lower pivot points to draw on the bottom part of the channel. Let's say that the price has just hit the bottom part of the channel. We just drew it down there. It's now moving up across the middle of the channel, and it's reaching the top of the channel now. When it touches, that will be the third touch at the top of the channel, all right? That third touch is one of the highest probabilities that it will revert to the mean and go back to the center of the channel. Let me say it again. When price comes up and touches either the top or the bottom of the channel, depending on each direction the channel is going, when it does that third touch, you be prepared for a higher probability entry to go the opposite direction, so even if you're trading on a daily basis, some stocks or some options, and you've got your channel set up, and it comes across and it touches that for the third time, you know you've got an opportunity that has much higher probability with you. That is reversion to mean. That is the most common reversion to mean that I've seen and this first secret is that if it's the third touch on the edge of the channel, you have the highest probability that it reverts to the mean. Okay, here's secret number two. The steeper the channel, the more likely the price action will move out of the channel, all right? If the channel direction is largely sideways, what I found is you can get four or five or six touches on each side of the channel. The more touches that there are, then the lower the probability of reversion because it keeps testing a particular area and finally it says, "Okay. I'm done testing this area. We're going to move past this now." The buyers and the sellers sort of wear out at the prices at that level, but when the channel is very steep, there's a much higher probability that price will break out earlier out of the channel. Think back to the Alpine Slide. Let me say it this way. If the mountain is very steep and you're going fast around a corner, and that corner represents the edge of the channel, the probability is much higher that you'll fly out of the Alpine Slide. In this case, you'll fly out of the channel. That's all we're saying here, okay? If it's really steep, if price is going down really fast over a short period of time, still bouncing back and forth within a channel, but if it's really steep and going fast, then it seems to take fewer touches on each side of the channel before it breaks out, and gets out of that channel and may ultimately go another direction, so in making investment decisions, be aware of the grade or the steepness of the channel. The steeper it is, again, the chance is for fewer touches, whereas the more sideways it is, there's a bigger chance that it will bounce back and forth for a little bit longer period of time. Okay, secret number three. When price breaks out of the channel, because price always eventually breaks out of a channel ... No channel is forever, all right? When it breaks out of the channel, it actually provides another opportunity to invest and maybe it might not be thinking in a way that you're thinking. Here's a scenario, okay? Let's go back to the Alpine Slide. You're going down the Alpine Slide. You go too fast and you shoot out of the channel, and you fly out of it. Let's say you don't get hurt, so what do you do? Do you walk down? Maybe. I suppose you might, but aside from all the other safety considerations, you get back in the Alpine Slide and you keep going. The market does that a lot. To say it another way, when price jumps out of the channel in the market, look for opportunities at support or resistant slides outside of the channel that will cause it to turn around, and come back to the edge of the channel. If that last part wasn't clear, I can cover that more at another time, so let me know because I've just said a lot right there that is actually very critical to investing in trading strategy. If you have your channel set up and price breaks out of it, and it moves away from the channel pretty quickly, there is high probability that it will actually come back and touch the edge of that channel again. That gives you opportunities for reinvesting or for buying or for shorting, depending on what your investing strategy is. Those three key secrets, don't forget. The first one is one of the highest probability moves is near the third touch on the edge of a channel. That is a high probability move that it's going back into the center, meaning mean reversion of the channel. That's secret number one. Secret number two, the steeper the channel, the more likely the price is going to jump out of the channel earlier with fewer touches, so be aware of the angle of the channel. Secret number three, when it breaks out, it provides an opportunity to invest. It generally comes out, and then turn around and comes back, and touches the edge of that channel where it came out of. Okay, so price action spends the majority of its time moving in a channel, whether it's trending market or a sideways market, so always, always be looking for the channel and you looking for the reversion to mean. That will make a big, significant difference to your trading. It really impacted my investing strategy when I discovered that channels are a fundamental part of this and they appear at multiple levels. They appear at very small timeframes. They appear, of course, at large timeframes. So it's worth your investing strategy to take some time to get to know it and understand what the mean to reversion is. It tends to work best to look for mean reversion across channels, all right? Give it a try. Draw some channels on whatever timeframe you're using, and look how that can benefit your investing strategy. Okay, that's it for now. Thanks for joining. I look forward to a feedback and future podcasts with you. My name is Grant. Until next time, trade with your channels. Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Don't forget to download your free high probability indicators before your next trade. Visit financialinvestingradio.com now.

