Category: Event Review

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Event Review: Global Economic Forecast – The World in 2013 and Beyond by HSBC Business without Borders

Vancouver was the last Canadian city to play host to the series Global Economic Forecast – The World in 2013 and Beyond that toured across Canada in November of 2012.  Put together by HSBC’s Business without Borders unit, this seminar featured perspectives on what is facing the world in both the immediate and not too distant future from two high-caliber speakers: HSBC’s Chief Economist David Watt and Director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon.

The first session, presented by David Watt, was an overview of several economic trends and issues that he believes will be key drivers for business opportunities in the near term as well as for the decades ahead.  Among the topics covered were how the shortfall in oil production will influence the oil services industry and the potential impact of the “currency wars” being waged between central banks on the Canadian dollar. He also made a call on the forecast for the Bank of Canada to hold Canadian interest rates steady in 2013 in the face of the global economic conditions and actions of international central banks.

One of the most interesting portions of this talk came when David Watt referenced how global economies are expected to unfold into 2050.  As part of the report, “The World in 2050” prepared by HSBC Global Research in January 2012, regions such as India and China are expected to have substantial impacts on the rest of the globe’s economies, with the young  demographic profile of India being particularly interesting in the decades ahead.  Other economies that have been previously overlooked as areas of strong economic growth, such as Peru and the Philippines will also be areas to watch for opportunities.

The next half of the session was presented by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon.  This portion took a much higher level view of some fairly somber issues confronting the global community.  Echoing themes from his book, “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization”, Dr. Homer-Dixon  focused on the capacity of systems to withstand multiple shocks or what he called synchronous failures. Issues such as population growth, environmental change, energy shortages and economic shocks happening all about the same time form a perfect storm to destabilize current societal systems’ abilities to cope in times of crisis.  After presenting the daunting statistics about extreme weather events that are being forecast to occur and oil well decline rates for the much hyped shale oil wells, Dr. Homer-Dixon talked about the opportunities for innovation in the face of crisis.

The first innovation strategy is development of general purpose technologies in the energy sector which can alter how energy is gathered, stored, transferred or used. Given the immense challenges facing the world in accessing affordable energy, the type of innovation required is substantial and the need urgent. The second major strategy that can be employed is building resilience.  Of the many ways in which this resilience can be built, a particularly interesting one was to mitigate some of the connections in key systems that currently exist today that let things like “flash crashes” cascade as quickly as they do. As a civilization it appears that humankind has a struggle ahead to properly reign in its own capacity for “innovation”.

Overall this event was a great opportunity to get exposure to some unique perspectives about the possible directions the world may head in and the reasons why it might go there.  While ‘predicting’ the future is always a tricky exercise, especially when looking so far into the future, going through the evidence and arguments is genuinely value added, especially when ideas for innovation are linked to possible investment themes. When most of the financial media is fixated on reporting momentary fluctuations in markets and politics, it is refreshing to take a step back and look out to where the longer-term trends and megatrends are pointing our society.

In addition to the complimentary admission and breakfast, and some great speakers, organizers gave out some serious food for thought as a bonus for attending the session:  audience members received free copies of the World in 2050 report by HSBC as well as the book by Thomas Homer-Dixon, “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.”

To learn more about the Business without Borders website and their future events, you can access their website at http://www.bwob.ca/.

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Event Review – TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage Direct Investing Expo – Vancouver 2012 – Part 2

TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage Direct Investing Expo Review (part 2)

To view part 1, click here.

Options basics – using covered calls

After a long break for lunch, attendees were treated to a session from Investools, an investor education company that was purchased by TD Ameritrade in 2009.  Even though Investools isn’t available to Canadians anymore, rumour has it that there may be something in the works to have them here sometime in the not-too-distant future.    The presentation “using options to help generate cash flow – fundamental options strategies and covered calls” led by Linda McCoy was by far one of the most engaging investor education seminars I’ve ever sat through.  Running a post-lunch seminar with the objective of successfully teaching participants of various experience levels about covered calls was no small undertaking but armed with a healthy dose of dramatic flair, a rock-solid understanding of options, and an obvious grasp of adult learning strategies, Linda was able to successfully lead the room through an often intimidating subject. Using everything from coupons for limes to hand gestures for telephones to get her point across, Linda drove the point home that the world of options is well worth the time it takes to learn about them  Looking around the room, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one who found her presentation both educational as well as entertaining (i.e. nobody was seen knitting at this one).

