User Questions
Frequent Asked Questions
In principle, day trading is getting in and out of the market daily with the intent of getting paid. In practice, it's a lot more fun than that!
- Day trading has changed my life. I have transitioned from a full-time career in the Australian Army and have now committed to now live and work wherever I choose. Many of you my dream of leaving the nine to five grind and instead living on a laptop, and I can confirm to you that that is 100% possible because; I've done it myself.
- In the Army we were taught that everything we need to do in life has been done before. All we need to do is find somebody that has successfully achieved what we want to achieve, then copy them with the intent of emulating their success. In my humble opinion, day trading is ridiculously good fun because it is one of the only online business models in the world that involves just one human, and that's you. The better you get, the more money you earn, and the markets turn over billions of US dollars daily! No drop shipping, no affiliates, no landlords, no suppliers, no unpaid invoices, just you, your laptop, and a multibillion-dollar market up for grabs.
I think it is worth noting that the Futures Markets, in various forms, have been around for a lot longer than most people think.
1700’s Japanese Rice Markets
1885 Chicago Board of Trade
1898 Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)
1992 CME Globex Platform
1997 S&P 500 electronic futures contract
The S&P500 = a collection of the 500 largest companies (by market cap) listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Amazon, Google, Mastercard, 3M, Apple, Citigroup, Fed-Ex, Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, eBay, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Pfizer, Starbucks, United Airlines, Walmart, Visa …
At DDT we trade the Exchange Traded Futures Markets.
This allows us to trade some of the largest markets in the world with 100% transparency!
1.The US, European and UK Stock Indexes
2.Commodities such as Oil, Gold, Coffee, Sugar, Wheat and Cattle
3.The Aussie Dollar, Japanese Yen and the Euro/US cross pair
4.And up to 70 other markets globally
It is worth noting that ONLY FUTURES TRADERS have access to the Futures Exchanges. Any suggestion that FOREX trading, CFD or Options trading are like Futures Trading, could not be further from the truth. This may seem like a small detail now, but this may change the way you think about trading forever. When I explain the red house greenhouse concept shortly, this video may become the most valuable investment into your trading education that you have ever made!
So why Futures Trading? Great Question!
As a futures trader I can trade some of the largest markets in the world while at the same time avoiding any form of Broker initiated market manipulation when I trade. How? We simply do not use OTC Brokers!
Not using Brokers (in the OTC sense of the word) allows us to become super confident in the foundational design of the markets we are trading. In a Broker free market, there is no one on the other side of the market to deliberately trade against you every time you take a trade. In this case, with a great strategy, you have a very high chance of picking winning trades.
You are also trading in a truly 2-team game, that being, buyers versus sellers and the stronger team must win. To be great at trading (in the 2-team game), all you need to do is work out which team is stronger, then join them with the intent of getting paid. This may seem too good to be true, sure, but after 16 years of doing just this, may I suggest you need to keep your trading simple in principle, simple in practice, and the results will follow.
The Most Heavily Marketed trading methods in the world include FOREX, Options, Binary Options, CFD’s and Shares (just to mention 5!!!). What is the difference?
You trade to and from your broker (that you are forced to use).
The price of the market you are trading is 100% controlled by your broker, not a Stock Exchange. The Broker can give you what ever price they want to …… (Problem!).
Every aspect of the market is open to manipulation by your Broker because they are in control of the price of the market you are trading.
What if there are 2000 FOREX Brokers globally … what does this mean? Understanding that the price of the FOREX Markets is defined by your broker, not a global exchange, there may be 2000 different prices for the AUD/ USD/ EURO, Gold, Oil, all at the same time.
Basic Trading FAQ’s
Day trading is trading the market on a daily basis with the intent of making money regardless of whether the market is falling or rising. Typically, a day trader will not hold a trade for more than one day, avoiding the risk of both overnight and over the weekend positions.
We trade Futures with the intent of avoiding OTC (Over the Counter) Broker controlled markets like FOREX, CFD’s and Binary Options. These OTC markets are open to manipulation by the Brokers who won them and as such are very difficult rot trade consistency well over the long term. At Douro, we are only interested in producing winning traders.
A green candle is typically a candle that is owned by the buyers.
A red candle is typically a candle that is owned by the sellers.
A trend is when a market is moving in a said direction, either up or down, for a sustained period. The DOURO Trend Indicator will show you what trend we are in. If the trend is up, the indicator will be colored green. If the trend is down the indicator will be colored red. If the trend is neutral, the indicator will be colored gray.