Welcome to Financial Investing Radio where you'll learn the secrets for consistent, high-probability returns in the financial markets for additional income to change your life. Grant creates consistent, high-probability trading systems for the financial markets and has applied them over the past five years. He has only recently started sharing these tried and true market secrets. As a gift to listeners, Grant is offering his high-probability indicators for free. Go to FinancialInvestingRadio.com and download yours today. Now here's your host and trading veteran, Grant Larsen. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. We've been talking about our investing journey, and some of our investing lessons come from the school of hard knocks. Most of us have felt that at some point along the way even after we've done some preparation and got some training. As a kid when I was growing up, part of my grown-up years was in California, up in Northern California. We played for hours in the sun. Our parents did a great job at giving us a balance of structured and unstructured time. I think one of the key things my parents did was they would take us on family vacations. Back in those days this was often done using the family car. Now my parents owned a station wagon. It was green with brown side panels. I think it was a Plymouth station wagon, but it had a V8 engine in it, and it could carry a pretty good load. My parents would load this car up with luggage on the rack on the top. Then they would put stuff everywhere on the inside. Soon it became a challenge for us to figure out where the kids were actually going to sit in this thing. That station wagon had a backseat that was reversed, so it faced the opposite direction of the car. My brothers and I would often sit in that seat in the way back. That was all good until another car would come up behind us, and they would linger for a while. Then it became a battle of how to avoid prolonged eye contact with the people in the car behind us. It was rather awkward staring back at these people. We soon learned that being on the freeway was awkward enough, but even worse we discovered was when we got into a town or a city, and there would be slow or heavy traffic. There is not a lot of options. You're pretty stuck. People are right there just a few feet behind you. We'd often to stare to the side or look down to the floor of the car. Just talking about it brings back some of those feelings back then. In my financial investing journey after initially being introduced to investing and seeing some of the potential benefits, I came up with a plan to get some training. Now for me the training started with options. I took a wide range of option courses, some that focused on cash flow, others that was more aggressive in terms of trying to get higher profits. Then others were focused on different kinds of patterns, so chart patterns, things like that. What happened was is unfortunately the training that I got didn't give guidance on the best way to trade the options in terms of what the right strike prices were because even if I ended up picking the right direction, I was still losing because of other factors with options, things like time decay and stuff like that, certainly won't go into that here at the moment. I felt like I was a kid again, like I was stuck in the back of the station wagon with only one direction to look. I felt like I had no options other than to trade options the way that I had been trained. Early in my trading journey I was very interested in options, but certainly was struggling with making a consistent return on it. Unfortunately, I was on the road to ruin as each trade slowly nipped away at my capital. It wasn't long before I realized that I needed to figure out what I should do. What I'm going to do is we move forward throughout these podcasts. I'm going to talk about in the next episode how I got passed this hurdle, the hurdle of spending the time, the money, the energy for not only the training and the learning but also even the investing part of it and still not having that come through, feeling like I had only been partially equipped or prepared for the material and for the right way to trade it. Again, the pun intended, I felt like I had no options at that point, that I was not being successful with it. Until next time, be sure to check out some of my free items on FinancialInvestingRadio.com. Until next time, my name is Grant, and trade safe like you mean it. Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Don't forget to download your free high-probability indicators before your next trade. Visit FinancialInvestingRadio.com now.

