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Links For Traders -Investors

  
Education, LINKS
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Interesting reads:

My take on how to read financial news headlines

  
Analysis, Education
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Headline: Stocks Rose/Fell Today by 1% Because of _______
How to read it: Millions of shares traded hands today because investors all have different goals, strategies, risk profiles, holding periods and ideas.

Headline: [Popular economist/fund manager] Expects Market Volatility to Pick Up Later This Year
How to read it: Saying you expect volatility to pick up at some point in the future is like saying you expect it to rain at some point in the future. And volatility works both ways — to the upside and the downside — so really this is just a way of saying the markets will fluctuate, which of course they will.

Headline: George Soros Gained/Lost $1 Billion
How to read it: Soros has around $25 billion so what he does with his money shouldn’t concern most investors.

Headline: Markets Got Slaughtered Today: A Sign of Worse Things to Come?
How to read it: No one ever really knows why stocks rise or fall on a single day. The market is up just over 50% of all trading days and down just under 50% of all trading days so you can never put too much stock in any one day.

Headline: Investors Are Dealing With More Uncertainty
How to read it: The future is always uncertain. The past just feels more certain because now we know what really happened.

Headline: Are Market Overbought Here? 
How to read it: Ask us again in a few months.

Headline: [Democrats/Republicans/current or past president] Caused X% of Economic or Stock Market Growth
How to read it: Presidents or political parties don’t personally control economies or stock markets made up of millions of participants and trillions of dollars all wrapped up within a complex adaptive system. These things don’t come with levers that you can pull to make them rise or fall.

Headline: The Stock Market Enters a Painful Correction
How to read it: Retirement savers rejoice as stocks fall on the week. Those with decades to save & invest should hope it continues.

Headline: _____ Could Cause Gold Could Rise to $1500/oz.
How to read it: Total guess. No one has a clue.

Headline: Is This the Stock-Picker’s Market We’ve Been Waiting For?
How to read it: It’s both always and never a stock-picker’s markets because it all depends on the quality of the stock-picker, not the market.

Headline: Goldman Sachs Expects Stocks to Rally For the Next 3 Months
How to read it: Big financial firms have so many strategists that there will surely be a research piece put out in the coming days that totally contradicts whatever they just predicted.

Headline: When Will the Fed Raise Rates?
How to read it: Has Fed policy really ever helped you make better investment decisions? Even if you knew exactly what they were going to do in the future you still have no idea how other investors will react. 

Headline: Investors Panic as Stocks Enter a Bear Market
How to read it: Don’t panic — expected returns and dividend yields go up during bear markets. This is a good thing for long-term investors.

Headline: A Perfect Storm Caused Markets to Fall
How to read it: Stuff happens in the markets and we like to attach important-sounding narratives to everything. 100-year storms now seem to come around once a month or so. (more…)

Trading Wisdom

  
  Education
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THE 5 FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF TRADING:

 1. Anything can happen.
2. You don’t need to know what is going to happen next to make money.
3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of
variables that define an edge.
4. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing
happening over another.
5. Every moment in the market is unique.

THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF CONSISTENCY:

 
1. I objectively identify my edges.
2. I predefine the risk of every trade.
3. I completely accept the risk or I am willing to let go of the trade.
4. I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation.
5. I pay myself as the market makes money available to me.
6. I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors.
7. I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success
and, therefore, I never violate them.

Characteristics for successful trading

  
  Education
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successfultraders-charctersticsA) absolute trust in myself to do what’s necessary when it’s necessary, B) discipline to follow my rules/method even when it’s going through a rough period (which all methods do), C) the unquestioning belief that I don’t know what’s going to happen next and that trading is just a probabilities game, D) that my success isn’t about the system/method – it’s about me and my attitude toward the market and trading, and E) the complete confidence that I really can make consistent profits from my trading over time.

What's The Price of Your Dreams ? MAKE THE GAME WINNABLE

  
  Education
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  • “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”  -Paulo Coelho
  • You win by living on your own terms–as well and as fully as you can, for as long as you can.
  • If you’re chasing someone else’s goal, you always lose.
  • Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and they massively underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade or two.

A Few Things About Risk

  
  Education
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People have an amazing ability to discount risks that threaten their livelihood. That’s dangerous because people who should be the most experienced experts in a field may be the least able to objectively assess their industry.

Risk has a lot to do with culture. Europeans and Canadians are generally wary of the stock market. For Americans, it’s a pastime. The French prefer raw milk. Americans are warned against it. Canadians are banned from it. Europeans are terrified of nuclear exposure. Americans couldn’t care less. Walk through an international airport and you’ll see one person wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of illness and another letting their kid crawl on the floor. Everyone wants to believe they’re thinking objectively, but most of the time you’re just reflecting the cultural norms of where you were born.

Success is an underrated risk. Jason Zweig once wrote: “Being right is the enemy of staying right — partly because it makes you overconfident, even more importantly because it leads you to forget the way the world works.”

Risk’s greatest fuels are debt, overconfidence, impatience, a lack of options, and government subsidies. 

Its greatest enemies are humility, room for error, and government subsidies.

Nothing in the world can give a damn less than risk. Risk doesn’t care about your political views or your morals. It doesn’t care what your view of the market is, or what you were taught in school. It’s an indiscriminate assassin and a master at humbling ideologies.

(more…)

ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH MARKETS?

  
Analysis, Education

Imagine for a minute your relationship with markets. How would you characterize that relationship? Is it an adversarial relationship? A hot-and-cold, confusing relationship? A fulfilling relationship?
Many traders talk about markets as if they are battlegrounds and they prepare for combat each day. Other traders, frustrated, talk about markets been manipulated.
How we related to markets very much impacts our trading experience. If we think of the market as casino, we will frame one kind of experience. If we treat markets as battlegrounds,  our experience will be quite different.
Now imagine what it would be like to be in loved with markets: to find in them something unique, special and valued. A person who is in love with markets will be market focused even outside normal trading hours.
They are not simply preparing for day’s trading; they are passionately interested in deepening their market experience, learning everything they can about markets.

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