5 Forex lessons from Clinton’s stellar debate performance

Hillary Clinton trumped Donald Trump in all three debates, according to polls. Her accumulated victories are the highest in the history of presidential debates. This does not automatically imply a victory at the one poll that matters most, but her performance at the debates  provides valuable lessons.

Here are 5 takeaways from Clinton’s  debate performances:

1) Preparation

Clinton is known for her serious preparation and Trump boasted he didn’t need any preparation. Well, that prep work paid off. Being fluent on policy issues, memorizing punch lines and doing mock debates certainly helped her. She also hired the best campaigners available for the preparation.

Our lesson: learning the markets, practicing on a demo account, and backward testing all help before making the real trades. Need help?  Take a course or hire a mentor.

2) Exploiting weaknesses

Donald Trump has his weaknesses: a low attention span, a thin skin and quite a bit of baggage. From the first moments of the first debate, just repeatedly calling him “Donald” began creeping under his skin. She later  baited him with the Alicia Machado case (with related ads ready for launch), punched him on mistreating women, not releasing his tax returns, his failed businesses and you name it. He lost his patience, digging  deeper into his traps and showed he doesn’t have the temperament. His last comment “such a nasty woman” served her in rallying hesitant women.

Our lesson: Take the path of least resistance. The cliche of “make the trend your friend” remains relevant. In addition, if a currency cannot go up on good news, it is weak and could tumble down on bad news.

3) Avoiding pitfalls

Clinton has a lot of baggage of her own, including the daily drip of her campaign manager’s emails. Her Wall-Street speeches reveal cozying up to bankers and having positions on a  trade that contradict her current stance. There are more dark episodes in her past. Nevertheless, she quickly pivoted away from the question on borders to the initiator of the hack, probably Russia, and tied Trump to Putin. While Trump did call her out on her pivot,  it still worked to divert the conversation. This is an example from the last debate, but not the only example. She also avoided questions about her husband’s issues with women.

Our lesson: There is no need  to trade currency pairs you are  uncomfortable with or go against the trend just because someone said so on some forum. If you identify the euro’s weakness against the rebounding pound but feel uncomfortable with EUR/GBP, you can pivot away to EUR/USD.

4) Patience

Trump provided his own punches to Clinton, yet in many cases, she  did not interrupt him but let him complete his answers, allowing himself to complicate matters for himself. She probably defied the urge to hit back with impulsive responses. One example is his ramble about the situation in Syria: instead of jumping to correct him, he continued talking and  made an argument that didn’t make sense.

Our lesson: Taking revenge on markets after a loss is  a step towards bigger losses as that second trade has not been thought through. Just don’t try taking revenge against markets.

5)Confidence

In the second debate, Trump promised to nominate a prosecutor and to jail her, in the second debate. The impulsive response would be to hit back immediately, but she  remained calm. At the end of the third debate, Trump interrupted Clinton with the “nasty woman” comment. She continued talking about social  security, showing confidence.

Our lesson: If you  did your homework, practiced and finally got into the trade, be confident that you did the right thing.  Let the trade roll and don’t attach your nose to the screen looking for another immediate move. Jumping ship from a trade that hasn’t gone in a straight line in your favor could be a losing strategy.

What do you think?