Welcome to Financial Investing Radio, where you'll learn the secrets for consistent, high probability returns in the financial market for additional income to change your life. Grant creates consistent, high probability trading systems for the financial markets, and has applied them over the past five years. He's only recently started sharing these tried and true market secrets. As a gift to listeners, Grant is offering his high probability indicators for free. Go to financialinvestingradio.com and download yours today. Now, here's your host and trading veteran, Grant Larsen. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. Thank you for joining. It's a Monday morning here and the market is not yet open, but the plan for the day is that I'll be looking for some choppy sideways action throughout the day. I expect there'll be moments of pushing in one direction or the other direction, but overall that's what I'm expecting at the moment. In the last episode, I shared some back story on my initial desire to begin investing. As I got to that point, I of course realized I needed a plan. Part of my growing up years was near some mountains in the countryside, and out there everyone had a dirt bike. My family did as well, and I think I must have weighed 85 pounds - I was a really small kid. Some of the other kids in the area decided to do a camp out on their motorcycles in the nearby mountains. So you'd put your backpack on with your sleeping bag, and off we'd go. So my parents said okay, and we headed off to a pre-defined location where all of our parents knew we would be. It wasn't too far away, but far enough out into the mountains to have the adventure, anyway. The key here was planning was not our forte, so we hadn't thought through the food and the other items. The parents left that up to us kids. The other thing we hadn't thought through was the weather. Who would have thought to look ahead of time to see what the weather's going to be. So during the night, a big rainstorm came in and it made all the roads super muddy and slippery. Of course, again I was about 85 pounds, so in the morning when it was so muddy, I could not keep the dirt bike standing up straight in the mud, it was that slippery. I'd stand it up and start to go, and it would go right out form under me. Heck, I could barely lift the thing off the ground, so aside from being cold and wet and hungry, we were faced with the prospect of spending a long, long time up there until things dried out. Ultimately, we hid one of the motorcycles back in some trees and I rode on the back of the motorcycle of the largest kid. So much for planning, or rather not planning. That was one of those life lessons where you sort of step back later and realize that could have gone better if we had done a little more planning. For me, investing in the markets requires planning in several key areas. One of those is planning for education. To get started there, you need to figure out which area are you interested in, and start your education there. Maybe you're interested in options, or stocks, or futures, or forex. In this industry I'm always learning and building my education. I'm not done, I'm still a work in progress. I think that it's a key part of what it means to invest, so if we're going to invest and be self directed in our investment, we also then need to adopt the willingness to be open to continually learn, and gather new insights. So that's the first area, which is plan our education, what are we going to work on over time, and give us the time and the license to do that. The second area is, let's say that you've already begun that process, you've already taken some education, or you're in the middle of that. Another kind of planning involves how you will invest on a regular basis. So think about today, when I first opened up this episode, I say "I'm anticipating a sideways choppy day with some regression to mean." Why would I say that? Well my education coupled with my experience now over the years leads me to say that. Leads me to say on this kind of day given recent activities in the market, and being a Monday, and other things like that, I'm anticipating that it will be a little more sideways. Doesn't mean there won't be any kind of trending, but be looking for more reversion to mean opportunities throughout the day. Of course we'll see if that's right or wrong. Stepping back, I use a two-phase investing strategy. The first is, I invest for cashflow purposes. So this is a smaller return consistent approach. You need to keep the lights on and pay for those kinds of things. So it's good to have a cashflow investment strategy. Then the second is, I invest for growth purposes. This of course is a higher return, but the key there is as you would expect, higher return is going to mean higher risk. So I need to know what the high probability situations are to reduce that risk so that you can still get the higher returns. So the key is to have a plan, and to build, and grow your learning, and plan your investment strategy. That's a key part of this, is to put that in place, and figure out where you are in it. Then accept the fact that you need to keep learning. So it looks like a great day for a trading here, the market opens up here shortly. To continue your journey, go to financialinvestingradio.com where I'm handing out some free items that will help you identify those high probability but with high return opportunities. My name is Grant, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Financial Investing Radio. Until then, trade the high probability. Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Remember to subscribe, and leave feedback. Don't forget to download your free high probability indicators before your next trade. Visit financialinvestingradio.com now.

