10 of the Worlds Most Powerful Trading Rules

1. A winning trading system must either be designed to have a large winning percentage of trades or big wins and small losses.

2. Your trading system must be built on quantifiable facts not opinions.

3. Start with the weekly price chart to establish the long term trend, and then work down through the daily and hourly charts to trade in the direction of that trend. The odds are better if you are trading in the direction of the long term trend.

4. The more times a support or resistance level is tested, the greater the odds that it will be broken. Old resistance can become the new support, and the old support may become the new resistance.

5. Moving averages can quantify trends and create signals for entries, exits, and trailing stops.

6. Bull Markets have no long term resistance, and Bear Markets have no long term support.

7. “The larger the market gaps, the greater the odds of continuation and a trend.” – Linda Raschke

8. “The last hour often tells the truth about how strong a trend truly is. “Smart” money shows their hand in the last hour, continuing to mark positions in their favor. As long as a market is having consecutive strong closes, look for an up-trend to continue. The up trend is most likely to end when there is a morning rally first, followed by a weak close.” – Linda Raschkee

9. Above the 200 day is where bulls create uptrends. Bad things happen below the 200 day; downtrends, distribution, bear markets, crashes, and bankruptcies.

10. “It is much easier to watch a few than many.” – Jesse Livermore

These are 10 powerful trading rules from new book “Trading Habits: 39 of the World’s Most Powerful Stock Market Rules.” The book explains these rules in great detail and how to profit from them along with 29 others.

The 10 Trading Rules of Jesse Livermore

The 10 Trading Rules of Jesse Livermore

Before there was a William J. O’Neil or a Nicolas Darvas there was Jesse Livermore. Livermore was considered to be one of the greatest traders to ever live. He is said to have made over $100 million shorting the 1929 crash, an unthinkable amount in his time. He made and lost millions on several occasions, he was a master of the market. No one blew up as many trading accounts or came back to be a millionaire more times in trading history that I know of. We would all do well to sit up and listen to the primary rules and the methodology that he traded with. His strength was his ability to trade with size and ride a trend for huge wins. Livermore’s weaknesses were likely his lack of discipline at times to follow his own rules and he did not manage his risk of ruin throughout his career going through too many cycles of boom and bust. I would assume with his style of trading he was chopped up in range bound markets and spent a lot on commissions, in his day there were no discount brokers and commissions would add up.

Here were his basic rules from his book How to Trade In Stocks which is recommended reading by many top stock traders.

Buy rising stocks and sell falling stocks.Do not trade every day of every year. Trade only when the market is clearly bullish or bearish. Trade in the direction of the general market. If it’s rising you should be long, if it’s falling you should be short.Co-ordinate your trading activity with pivot points.Only enter a trade after the action of the market confirms your opinion and then enter promptly.Continue with trades that show you a profit, end trades that show a loss.End trades when it is clear that the trend you are profiting from is over.In any sector, trade the leading stock – the one showing the strongest trend.Never average losses by, for example, buying more of a stock that has fallen.Never meet a margin call – get out of the trade.Go long when stocks reach a new high. Sell short when they reach a new low.

While Livermore won in the markets over the long term he also lost everything many times, he even went into bankruptcy before making his unbelievable wealth. While he was a true pioneer in trend following, his weakness was the proper respect of risk management, especially his understanding of the odds that he would be ruined if he risked large amounts of his capital on each trade. He was living proof that if you do not respect the risk of ruin you will eventually be ruined by a string of losses. It is popularly believed that Livermore died broke, this is not true, he set up a trust for himself after one of his comebacks to make sure he would never be broke again. According to the books I read and Wikipedia he had untouchable trusts and cash assets at his death totaling over $5 million. He had a  lifelong history of clinical depression and it had become the dominant factor in his final years. He may have faced and been overcome by mental ruin at the end when he committed suicide after a life spent on the boom and bust wealth cycle along with a materialistic lifestyle. Jesse Livermore’s life is both an example of success with making the kind of money most new traders dream about and also a cautionary tale that shows the dangers of trading and the mental toll it can take when done incorrectly and with the wrong mindset.

Behind Microsoft's Shift to Cloud Technology (MSFT)

Few companies have enjoyed the long-term success of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). The company has been a leader in the software business for over four decades and has created one of the most iconic brands in technology. Microsoft shareholders have benefited from the company's success. The company's $409.1 billion market capitalization as of June 8, 2016, ranked it as the world's third most-valuable publicly traded company.

Despite its history of success, Microsoft faces serious challenges going forward. Disruptive technologies, such as cloud computing, challenge the company's traditional software business and ultimately may make it obsolete. How the company addresses and embraces the competition from cloud computing may determine its future.

