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A good trading system gives you an edge in the market.
To use a technical term, it provides a positive expectancy over a long series of trials.
A good system ensures that winning is more likely than losing over a long series of trades.
If your system can do that, you need money management.
But if you have no positive expectancy, no amount of money management will save you from losing.
Constructing Diversified Futures Trading Strategies
- Once you reach a few million under management, hiring a research staff to improve details is a good idea.
- Wait for momentum to build in one direction and get on the bandwagon. Expect to lose about two thirds of the time and so make sure your winners can pay for the losers and leave enough over to cover the rent.
- Using a single strategy on a single instrument is for people with either extreme skill or for those who simply have a death wish
- If we put the same notional dollar amount in each trade the portfolio would immediately be dominated by the volatile instruments and not much impact at all would come from the less volatile.
- Trend following: Buying high and selling higher
- Non professionals tend to spend an excess of time and energy on the buy and sell rules and neglect diversification and risk
4 Points to Deal With Trading Losses
- Consider yourself a manager of bad trades. The profitable trades will look after themselves – sit back and let the profits run. However when a trade turns against you, cut your losses quickly and move onto the next trade.
- Find a trading strategy that works and validate it. You may design your own trading system, you may purchase a strategy or follow someone else’s advice but the key is to find a strategy that suits your personality. If you are comfortable and confident that your strategy works then you are more likely to stick with it when the losses come (and they will come!)
- Never second-guess your strategy. If your trading rules are telling you to exit a position…then get the hell out! Don’t presume you know more than the market. Don’t wait to see if a bad trade will turn around in your favor. It may, but it may continue to go against you and therefore create larger losses.
- Reality check: you WILL have losing trades. The goal is to make the losses insignificant so you are not taken out of the game and unable to keep trading. Large trading losses cause damage to your investment capital AND to you psychologically. It is very hard to step back up to the plate and take the next trade if you have a huge trading loss. Therefore, have a very clear risk management strategy and stick to it.
Olympic Gold Medals Have Almost Zero Gold In Them
The 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games are already 51% over budget, with the total cost expected to be in the $4.6 billion range. With that in mind, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that the organizers have tried their best to cut costs.
One area of compromise?
The Olympic gold medals, which weigh 500g (1.1 lbs) and are 85mm (3.3 in) in diameter, are gold in name only.
OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS HAVE ALMOST ZERO GOLD IN THEM
Today’s infographic comes from JM Bullion and it shows the real amount of metal in gold, silver, and bronze medals, along with the hypothetical cost of awarding solid gold to winning athletes.