The candles in the market create a stair step that can reinforce who is in command of the markets.
The NASDAQ is a great market for new traders to trade. The nasdaq is otherwise known as the nasdaq composite index and is an index that represents more than 2500 stocks listed on the NASDAQ exchange. The nasdaq is weighted by market capitalization and is heavily weighted in the technology sector, followed by consumer discretionary and healthcare companies.
The S&P 500 is an absolutely brilliant market for those traders who enjoy a slower moving market with a moderate level Tic value. One very large advantage of the S&P 500 is that it allows you to trade a very large number of contracts when you have the experience to do so. Call The S&P 500, or Standard and Poor's 500 index, is a market capitalization weighted index of 500 leading publicly traded companies in the US.
The FDAX is an expert market that offers many traders with Douro the opportunity to capitalize on the European open using a European centric stock index. The FDA X, also called the Dax 40, is a weighted average of the value of the top 40 stocks traded through the German Stock Exchange.
The FESX is potentially the best yardstick for the direction of global markets during the European open trading session. This stock index is composed of 50 stocks from 11 countries across the eurozone and is considered the leading and largest European stock index available globally.
The expression market open refers to when a stock market triggers its cash market trading. Cash market trading means that the Stock Exchange pertaining to that stock index is open for regular trading. A stock market open session, like the European open session used by the DOURO live trading room, typically offers a very good trading opportunity. A market open session is typically characterized by great volume and good volatility meaning that day traders have an opportunity to finish their day inside the first 90 minutes of that trading session.
The expression market close typically refers to the last two hours a market can be traded prior to the respective Stock Exchange closing for trading for the day. The Market Close session does offer a particularly good trading opportunity as institutional traders tend to exit their trades prior to market close.
Trading and Signal Set FAQ’s
A Tick is the smallest increment by which a market movement can be measured. Much like a cent is to a dollar, specific markets like the NASDAQ, Oil and Gold are measured in the number of ticks it moves on a daily basis.
A point is the smallest increment by which a market movement can be measured on markets that are not measured in ticks. Specific markets like the FDAX, FESX and S&P500 are traditionally measured in Point. To complicate matters slightly, some markets move in both ticks and points. These tick and point values are different for each market. Before you start trading, make sure you are aware of your market’s tick/point value so that you can accurately calculate your appropriate risk levels.
In mathematics and nature and trading alike, the Fibonacci Sequence is a sequence of numbers that establishes a pattern of behaviour. In trading with DOURO, there a two Fibonacci’s we use, a Fibonacci Extension (projection) and a Fibonacci Retracement.
A Fibonacci extension, sometimes referred to as a Fibonacci projection, is a mathematical grid that we can use to project how far a market is likely to move in a certain direction. We can use this forecasting tool with the intent of setting medium and long-range profit targets while at the same time establishing mathematical risk control points that are of significant assistance to very well-trained traders. At Douro, we are big fans of Fibonacci extensions!
A Fibonacci Retracement is a mathematical grid that we can use to calculate how far a market is likely to retrace against its most recent move. We can use this as a forecasting tool to work out where the market is likely to fail on its return journey back to its balance point. At Douro, we use specific Fibonacci Retracements that have proven to be of significant value to our traders since 2009.
The moderators use a series of colors to make it easier for all traders globally to understand where a Fibonacci Extension or Fibonacci Retracement is generated from.
- The 60-minute chart Fibonacci color is black.
- The four-hour Fibonacci color is green.
- The daily chart Fibonacci (1440 Min Chart) color is blue.
- The weekly chart Fibonacci color is pink.
- The monthly chart Fibonacci color is orange.
At Douro, the expression ATM refers to a ninja trader function that enables all traders to take advantage of ‘automated trade management’. An ATM allows a talented trader to automatically control their risk once a market has moved toward their desired profit target. This same ATM can also be used to automatically control risk throughout the entire duration of a trade. In weekly tactics and strategy coaching, the moderator will explain how to establish the most popular ATMs used by the Douro professional trading team.
At Douro, a reversal trade is a trade that is traded against the stair step of the market. Reversal trades typically offer a high potential for long range targets and as such a very positive risk to reward ratio when traded correctly by well-trained traders.
The DDT reversal trades are primarily range chart-based trades and can be dated back until September 2009.
