Hello, my name is Jason Love, and I am the Founder and Lead Trader for the Oil Trading Group.

As a way of quick background, I have been affiliated with TopstepTrader in one capacity or another since 2012. I have been a funded trader, educator and webinar presenter. I strongly recommend TopstepTrader to all the traders with whom I come in to contact. Even if the trader has no intention of becoming a funded trader, I advise them to take (and pass) a Trading Combine® prior to risking their own funds.

The reason for this is quite simple: if you can pass a Trading Combine using TopstepTrader’s parameters, then you will be in a better position to handle your live trading account and, ultimately, in a better position to make money trading futures.

That’s why, from time-to-time, I will also enter a Trading Combine and trade it live in front of my trading room audience. The purpose is to demonstrate live what we talk about all the time: the fact that the number one job of a trader is to preserve capital. Making money is secondary to preserving capital.

Here are three things I did to pass my latest Trading Combine in 15 days.

Trading can be frustrating. Perhaps never more so than when you think you are seeing the market clearly and yet, you can't seem to take advantage. 

That was the topic of a post on Topstep's private Facebook community, where Lee A. said:

"I'm again having the comical problem of being 100% correct in directional moves, yet getting stopped out or filling entries that go nowhere. And just found myself upside down once again today and had to cut a trade at a big loss. Can anyone share some wisdom?"

The post hit a nerve within the community, particularly given the recent volatility that has some traders wondering how to adjust their styles in a new environment. So, Performance Coach Dan Hodgman and our Content Manager Mark Meadows got on Facebook Live to talk through their recommendations for adjustments traders should make to continue to make money trading futures. Enjoy. 

Why have we been saying that markets right now are full of opportunities? Because volatility plus risk management can equal big profits. Take just one example, Jacob B. in Utah, who started in his TopstepTrader Funded Account™ on October 1 and amassed a healthy amount of profits and a $7,000 withdrawal check by the end of the month. 

What can you learn from how Jacob managed his account and took advantage of what the market gave him? 

You may know Annie Duke as the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions winner in 2004. But you don't make more than $4.2 million in lifetime earnings on the professional poker circuit without knowing how to make decisions and manage risk. 

For Annie, that's been a lifetime passion — and one that she is pursuing more than ever now that she is retired from professional poker. 

In this interview with Topstep's Eddie Horn, Annie details why our decision-making is flawed and how we can change the way we approach problems to reach better decisions. Annie takes complex topics like "resulting" and "hindsight bias" and breaks it into easy-to-understand pieces that will improve your trading. 

Today, we continue our September series about how to get better trading every day. And like so many lessons, this one focuses on what you can learn from someone else's missteps. Before there were crises at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers or MF Global, there was Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM).

(The irony of the collapse of a hedge fund called "Long-Term" should not be overlooked.)

Though LTCM was run by Nobel Laureates and  geniuses, it made one trading mistake that cost it big, leading to a rescue 20 years ago. In the rescue, LTCM partners' capital, which once stood at $1.9 billion, was wiped out completely. 

Was I planning on relating trading to Tiger Woods' epic 2018 comeback today? No.

Maybe I am doing it because I was caught watching The TOUR Championship in the office yesterday and said it was for "research." Or maybe there really are some parallels that you should take into your trading. 

You're just going to have to read on to find out. 

Overtrading. It's a bad habit.

Sometimes, we make trades for the simple fact that we are in front of our computers and the markets are open. Then, we hold onto those trades and make them positions — it's a vicious cycle that often ends up in losses and ties up capital that we could be using when the market does present an opportunity.

So, instead of placing that next trade when the market isn't there, here are four things to do instead.

Experts say that there is no better way to learn to trade than to teach. That's something that Steve Burns, trader and the founder of New Trader U, has taken to heart. From his time trading the dotcom boom and bust to trading through the Great Recession of 2008 to today, Steve has been incredibly passionate about markets and  shares that passion openly on Twitter (@SJosephBurns). 

In this interview, Steve tells Eddie Horn how he found his niche in trading and how he would lessen the learning curve if he were starting out today. 

We are halfway through our September series focused on helping traders get better every day. We've covered the importance of preparation. We've taken a look at some funded traders (Brian from Brisbane and Daniel from Arizona) and shared insights about how they've found success.

And through it all, we've tried to show how challenging trading is, that's why we pointed out how "Bond King" Bill Gross made an amateur trading mistake this year that cost his investors $150+ million. 

If you've been following along — and we hope you have — hopefully you've incorporated some of these ideas into your trading. But if you're working to make change, you are going to need a community.

That means you should join our private Facebook group. Here's why.

This is our second piece in a three-part series on the 2008 Financial Crisis. For the first piece, please see “10 Years Later: 4 Universal Trading Lessons from the Great Recession.”

Under normal conditions, the stock market goes up and down. So corrections (aka losses) happen from time-to-time. They’re expected and not much of a challenge for our economy to navigate.

But 2008 was different. That year, markets were not operating normally. Because the economy was not operating normally. Here’s a breakdown at some of the moves in equities, commodities and currencies.