Never under any circumstances reveal your trading positions to anyone. Your mind must be in complete harmony with your trading positions. When you reveal your positions to someone, they will immediately start to question the trade and start to erode your confidence and concentration in the trade. You will then be a less effective trader and eventually lose.
As in life so also in trading…if you are going to succeed you will have to learn to fail and fail often. Don’t take failure personally as if something is wrong with you or the market is out to get you. The markets do not care about your analysis, or your indicators, or your chart patterns. The markets simply test the resolve of those who choose to play the game.
Your long term success will be based on your willingness to keep on speculating while managing uncertainty, fear and greed, losses and gains, the knowns and the unknowns. Success is about speculating again after multiple, managed losses knowing that the next big winner may just be the next trade. Success is about speculating again after a winner, not fearing that the next trade may chip away at your recent gains.
1. Always change a losing game; never change a winning game.
2. Always have a plan going into a match, and a backup plan.
3. Always have a surprise to pull out all the stops.
4. Reconnoiter your opponent before the match for his strengths and weaknesses.
5. Have a general strategy against all power players, and another against all control players.
6. Analyze every match – how would you play it differently next time.
7. Keep a log of your strategies, and of the opponents.
8. Always have a customized strategy against each opponent, if possible.
9. Call a timeout whenever you skip two straight shots, or the opponent runs three straight points.
10. Keep a coach in the crowd for a second opinion. (more…)
Here are a list of ten types of traders I have observed on social media. We have all likely been more than one of these types at some time or another while trading. But we need to focus like a laser on the only real reason we should be trading: to make money and once we have made it, to keep it.
“Gambling is taking a risk when the odds are against you. Speculating is taking a risk when the odds are in your favor.” Victor Sperandeo
“the only difference between gambling and trading is that your amount at risk and amount of potential reward varies with trading.” I agree, but there’s more to it. The parallels are obvious, from the lack of control over outcome to the illusion of knowledge to the physiological effects of having a stake in the outcome. However, the differences are substantial…and mostly mathematical.
The expectancy in gambling is ALWAYS terrible, while market speculation at times offers outstanding opportunities. To get a 2:1 or 3:1 opportunity in gambling, one needs to accept incredibly low odds of victory. In financial markets, those 2:1 or above opportunities come around like clockwork and offer high enough probability that long-term positive expectancy is possible. Not only that, but the market speculator has the opportunity to adjust his or her position after the game begins…when was the last horse race where you could take a little off the table after the first turn? Or reclaim most of your bet when your horse stumbles out of the gate?
I’ll leave the neuroscience to the experts, but it seems to me that we need to coordinate our left brain(rational) and right brain(experiential) in laying out the role of each. We want to allow our intuition to shine through, but within the overall structure of positive expectancy. No matter how hard one tries, the math of gambling can’t come close to touching the opportunities for building a business out of the markets.