At Douro, the 4PTB, like an SBR trade, is a ratio based reversal trade that is typically traded off Pivots and Known Areas like Fibonacci Retracements.
This is also a very high success rate reversal trade and is a favorite with DDT Traders.
This style of trading is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
At Douro, a bias switch trade is a trend change trade that occurs when the market switches the color of the Douro trend indicator in favour of a new trend.
The bias switch trade is one of the most popular trades with our professional traders and also dates back to September 2009, when the original 101 trading course was released by Lachlan.
This style of trading is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
At Douro, a continuation trade is a trend resumption trade that typically occurs after a bias switch. The Douro continuation trade is particularly powerful when traded in combination with a larger chart move.
This style of trading is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
At Douro, the DELTA trade is a scale-in trade assisted by the DELTA indicator. This algorithm is only available to Douro clients globally. The DELTA indicator was first developed by Lachlan in 2009 and has been updated in 2024 for Douro.
This style of trading is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
At Douro, the SBR trade is a ratio based reversal trade that is typically traded off Pivots and Known Areas like Fibonacci Retracements.
This is a very high success rate reversal trade and is a favorite with DDT Traders.
The SBR trade is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
At Douro, the FECAT trade is also a ratio based reversal trade. The name stands for "First Efficient Candle After a Turn in the market".
A FECAT is typically traded off Pivots and Known Areas like Fibonacci Retracements.
This is a slightly lower success rate reversal trade and is a also a back-up reversal trade for the DDT Traders seeking SBR and 4PTB trades.
The FECAT trade is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
The Douro strength indicator, sometimes referred to as efficiency, dates back to October 2010 and was originally developed for Euro/US cross pair currency trading. Fast forward to today, and ideal intent is still being used across all markets traded with significant success. Douro has recently modified this indicator to even better fine tune its sensitivity to market volatility and this fine tuning is paying significant dividends.
The Douro excess volume indicator allows us to determine, by market, if a particular team is using too much volume and is therefore likely to face a fatigue event leading to a market reversal. Excess volume, also historically known as climactic volume, was first used by Lachlan in 2010 when developing the oil and gold trading strategies used at that time.
The Douro Pivot Indicator is designed to establish support and resistance levels in the market that are identical to those levels used by the institutional traders that Lachlan has worked with in the past. These traders are some of the best, globally, and that DOURO, we benefit enormously from using similar market intelligence to them. Please be aware that there are multiple pivot files available globally, yet the DOURO pivot file continues to perform, being unchanged since early 2010.
Every trade called in the Douro live trading room we'll have multiple targets defined for the traders’ present depending on their experience levels the Douro TGT Indicator has been specifically designed to assist this process. Ultimately, your target should be selected based on the volatility of the market on the day and Douro can assist you in establishing realistic expectations for this target setting for the markets we specialize in trading.
A KPI is a key performance indicator that is used by a professional trader on a daily and weekly basis to track their performance as they move towards their projected income goals. At DOURO we believe in short-term consistency allowing traders to take advantage of long-term profitability. We understand that compounding a trading account is the key to success in trading and we understand that a small KPI, achieved daily, repeated weekly and monthly from three to five years, sets the foundation for a phenomenal career in trading.
Your stop loss, as the name suggests, is an order placed into the market that will stop you from losing money if the market moves in the direction opposite to the one you anticipate. Each signal taught by Douro has a specific stop loss location that has proven to be the most beneficial for that specific signal. As a general rule, the best place for your stop loss is where the enemy last failed. If you are a buyer, your enemy is the sellers. If you are a seller, your enemy is the buyers. This buyer or seller failure can be defined very easily using Candlestick analysis, so log in to weekly tactics and strategy coaching if you have any questions.
If you enter a trade and you have no stop or target orders on the screen, this may suggest that you have entered the trade without an ATM selected. You have two options:
- You can simply close the trade using the close button on the chart trader panel, then select the correct ATM, then seek to reenter the trade at the appropriate price point.
- You can manually place a stop loss and target into the market instead of closing out on what would otherwise be considered a valid trade. Manual trade risk control must be practiced by you to ensure you do not make a mistake. This will be covered in the Douro weekly tactics and strategy coaching for all traders.
Very occasionally, your buy or sell order may be skipped in the market. This is because, in the futures markets, there must be a buyer for every seller and a seller for every buyer. When you place your order on your chart, you are sitting in a queue waiting to have your order filled. Simply put, if too many people are in front of you in the queue, your order may not get filled at the price you have selected with your order, particularly if you use a limit order.
