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20 Habits of Great Traders

1)      Patient with winners and impatient with losers

2)      Making money is more important than being right

3)      View Tech Analysis as a picture of where traders are lining up to buy and sell

4)      Before they enter every trade they will know profit target or stop exit

5)      Approach trade no.5 with the same conviction as the previous 4 losing trades

6)      Use naked charts

a)      As we mature we begin peeling off indicators

b)      Prices action is key (more…)

Market Quotes from Market Wizards

“Throughout my financial career, I have continually witnessed examples of other people that I have known being ruined by a failure to respect risk. If you don’t take a hard look at risk, it will take you.”
Larry Hite

“Frankly, I don’t see markets; I see risks, rewards, and money.”
Larry Hite

“My philosophy is that all stocks are bad. There are no good stocks unless they go up in price. If they go down instead, you have to cut your losses fast… Letting losses run is the most serious mistake made by most investors.”
William O’Neil

“[Michael Marcus – another top trader] taught me one other thing that is absolutely critical: You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. Michael taught me about making your best judgement, being wrong, making your next best judgement, being wrong, making your third best judgement, and then doubling your money.”
Bruce Kovner

“That cotton trade was almost the deal breaker for me. It was at that point that I said, ‘Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?’”
Paul Tudor Jones

“If I have positions going against me, I get right out; if they are going for me, I keep them… Risk control is the most important thing in trading. If you have a losing position that is making you uncomfortable, the solution is very simple: Get out, because you can always get back in.”
Paul Tudor Jones

“Don’t focus on making money; focus on protecting what you have.”
Paul Tudor Jones

“The elements of good trading are: (1) cutting losses, (2) cutting losses, and (3) cutting losses. If you can follow these three rules, you may have a chance.”
Ed Seykota

“When I get hurt in the market, I get the hell out. It doesn’t matter at all where the market is trading. I just get out, because I believe that once you’re hurt in the market, your decisions are going to be far less objective than they are when you’re doing well… If you stick around when the market is severely against you, sooner or later they are going to carry you out.”
Randy McKay

“I’ll keep reducing my trading size as long as I’m losing… My money management techniques are extremely conservative. I never risk anything approaching the total amount of money in my account, let alone my total funds.”
Randy McKay

“When I became a winner, I said, ‘I figured it out, but if I’m wrong, I’m getting the hell out, because I want to save my money and go on to the next trade.’”
Marty Schwartz

“Learn to take losses. The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand.”
Marty Schwartz

“I always define my risk, and I don’t have to worry about it.”
Tony Saliba

“The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading… I know this will sound like a cliche, but the single most important reason that people lose money in the financial markets is that they don’t cut their losses short.”
Victor Sperandeo

“I think investment psychology is by far the more important element, followed by risk control, with the least important consideration being the question of where you buy and sell.”
Tom Basso

Jack Schwager :Risk & Reward

“In one experiment, subjects were given a hypothetical choice between a sure $3,000 gain versus an 80 percent chance of a $4,000 gain and a 20 percent chance of not getting anything. The vast majority of people preferred the sure $3000 gain, even though the other alternative had a higher expected gain (0.80 X $4,000 = $3,200). Then they flipped the question around and gave people a choice between a certain loss of $3,000 versus an 80 percent chance of losing $4,000 and a 20 percent chance of not losing anything. In this case, the vast majority chose to gamble and take the 80 percent chance of a $4,000 loss, even though the expected loss would be $3,200.

In both cases, people made irrational choices because they selected the alternative with the worse expected gain or greater expected loss. Why? Because the experiment reflects a quirk in human behavior in regards to risk and gain: people are risk averse when it comes to gains, but risk takers when it comes to avoiding a loss. And this relates very much to trading. It is exactly the quirk in human psychology that causes people to let their losses run and cut their profits short. So the old cliché of let your profits run and cut your losses short is actually the exact opposite of what human nature tends to do.”

The Process of Invention

When inventing your own trading system or strategy as I prefere to call it, you are constantly asking questions. In a sense, you enter into a passive relationship to the market where it is telling you about itself – thats the big change in mindset from being a newbie. When you are a newbie you want the market to do what you want (i.e. “my system says it should go up, so GO UP!”). At the same time as demanding, you are hoping – your WILL is involved.

