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10 Trading Thoughts

  
  Education
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ten101. You only have three choices when you are in a bad position, and it is not hard to figure out what to do:
(1) Get out
(2) Double up, or
(3) Spread it off.

I have always found getting out to be the best of all three choices.

  1. No opinion on the market or you are doubtful about market direction? Then stay out. Remember, when in doubt, stay out.
  2. Don’t ever let anyone know how big your wallet is, and don’t ever let anyone know how small it is either.
  3. If you snooze, you lose. Know your markets, when they trade, and what reports will affect the market price.
  4. The markets will always let you in on the losers; the market’s job is to keep you out of winners. Dump the dogs and ride the winning tide.
  5. Stops are not for sissies.
  6. Plan your trade, then trade your plan. He who fails to plan, plans to fail.
  7. Buy the rumor and sell the fact. Watch for volatility in these situations; it usually marks tops or bottoms in the markets.
  8. Buy low, sell high. Or buy it when nobody wants it, and sell it when everybody has to have it!
  9. It’s okay to lose your shirt, just don’t lose your pants; that is where your wallet is.

One last thought to leave with you. It applies not only to every-day life but to trading the markets as well:
Success is measured not so much by the wealth or position you have gained, but rather by the obstacles you have overcome to succeed!

The Forbes 400 appears to have 2 trend followers on the list

  
  Education

#85 Bruce Kovner (trained by Michael Marcus who was trained by Ed Seykota)
Net Worth: $4.3 billion As of September 2012

Hedge fund legend Kovner, who had generated more than $12 billion in net gains for investors since he founded Caxton Associates in 1983, called it a career in September 2011. The reins to his $10 billion firm were officially handed to former chief investment officer Andrew Law on January 1, 2012. Kovner addressed the transition in a letter to investors saying he will miss the adrenalin rush of confronting markets every day. The son of a trade unionist, Kovner abandoned his Harvard Ph.D. in economics after a fit of writer’s block. He moved on to driving taxis, writing and studying harpsichord at Julliard. At 31, he turned $3,000 he borrowed on his credit card into $45,000 trading soybeans and soon watched as that value halved. It was a seminal lesson in risk management. The chairman of Julliard, Kovner has donated 140 scores and sketches by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to the school; he also gave $20 million to Julliard in January to endow a graduate-level program in historical performance.

#311 John W. Henry (profiled in Trend Following)
Net Worth: $1.5 billion As of September 2012

Boston Red Sox owner John Henry hasn’t enjoyed watching his expensive team fall apart in 2012, missing the playoffs for the third straight season. He bought the Red Sox in 2002 after building his fortune through his hedge fund J.W. Henry & Company. Henry broke the “Curse of the Bambino” by winning two World Series championships in 2004 and 2007. His Fenway Sports Group now owns the Liverpool F.C. soccer team, 80% of the New England Sports Network (NESN), and 50% of Roush Fenway Racing. In his free time, Henry enjoys playing iRacing, the online racing simulator game he owns. In 2009, he married his second wife on his private yacht (now for sale) and held the reception at Fenway Park in Boston. (more…)

Six Insights for Disciplined Trading

  
  Education
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1) Trading is a probability game.  You can’t be a perfectionist and expect to be a great trader. Your losses (that you hope will return to breakeven) will kill you.

2) Jumping in too soon or getting in too late.  These mistakes come from traders not having a well-defined plan of how they will enter the market.  This positions the trader as a reactive trader instead of a proactive trader, which increase the level of emotion the trader will feel in reacting to market movements.  A written plan helps make a trader more systematic and objective, and reduces the risk that emotions will cause the trader to deviate from his plan.

3) Not taking profits on winners and letting winners turn to losers.  Again this is a function of not having a properly thought-out plan.  Entries are easy but exits are hard.  You must have a plan for how you will exit the market, both on your winners and your losers.  Then your job as a trader becomes to execute your plan precisely.

4) Great traders don’t place their own expectations on to the market’s behavior.  Poor traders expect the market to give them something.  When conditions change, a smart trader will recognize that, and take what the market gives. 

5) Emotional pain comes from expectations not being realized.  When you expect something, and it doesn’t deliver as expected, what occurs? Disappointment.  By not having expectations of the market, you are not setting yourself up for this inner turmoil.  Douglas states that the market doesn’t generate pain or pleasure inherently; the market only generates upticks and downticks.  It is how we perceive and respond to these upticks and downticks that determine how we feel.  This perception and feeling is a function of our beliefs.  If you’re still feeling pain when taking a loss according to your plan, you are still experiencing a belief that your loss is somehow a negative reflection on you personally. 

6) The Four Major Fears – fear of losing money, being wrong, missing out, leaving money on the table.  All of these fears result from thinking you know what will happen next. Your trading plan must approach trading as a probabilities game, where you know in advance you will win some and lose some, but that the odds will be in your favor over time.  If you approach trading thinking that you can’t take a loss, then take three losses in a row (which is to be expected in most trading methods), you will be emotionally devastated and will give up on your plan.

10 things you have to give up right now

  
Education, Life
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1.  Give up caring what other people think of you. I know it seems counter intuitive as we humans are primal pack animals that don’t want to be cast from the village; but spending time worrying what others think, is a waste of energy. You’ll never please everyone and it’s none of your business what others think of you.

2. Give up trying to please everyone. Unless you’re living life to the beat of your own drum, your tribe won’t be able to find you. Be the best version of YOU you can be, and you’ll naturally attract in the people that are supposed to surround you.

3. Give up participating in gossip. 100% of the time, those sharing gossip with you will gossip about you. Believing gossip is like gambling everything on a horse sight unseen. It’s naive.