A limit order is an order to buy or sell the market that sets a limit on what you are prepared to pay for the buy or sell order you have placed into the market. As much as limit orders are very accurate, they have a higher chance of being skipped if the market is moving quickly in your favor.
A market order is a buy or sell order placed into the market that does not set have a set strike price. You are basically saying to the market, get me in now, even if your order is slipped a number of ticks or points. When you first start trading with Douro, we do not recommend using market orders.
Very occasionally, the market may touch your profit target and not pay you. This is because your profit target is a limit (limited)order and as such there may be more people in front of you in the queue that also want to get paid at that specific price level. At DOURO, we strongly encourage all traders use an ATM that ensures that profit is locked in once a market has moved 80% of the way to your desired profit target. In the Douro 101 course, this is known as the 80% rule.
NT8 Specific Questions
Simply click on the object you wish to remove using your left mouse button and press delete.
Simply left click on the chart you wish to change contracts on and type the new cand abbreviated contract name into the window that appears on your chart. For Example, a NASDAQ trader seeking to trade the March of 2025 NQ Contract would type “03-25” into this window when it does pop up.
The arrow is intended to draw your attention to the strong candle. The number rating adjacent to the arrow will define for you how strong the candle is.
The red box stipulates a loss of strength for the team in charge of a particular candle. Combined with pure price movement thinking, this loss of strength indicator is designed to assist you in understanding how powerful a reversal is likely to be in the market.
The Douro bar timer is available on all charts and dictates exactly where you are in the maturation of a particular chart candle. Please note that if you are a static bar trader, or you seek to trade at a very high success rate, make sure you let the five-minute chart candle close, and the bar timer countdown to 0, before you make a definition as to Candlestick ownership and strength.
LTR FAQ’s
The markets on display are positively correlated and this positive correlation allows the professional trading team to navigate the market at an exceptionally high strike rate.
The European premarket does offer some very good trading opportunities as it typically aligns with the last hour of trading in Singapore. That said, the highest performing trade in the European premarket is a pivot based static bar reversal on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ concurrently. A rising Singapore close typically indicates a rising European open and as such the Singapore close is analyzed in detail by the moderating team prior to commencing the moderated session.
Typically, the European Open runs as follows:
- The LTR charts will be projected 30 minutes prior to the European open.
- The moderator will start briefing the LTR 15 minutes from the European open.
- The session has a duration of 90 minutes unless the volume becomes untenable in the session.
- Most traders will have finished trading in the first 30 to 35 minutes of the session.
- Caution needs to be used trading in to the close of the hour. The last candle in the hour is typically known as the widow maker candle as that candle typically falls prey to the 60-minute chart traders and as such produces lower probability trades.
- FDAX traders will not take a new trade in the last 15 minutes of the hour and as such avoid 70% of their losing trades.
Absolutely! The European open LTR session follows the opening of the German FDAX Cash Market. As such, twice yearly, as daylight savings changes in Germany, so does the start time for the LTR.
Absolutely! Some of the best trades triggered by the professional trading team inside the European open trading session are in fact repeated trades from the European premarket. These trades need to be navigated carefully and inside a highly defined set of rules to make sure that they are traded profitably. These rules are taught daily in the LTR and also during weekly tactics and strategy coaching.
The US Pre-Market can be traded in an identical style to the European Open. The best trades will be generated statically by the market.
Advanced traders can seek to also take single and double touch reversals as traded in the LTR on a daily basis.
This style of trading is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
The US Open follows 2 x separate trading plans depending on your trading style.
The first plan is akin to the 2009 plan developed by Lachlan. This is a closed candle (static) strategy.
The second plan is the Fibonacci Extension plan. This plan requires significant practice and perfection of the use of Fibonacci Extensions in agreement with the 2009 plan.
This style of trading is taught in the 101 course, in Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and in the Live Trading Room.
Typically, the US centric sessions run as follows:
- The US Pre-Market Session commences 90 minutes prior to the US Open. This session then becomes the US Open session and the Open Session runs for the first 30 minutes of the US Open.
- The US Close session starts 2 hours prior to the close of the US trading Session.
- Both trading sessions are discussed in detail in the 101 course, Weekly Tactics and Strategy Coaching and during subject specific Master Classes.