Welcome to Financial Investing radio. Where you'll learn the secrets for consistent, high probability returns in the financial markets. For additional income to change your life. Grant creates consistent, high probability trading systems for the financial markets and has applied them over the past five years. He's only recently started sharing these tried and true market secrets. As a gift to listeners, Grant is offering his high probability indicators fro free. Go to financialinvestingradio.com and download yours today. Now, here's year host and trading veteran, Grant Larsen. Hey everybody. This is Grant and welcome to another episode of Financial Investing radio. In these podcasts we share lessons learned with financial investing. The real focus is on the activities involved for the self direct investor. Someone that is trying to take control of their own financial future. At least a portion of it comes through this avenue. I believe in a diversified approach. For our purposes we're going to look at investing in the markets and we'll look at several perspectives. We're going to look at futures and over time we'll look at options and stocks as well. Now, I wanted to harken back to an experience I had growing up. Part of my early years as a kid was in Minnesota. We lived right by the Mississippi river. One day, now this is in the early spring, so there's still ice along the edges of the river, but the water was flowing heavy. Our neighbor kid, we were down along the river playing by it, decided that he wanted to float down the river. He looked around for something to get out and float on and he ultimately began chopping the ice. He cut off a section of the ice and had a stick that he pushed out into the river. As he got probably 25 yards out into the river, some water started to get onto this chunk of ice and it got really slippery. He started to slide off of it and ultimately he fell into the water. Now, he had on a coat and boots and hat and gloves and he went under and started to bob up and down. Of course my brother and I were frantic looking for a large stick that we could grab to ultimately pull him out of there and get him into safety. That was a scary moment for all of us. Of course obviously we were shaken. He was, of course, shaken the most, as we pulled him out there. We asked him, "Why would you do this?" He said, "Well, I just really wanted to float down the river." He says, "Well, maybe there's another way." I've been investing in trading or five years and at times it felt like this neighbor kid who wanted to float down the river but didn't have the right tools or equipment or the training. I certainly admire the courage. The jump on to a self made boat. In this case it was literally a piece of ice, but we can drown financially pretty easily, as you've all seen, in the financial markets if we don't have that right equipment. Now there are many human needs and one of them that affects our investing is the need for certainty. As I talk with other traders, most people want consistent profits. I know I do. What really started me on this journey was desire. I saw a potential, as I'd mentioned in my previous podcast. I saw a potential for achieving returns that could impact my family and my life, but I could see the risk. Conceptually. I hadn't experienced that yet. I didn't experience it until I actually started investing. Until I jumped in the river and started trying to paddle down it. I did it without the proper training. I didn't have all of the right equipment and elements that I needed. I got some training and I'm going to discuss that more on some other podcast, but some of the training didn't provide the right equipment. Then I launched into the river, so to speak, and ended up experiencing the negative results which is, "Gee, I might drown here." It was the desire that served as the catalyst to want to achieve these results of effective investing and of consistent profits. To do this, we need desire but we need the training that's based on experience and based on a plan. Something that I've learned is to understand the relationship between how hard the engine in a car is working and how fast the car is moving right. You've all experienced that. As the car moves up the hill the engine works harder, but if we don't have any momentum with this then the car starts slowing down. Just the end verse also, going downhill. There's a relationship there, of course, between the energy going into the engine of the car and how fast the car is actually working. That principle applies to the market. Then in this particular podcast, over the next several podcasts, we're going to focus on that principle of how can I understand how the engine is working and what the speed is relative to that energy of the engine and how can I apply that to my trading. We're going to start with futures initially and we'll focus on the indexes initially, to get this started. Then over times, like I mentioned, we'll look into options and stocks as well. To continue your journey, and I'm so glad that you've joined me here. To continue your journey, please join me over on financialinvestingsecrets.com and there's several opportunities there for learning more information. Some things that I give away that you can pull into your trading environments and I give them for free. You can go take advantage of those and look into that. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Financial Investing radio. My name is Grant and thank you for joining. Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing radio. Remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Don't forget to download your free high probability indicators before your next trade. Visit financialinvestingradio.com now.