Risk-defined options strategies

The last portion of sessions for the afternoon had three concurrent sessions, including a repeat of the two sessions from the morning: The Art and Science of Analyzing Charts and ETF Trading: Income Investing Using ETFs, and a third session entitled “Learn to Trade in Any Market Direction – Risk-Defined Option Strategies”.  I sat through the latter, again led by Linda McCoy.  Equally animated, this was a challenging topic as it got into some of the more complicated trade strategies that can be done using options.  For example, in this session Linda went over trading strategies such as vertical spreads, “iron condors” and “calendar spreads”.  While to most people the names of these strategies  can sound like something out of a kung-fu movie, our instructor was able to successfully walk the audience through a full trading plan for each, eventually having the audience put together a hypothetical trade themselves.

The key point of both options sessions is that options can offer a way to make money from markets while controlling risk, especially by taking advantage of a feature of options known as time decay.  While much easier said than done, every successful trader knows that the ability to make a sound trading decisions starts with a trading plan that includes entry and exit rules as well as well-defined money management criteria.

Conclusion

Overall the TD Direct Investing Expo was a well-attended (~160 people), well-planned event.  The speakers kept to the schedule, and events were run generally on time. As far as investor seminars go, it was certainly the type of event that made it worth getting up early on a rainy Saturday morning to attend.  If there were any downsides, they were fairly minor. One suggestion would be to provide a compiled set of notes and slides from the speakers (which to their credit, Investools did do) but which would have been helpful for the Bob Gorman session and for the technical analysis section. In addition, the event did not have a twitter plan in place so even though SparxTrading was tweeting from the event, other clients or followers of TD could not follow along with some of the events of the day.  Incidentally, for those that would like to review the tweets from the event, you can find them below.

For self-directed investors thinking of attending similar events, it’s certainly worth doing a little research on the speakers and the companies in attendance in order to know if it’s the right type of event for you.  A full-day event such as this presents a lot of information to take in. While some may argue that certain types of stock market information just makes things more complicated than they need to be, it is nonetheless important for beginner self-directed investors to be active learners in order to get the most out of what’s being presented.  Taking active notes and asking questions (if there’s the chance) are two tips that ensure that what’s being said will actually stick.

In case you missed it, here are our tweets from the event

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Great breakfast before a big day at the #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada http://yfrog.com/oeqmljuj

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Bob Gorman talk launching – exciting stuff! Starting with dominant theme – the US mkts #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Fiscal Cliffs, Fiscal Norms = Fiscal Cheers; Bob Gorman’s positive perspective on 2013 econ events #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Bob Gorman: Canadian real estate speculators be warned esp in Van and Toronto #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Great talk by Bob Gorman – lots of investment ideas to think about! #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Curious about Bob Gorman’s outlook and stock picks? Look out for our review on https://www.sparxtrading.com  soon! #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: On now to technical analysis 101 with Ryan Lewenza; trends, volume & patterns give entries and exits a hand #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: #technicalanalysis is more helpful at exits than entries: ryan lewenza, #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: TA tips: round #’s matter, # of times stock hits a price more important the price, breaks of support/resistance matter #directinvestingexpo

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Bearish markets means buy and hold not the best strategy; need to be more active: Ryan Lewenza #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Great to mingle with other investors, swapping investing stories over lunch, can’t wait for the next talk! #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Linda McCoy of investools on #options for cash flow – here we go! #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Linda McCoy has a green laser pointer & she can convince the internet to work?! Talk about engaging speaker #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Learning with Investools about #options with limes and coupons #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Here we go: Learning to trade in any market direction with Investools – sounds promising! #options #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Unless you beta weight, you don’t know if you’re supposed to sleep @ night: Linda McCoy #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Yay yay for Time Decay – generating income by selling #options with Linda McCoy #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Selling time and volatility with spreads – great session on iron condors with Linda McCoy of @investools #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada

Sparx Trading ‏@SparxTrading: Great sessions and great day for investors at the #directinvestingexpo @TD_Canada; saturday well spent! Thx for having us!

