The Trading From Main Street ideology is one well-rooted in Technical Analysis. We are Chartists to the core. Technical Analysis is based in the belief that the key to your success as a trader or investor comes from your ability to dissect and learn from past market events and apply them to present. It is an ideology that shares ties with psychology, a field of study that holds that certain sets of stimuli will yield a certain responses that are inherent to human nature. In technical analysis, these responses are plotted in the form of charts. Our Main Street Mentors use these charts as an aid in successfully predicting what will happen next in the market.

At Trading From Main Street our Moderator team is composed of three highly successful and personable traders and educators. You will find a number of similarities in our styles, such us the fact that we like to keep things simple. We each use very few indicators and our systems are such that ANYONE can learn them. One of the keys to each of our success also comes from using larger time frame setups and perfecting entries on the shorter time frames to reduce risk and increase profits. 

While we each share our love of technical analysis, as well as sharing our knowledge with others such as yourself, we also have our differences. There are truly no two traders that are exactly alike. A large part of your success as a trader will come from tuning in to your own unique talents and emotions and making technical analysis your own. At Trading From Main Street we offer three successful models to learn from stemming from four very unique individuals. Read on to learn more about us and how we view our styles in our own words to select a mentor or mentors that best suit your personality and needs.

Toni Hansen (Toni) - President and founder
"I follow both stocks and futures, pretty evenly between the two. I am widespread in what times frames I look at to trade on with anything from a 1 minute chart if it has a bit larger time frame going with it to a monthly chart for position trades. For the indices though, I stick to intraday. I use the smaller time frames to get me in on larger time frame setups. Whenever you have a larger time frame setup, using a smaller time frame one along with it will lower your risk. You can get better entry prices with a smaller stop in most cases simply because you are in faster than you would be waiting for the larger time frame one. For example, use a 1 min Avalanche to get you in on a 5 min Bear Flag. Unless I am looking at a setup going into the day though, I am not very active in the first 30 minutes of the day.

I also have a wide spread in terms of what patterns I use with everything from reversal to continuation patterns. Although I do favor reversal setups, such as the Phoenix and Avalanche, and the first continuation after the reversal, I do NOT like getting into a trade in a market or stock that is pacing gradually without decent pullbacks. As such, I am not very active in a gradual trend market unless I caught it early on. This is because the further along you are from the start of a trend, the more easily it can turn on you.

I would consider myself to be perhaps the most conservative of the group overall. To enter a setup, I rely very heavily on support and resistance using moving averages and price S&R mainly intraday placing entries and stops on the opposite side.

I rely on the charts to give me patterns to trade. Many times these are the aftermath of news environments. I scan gainers and losers throughout the day looking for setups, because these tend to provide nice moves with lower risk to reward.

On my charts I use a 20 and 200 sma intraday 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 on daily and weekly charts. I'm a very technical trader as you can see from the above. With each setup I look at I think, "How can I explain this?" If I can't, then I pass. Now, there are definitely times where my instincts are "I KNOW this will happen," but one of the ways I learned was to put these "instincts" into words. When I ran into such a situation, I would try to explain to myself why and I think this was a huge factor in my learning curve...."

Brandon Fredrickson (Brandon) - Vice President and founder
"I'm pretty much a simpleton. I try to do just a few things and try to be as much of an expert on those things as is possible. For the most part, I try to go with the trend at least on a 15 minute basis trend and usually try to get in with the hourly or 30 minute. I want to see what is the primary direction there and then I look for very short term reversal patterns on the 1 minute and 2 minute charts in order to get in on those.

I am definitely a scalper by inclination and probably have the shortest attention span of any of the moderators here. My average trade will last under 20 minutes, as such I really don't look for huge blowout gains and don't take big stops (10 cents on stocks to a few points on the indexes).

I think one of the secrets to being a successful trader is to exploit the few times a month when there are exceptional opportunities and then be bored the rest of the time. It's a job remember. :) So, a large part of my success is due to fact that if I was not able to cut back when things are not working for me I would be unprofitable. My strengths as a trader, I think, are mostly patience and that I have a very good eye for the patterns a good instinct with the market...

I scan each night to get a good feel for the market, as well to locate potential Oops setups. For the most part though, I am looking for specific intraday setups to occur that call for immediate action to capitalize on the opportunity.

People who find that they do best in a sudden situation which does not call for a ton of planning, but does take experience and a cool head will probably find themselves most comfortable with my style.

I tend to average 3 to 5 trades per day, but when the market is very active this number can be substantially higher.