Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Become A Sales Agent For An Offline Product And Take It Online

Become A Sales Agent For An Offline Product And Take It Online  Offline Assassin


Have you ever come across a product that really caught your eye that you have never seen online before?
If you have and you still know where to find it, why not consider trying to market it online? There are really countless ways of doing this, depending on the nature of the product and where you get hold of it from, but in general if you come across something that hasn’t really taken off online yet you have a great chance of beating everyone else to the punch.
Becoming a sales agent usually means you get a percentage from every sale you make, so the way to approach this opportunity depends on how many products you can get access to. Some businesses allow you to join as a sales agent and sell a range of products, in which case you could set up a website (with their agreement of course) promoting all of them in turn. You would then receive orders via your site and process them via your supplier directly.
It does depend a lot on how you get hold of the product or products in the first place though. Some businesses may agree to let you promote their product on a sale or return basis, or alternatively you may have to buy a quantity of the product first and take a chance on whether it would sell well online or not.
Whichever way you approach this opportunity, it’s clear that you should get stuck into some research before you agree to anything. Find out as much about the product as you can – who it would appeal to, what price it retails for, and how much your profit margin would be on each unit.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of finding a product that you love and you think you could make money with, but you need to be certain that a lot of other people will like it just as much as well! By finding out as much as you can in the first place you stand a better chance of making a good profit.
If you haven’t seen any particular product which grabs your interest the best place to start looking – ironically – is online. Search for companies that have offline sales agents already and think about approaching the best ones (the ones that appeal to you the most) with your proposition. As hard as it may be to believe there are still some businesses that don’t have any kind of online presence at all – and you could be just what they are looking for.
One final point – you should try looking in your local area to see what businesses are there, before you look any further afield. Quite often they will be the ones who haven’t got online yet.
It might take some work to find a product you like that has great potential for taking online, but the end result can be well worth it. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a message below before you start hunting.

Become A Paid Premium Blogger On Other People’s Sites

Become A Paid Premium Blogger On Other People’s Sites


There is always a lot of talk about writing your own blog but what about the opportunities that exist for writing blogs for other people?
There are a number of ways you can do this and you could pick the one that appeals most to you or even do a combination of all of them if you wish. There are some people around who really do blog for a living, and not all of the money they earn is from their own monetized blogs.
All you need to know is how to do it and where to look for opportunities…
First off, there are a number of sites that allow you to write for their own network of blogs. A typical example of this is Creative Weblogging. This site has a number of blogs that it manages, and subject to opportunities being available you can apply to manage and write for one of their blogs in return for an agreed payment every month.
You do need to show that you have some experience so you’ll need to set up a blog if you don’t already have one and keep it up to date for a month or two before you apply. Alternatively they do sometimes elect to add new blogs to their network so you can always contact them if you have one you think they would like.
Another option is to write for other companies on your own blog. Websites such as Pay U 2 Blog use this kind of system and it works very well if you want to add another income stream to your own blog.
But if you would rather write for an existing blog – or at least one that is run by someone else – then you can also look for existing job opportunities. More people than you might think are willing to get someone else to write their blog for them. You would be ghostwriting it as each entry would appear under their name, but you will usually get paid per entry for a fixed number of entries per week or per month.
If you market yourself as a premium blogger in this way, there is no reason why you can’t eventually take on several blogs and start doing it full time. Blogging for a living like this is a great job to do as there will always be success stories online that are looking for someone else to write their blog for them. You can have lots of jobs on the go and even if you should lose one or two you won’t notice a significant dip in your income.
The best places to look for work writing other peoples’ blogs are the sites where you bid on work offered by other people, and also in the writing websites job boards. Craigslist is also worth a look, and there are also some ghostwriting teams that have websites advertising for people to write blogs for clients.
Once you get started it doesn’t actually take that long to find work – you just need to keep at it. And with a combination of finding work yourself, working for a site like Creative Weblogging and working for a ghostwriting outfit you could soon be blogging for a living.
One final point – just as Creative Weblogging advises, if you want to become a professional blogger for other people it helps to have plenty of blogging experience. So it’s worth setting up at least one blog of your own if you haven’t already got one.
Time to get started! But leave a comment by using the form below first.

