Learn From Trading Mistakes
Archives of “January 2019” month
rssTrading and Ego
Some typical symptoms of ego-tizing trading would be the following:
- Not putting in stops. The ego doesn’t want to be proven wrong.
- Hesitating before putting on a trade. The ego wants reassurance before it begins.
- Overtrading. The ego wants to prove itself big time.
- Getting stuck in a trade. The ego has intertwined itself with a trade and is holding on for dear life. It cannot cut out. The ego doesn’t want to be wrong.
- Adding to a losing trade. The ego digs its hole deeper in a massive effort to crawl out.
- Grabbing a profit too soon. The ego wants a pat on the back.
Why are you failing? The first one is often the case for trading & also "resist change". Learn from mistakes & grow
Top 6 Mistakes Traders Make
1. Failure to have a trading plan in place before a trade is executed. A trader with no specific plan of action in place upon entry into a futures trade does not know, among other things, when or where he or she will exit the trade, or about how much money may be made or lost. Traders with no pre-determined trading plan are flying by the seat of their pants, and that’s usually a recipe for a “crash and burn.”
2.Expectations that are too high, too soon. Beginning futures traders that expect to quit their “day job” and make a good living trading futures in their first few years of trading are usually disappointed. You don’t become a successful doctor or lawyer or business owner in the first couple years of the practice. It takes hard work and perseverance to achieve success in any field of endeavor–and trading futures is no different. Futures trading is not the easy, “get-rich-quick” scheme that a few unsavory characters make it out to be.
3.Failure to use protective stops. Using protective buy stops or sell stops upon entering a trade provide a trader with a good idea of about how much money he or she is risking on that particular trade, should it turn out to be a loser. Protective stops are a good money-management tool, but are not perfect. There are no perfect money-management tools in futures trading.
4.Lack of “patience” and “discipline.” While these two virtues are over-worked and very often mentioned when determining what unsuccessful traders lack, not many will argue with their merits. Indeed. Don’t trade just for the sake of trading or just because you haven’t traded for a while. Let those very good trading “set-ups” come to you, and then act upon them in a prudent way. The market will do what the market wants to do–and nobody can force the market’s hand. (more…)
The Purpose of Living Life Purposefully
There are some good self-assessment questions:
* How purposeful are you in getting the sleep you need to function at your best?
* How purposeful are you in getting the exercise you need to function with maximum energy?
* How purposeful are you in eating the right foods to sustain your health and well-being?
* How purposeful are you in organizing your time so that you’re spending your highest quality time on your most important priorities?
* How purposeful are you in cultivating the quality of time with the people who matter most in your life?
* How purposeful are you in ensuring that, each day, you are accomplishing something meaningful in your life?
Can we really expect to achieve our life’s purposes if we are not living our days purposefully?
Can we trade with intention and discipline if we don’t live the rest of our lives intentionally?
Everything in life can be approached with intention and purpose or it can be approached mindlessly and routinely. In carrying out daily activities with self-direction, we strengthen our ability to stay mindful and purposeful for life’s greater goals.
It's the circle of life (accounting edition)
Minimize The Impact Of A Setback!
First, minimize its symbolic importance. Many people over interpret setbacks by imbuing them with more emotions than are warranted. They view setbacks as a form of punishment, as if a teacher or parent is punishing them for doing something wrong. Take the setback in stride and move on to the next winning trade.
Second, don’t confuse trading outcomes with personal significance. If you lose big, for example, the loss may have great financial significance but it doesn’t need to have great personal significance. You can wipe out your entire account, but that doesn’t mean you are diminished in the eyes of friends and family. You don’t need to let a loss or setback make you feel less worthy as a person.
Ironically, when you psychologically minimize the impact of a setback, and treat it as if it isn’t important, you’ll stay calm, free, and objective. And when you feel this way, you’ll trade profitably.
All this technology is making us antisocial #WTF nothing has changed just the point of view
The Secret to Trading Success
The most important thing you must learn in every market cycle is where the money is flowing. It is flowing into the companies where the earnings are growing. As long as mutual funds have capital in flows instead of net out flows then they must put new money to work investing in stocks. If you want to make your job as a trader much easier then find where the flow is going. Mutual fund managers can not go to an all cash position they can only move money around. A bear market sinks most stocks because managers have to sell everything to raise money to redeem shares. In an uptrend they have to buy stocks with the incoming money flows. Where does this money go? It goes into the sectors and stocks that are in favor due to increased earnings in a sector and individual stocks that are dominating their sector and changing the world in the process. You want the leaders not the has been. You want the best the market has to offer. Where are consumers dollars flowing into? That is where the money is going. What companies have the best growth prospects? The stock can only grow in price if the underlying company does. Mutual fund managers are the biggest customers in the market when they start buying a stock that increases huge demand and price support.
Your job is to follow the big money, shorting in bear markets, going long in bull markets. Following the trend of what is in favor. Do not fight the action, flow with it.
Quit having opinions and start being a detective looking for the smart money, the fast money, the big money and where it is going now.
THE COLLECTIVE MADNESS OF CROWDS
All I can say about the following is WOW, talk about THE perfect explanation for the reason behind unreasonable and illogical crowded moves in the stock market…
The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence,the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think,and act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells singly.
…and it was written by a psychologist in 1896!