 

 

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Event Review – TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage Direct Investing Expo – Vancouver 2012 – Part 1

The Vancouver Direct Investing Expo organized by TD Waterhouse provided self-directed investors the chance to learn about macroeconomic trends and issues coming in 2013, tips on technical analysis, exchange traded funds and several options trading strategies. This day-long event featured top-tier speakers such as Bob Gorman, TD’s Chief Portfolio Strategist, as well as a line-up of speakers from Investools, Horizons Exchange Traded Funds and from TD’s Wealth Management division.

Even though it was a typical rainy Vancouver day, the Direct Investing Expo launched on a bright note with a great breakfast spread. The TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage booths surrounding the foyer area had demo stations for several of the major tools of interest to self-directed investors including the TD mobile trading app, the thinkorswim platform, web broker and global trading.  Horizons Exchange Traded Funds and the Montreal Exchange also had booths providing investors with information on their products and services.  Like most discount brokerage sponsored events, TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage took the opportunity to showcase their products to the audience as well as try and land some new clients. To that end, one interesting incentive they offered was a refund of the $100 price of admission for non-TD clients who wanted to sign up for a TD Waterhouse account on the day.  Overall, however, the balance of the day was decidedly on education rather than sales.

The World in 2013 According to Bob Gorman

The first speaker to take the stage was Chief Portfolio Strategist for TD, Bob Gorman.  Investors listened attentively as he outlined his case (impressively without notes) for the economic and investing climate for 2013.  In his view, Bob Gorman believes that 2013 won’t be as dire as some market observers are currently forecasting.  His arguments on the US fiscal cliff being more of a fiscal drag, the recovery of the US auto and housing sectors and an overall soft landing in China mean that on a valuation basis, 2013 could be a positive year for certain sectors.  The tactical approach on where to invest included advising investors to tread carefully with fixed income investments, favouring large cap companies to smaller cap companies and to focus on what he calls ‘dividend-growth stocks’.  For those looking for something more adventurous, the emerging markets may hold promise in the “MIST” countries (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey) over the traditional “BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India, China).  The mix of economic news and concrete picks made this session a very valuable one for investors looking for some investing themes and companies.

Getting Technical

There was a split in the schedule with two sessions running concurrently.  One was on “The Art and Science of Analyzing Charts” i.e. technical analysis (which I attended) and the second was “ETF Trading: Income Investing Using ETFs” presented by Horizons Exchange Traded Funds. The technical analysis session was led by Ryan Lewenza, V.P. & U.S. Equity Strategist at TD Wealth Management.  Ryan walked the crowd through some of the basics of support, resistance and chart reading.  While technical analysis isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, there were some interesting points made on being able to better time entries and exits on ‘fundamentally good’ companies, with the bottom line (no pun intended) being that stocks are not things investors should ever fall in love with.  Of course, while some folks were writing notes during this one, others who felt a little out of their depth with “Relative Strength Indicators” and ‘on balance volumes’ were fortunate enough to have brought their knitting. Trying to get the basics of technical analysis down in a one hour session is a tricky undertaking, so this session was a understandably tough to follow for most beginners

Check out part two of this review where we describe the sessions with Investools and provide some tips for attending these kinds of  investor seminars.

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Event Review – Scotia iTrade Educational Summit – Vancouver 2012

As part of its cross country tour, the Scotia iTrade Educational Summit stopped in Vancouver and we had a chance to check out what it was all about.  This evening session featured presentations on how to go about investing in markets using technical analysis and risk management (provided by AJ Monte of The Market Guys), as well as a presentation and product tour of the FlightDesk™ and mobile trading app provided by senior manager for product strategy for Scotia iTrade, Kevin Dunseath.

The first segment with AJ Monte, Searching for Opportunities in Volatile Markets While Managing Risk, kicked off with a fun little exercise of simulating an open outcry style market pit.  Nothing gets a room going like 200 investors being able to yell “buy Apple” pit-trader style.  During the segment, AJ went through the basics of technical trading, the importance of volume and price action, and how to manage risk by controlling position sizes and using stop-losses.  While the session provided a brief overview of candlesticks and charting, the key takeaways are that buy-and-hold as a strategy may need to give way to buy-and-protect, and that managing risk effectively will ensure your odds of surviving and succeeding will improve.