When you enter this frame of mind I’m talking about, you have no more demands of this nature, but rather are trying to get ‘in step’ with what the market is and how it behaves – you subordinate your will to the will of the market; it speaks to you if you shut up and listen. For instance, the market suddenly turns on a dime and you give back all your profits. The market has spoken to you and said “sometimes I have unexpected price shocks and it looks like this”.
Instead of cursing this event a question suddenly arises in your mind such as “Hmmm….. I need to think of a way to deal with price shocks.” You ponder this like a puzzle – you try some things, and think about it. This is the process of invention.

Believe me, when at the end of this you have a way to deal with, for instance, sudden turns in price action you will NOT struggle to force yourself to stick to the “rule” – this rule is not imposed on you from outside, you created it. The process was also interesting, challenging and enjoyable; you are a creative trader who is genuinely interested in the subject.

Preserving Psychological Capital

Estimates are that 75-95% of all traders lose all their trading capital in the first year, and only about 5-10% of those that get into trading are able to stay profitable on a consistent basis after 5 years. This is not encouraging. However, since the majority of people tend to be overconfident, most believe that they are not going to be among the casualties.

What is behind this overconfidence?

Some of the most highly educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers who are used to being first in their class–the best of breed in whatever they do– fail miserably as traders and investors. The reason is that the process of trading and investing is completely different from activities and ways of thinking that bring success outside of the markets. Trading is a counterintuitive to what we are taught growing up. As we grow and develop, we acquire levels of control. We learn to control our bodies, movements, environments, who we chose as friends, lovers and mates, our educational goals, where and how we live. We get cozy and comfortable in our little worlds where we make the rules, and live out our lives in accord with them. Yes, there is a lot going on in the world, but it really doesn’t mean all that much unless it affects us directly. When external challenges face us in our personal lives, we take control, problem solve, and get done what needs to be done.

In the markets things are quite different. There is no way to control the market forces. Markets are larger than life, yet they are life. Millions of people from every part of the world are there making decisions that affect you in either a positive or a negative fashion. Millions of nameless and faceless people are trying to take your money before you take theirs. There is no situation in the life of most people that compares with this. That is why successful trading and investing requires one to adopt an entirely new brain-set.

The majority of people are simply not neurologically flexible enough adapt to this new environment. They insist on adapting the markets to their own worldview, and they fail—sometimes miserably so.

Small losses almost always become larger and larger losses, leading to every manner of emotional distress as you are holding and hoping, or in complete denial that the position could possibly turn against you. Holding and hoping leads to larger losses and more emotional carnage until you are a financial and neuropsychiatric basket case and you just want out at any cost. Desperation, anxiety or depression set in and remind you of every time in your life you were told that you were not good enough, that you would never amount to anything or that you didn’t deserve to win or be successful. You are now in a state where both financial and psychological capital are depleted–all because you didn’t take a small loss.

How do you preserve your financial and psychological capital? You learn to embrace risk by using rigorous risk management techniques. The most important of these are position sizing, stops and money management. You take small losses. You take small losses! You let winning positions run and take profits and trail stops as they are running. Please memorize this until it is burned into the connections in your brain: The single biggest reason for failure as a trader or investor is the inability to take small losses and letting them grow into larger losses.

Euro surpasses US dollar as the currency of online casinos

At the dawn of the online gambling industry in the 1990s, the U.S. dollar was the major currency accepted in online casinos, but those days are over. The euro has replaced USD and is now the most popular currency. According to the latest research by KeyToCasino, the euro is currently accepted in 79% of all existing online casinos. 

The use of the U.S. dollar changed after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), legislation regulating online gambling, was passed in the United States. The UIGEA has prohibited all gambling sites from accepting deposits online, forcing U.S.-oriented casinos out of business. At the same time, online gaming business in Europe has flourished, and many online casinos re-oriented their business towards European customers.

It has been 10 years since UIGEA, and many new online casinos have opened throughout this period. They have never considered targeting the U.S. market and never planned to include USD as a currency that is available for deposits. Players from countries with economically unstable currencies were forced to use the euro for their casino transactions.

American currency is not completely out of the gaming business however. It remains the second most popular currency in online casinos, followed by the British pound, which is accepted in 58% of online casinos. However, the overall popularity of Scandinavian currencies, which include the Norwegian krone, Swedish krona, and Danish krone, beats the pound because Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have the highest population ratio when it comes to casino popularity.

Among the other currencies that have become prevalent on online gaming market, there are the South African rand, South Korean won, and Russian ruble. The least popular are the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan. The Australian dollar beats the Canadian dollar in popularity because unlike in Australia, the legality of online casinos in Canada is uncertain, which results in the Canadian dollar not being widely accepted at online casinos.

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