Start Your Own Informational Membership Site

Start Your Own Informational Membership Site


There is big money to be made from websites as we have seen, but there is one type of website in particular that is a bit different from the rest. What makes it so interesting is that it actually limits the number of people who can get into it and make use of what it has to offer.
This might sound like a strange way to earn money but in actual fact it is well worth doing if you have a good subject to start from.
Informational membership sites are websites which charge people to gain access to them. Everyone will be able to see the main home page (and sometimes certain other pages as well) but the bulk of the website cannot be seen until each person pays their money to gain access.
The key to designing a membership site that works is to pick your subject carefully. It should be something that you know a lot about, and which other people will also find interesting. More than that however, it should include information that people will be willing to pay for. If the information you include could be found by any other means then your site will not work. What’s more, it could damage your reputation too.
So this obviously calls for some research. You need a subject that will always be popular and has brought in a lot of money for other people already. One of the best examples will be working from home – there are always people wanting to know how they can do this and earn plenty of money without the drudge of going out to work every day.
Let’s that that as an example. The key here is to approach that broad subject from an angle which may not have been done before, and which will form the basis of a membership site which provides people with information they cannot get elsewhere. If you don’t have a specific focus and you don’t have some exclusive information to provide your members with every month, then you don’t have a site. It’s that simple.
As far as the website itself is concerned, you will need to make sure your web host can handle a site in which people can log in and log out of their own accounts as and when they wish. You can set up monthly payment schedules online with certain providers; once you have integrated the relevant payment buttons into your website it should automatically take the payment from the customer every month. To get an idea of how much to charge, the best thing to do is to research similar sites to see what they are offering and how much they are charging for it.
When it comes to designing your website, make sure your home page is welcoming for your members, but also make it enticing enough to encourage more people to join. By doing this – and by driving plenty of traffic to your site – you should soon build up a respectable membership base that will hopefully grow into a nice monthly income for you.
Got some ideas on how to make your own informational membership site work? Leave us a comment below and then start brainstorming! Good luck

Make Money Writing Articles Or Web Content

Make Money Writing Articles Or Web Content


What is the one thing that everyone is looking for when they go online? You’ve got it – information. And if you can supply it in all kinds of shapes and forms then you will be paid for doing so, which could lead to a whole new career as a web writer.
Of course it isn’t just online markets that need content; there are hundreds of other markets you could break into as well, including magazines, but overall it is the internet which offers the best opportunities, especially for the beginning writer.
So why should you start online when you want to earn money writing? The reason is simple – it isn’t just editors that need your work. Website owners, people with newsletters that need writing and countless others all have writing jobs that they can’t or won’t do or don’t have the time to do themselves.

That generally sends them scurrying to websites like Elance and Get A Freelancer to find people who will write the articles and content they need for them. There are plus points and negative points to writing for the internet; you won’t often see your work published under your own name as you will usually be ghostwriting it for someone else, but you will get a lot of work since jobs quite often come in batches. You won’t often get just a single article to write for instance – you might get a half dozen, ten, twenty or even more, so the money can soon mount up.
The best places for finding work are the aforementioned sites, but you should also look on classified ad sites such as Craigslist for jobs in your own country and in other places around the world. There are also plenty of writing related websites that can easily be found via the search engines if you look for ‘online writing jobs’ or something similar. Don’t forget blogging jobs as well; if you have your own blog then you already have experience in blogging, so apply for as many as you can. Ongoing blogging jobs are great for bringing in a regular stream of income.
Getting started and building contacts is the hardest part. Go for jobs you feel confident in doing to begin with; after a while you will pick up speed and complete them faster and much more easily. You will soon learn to juggle your work as well in order to meet all your deadlines before they fall due – this is an essential skill you will need to develop in order to position yourself as one of the best in the business.
You could also work for a ghostwriting team if you prefer; these can also be found via the search engines and a simple email should reveal whether they are accepting new writers at any time. This can make life easier since you don’t have to go looking for work all the time – it is generally supplied by the team leader, depending on how that particular team works.
But can you really make a full time income by doing this? The answer is yes you can, but speed and quality are of the essence. If you produce good work then people will naturally come back to you for more of the same. They will also pay more for work of a better standard, so make sure you don’t put yourself down with the $2 an article crowd.
It will take time to build up enough work to be able to leave your current job and start a brand new career as a web writer, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do this if you persevere and keep checking the classified ad sites and job boards every single day. Don’t wait to apply for jobs either – do it as soon as you see them appear. Getting in early can make all the difference in some cases.
So do you think you have it in you to be a writer? If you do there is a huge market out there just waiting for you to dive in. Just remember where you came from, and leave us a comment by using the form below before you go and begin your new career!

