Archives of “February 2019” month

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GERALD M. LOEB on GAINING PROFITS BY TAKING LOSSES

  
  Education
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One of the many books on my desk right now is a classic written over 70 years ago by the stock market legend Gerald M. Loeb.  Loeb was a well respected Wall Street broker, not because he possessed some magic investing genie lamp but because of the following nugget of wisdom, one of many from The Battle For Investment Survival in a section entitled Gaining Profits By Taking Losses:

Accepting losses is the most important single investment device to insure safety of capital.  It is also the action that most people know the least about and that they are least liable to execute.  I’ve been studying investments, giving investment advice and actually investing since 1921.  I haven’t found the real key yet and don’t ever expect to, as no one has found it before me, but I have learned a great many things.  The most important single thing I learned is that accepting losses promptly is the first key to success.
 

Some things never change.

Why do 90% get washed out?

  
  Education
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They say that 90% or more of new traders get washed out of the market in six months – why would that be? I just had an insight into my own current state and the implications of it long term if it were left as an unconscious process…

The fact is that learning to trade is hard; very hard – but on top of that, it is a zero feedback learning curve. You don’t get marked or a pat on the back for your efforts; the only feedback you get is:

You lose…
You lose…
You lose…

You think you are building up knowledge and skill in your conscious mind, but unbeknownst to you, in the dark invisible depths of your subconscious, you are slowly training yourself to HATE TRADING…

It is like constantly sticking your hand in the fire and going “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”

Your interest and passion for it is being quietly eroded. There eventually comes a day where you would rather do something else than trade that day; your instincts are telling you to avoid the pain.

It eventually becomes a DRAG…

Attracted by more pleasurable pursuits you realize one day that you haven’t traded for a week or two, but the very thought of it gives you a pain in the solar plexus… You brush the whole thing aside as an old hobby that was a large expensive waste of time.

You’ve been washed out. You are a statistic, but by now you couldn’t care less!

Speculation drives human progress

  
  Education
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Speculation, in all its forms, is what drives human progress. This is the core message behind Michael Bigger’s recent post, “The Desire to Speculate”.
An excerpt from Michael’s essay: 
“It is said that the desire to speculate is very strong in the American people. That is why our country has made greater progress than any other country in the world, because progress is the result of speculation. We are not referring merely to stock speculations, but to the word in its broadest sense. Every new undertaking is a speculation.

An inventor speculates on what he is going to invent. Often such speculations result in losses, because many inventors, or would-be-inventors, never accomplish very much. They spend their money, time, and efforts, and probably live years in poverty, and then if the invention is not profitable, they are heavy losers.

It is the same thing with every new business. It is purely a speculation…”  (more…)

Trend following..

  
  Education
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Trendfollowing-The objective of the trend follower is to employ discipline to offset biases in order to extract signals from prices to the exclusion of other information. In fact, this has greater similarity to a statistical or engineering problem than to a finance problem. Because prices are surrounded by or filled with noise, trend following is a form of price smoothing. You eliminate the noise to obtain a clearer signal. It also can be thought of as a filtering problem. You throw out the excess information that may be associated with trades that are not driving the trend signal.

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