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Five Trading “Don’ts”

  
  Education
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Trading can be complicated to learn. Many traders spend hours every day on their charts, yet still find success elusive. Part of the difficulty can arise when little attention is paid to the mental side of the game. Developing a mental edge is just as important as possessing a technical trading edge. Here are five common mental “wrong steps” that can quickly derail your trading. These can blindside you no matter how good your technical skills. This brief discussion regarding these trading “don’ts” offers an introduction to trading psychology and some sensible solutions:

What Not to Do

  1. Have an opinion. One sure way to find yourself trading against the market is to have a market opinion. Trading with a rigid belief about what the market will do next can limit your ability to see what the market is actually telling you. 
  2. Have someone else’s opinion. Adopting some market guru’s market opinion is actually worse than having your own. Market gurus are notoriously inaccurate in their predictions.  Embracing another’s market judgment prevents you from learning to read the market on your own. Besides, it’s doubtful the guru will be texting you to let you know when his or her opinion has changed.
  3. Make your opinion public. Putting your bias into a chat room or forum thread makes it public. Making something public gives it a psychological life of its own. It’s hard to back off an opinion once you have announced it to others. 
  4. Let your ego get involved. Everyone wants to be right. In trading, learning to accept being wrong and the losses associated with being wrong is a big part of the game. This is no place for big egos.
  5. Ride a loser. Still wanting to be right? Having a bias, making it public, and getting your ego involved will cause you to hold losers far longer than you should.

What to Do

  1. Anticipate. Avoid having an inflexible bias. Identify areas where the market might turn, break out, or continue, and think through what that would look like. Anticipate the alternative ways the market may trade. When you see the market trading as anticipated, you already know what to do.
  2. Keep your own counsel. Avoid gurus. Jesse Livermore viewed trading as a “lone-wolf” business, and it is. Learn to read the market and make your own decisions.
  3. Avoid the forums while trading. Use the good ones as a source of education, but refrain from making your trades public.
  4. Check your ego. Be aware of when you want to be right. Ask yourself, “What is more important, being right or making money?” Then, make the correct decision.
  5. Cut losses short. Use hard stops and be merciless with losing trades. When the market turns against you, exit.

Traders Should Control These 14 Emotions

  
  Education
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14-POINTS
 

Anger- Revenge trading

Fear- Inability to take an entry or hold a winner in a trend.

Disgust- Can lead to loss of a traders confidence.

Happiness- Surprisingly can lead to trading too big and taking on too many positions.

Sadness- Can lead to having difficulty taking the next trade entry or cutting a loss.

Surprise- Can many times lead to making decisions based on emotions and abandoning a trading plan. (more…)

Trading Rules from -Full Metal Jacket

  
  Education
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I look at charts so often, I usually have to have something on in the background to keep the rest of my brain from rioting. Typically, that “something” is usually a movie or some music, and today I put in Full Metal Jacket (which, like most of my DVDs, I’ve seen many times).

Semi-watching the movie made me curious about the Marines, and I found this really interesting code of principals, which I’ve put below. It’s an impressive list, and I think every element shown here is relevant to trading. Please read it:

INTEGRITY
Uprightness of character and soundness of moral principle. Absolute truthfulness and honesty.

KNOWLEDGE
Acquired information, including professional knowledge and understanding of your Marines.

COURAGE
A mental quality that recognizes fear of danger or criticism, but enables a Marine to proceed in the face of it with calmness and firmness.

DECISIVENESS
Ability to reach decisions promptly and to announce them in a clear, forceful manner.

DEPENDABILITY
The certainty of the proper performance of duty.

INITIATIVE
Seeing what has to be done and commencing a course of action, even in the absence of orders.

TACT
The ability to deal with others without creating offense.

JUSTICE
The quality of being impartial and consistent in exercising command.

ENTHUSIASM
The display of sincere interest and exuberance in the performance of duty.

BEARING
Creating a favorable impression in carriage, appearance, and personal conduct at all times.

ENDURANCE
The mental and physical stamina measured by the ability to stand pain, fatigue, distress, and hardship.

UNSELFISHNESS
Avoidance of providing for ones comfort and personal advancement at the expense of others.

LOYALTY
The faithfulness to country, Corps, unit, and to your seniors and subordinates.

JUDGEMENT
The quality of weighing facts and possible solutions on which to base a sound decision.

Gruesome Details of Bin Laden Killing Revealed in Navy Seal’s New Book

  
Analysis, Education

Osama bin LadenSEAL Team 6 operator Robert O’Neill’s book “The Operator” details his career through killing bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. The most shocking new detail is that he says he shot the terrorist leader in the forehead.

O’Neill recounts following other members of the team through the compound, when they spotted bin Laden’s son Khalid holding an AK-47. He says that they whispered “Khalid, come here,” and shot him in the face when he poked his head out.

Along with another team member, O’Neill says he went to the third floor and burst into bin Laden’s bedroom. The other operative tackled two screaming women who were present, fearing they may be wearing suicide vests, as O’Neill shot bin Laden in his head as he attempted to use his youngest wife as a human shield.

“In less than a second, I aimed above the woman’s right shoulder and pulled the trigger twice,” O’Neill wrote, according to a report from the New York Daily News. “Bin Laden’s head split open, and he dropped.

“I put another bullet in his head. Insurance.”

The Post details: (more…)

Over-trading

  
  Education
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56703773SO002_Markets_ReactToday I want to consider the subject of over-trading. This can take two forms:

  • Frequency of trading: we over trade when we take trades in breach of our strategy.
  • The amount at risk relative to our capital: we over trade when the size of our position threatens risk of ruin.

Frequency of trading assumes that firstly we have some sort of strategy and that you have have developed some rules to implement that strategy. And, secondly, we execute trades in breach of those rules – we take trades not within our rules. (more…)

Why do 90% of traders lose money?

  
  Education
  • It is far easier to funnel a vast amount of money from the masses to a few winners than for a few people to give out money to the majority.
  • Any given game there are few winners
  • So knowing that statistic, do you want to be in the majority or minority?
    • “Do the hard thing” ~Richard Dennis
    • They watch Blue Channels ,They dont do Homework
    • They lack one or two of these four-Money ,Mind ,Method & Target

There is an important difference between being reactive and predictive. Trend traders never say “I think that market is going up so I’m going to buy it”. They buy when it goes up.
“The price is always right.”

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