Make Money in Network Marketing or MLM

Make Money in Network Marketing or MLM


It has been said that 10% of new millionaires in the US over the past ten years have done it by building businesses through network marketing.
Even well known authors and business people such as Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad), Donald Trump (Trump University) and Tony Robbins (Robbins Institute)  have all stated that Home Based Businesses and particularly network marketing, direct sales and MLMs will be the biggest growth industry of the next decade.
The highly respected Forbes Magazine forecast that an incredible 79,000,000 new home based businesses would start over the next three years.  That’s over 500,000 a week – and just in the U.S.
Now that’s certainly not to say that the MLM business model suits everybody. There is always a rather large drop out or failure rate, but then that holds true for pretty much any business, online, offline, MLM or whatever. Most Businesses do tend to fail in their first 4 years, but out of the tens of millions that are started each year, there are plenty that do succeed.
Entrepreneur Magazine estimates that the US home-based business industry may be worth over $420 billion a year; that’s more than pharmacy; food; and consumer goods combined; with an average home office household earning of 65,000 US dollars a year.
With increasing financial uncertainty; job lay-offs and a shift in thinking to create a better lifestyle, home based businesses as either an additional part-time income or replacement of primary income can only grow massively over the coming years.
So exactly what does it take to succeed with a network marketing business. Most experts tend to agree on the following attributes:
  1. You must be prepared to “network” with likeminded people. People who join network marketing companies and do nothing never get anywhere. The only way to succeed is to get involved and build your business. Now this doesn’t mean you have to become a leech to your friends and family and sell them stuff, or join them up. On the contrary, most successful MLMs run proper businesses, they learn the value and develop the skills needed to generate quality leads to their business. People who are already looking for the products or services they are selling and offer their products.
  2. You must have some marketing knowledge, or be prepared to learn some. The internet has been a godsend for people looking to generate leads to any type of business. Gone are the days when you had to run newspaper, classifieds, radio ads or letter box drops in order to generate leads. Nowadays anyone looking for pretty much anything is looking online. So all you need to do is know how to get your message in front of the people who are already looking for it. Most good network marketing companies offer some kind of basic level marketing support, but it’s always a good idea to seek out those who are willing to go the extra mile and teach you everything you need to succeed.
  3. You must be prepared to do some real work. A lot of people join network marketing companies looking to “get rich quick”. But the reality is, most of them are not prepared to do the work it takes to be successful. Yes there is a lot of money to be made in network marketing, but it’s not a sure thing, you still have to work hard, especially at the beginning if you want your business to take off. (just like you do in any business venture, or anything else worth doing for that matter)
  4. Building Your Network Marketing Business
  5. Believe in the products you are selling. This should be obvious, but needs to be said anyway, make sure you choose a company who sell products that you actually believe in, use and are happy to recommend other people use. To be success in your business you are going to be spending quite a bit of time talking about your products, so make sure it is something you can relate to and get excited about selling.
So if that sounds like you, then perhaps you have what it takes to build a successful network marketing business.
So the only question you have to ask yourself now, is which company will you join…
Here is a list of some of the more popular network marketing companies running today:
If you think network marketing might be for you, don’t forget the points above and make sure you find a company with a good support network that can help you get started.