Scotia iTrade also provided attendees with a chance to tour their new FlightDesk™ platform and their mobile trading app.  While we didn’t get to see the mobile app in action, we did get a chance to walk through some of the key features.  One of the interesting new features coming out in the next release of the mobile platform is the ability to receive ‘unauthenticated’ quotes and watchlist updates meaning that you won’t have to log in every time you want to receive a quote or view your watch list.  Also coming up in the next update of the mobile app is the improved ability to transfer between brokerage account and a bank account.

The FlightDesk™ platform has quite a number of tools that cater to both active as well as non-active investors.  The interface itself looks very slick; however with any piece of software, functionality will determine its worth.  Some interesting features of the platform include the ability to create heat maps (even with Canadian stocks), and the ability to chart options prices.  Some drawbacks, such as the inability to float windows (i.e. place FlightDesk™ windows anywhere on your desktop) mean that there is still some room for improvement, especially for active traders’ needs.  One popular feature on the release horizon is an upgrade to the order types that can be handled (such as bracket & contingent orders) as the current set of order types FlightDesk™ can handle is fairly standard.

Overall, the event was a good opportunity for do-it-yourself investors to connect with their discount brokerage and to get a basic introduction to some educational concepts and tools that can be useful when investing on your own. This type of event also provides the chance to ask and find out about specific features of interest from the iTrade representatives directly.

From an educational perspective, this event did provide a few basics, but is certainly something that individuals would want to build upon. Fortunately, Scotia iTrade offers a number of free webinars and seminars (here’s the link to the Scotia iTrade investor education calendar), many in partnership with AJ Monte, that cover educational topics of interest for the do it yourself investor.  To find out about more investor education events being offered in Canada and online, you can check out our calendar here.

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Event Review: Horizons Exchange Traded Funds – ETF 101: An Introduction to ETFs

This event was a presentation by Horizons Exchange Traded Funds, on the basics of exchange traded funds and was held at the TD Waterhouse Investor Centre in downtown Vancouver.   The seminar itself was just over an hour long and provided a great overview on what ETFs are, how they compare to stocks and mutual funds, how they are actually traded and what some of the advantages and disadvantages are of particular types of ETF products.  All in all, it was an informative session provided by a knowledgeable speaker on the topic.   As this was a presentation from a company outside of TD Waterhouse, there was no direct reference to TD Waterhouse products or services, and was thus an opportunity to learn about ETFs in general and Horizons’ products in particular.

Some of the most interesting points presented were around the cost structure of ETFs as well as the ETF industry in Canada and around the world. The relatively low cost of using index ETFs versus the equivalent product in a mutual fund where management fees can be three or four-fold higher in the latter were discussed.  Whether you are a deal hunter or not, the ultra-low management fees (0.07%) of some index ETFs are something worth taking notice of.

This presentation also had an interesting section on the role of market makers in trading ETFs and gave some eye-opening stats on this US$1.5 trillion dollar industry.  In addition to the Horizons Exchange Traded Funds family, other major players in Canada include iShares and BMO with Horizon’s claiming 7% of the ETF market share overall in Canada.

Horizons Exchange Traded Funds offered audience members a few great tips to close out the presentation including:

  1. Use limit orders instead of market orders to improve the chances of getting an order filled at the desired price
  2. Use stop losses to ensure disciplined exits
  3. Avoid trading the opening and closing 15 minutes of the market
  4. Take a look at the depth of ETF orders before executing a trade

To learn more about Horizons ETF family of products, you can find their website at http://www.horizonsetfs.com  and if you’re interested in attending one of their upcoming seminars, they’re listed on their events page here.

If you are interested in learning more about ETFs, you can watch a couple of introductory videos here (10mins) or here (60mins)

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Event Review – Margin and Short Selling by TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage

Short selling

This past August we attended several investor education events put on by TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage.  These events were aimed at educating retail investors on the concepts, practices and strategies that will better prepare them when trading. The most recent session we attended was about margin and short selling.

