The Universal Principles of Successful Trading

Investors and traders are always looking for an edge. Without an edge, it means trading on the same information and with the same tools and strategies as everyone else. Good luck beating the market.

Looking for an edge is worthwhile, but it creates a problem: the search makes it easy to forget the core fundamentals you need for trading success. If you lose these fundamentals, no amount of edge can help you win.

In this article, we'll detail our 5 critical fundamentals for trading success. But we'll also show you how to use Artificial Intelligence to build on these fundamentals and take your investment strategy to the next level.

First and foremost, investors need to differentiate between assets that are long-term and for retirement, versus assets that qualify as 'fun money' or are designated for trading. Short-term or day trading is a high-risk/high-reward endeavor, it should only be done with money you don't necessarily need for retirement. That's step one.

Step two is figuring out how to invest each pool of money in a manner consistent with your goals and preferred strategy. That's where Artificial Intelligence comes in.No matter where you are in the process, Artificial Intelligence can help you allocate your assets.

First, head to Tickeron's website and navigate to the Portfolio Wizards page:

From the Portfolio Wizards page, you'll answer some key questions about what type of investor you are, and what you're looking for:

• Are you a short or long-term investor?
• Is your goal to have A.I. analyze your existing portfolio for diversification, or are you starting from scratch (with just cash)?
• What types of asset classes do you prefer -- stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, Forex?
• Are you looking for help allocating your 401(k) plan, within the confines of the available investment options in your plan?

Tickeron's Artificial Intelligence will process your responses and give you ideas for how you can allocate your portfolio. In the example below, we told A.I. that we were long-term investors with $25,000 to invest in stocks and ETFs. Within seconds, A.I. produced a recommended allocation to maximize our Diversification Score. It's that easy:

With investing and trading, there is no such thing as "practice makes perfect." But, practice can make you better.

In baseball, the more times you step up to the plate for an at-bat, the higher the likelihood you'll get a good pitch you can turn into a base hit. Tickeron has taken this same concept directly to the trading world. Tickeron's Artificial Intelligence scans the market everyday and delivers (throws) you trade ideas (pitches) with technicals, charts, patterns, target prices, and odds of success. It's up to you to find the trade idea that suits your investment style and turn it into a base hit (successful trade).

Accessing Tickeron's best trade ideas is simple. From Tickeron's home page, you'll see "Best Trade Ideas" under Popular Links on the left-hand side.

Clicking on "Best Trade Ideas" will direct you to the A.I.-powered trader's playground. To keep the baseball metaphor going, it's like stepping into batting practice.

Here are a few tips for getting started. From the Best Trade Ideas home page, you can simply scroll the news to see the A.I.-generated trade ideas for that day. There will be dozens upon dozens of fresh trades for you to consider, with odds of success.

You can also play around with some of the filters on this page. On the left hand side, you can sort the trade ideas any number of ways. By clicking on the "+" sign, you can sort the news by technical analysis, trend, patterns, different indicators, and more. If you're the type of trade who likes pattern trading, simply click on the "+" sign next to patterns to sort the news:

Tickeron's A.I. will immediately filter results for only pattern trades (see arrow below), and as you scroll the page you will see all of the latest trade setups available. When the A.I. presents you a pattern, it gives you the date that the pattern emerged, the breakout price, the target price, and the date the pattern was confirmed:

Another way to filter the news for trade ideas is to make a selection from the dropdown menu:

You can search by stock or ETF tickers, category (e.g., technology, cars), or theme (e.g. China internet stocks, 5G). Let's say you're looking for trade ideas within the technology sector. Just select category, type in "technology," and watch the trade ideas roll in:

There are literally hundreds of new trade ideas every day. With filters and a little bit of exploration and practice using the tool, you can quickly start finding attractive trade ideas. With some practice, you can get better at trading them.

Let's face it: an investor's worst enemy is him/herself. The most common mistakes happen when we let emotions get the best of us -- trading on "gut" feelings or making trades when we're feeling greedy or fearful. With Artificial Intelligence, you can remove emotion completely from the equation and trade on what the technicals, data, and odds tell you to do.

A.I.-driven pattern trading has never been easier with Tickeron's new Intraday Pattern Feed. Technical traders will be familiar with many of the bullish and bearish pattern types, like Head and Shoulders, Pennants, Cup-and-Handle, Broadening Tops and Bottoms, and so on. Tickeron's A.I. looks for all of them.

From the pattern home page, a good place to start is by clicking on "Instant Pattern Search," where you can look for patterns by ticker, category, or theme. Let's say you're interested in patterns that involve the stock Apple, Inc. All you need to do is click "Ticker," type in AAPL, and indicate what level of confidence you want A.I. to have in the pattern (in this case we chose 39% confidence). Within seconds, A.I. found a Pennant pattern for Apple:

Another option traders have is to look at patterns in real time. By clicking on Real Time Pattern Feed, Artificial Intelligence will generate a stream of pattern trade ideas across all pattern types. In the example below, you can see that A.I. has found a Broadening Bottom Bullish pattern for Mastercard, with all the information you need to make the trade. As you scroll down, you can see all of the available patterns for that trading day:

With Tickeron's Pattern search and news feed features, you can remove emotion from the equation and trade based on chart patterns, data, and backtesting.

Everybody has their own style and strategy for trading. With Tickeron's Screener, you can look for trade ideas that suit your particular trading style.

There are myriad filters you can apply to the Screener to find exactly what you're looking for. The best way we can show you how is with an example. From Tickeron's homepage, click on Screener Home.

In this version of the Screener home page (chart below), we've selected "Stocks" as the security type we want to research, filtering by "Performance." The Screener automatically generates the page you see in the image below, where the user can toggle between performance results over day, week, month, quarter, year, and 5-year periods. For this example we've decided to look at top and bottom 3 monthly performers over the last sixth months:

As you can see, the Screener gives us the top 3 and the bottom 3 monthly performers. For trend-traders, this is highly valuable information as you can trade with or against the trend. Let's say you're a trader who likes 'bargain hunting,' and is interested in buying dips where possible. In this case, you might consider the Contact Drilling Industry given it's dismal performance over the last month, where all 4 stocks (100%) in the category are exhibiting a downtrend.

Your next step is to analyze these 4 Contact Drilling stocks to look for opportunities. By simply scrolling down on the page, you can see all 4 stocks listed (image below). Now you have two options: 1) individually select the stocks you want to analyze, or 2) click select all to analyze the entire group as we've done below:

Finally, it's time to analyze the group and look for your trade opportunity. After clicking Summaries, you'll land on a page that has a succinct group summary of all 4 Contact Drilling Industry stocks, which in this case is pointing to positive momentum ahead:

As you scroll down further, you can find technical indicators and trade ideas on individual stocks within the Contact Drilling industry. In this example, we find that HP's looks to be in an uptrend, with Tickeron's A.I. determining that the odds of a continued uptrend for the stock are 90%. For investors, this may be a sign that it's time to buy.

Investing and trading can be a stressful activity. There's real money on the line, and the markets are volatile. But retail investors are also often at a distinct disadvantage -- they don't have access to the same kinds of tools and technology that hedge fund and institutional investors do.

Tickeron is changing that. With all of the fundamentals and tools you learned above, you can deploy Artificial Intelligence to find trade ideas that suit your style and give you the odds of success for every trade. Using Artificial Intelligence to help you trade can give you the edge you need to succeed, while also allowing you not to lose sight of trading fundamentals in the process.

It's time to elevate your trading to the next level. But you can't get there until you start using the tools and refining your skills. Get started today on Tickeron.