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Proactive Response

Microsoft understands that it must embrace cloud computing and transition the company for future growth. Chairman John Thompson asserted that the company's traditional software business may disappear in a few years. While he lauded efforts by chief executive officer (CEO), Satya Nadella, to increase the company's revenues from internet software and services, he also acknowledged that the transition must occur more quickly. Thompson mentioned increased spending on cloud technology and restructuring the company's sales force and partnerships as ways to address the problem. The company sees cloud computing not merely as an add-on to its existing services, but rather as a critical step in its transition.

An Analogy to Telecom

Thompson noted that fellow board member Chuck Noski, the former chief financial officer (CFO) of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), experienced firsthand the effects of failing to address competition from new technology. Noski witnessed the traditional wireline business at AT&T disappear as consumers switched to wireless devices. Thompson and Noski understand that Microsoft may face a similar fate with its on-premise software programs.

Late to the Game

Microsoft forecast $20 billion in annual sales of commercial cloud products in fiscal year 2018, and Nadella expects the company to meet this goal. However, Thompson expressed concern about the company's late entry into cloud computing. While Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform posted 100% gains in quarterly sales, it contributed only $5.8 billion of the company's $93.6 billion in revenues in fiscal year 2015. Other cloud products such as Power BI and the enterprise mobile management service contribute an even smaller fraction of the company's overall revenues. The board is evaluating whether the company has invested enough in this area and how it might leverage its relationships with partners to deliver better cloud products.

Building Partnerships

Analyst Lydia Leong of Gartner Inc. (NYSE: IT) believes Microsoft can better leverage its Azure offerings by forming partnerships with consultants to install and manage its services. Leong noted that Microsoft lags Amazon Web Services in its knowledge about installing and servicing cloud products. Most Microsoft salespeople lack deep familiarity and experience with subscription-based deals. Unlike the one-time purchases of traditional software sales, cloud sales entail longer-term contracts. Matt McIlwain, managing director at Seattle's Madrona Venture Partners, believes that Microsoft's sales team still needs to transition more effectively to a subscription-based selling model.

Reliance on Traditional Model

Microsoft's quarterly report, which it released on April 21, 2016, demonstrated the long path the company faces in breaking into cloud computing. The company announced weakness in its traditional software business and noted that this weakness may persist in the future. The company needs to grow its cloud business more quickly to avoid more growth headaches.

The company's 2015 annual report also highlighted the costs of transitioning to cloud computing. Cloud computing is a lower-margin business than traditional software; the cost of building and running data centers to deliver the product erodes margins. Microsoft's gross margins dropped from 80% in fiscal year 2010 to 65% in fiscal year 2015.

Competition

In market share, Microsoft's Azure cloud service trails Amazon Web Services, the product offering of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), but it leads product offerings by Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM). Microsoft also offers Office 365 cloud versions for email, spreadsheets and other software.

Another big health hire APPL

Apple is quietly building one of the strongest teams in digital health, and on Thursday, it just added perhaps its most high-profile hire yet.

Stephen Friend, co-founder and President of Sage Bionetworks, is joining Apple's healthcare team, Sage Bionetworks announced in a press release on Thursday.

It's not clear exactly what Friend's title will be at Apple, and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Before Sage, Friend was an executive at Merck and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. 

Sage Bionetworks is perhaps the most important partner for Apple's nascent health effort. Sage has been a partner on most of the high-profile apps to come out on Apple's health-focused platforms, ResearchKit and CareKit. 

Sage Bionetworks helped develop the Parkinson mPower app, for example, which was one of the first ResearchKit apps at launch and later became one of the first CareKit-enabled apps. 

Sage provides an accessible, open-source backend for ResearchKit and CareKit apps, and for many researchers and clinical professionals, it was a partner that helped address a lot of the messy behind-the-scenes problems with building one of these mobile health apps. 

"Sage Bioneworks is definitely a big player with where Apple goes with [health], but there's some sort of pseudo-interesting relationship between the two of them," Ahmed Albaiti, CEO of health care consultancy Medullan, said.

"Sage has a very rich think-tank set of resources, and they are are the ones that trailblaze on these Apple products, but they don't help you develop [ResearchKit and CareKit apps]," Albaiti said.  

Apple has long-term ambitions to go into the healthcare market, and has been emphasizing the health capabilities of the Apple Watch. Earlier this year, CEO Tim Cook said Apple had "massive interest" in the health world and that the healthcare space is "ripe for simplicity and a new view."

Last month, it posted a job listing for a lawyer who focused on medical privacy.