Part 1: Cryptos are here to stay

Even non-traders have been talking about some of the year`s big trading stories, whether the meme stock ‘rebellion’ by retail traders in January, or everyone and their dog hoping to get a piece of the crypto gold rush.

As ever, the news has been key in driving the price direction of these asset types, and not in the way an outsider might expect. Once again the Wyckoff VSA methodology has been vindicated in its focus on tracking market manipulation rather than falling for it.

Cryptocurrencies have seen some big swings this year. ‘We’ve seen waves of up and down moves,’ says Gavin Holmes, Tradeguider CEO. ‘They are very volatile instruments to trade but if you’ve got Wyckoff VSA on your side, you can spot your moves in a very short time frame.’

Those swings have often been prompted by big players playing the news machine. Take Elon Musk, for example:

‘Elon Musk will come out one week and say Tesla are not taking Bitcoin,’ recounts Gavin. ‘The coin price will drop 10%. A week later he says, “We’ve changed our mind” and it goes up 25%. And who is going to profit is him.’

Gavin goes on to explain that bitcoin has showed some false breakouts ‘where the price breaks through an old area of resistance of price to the left and everyone who uses mathematical formulas will say it’s going up. But then it completely reverses’.

With announcements this year from the likes of PayPal, the CME Group, and even Premier League football club Arsenal getting into the space, it’s clear cryptos continue to become more established.

This is another reminder, he notes, to follow the advice the late David Weis gave in his book `Trades About to Happen, A Modern Adaptation of the Wyckoff Method` - to wait for a change in behavior in market conditions before making the change.

It’s not about trading when high volume appears. Instead, that is your signal to pay attention and wait for the opportunities that are about to present themselves. Gavin’s last YouTube webinar of 2021 shows this very point in action.

Cryptocurrencies became even more established in 2021

Part 2: What happened at Tradeguider this year

While a minority of traders have made some serious coin from this year’s big trends, one trend that Tradeguider has noticed is that people are not prepared to spend as much, says Richard Bednall, Tradeguider’s Chief Marketing Officer, probably because of the pandemic. Which is where Tradeguider’s VSA Lite product comes in.

a – VSA Lite for those that want a taster

Let’s face it, VSA is not for those who want fast concepts and instant gratification. It’s a complicated process, but the learning curve pays off.

So Tradeguider decided to distil its special sauce in a to-go package and VSA Lite was launched.

It runs on TradingView as a cloud-based service, has two VSA indicators available in the fully spec’d product, comes with simplified documentation, and only works for in-trend trading.

‘We wanted to offer a simplified app so someone could put a toe in the VSA water and decide if it is right for them,’ explains Richard. ‘Making it available on TradingView enables us to offer the VSA methodology on a chart via desktop, tablet or mobile for the first time.’

It’s also the first time that Tom Williams’ favourite trading approach has been made publically available as VSA Lite is based on this approach. Read more about it here.

b –Finally, an easy answer to the question of how to choose stocks

‘We get asked a lot how to select trading candidates so we’ve built a service that helps traders do just that,’ Richard says.

Tradeguider staff had the idea for this 3 years ago but needed to wait for the appropriate hardware to become available. They launched the Index Scanner and Indicator Scanner components in Q4 of 2020, and then completed the offering by launching the Sector Scanner product in March this year.

The Index Scanner looks for the top ten overperforming and bottom ten underperforming stocks against the parent index. Then the Indicator Scanner takes those same stocks but looks for Climatic Action VSA indicators which signal a potential turn in that stock.

‘You can combine those two scans together so you can see the top ten overperforming stocks and then you can scan those for VSA Climatic Action so you can increase the likelihood of a trading setup’, Richard explains.

Finally the Sector Scanner service identifies the overperforming and underperforming stocks in each key market sectors in the US market.

All three products are based on the Wyckoff VSA methodology. The scans are done daily and then posted to the customer portal.

An example of the Sector Scanner

c- Autumn Trading Package mixes software, guidance and access

There were nearly twice as many attendees in Tradeguider`s September’s Autumn Trading Package this year as in 2020.

This is a combination of access to their most popular software – SMART Center -  and a 4-week live trading course so people can see how Wyckoff VSA works in action. With three 1.5-hour sessions a week for 4 weeks, traders benefit from an accelerated trading process. They can start paper trading with guidance and coaching on hand so that confidence and consistency increases. Participants also get to share trading ideas and best practice.

Also, Tradeguider gave each participant three months’ access to the SMART Center software after the course.  ‘We found that a month wasn’t really long enough to get to grips with it’, said Richard.

Looking ahead to 2022

It`s been an uncertain year in many ways though Richard says that Tradeguider, like many in the trading space, has had a great year in 2021 and that`s going to continue.  `We`ve got some exciting developments coming in 2022 that will help you handle whatever the market throws at you`, he says.

And in the meantime, whether the rest of this month is a time of celebration and family for you, or whether it`s just another month-end, we wish you good health, presence of mind and continued growth and development on your trading journey.