4. Quit worrying. Where thoughts go, energy flows. Worry is investing time and energy in something you don’t want to have happen. Learn to let go and trust.

5. Let go of insecurity. When we take ourselves too seriously, we think everyone else does too. There is one version of you on the planet. Be it, own it and quit worrying about it. No one really cares or watches you that closely. (more…)

20 Insights from Peter Lynch

  
  Education
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1. Invest In What You Know

This is where it helps to have identified your personal investor’s edge.  What is it that you know a lot about?  Maybe your edge comes from your profession or a hobby.  Maybe it comes just from being a parent.  An entire generation of Americans grew up on Gerber’s baby food, and Gerber’s stock was a 100-bagger.  If you put your money where your baby’s mouth was, you turned $10,000 into $1 million.

2. Let Your Winners Run

It’s easy to make a mistake and do the opposite, pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds.  If you’re lucky enough to have one golden egg in your portfolio, it may not matter if you have a couple of rotten ones in there with it.  Let’s say you have a portfolio of six stocks.  Two of them are average, two of them are below average, and one is a real loser.  But you also have one stellar performer.  Your Coca-Cola, your Gillette.  A stock that reminds you why you invested in the first place.  In other words, you don’t have to be right all the time to do well in stocks.  If you find one great growth company and own it long enough to let the profits run, the gains should more than offset mediocre results from other stocks in your portfolio.

3. On Growth Stocks

There are two ways investors can fake themselves out of the big returns that come from great growth companies.  The first is waiting to buy the stock when it looks cheap.  Throughout its 27-year rise from a split-adjusted 1.6 cents to $23, Walmart never looked cheap compared with the overall market.  Its price-to-earnings ratio rarely dropped below 20, but Walmart’s earnings were growing at 25 to 30 percent a year.  A key point to remember is that a p/e of 20 is not too much to pay for a company that’s growing at 25 percent.  Any business that an manage to keep up a 20 to 25 percent growth rate for 20 years will reward shareholders with a massive return even if the stock market overall is lower after 20 years.
The second mistake is underestimating how long a great growth company can keep up the pace.  In the 1970s I got interested in McDonald’s.  A chorus of colleagues said golden arches were everywhere and McDonald’s had seen its best days.  I checked for myself and found that even in California, where McDonald’s originated, there were fewer McDonald’s outlets than there were branches of the Bank of America.  McDonald’s has been a 50-bagger since. (more…)

8 Trading Psychology Quotes

  
  Education
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Your biggest enemy, when trading, is within yourself. Success will only come when you learn to control your emotions. Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923) offers advice that still applies today.

  1. CautionExcitement (and fear of missing an opportunity) often persuade us to enter the market before it is safe to do so. After a down-trend a number of rallies may fail before one eventually carries through. Likewise, the emotional high of a profitable trade may blind us to signs that the trend is reversing.
  2. PatienceWait for the right market conditions before trading. There are times when it is wise to stay out of the market and observe from the sidelines.
  3. ConvictionHave the courage of your convictions: Take steps to protect your profits when you see that a trend is weakening, but sit tight and don’t let fear of losing part of your profit cloud your judgment. There is a good chance that the trend will resume its upward climb. (more…)

Recipe for catching a reversal:

  
  Education
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recipesIngredients: For this recipe you will need one (1) well-known or “classic” technical chart pattern on a daily time frame, preferably near the high or low of the mid-term price range. When your pattern of choice has been observed, you will then need to collect at least two (2) or more instances of public expressions of sentiment which confirm the prognostication of said pattern: pre- or post-market media bytes, business news website headlines, confident/fearful declarations on your favorite trading forum, or any other variety of before-the-fact assumption.

Preparation: When the above ingredients have been secured, wait for a daily close which would confirm “ripeness” of the pattern. Next morning, enter a stop order at the confirmation price in the opposite direction of pattern breakout to initiate position. If stop is triggered, immediately enter protective stop at prior low/high.

Parboiling: If market moves quickly in your favor, take profits on at least a partial portion; mentally “set aside” closed profit for re-entry if market pulls back towards initial entry price with next few days. If pullback manages to hold above prior high/low, re-enter full position at your discretion.

Cooking: Set protective stop for entire position at breakeven and let sit undisturbed for a few days or more if possible.

Presentation: Dish is ready when “failure” point of pattern is breached; serve at market or with trailing stop, whichever you prefer.

21 Things Guaranteed to Happen

  
  Education

1. When you got out for lunch, the market will take a big move in your favor that you were too slow on the trigger to capture. Your wicked friends will stay glued to the screen during that time, knowing the big move in what would have been in your favor is about to happen.

2. When you switch your position size down after series of big losses, you will hit 5 winners in a row, which will not compensate you for just one of the big losses you took.

3. The bonds will rally big on a economic number like GNP, but stocks will go down sharply and the explanation will be concerns about interest rate increases.

4. The big basketball game will feature a comeback the previous evening that is exactly like what happens in your market, and your team won’t make it to black nor will you.

5. Whenever you have a big loss, and it turns around and goes to break even and you get out with a hootenany of relief, the market will go at least as far in your favor if you held as your were under water before.

6. Whenever there is serious morbidity in your family, you will lose many days in a row.

7. After a tremendous decline, the market will percolate around near unchanged for a day or two until you give up hoping for a rise, and then it will have a huge rise in your favor.

8. After a series of lucky trades in your favor, you will increase your size and the market will give you a tremendous beating. The same thing happens with basketball teams when they hit a lucky % of threes in the first half. When they try the same thing in the second half, they will make only 10% of them, and will go on to an ignominious defeat. (more…)

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