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3 Stages of Trading :Simple really but difficult to manage

  
  Education
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Ideal preparation involves commitment to clearly defined rules of engagement.  This is necessary for the developing a sound, consistent pre-trade routine that is suitable for any market environment.  The ideal state of mind for action is feeling confident and remaining focused on the present.  The focused confidence being a direct result of adequate preparation.  If you are prepared then doubt will find no home in your mind or in your charts.  The ideal response to your trade should foster future confidence by building on past successes while learning from mistakes, all within the framework of maintaining a healthy balance between the two.

These three are mutually inclusive.  Without each working together to create the whole, managing your trading success will be difficult. Simple really but difficult to manage.  But once managed very difficult to complicate.

ACTION + RESPONSE = COMPLICATED AS IT CAUSES CONFUSION

PREPARATION + ACTION = COMPLICATED AS IT CAUSES DOUBT

PREPARATION + RESPONSE = NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT TAKING ACTION

PREPARATION + ACTION + RESPONSE = MANAGEABLE SIMPLICITY

 

Sumo Trading

  
  Education
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The market trades much differently at bottoms than in the middle, and the tops. How to figure where we are is in part disclosed by how the market trades. Entries and trades should be completely different, but its very very hard to switch gears from day to day.

Seems like Sumo trading where one side gets the momo and knocks the other side clean out of the ring till the next match at few moments later.

14 Stages of Trading Psychology

  
  Education

1. OPTIMISM – It all starts with a hunch or a positive outlook leading us to buy a stock.

2. EXCITEMENT – Things start moving our way and we get giddy inside. We start to anticipate and hope that a possible success story is in the making.

3. THRILL – The market continues to be favorable and we just can’t help but start to feel a little “Smart.” At this point we have complete confidence in our trading system.

4. EUPHORIA – This marks the point of maximum financial risk but also maximum financial gain. Our investments turn into quick and easy profits, so we begin to ignore the basic concept of risk. We now start trading anything that we can get our hands on to make a buck.

5. ANXIETY – Oh no – it’s turning around! The markets start to show their first signs of taking your “hard earned” gains back. But having never seen this happen, we still remain ultra greedy and think the long-term trend is higher. (more…)

Technical Analysis -A Small Note

  
  Education
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Most traders in the markets use charts and technical analysis to establish and exit their positions. Academicians and skeptics point to the random nature of many technical patterns. Here’s a typical chart generated by random numbers. If you don’t tell a trader it’s randomly generated, they’ll come up with all sorts of predictions and patterns that the chart generates. And if you dare to suggest that what they’re doing is mumbo jumbo, they take great offense and beat you on the head with examples of great traders who follow charts, and examples of others who consistently make a fortune by using charts.

There’s a trader from Harvard who uses charts and has made 20 billion who says “using a chart is like a Dr. taking your temperature before a diagnosis.” Another one says that if charts are so useless how come everyone including you looks at it before making a trade. One of the most respected and successful traders, a friend, puts the debate in focus: “There are lots of great tools in technical analysis (some of them in his book like trader’s positions, and breakouts, open interest and spreads). They’re very useful as part of a bigger trading process. There are good saws and hammers but it takes a good carpenter to make them work.”

There’s a guy in Japan who calls himself the Japanese Victor Niederhoffer who has turned $ 10,000 into 5 million by using charts. I hope to meet him in Japan when I visit there for a talk arranged by one who believes in charts, an estimable fellow who combines charts with anthropology, life extension and sports, and perhaps I will become the American Matsohita-Masamichi.

Options values are determined by using random numbers with the same standard deviation and distribution of prices as would be generated with the random number generators I just mentioned. Every trader on the floor uses such generators to predict the price that an option should trade at, and they do very well with this model– until something like the 1987 crash occurs and they go broke.

A famous former academic big options trader and head of the exchange said that almost all the scientific options traders he knew found that when you apply the random walk model to options, it turns out that puts are priced much too highly. He said that he’s watched every last one of them go broke. The problem here is that extreme events tend to occur much more frequently than the random walk model would predict.

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