Welcome to Financial Investing Radio. Where you'll learn the secrets for consistence, high probability returns in the financial markets. For additional income to change your life. Grant creates consistent, high probability trading systems for the financial markets and has applied them over the past five years. He's only recently started sharing these tried and true market secrets. As a gift to listeners, Grant is offering his high probability indicator for free. Go to financialinvestingradio.com and download yours today. Now, here's your host and trading veteran, Grant Larsen. Hey everybody. Welcome to the first episode of Financial Investing Radio. Well thank you for joining. I've started this podcast with the intent to share my lessons learned with the investing and trading. For me it's more about building community and collaboration. These podcasts are gonna be combination of interviews as well as personal experiences. Now if you have a lesson learned or a useful tip to share from your investing journey then reach out to me at [email protected], that's [email protected]. Now investing and trading for me, has been a bit like some of our experiences we had raising our family in Colorado. We would ski with our children a lot and in one particular case our son, one of our younger sons ... I was skiing with three of our sons at the time. At that time the youngest son, as we'd ski down he took off really fast down the mountain so I sped up to him and asked him to stop. I said, "Hey. Now Jared, skiing is a lot more fun if you stay in control." He goes, "Mm-hmm (affirmative), thanks Dad." So we start skiing again and he takes off again, like a bullet. I speed up, catch up to him, "Hey. Hey Jared. Just a minute. Skiing is a lot more fun if we stay in control." "Yeah. Okay Dad. Yep. Mm-hmm (affirmative)." The third time, off he goes and before I could catch up with him, I looked down ahead and I just, you know, I see this ball of snow. Right? Skis everywhere, poles flying and so I ski up to him and I say, "Hey Jared." He goes, "I know Dad. It's a lot more fun if you stay in control." Investing has certainly got those characteristics to it, it's a lot more fun if we stay in control. That mantra has influenced my investing and trading strategies, which is to look for consistent returns, which of course we all want, but also to look for the high probability opportunities. So what got me started here? I wanted to spend this first podcast giving a little back story as to how I got involved in this. Now my background is in software and I've done that for a lot of years. I was working at home one day and one of my sons, not the skiing one, but another one, came in and invited me to attend a trading seminar. There was a three day seminar taking place. I'd always thought that the folks in that business were, you know, selling snake oil. Right? It was something to be watching out for and there is some truth to that, no doubt, but I was definitely not gonna go. So he takes off. He spends the first day at it and he comes back, you know, that evening and was like, "Dad you really gotta check into this or just give me your second and third day on this with me Dad and just take a look." So, you know, eventually I went for the second and third day, under a bit of duress I admit. I was thinking, "Oh okay. I'm being a good father. Right? I'm supporting my son." So we get there and I listened skeptically to the presenter. Right? By the end of the second day I realized that if I could create trades with probabilities in my favor, then the math would work out. So this appealed to the logic part of my nature. So I ended up buying some training on trading and at that time I was focused on learning options. Now, later I discovered that the options training encouraged the buying of, you know, calls and puts at strikes, which ultimately decreased my probabilities. You know if you've done work with options you understand that if you're gonna trade them directionally you need to make sure you get them just right because even if you get the right direction sometimes decay will still take away your profit. So I took some initial losses in options with some of the training that I got. So in time I learned about option decay, I didn't know about it at the time, and about the value of selling options. So I pursued some additional training focused on option time decay and using that approach, my probabilities improved a lot and it began to give me some cash flow but it was not enough to make a big income. So I was happy with the income, but I wasn't yet satisfied. I had heard about futures and decided I would take a course on that and look into and after that course I was hooked. Now it turned into a love hate relationship. I loved the leverage when it was in my favor and I hated it when it was not in my favor. What made matters worse was some of the training that I had received gave me some bad