The session covered a number of topics related to using margin including defining margin trading, trading account types, the benefits and risks involved in margin trading and ways of reducing that risk. Our main takeaways from the presentation on the subject of margin trading include:

  • Margin trading is leveraging assets you own or intend to buy
  • Leveraging is the degree to which an investor uses borrowed funds to purchase a security
  • Benefits include increased buying power, lower debt interest rate and the most interesting benefit of all, you can withdraw cash from your margin credit

Of course where there is a silver lining there is always a cloud. There are a few drawbacks to margin trading but the main one is that you can lose more than you invested. You can help mitigate some of these risks by not over-borrowing, diversifying across securities and sectors and having an exit and margin-call strategy.

Short selling was also covered in this presentation. Topics covered included the definition of short selling with examples, reasons to short sell, trading requirements in short selling, some potential risks and ways of reducing those risks. Our key takeaways for this section include:

  • Short selling requires borrowing a security from a broker in order to selling it, then buying back the security to return it to the broker.
  • Profits or losses are realized when shares are repurchased to return to the broker
  • Losses can be infinite in short selling as there is no limit on share price gain
  • Profits are capped as the share price will only go as low as zero

One can utilize the same strategies used for minimizing risks in margin accounts when short selling. These strategies include starting out small, diversifying investments and having an exit and margin-call strategy in place.

Overall the TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage session on margin and short selling was informative. The presenter was knowledgeable and answered all questions asked throughout the presentation.

These types of education oriented events are a great opportunity to learn more about investing and trading, especially if you’re just starting out.  To find more educational events, check out our investor education calendar here.

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Event Review – Active Trading Strategies Seminar – TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage

Active-Trading-Strategies

The Active Trading Strategies sessions that I attended took place at lunchtime in the downtown Vancouver investor center. The centre itself is a space for retail investors to directly contact TD Waterhouse representatives as well as catch up on what’s going on in the financial markets via the BNN broadcast or with newspapers provided. Also taking place in the investor centre are regular free seminars that deal with a variety of investment-related educational topics as well as product orientation for TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage platforms such as WebBroker.

In this session, a handful of do-it-yourself investors were taught some basics about what active trading is, the different types of trading strategies as well as a bit about technical analysis, level 2 trading and using company insider trading reports.  This session covered quiet a bit of ground but did so at a surface level and while it was definitely aimed at a beginner investor, there are many concepts beginner investors are probably going to have to look up and learn about. If you’re looking to prep before going to one of these you might want to brush up on some basics of technical analysis found in this post (also check out the section on Moving Average Convergence Divergence [MACD] here).  Overall, the session was definitely geared towards education (rather than product orientation) and supporting retail investors, however quite a bit of homework before and after this session is probably necessary if you’re just starting out.

TD Waterhouse discount brokerage is planning to fine tune their investor education seminars this coming fall. According to their representatives, sessions will be organized for beginner, intermediate and advanced traders/investors to help their clients attend seminars that better match their investment knowledge background.

The session had a couple of added bonuses – the first was a draw for a nifty TD Waterhouse bag, and the second was for an exclusive “free trade” deal to open an account which we’ve listed in our deals section.

To find out about TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage seminars, you can click here or to learn more about TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage, check our broker profile page for them here.

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Event Review – Small-Cap Conference Vancouver 2012

SparxTrading.com attended the Small-Cap Conference Series held in Vancouver on April 10th. We went for a status update on the small-cap (short for small market capitalization – check out Investopedia’s definition here) companies but what we got was so much more. Guest speakers Ryan Irvine of KeyStone Financial Publishing Corp., Theodor Tonca of Vancouver Value Investors Club and Brent Todd of Canaccord Wealth Management educated the audience on the intricacies of trading small-cap stocks.

Most notable was Brent Todd’s approach to investing: “heads you win a lot, tails you don’t lose much” creating good odds for investors. Theodore Tonca discussed ownership of a stock as the same as ownership of a company and Ryan Irvine noted that focused diversification is where it’s at; owning 8-12 stocks is the sweet spot.

Conferences like this make us realize that learning is continuous and that the investment of time made (the conference was free!) is well-worth the confidence in trading later. We hope you take advantage of all conferences, learning seminars and webinars happening in your area. Another small-cap conference is coming up on May 10th 2012 in Calgary. For a full list of upcoming educational conferences and events check out our events calendar here.