How to Make Money with Twitter

Making Money with Twitter
How to Make Money with Twitter


Every time we turn around we’re hearing about another social networking site offering users unlimited possibilities. Twitter is just such a site. Twitter is a very popular site that’s gaining more popularity every day. Members are constantly “tweaking” their friends, family members and even work associates! It seems like almost every one of all ages has a Twitter account today and many are making money doing it. Yes, you can make money with Twitter. Join the thousands of others that are doing that very thing. While you won’t become a millionaire overnight, Twitter offers you a great chance to earn some real cash!
Twitter Offers Many Money-Making Opportunities
There are several ways you can make money with Twitter. Before you can begin making money on Twitter, you will need lots of contacts the better. It’s been shown that Twitter users are getting as many as 20,000 followers within just the first month or two of joining. Imagine if you made a sale to just 1% of these followers: you’d have sold to 200 people. The opportunities to make money are endless with Twitter. So make as many friends as you can on Twitter and develop a good trusting relationship with these users. The more Twitter friends you make, the better your opportunity to make money.
Become an Affiliate on Twitter
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online while doing very little in the way of work. Most online companies offer an affiliate program to anyone interested. Find a company that offers affiliate marketing (it will be on the bottom of their website). Sign up and wait to hear from them. They’ll check out your Twitter page and make sure it offers good opportunities for sales. Once they’ve accepted you as an affiliate, you’re all set to go.
Put up an attractive ad for the business and promote it to all your followers. The more of your followers you can get to purchase the product, the more money you’ll make. Since Twitter is such a large social networking site, the possibilities just keep getting bigger and bigger. Some companies will even pay if a person just clicks on the ad without making a sale, although these are rarer. Affiliate marketing is a very popular way to make money and if you have a Twitter page anyways (who doesn’t?), you may as well make some money at the same time.
Make Money on Twitter with RevTwt
RevTwt is a platform that deals with CPC (cost per click) and allows you to make money from your tweets. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, tweets are messages and posts you put on your Twitter page.
Sign up for an account with RevTwt and they’ll check out your Twitter profile. After doing this, they’ll allow you to put ads for different products or services on your Twitter page. Each time someone clicks on these ads, you can make money.
As you can see, there’s a lot of money to be made off of Twitter but the key is to get as many followers as possible so make all the friends you can!

Make Money Forex Trading – Learn How To Trade Forex

Make Money Forex Trading – Learn How To Trade Forex


Whether you’re new to trading or you are what’s considered a “seasoned” trader, there is a lot of money to be made trading Forex markets. Although instantly trading with real money is not for beginners or people that have never traded before, you can quickly learn the ropes with a little help and commitment.
What is Forex Trading?
Forex trading is the buying and selling of currencies. In much the same way that you’d buy and sell stocks on the stock market, traders exchange currencies they’ve purchased. If you’ve ever traded on the stock market, you should have no problem getting the hang of trading Forex.
The purpose of Forex trading is to exchange a currency that you’ve purchased for another with the hopes that the price of the newly purchased one will go up in value. Whether you’re new to this or consider yourself an old pro, you’ll find it very exciting and a lot of fun. The value of currencies is always quoted in pairs such as USD/JPY or GBD/USD. The reason for this is because you’re always buying one and selling another.
It is recommended, however, that until you get the hang of what you’re doing you should set up a “demo” account where you may be buying and selling currencies but they’re fake. By doing this, you’re learning how it’s done and giving yourself a chance to learn more about it without losing real money.
Signing up for an Account
Signing up for an account is very easy. You can register for one of the training courses on the Forex web site where you can “pretend” trade in a demo atmosphere or you can participate in their workshops where you’ll have real experts teaching you everything you need to know about Forex trading. You’ll also have webinars at your disposal where you can watch demonstrations of Forex trading, take part in discussions with beginners as well as experts in the field. Signing up for an account is not only fun and exciting by the best way to learn the ropes so you’ll soon be ready to begin making money trading Forex.
Getting started is Easy
You’ll find that it’s easier than you thought to get started. Banks and financial institutions have been doing it for years and now with the internet available to everyone, it’s easy for you to make money at home by trading Forex. Because there are so many different theories behind trading Forex, it’s to your advantage to talk with someone that knows what they’re doing and has participated in Forex trading in the past.
If you don’t know anyone with enough experience to help you, consider signing up for some of the online webinars and Forex workshops. They’re very helpful and will take you through any scenario you can imagine and are available to answer any questions you may have. You can continue to be part of a “demo” trading market until you’re ready to strike out on your own with real money. That’s when you’ll see how much money you can truly make trading Forex.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