guidance on when to trade the futures market. So that, you know, the training talked about taking advantage of volatility at key announcement times. I mean wow, don't do that. Well I did it and, you know, took a couple significant losses and you know that just added to my pain. I wondered if I was ever gonna see a positive return on my investments and trading. From there I began to study order flow and I worked with some professional traders using that style, but I was still not seeing the results. I would see intermittent, you know, it would work intermittently, but I didn't get the consistent. So I felt determined, but I was a little discouraged at that point so I took more courses. In that particular case it was on the E-mini futures. I learned about the general cycle of the market and some of the key patterns there. So I started training with another professional who excelled at applying these market cycles and patterns but the challenge was that my smaller account size couldn't handle the big stop losses when the general market pattern didn't play out on any given day. So create these really big stop losses to get lots of windows. You're hoping and counting on the fact that a pattern is gonna work out. If it does then, you know, then you do well, but if not, you know, it's taking some decent losses on it. Then occasionally I'd get a win. I kept wondering, "All right. What can I do?" I needed to see smaller increments of success. I wanted to take profits when I could, while not relying on some pattern, but still be aware of what the market cycles were, but still trade the actual price actions. Right? That was the key. I wanted to build on a succession of small wins with high probability that was based on price action but still, again like I said, to be aware of the general market cycles and the patterns for context. So it hit me. One of the first secrets I discovered as a self driven investor, that if I could combine the high probability option thinking with futures. In other words, you know when you look at the option chain, right, and you've got probabilities of being in the money and out of the money and so forth, if you could look at that and say, "Wait a minute. If I could apply that style of thinking with futures, I could have a trading investment strategy that would bring cash flow and reasonable gains." In other words, like you use a combination of what options do best, in terms of, you know as far as I'm concerned, do great with the time decay, and selling premiums, and, you know, getting the value from that while using some of those techniques, but as it relates to futures; looking for what it means to be high probability on futures and to get the gauge from that. So I found a way to combine some small and simple things to bring about high probability gains in the futures market as well. I couldn't believe it. After all the searching and trying to find a solution, what it turns out is that the solution was, of course, overly simply not overly complex. So that's the good news. Basically, what I've learned in the last, you know, five years on this journey is that price action matters, there's no surprise there, and that that's what you trade, but you do it with a set of principles and with a set of overarching patterns and not just the patterns themselves but ... What I wanted to share with you is the experiences that I've had after all of my trading and attending courses and trading rooms and you know indicators, and systems, and lectures, and professional guidance, and so on. So it comes down to a few simple ideas that need to be pulled together, you know, in the right way. So when I started the journey on this I was expecting greater results sooner and perhaps you felt that way as well. Early on I was looking for the home run hits, right, with huge returns and I hate to admit it, but that was probably the greedy part of my nature. Over time, I refined my objective to look for a balance of high probability cash flow and high probability gains, mixing those together and taking base hits and consistent hits and letting those build on top and compound on top of each other. So I want to share with you my secrets to high probability returns. I'll talk a lot about the E-mini futures, but we'll broaden that conversation to be stocks and other instruments as well. So this can apply to other markets also. So I hope that you join me in the next episode, where we'll continue the journey. I'll be bringing in interviews as I said. We'll be talking with other people and hopefully you as well. So again, reach out to me. Look forward to getting to know you and thank you for joining me in this very first episode of Financial Investing Radio. My name is Grant Larsen and trade safe! Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Don't forget to download your free high probability indicators before your next trade. Visit https://FinancialInvestingRadio.com now!