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Event Review – Options Education Day – Vancouver 2012

Options Education Day is an annual series of events organized and hosted by the Montreal Exchange (part of the TMX Group) as part of their goal to better educate retail investors about options and derivatives products.  While options and derivative products are more complex than your average stock, there has been an enormous growth in availability and interest in these types of investment products because of the versatility of strategies they offer investors. So, even though it takes some extra effort to learn them, there are many more potential strategies for creating wealth as well as preserving it that options offer investors.

There were three great speakers at the Vancouver stop on the Options Education Day: Jason Ayres, President of Learn to Trade Global and founder of optionsource.net;  Joseph Burgoyne,  director of institutional and retail marketing for the Options Industry Council and Patrick Ceresna, chief derivative market strategist for Learn to Trade Global.  Click on the following links to see our interviews with Jason, Joseph and Patrick.

The event itself had workshops for “beginner” and “advanced” topics that provided information appropriate to the level of complexity investors were willing to dive into.  The beginner sessions covered an “introduction to options trading” and “introduction to ETFs” whilst the more advanced sessions covered “advanced options spreads” and “getting to know the greeks and the impact of volatility”.  A final workshop covered using options as a tool for creating a balanced portfolio.

Exhibitors at the event included Canadian discount brokerages such as Disnat Direct, Interactive Brokers,  Jitneytrade, TD Waterhouse, Virtual Brokers and National Bank Direct Brokerage, as well options education firm Learn to Trade Global, and also the most awesome Canadian discount brokerage comparison company Sparx Trading (yes it is a shameless self-plug!).  We had a chance to talk to lots of investors of all levels who were all there not only for the great food, but also to get a better understanding of options and how to use them in their investing and trading strategies.

Overall this is an excellent event for individuals who want to learn about options at a live event and also network with fellow investors.  It was well-organized, the venue choice great and the cost was nominal and included materials, breakfast and lunch – a great deal for their price of $45.  The conference organizers did a great job of preparing materials that attendees could use during the presentations and take with them after the sessions were done.

For those that could not attend in person, the Montreal Exchange also has a lot of the material that was covered at prior options education days in the education section on its website.  Another excellent source of education materials for individuals looking to learn more about options is the Options Industry Council website available here.

Upcoming stops for the 2012 sessions of Options Education Day include Winnipeg (June 2), Montreal (September 8), Toronto (September 29), Calgary (October 20) and Edmonton (October 21).  You can find out more details for these and other education events checking our events calendar here.

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Event Review – Stockscores Canadian Active Trader Expo (SCATE)

We stopped by the Stockscores Canadian Active Trader Expo (SCATE) this past week and had a chance to sit through a presentation by veteran trader and founder of stockscores.com Tyler Bollhorn. This event was also sponsored by Disnat which has launched one of their best deals/promotions alongside the SCATE tour.  You can find out more details about their deal here.

The session was a condensed version of Tyler’s educational program with topics on trader psychology and trading strategies from less active or position trading to very active day trading strategies, such as one he called “the worm” (as in “the early bird gets the worm”).   He walked through the stockscores.com platform and how to use it to find trading opportunities along with the tradescores.com tool (which we discuss here) as a means to practice (or paper trade).

After sitting through many different presentations on investment/trading strategies Tyler’s presentation is one of the more engaging and clearly delivered.  Like any master of their craft, Tyler makes it look very easy.  In his words, ‘trading is simple, but not easy’.  The difficult part for anyone who is just starting out or who has been at it for a long time comes down to managing emotions and risk.

A central point in Tyler’s presentation (as well as in his upcoming book) is that trading is a skill, not a talent.  To learn and perfect a skill, whether it be playing the piano or doing surgery, it takes practice and discipline.  It is not important how often you are right or wrong, but rather how much you make when you are right versus how much you lose when you are wrong.

One of the most interesting observations from this session is that it took Tyler 8 years of practice before things actually started to “click” for him as a professional trader – before he was able to trade and be consistently profitable.  He attributes the turning point in his success to properly managing risk – cutting his losers early and letting his winners run; a piece of “uncommon sense” which most traders don’t adhere to and explains why they’re on one side of the performance column and Tyler is currently successfully sitting on the other. Check out our interview with Tyler earlier this year for some extra tips on being a successful trader.

To find out more information on the SCATE tour, check out our events section here.