How Seth Godin Helped Me Understand The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Seth's Blog: Moving beyond teachers and bosses

Almost daily I find myself thinking about the meaning of "The Entrepreneurial Mindset". As I think about trying to help a baby boomer make the transition to from employee to baby boomer entrepreneur, the definition of the entrepreneurial mindset is always an issue.

Seth Godin, one of my favorite writers recently helped me bring this concept into a tighter focus. If you follow the link to his blog, you will learn how we get conditioned to please teachers and bosses. In the process we forget how to take initiative.

Grasping this simple concept shared by Seth will help you, just as it helped me. It brought me to a new level of clarity. It can do the same for you as you make the transition to becoming a baby boomer entrepreneur.


Shallie Bey





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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Only Way to Day Trade


The Only Way to Day Trade
There are four cardinal principles which should be part of every trading strategy. They are: 1) Trade with the trend, 2) Cut losses short, 3) Let profits run, and 4) Manage risk. You should make sure your strategy includes each of these requirements for success.
Trade with the trend relates to the decision of how to initiate trades. It means you should always trade in the direction of recent price movement.
Mathematical analysis of commodity price data has shown that these price changes are primarily random with a small trend component. This scientific fact is extremely important to those desiring to pursue commodity trading in a rational, scientific manner. It means that any attempt to trade short-term patterns and methods not based on trend are doomed to failure. It also explains why day trading is darned difficult and why almost no day trader is a long-term success.
The shorter the time frame in which you examine price action, the smaller the trend component is. Commodity price action is fractal. That means that as you shorten or lengthen the time frame, price action remains similar in behavior. Thus, five-minute charts have roughly the same appearance as hourly charts, daily charts, weekly charts and monthly charts.
This similarity in chart appearance convinces traders that you can day trade successfully with the same tools you use on longer-term charts. Of course, they try to use much of the arsenal of technical analysis that doesn't work on long-term charts either. Things like Oscillators, Candlesticks and Fibonacci numbers.
However, even trend-following tools that work in intermediate to long-term time frames won't work in day trading. This is because the trend component is so very small in short-term data that you must use a highly effective method to overcome the costs of trading.
In longer-term trading, you can let your profits run. You do it by definition or it wouldn't be long-term trading. In day trading you can only let your profits run to the end of the day. This means your average trade (the average profit of both your winning and losing trades) must necessarily be much smaller than if you could let your profits run for days, weeks or months. However, your costs of trading--slippage, commissions, the bid/asked spread and mistakes--stay roughly the same on a per trade basis. Thus, your day trading system must be much more consistent and robust to stay ahead of the costs of trading than would an intermediate to long-term system. There are few day trading approaches that meet this test.
Since market price action is mostly random, successful trading methods must somehow exploit a non-random feature of market price action. The tendency of most markets to trend is the only possible edge in trading, so a winning approach must harness trend in some way. Tradeable trends do not show up often in the very short term. They certainly are not present every day. That is why the person who tries to day trade at least once every day, and perhaps even more often, is doomed to failure. The more often you day trade, the more likely it is that you will be a long-term loser.
There is a wonderful fantasy about day trading. You get up in the morning, have a nice breakfast and go to your home office. There you have a powerful computer with fancy software that brings you real-time intraday charts and quotes. You look over the day's market activity and find some promising situations. You watch the markets for awhile until a suitable trade presents itself. You pick up the phone and call your broker to make your trade entry. Then it's time to relax and grab a hearty cup of coffee or a frosty glass of juice while you watch your profits mount. By the end of the day, you are out of your position with a nice profit. Most days are profitable, although not all. You seldom have a losing week. Never a losing month. You make as much money as you need. Some days you don't bother with trading at all. You have better things to do. You play golf, sail, do lunch. You take extended vacations whenever you want. Life is sweet.
There are plenty of people out there ready to sell you a day trading course or system for thousands of dollars that will show you how to implement this fantasy. The only problem is they haven't been successful traders. They make money only by selling their losing methods to others.
Here's what trading legend Larry Williams said about day trading: "If you're day trading, you're going to end up frying your brain. When you go home, you're not going to be a nice person to be around. I'm already not too a nice a guy to be around. So when I do a lot of that type of trading, who would want to be around me?
"All the day traders I talk with are losing money. The oscillators, the supposed support and resistance levels, all that other technical analysis stuff out there doesn't work very well in day trading. Plus I found I make more money by holding overnight and trading out of positions in the next day or two. If I've really got a strong signal, it should last for more than a few hours."
Gary Smith is the only person with a documented long-term success record in day trading. He made money consistently for over ten years. However, he trades relatively infrequently, maybe once or twice a week. "Successful day trading is not an everyday affair and not a multiple trade affair," he cautions. "Inexperienced day traders simply refuse to accept this." Gary's book, published by Reality Based Trading, is called Live the Dream by Profitably Day Trading Stock Futures.
I have been day trading successfully for the past couple of years using a system that trades on average only two or three times a month. I have also recently published a second day trading system that trades only once or twice a month. Of course, I make almost all my money trading with my more effective long-term systems. For me, day trading is only for fun and for a little diversification. These systems are available from our company.
If you want to be a successful trader, your best chance is with a long-term, trend-following system. If you must day trade, don't do it very often. The more you trade, the more likely it is you will lose.

