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My Checklist :During and After the Trade

checklist-1. What’s your game plan if it goes against you and threatens your survival?

2. Will you be able to get out? Did you take that into account in your workout?

3. More typically, what will you do if it goes way against you and then meanders back to give you a breakeven? Or if it immediately goes for you or aginst you?

4. Would you be willing to take a ½% profit if you get it in the first 10 minutes?

5. Did you test whether taking small opportunistic profits turns a winning system into a bad one?

6. How will unexpected cardinal events affect you like the “regrettably,” or the pre-annnouncement of something you expected for the next open? And what happens if you’re trading an individual stock and the market goes up or down a few percent during the day, or what’s the impact of a related move in oil or interest rates?

7. Are you sure that you have to monitor the trade during the day? If you’re using stops, then you probably don’t have to but then your position size would have to be reduced so much that your chances of a reasonable profit taking account of vig are close to zero. If you’re using 10% of your capital on a trade, they you’ll have to monitor it for survival. But, but, but. Are you sure you won’t be called away by phone calls, or the others? (more…)

Nuggets

Price — The Truth, The Light, The Way

  • Work to understand price
  • Price does not move in a straight line
  • Big moves take time
  • Volatility is your friend and helps to compress time
  • Although volatility is your pal, it can cut both ways
  • If a stock moves 30% a day, then you can’t trade with a 5% stop
  • Don’t expect a volatile stock to stop behaving as it has been and only move in your favor just because you’re now in it. Unless you’re Bill Clinton, what is, IS.

Random Thoughts:

  • Observe but be slow to shift gears — we are trend followers, not predictors
  • It’s the market’s “job” to shake you out
    • The market will do what it has to do to create the most pain (for the most people)
    • The market will often do the obvious in the most un-obvious manner
  • Err on the side of the longer-term trend
    • DO wait for entries
    • DO use protective stops
    • DO trail and scale as offered

How To Improve

Turn off the noise – Information may be the world’s most precious commodity, but 99% of the information at your disposal is not. In today’s age of real-time information, opinions, analysis, etc. it is my strong belief that information overload and noise is hindering performance far more than it is helping. The first step is to stop watching all TV and to place severe restrictions on all media. In addition, to perform better this year you must stop wasting time on seeking out advice and opinions that only serve to confirm what you really want to hear in order to justify your positions. If anything, what time you spend in social media should be devoted to looking for ideas that challenge your positions and/or offer unique insight you can really learn something from.

So turn off that Blue Channels crap. And stop reading those silly Websites/Blogs.

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