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Trading with No Regrets

  
  Education
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Trading is really not as much of a numbers game as it is a mind game. Winning or losing in the long term will come down to whether you quit or keep going on your trading journey. Trading is not for everyone, there is no easy money in the markets. You will fight for your dollars, you will make money by doing the uncomfortable you will lose money when you think you are in a trade that just can’t lose. The emotional and mental pain will be unbearable if you do not believe in yourself and your method. If you are trading with no plan, no rules, and no system or method you will tend to be very hard on yourself for every losing trade. It was your decision that made you lose money, you will beat yourself up, and feel stupid. You will have 100% accountability for your mistake.This will not work.

What you must do is transition the accountability from yourself to your system or method. You must trade a proven methodology that will win based on the market action not your personal actions. You can not control odd out of left field events.  You can not help it if you trade a trend or a pattern and suddenly it loses. All you can do is take trades with great probabilities that match your beliefs about the market and if they are losers then you can’t blame yourself you can only cut your losses and look for the next trade that meets your parameters.

When you can shrug off a loss with no emotional or mental pain and move on to the next one you are at the next level. All you can control is your entry parameters, risk management, position size, exit, and mind set, the market determines whether you win or lose, not you.  You must have self confidence and faith in a proven method, take your trades let the market separate the winners from the losers.

Still Want to Invest With George Soros?

  
Analysis, Education
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Bummed that George Soros has closed his fund to outside investors and will no longer use his 2 and 20 from your cash to destroy America? The SEC has been thinking about your problem, and have come up with something that could be good both for your PA and for your love life.
Solution: marry George, or one of his children or nephews. If that doesn’t sound very appealing, you could also keep your eye out for any “lineal descendants (including by adoption, stepchildren, foster children, and, in some cases, by legal guardianship) of a common ancestor (who is no more than 10 generations removed from the youngest generation of family members).”

Under new SEC rules, that will let you invest with George without subjecting him to irksome regulations. On the downside, your shiftless relatives can’t co-invest, and you’re out in the cold again if you get divorced.

[T]he new rules are causing a commotion with family offices, who used to be able to serve in-laws, distant cousins and even ex-wives of the family but now can’t. …

For instance in-laws no longer count as family — which may be happy news

Do successful traders have different mental models

  
  Education
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While much of the focus on trading is around chart patterns, scanners, analytical techniques, indicators, quantitative techniques etc., most of it is commodity. Everyone has access to same tools, techniques, books, research or analysis. So why is it that some traders are very successful and some are not. You can largely divide the traders in to those with consistently good returns, those with mediocre returns and those who are unsuccessful. Most of the time you will find mediocre traders continue to have mediocre returns for long time and their best years never exceed beyond a certain thresh hold.

Much of the same things you will notice in life in general. Vast majority remains stuck in sea of mediocrity. It has nothing to do with innate talent or efforts. Much of it has to do with mental models.

Mental models are deeply held mental images, beliefs, and assumptions. The mental models play a very important role in dealing with world around us. We interpret the world according to our mental models. Two people with different mental models react and interpret same data and same situations differently. Mental models include what a person thinks is true but not necessarily what is actually true.

Successful people in most walks of life have different mental models than mediocre people. That is why successful people can see and act on opportunities which others do not see.

One thing which you can do to be successful in trading or in life in general is to change your mental models. But in reality it is one of the most difficult things to do. Movies often have very dramatic scenes of mental model change leading to transformation in leading character. But in real life changing mental models requires a sustained and structured process and many times requires facilitation by an outside entity. There is a vast array of books and techniques dealing with this field. I have spent years studying this fascinating field of mental modeling.

Once you have the right mental models you see the markets and the trading opportunities differently.

Greed & Hope

  
  Education
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Always take your profit too soon.

Sell too soon. Don’t hope for winning streaks to go on and on. Don’t stretch your luck. Expect winning streaks to be short. When you reach a previously decided-upon ending position, cash out and walk away. Do this even when everything looks rosy, when everyone else is saying the boom will keep roaring along.
The ONLY reason for not doing it would be that some new situation has arisen, and this situation makes you all but certain that you can go on winning for a while.
Except in such usual circumstances, get in the habit of selling too soon. And when you’ve sold, don’t torment yourself if the winning continues without you.

When the ship starts to sink, don’t pray. Jump.

Learning to take losses is an essential speculative technique. MOST never learn it. Take losses at once and move on. Take small losses to protect yourself from the big ones.
Beware the 3 obstacles to jumping ship:
– fear of regret ( that the loser will turn out to be a winner when you’ve bailed-out )
– Unwillingness to abandon part of an investment ( become willing to abandon )
– Difficulty of admitting you made a mistake.

11 Rules for Better Trading

  
  Education
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11rulesbettertrading

Trading in the markets is a process, and there is always room for self improvement. So as we start the new year, here are my 11 rules that help me navigate the markets. By no means is this list exhaustive or exclusive.

Rule #1 Be data centric in your approach : Take the time and make the effort to understand what works and what doesn’t. Trading decisions should be objective and based upon the data.
Rule #2 Be disciplined : The data should guide you in your decisions. This is the only way to navigate a potentially hostile and fearful environment. (more…)

The Strategy Of John Neff

  
  Education
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MUST READTaken from the April 26, 2013 issue of The Validea Hot List

Guru Spotlight: John Neff

Most investors wouldn’t give a fund described as “relatively prosaic, dull, conservative” a second glance. That, however, is exactly how John Neff described the Windsor Fund that he headed for more than three decades. And, while his style may not have been flashy or eye-catching, the returns he generated for clients were dazzling — so dazzling that Neff’s track record may be the greatest ever for a mutual fund manager.

By focusing on beaten down, unloved stocks, Neff was able to find value in places that most investors overlooked. And when the rest of the market caught on to his finds, he and his clients reaped the rewards. Over his 31-year tenure (1964-1995), Windsor averaged a 13.7 percent annual return, beating the market by an average of 3.1 percent per year. Looked at another way, a $10,000 investment in the fund the year Neff took the reins would have been worth more than $564,000 by the time he retired (with dividends reinvested); that same $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 (again with dividends reinvested) would have been worth less than half that after 31 years, about $233,000. That type of track record made the understated, low-key Neff a favorite manager of many other professional fund managers — an “investor’s investor”, if you will. (more…)

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