Market Disinformation


Market Disinformation
How long would a gambling casino be able to stay in business if most of the customers won instead of lost? The markets are no different. In order to continue to exist, the markets must operate in a way that causes most participants to lose. There would not be enough money available to pay the winners if the majority were consistently taking profits out of the markets.
Gambling casinos have an advantage over the markets in that they are able to setthe rules of the game to insure that the house has a mathematical edge. The markets cannot directly control how the individual participants will play. Most commodity traders are intelligent, competitive individuals. There are seemingly unlimited sources of information about how to trade. There are powerful computers within everyone's reach to help conquer the markets. Why is it then that such a high percentage of traders still end up losing?
A well-known answer is that traders cannot overcome their emotions well enough to succeed. That is certainly true. Another less well-understood reason is that the markets constantly send out "disinformation." I could not find disinformation in my dictionary, but it is a term coined in the intelligence community and now in broad use. In intelligence parlance it means false information designed to mislead and confuse the adversary.
I am not suggesting that the markets have any volition or that there is a conspiracy among insiders (like the "evil" floor traders) to fool the rest of us. This is something that just happens because of the nature of markets.
William Eckhardt is one of "wizards" Jack Schwager interviewed for his book, The New Market Wizards. Eckhardt was the partner of mega-millionaire Richard Dennis. It was his bet with Dennis about whether trading skill could be taught that led to the formation of the famous "turtles." Eckhardt put it this way. "The market behaves much like an opponent who is trying to teach you to trade poorly."
A common formulation of this phenomenon is the concept of random reinforcement. Traders are not rewarded with a profitable trade every time they do something right, nor are they penalized with a loss every time they do something wrong.This makes it exceptionally difficult to figure out what is right and what is wrong. Compare this to an electric fence. Every time you walk by and don't touch it, you feel fine. Every time you touch it, you receive a painful shock. It doesn't take a man or animal long to learn how to relate to an electric fence.
Think how much easier learning to trade would be if you automatically took a loss every time you failed to follow correct decision-making procedures. At the same time, what if you were always rewarded with a profit when you traded correctly? You would be able to learn the correct trading rules much more easily.
As your opponent who is trying to trick you into trading incorrectly, the market is constantly sending you disinformation. One important piece of disinformation it sends is that the market is constantly changing its behavior so the successful trader must be vigilant to change his approach to keep pace.
Have you noticed what a constant refrain this is from various trading experts? It is a common piece of conventional wisdom that no mechanical approach can be successful very long because the markets change. You are advised, therefore, to change your system to keep in tune with recent market behavior.
It is in the expert's self-interest to preach this gospel. Anyone who tells you that the markets are always changing no doubt has found a "solution" to how to keep his trading method up-to-date. He probably wants to sell it to you in one form or another. If he is not selling his system, he at least can appear incredibly wise and resourceful to his audience. It is a sure thing his audience hasn't found such an elegant solution to beating the markets or they would be rich and would not have to listen to any experts.
Another reason experts invariably claim the markets are forever changing is that it is a convenient excuse for poor performance. Every successful trader has numerous periods when his system or method doesn't seem to work. It is more palatable to say the markets have changed than my system isn't working right now. If your system isn't working, it implies you have failed. On the other hand, if the markets have changed, that is beyond your control. You can just "fix" your system.
This is the origin of the pernicious practice of re-optimization. Let's say you have a great trading system using three moving averages. During the last five years, it has made beaucoup bucks in hypothetical historical testing. Naturally, you use a different set of moving averages for each market because each market "has its own personality." You are in tune with the markets and ready to trade.
But wait! You know that the markets are constantly changing their personalities to keep traders off balance. It is only reasonable to expect that the correct moving average values will change over time in the future. So as part of your approach, you set a schedule for yourself to re-optimize the moving average values every so often.
How often you decide to do this will depend on how industrious you are and how often you think the markets change their spots. Do the markets remain stable for six months, three months, one month, two weeks, two days? Whatever your answer, you will dutifully re-optimize your moving average values to keep up with those elusive markets.
Let me tell you a little secret. Your system will always trade the past perfectly, but it will probably be lousy in real trading no matter how often you re-optimize it. Oh yes, you will have some extended periods of good profits. This will encourage you. The market is just sending you some of that good disinformation, encouraging you keep it up. In the long-run, absent some extraordinary luck, you will surely lose.
I am not saying the market don't change. They clearly do. One of my favorite sayings about the markets is, "The future will be just like the past, only different." What I am saying is that any attempt to modify your approach to "keep up" with this change is like a dog chasing his tail.
When you re-optimize your system every two weeks, you are making the assumptionthat during the next two weeks the markets will behave like the last two weeks. This is a comforting idea, but where is the evidence to support it? Research has shown just the opposite. The best system parameters for the next period are most likely not the best parameters from the previous period, regardless of the period length you choose. You are as likely to be successful choosing your parameters at random from previously profitable parameters as you are choosing the most profitable parameters.
When people ask me how a system has performed in the last twelve months to get an indication of how it will perform in the next twelve months, I ask them a question. What makes you think 1997 markets will be more like 1996 markets than like 1987 markets or 1993 markets? In fact, 1997 markets are more likely to be similar to some previous year other than 1996.
The purpose of this market disinformation is to cause people to be suspicious of successful trading methods and abandon them too soon. One of the most reliable traits of professional traders is the ability to stick with their system much longer than the typical loser. We all go through losing periods, no matter what type of approach we choose. We cannot increase our chances of success by constantly changing our approach. Since there are many more losing approaches than winning ones, we actually decrease our chances of success by frequently changing our system.
The correct solution is to find a non-optimized approach that works over a long period of history in a wide variety of markets. To avoid over-curve-fitting, use the same rules for all markets. If you can trade it for an extended period in the future in a wide variety of markets, you are likely to be successful, although success in never guaranteed.
The reason this works is that although the markets change their short-term patterns, they are still trending overall. That is your edge. If you play the trends, you will succeed in the long run. Attempting constantly to modify your system to mimic the changing patterns of the recent past will not improve your chances of success. It will more likely insure failure.
Human nature is such that we are always trying to improve. I am not suggesting that you might not be able to create a better system in the future. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that it is better because it is somehow adapting to ever-changing markets. It is better because it is more profitable over a long period of time or because it trades more markets profitably.
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