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Solution focused approach

  
  Education
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focusedWhat did we do differently on those successful occasions?

* I have planned the trade well in advance with research; it is not a spontaneous trade, so I’ve had time to think clearly about what I want to do.
* I have a clear profit target in mind based on research and refuse to waver from that target unless the market takes me out with a predefined stop. I consider myself a person of integrity, so I tell myself that I have to show integrity and loyalty to my trade idea and target;
* I don’t follow the position tick for tick. Either the trade will hit my target or it will hit my stop. I make a conscious effort to let go and not micromanage the trade;
* I keep myself calm and clearly focused by purposely getting up from my chair, doing some stretches, breathing deeply, and getting away from the screen. I keep myself in a state that is incompatible with anxiety;
* I rehearse constructive self-talk during the trade. I tell myself that I’ve done my preparation and established my edge. Any individual trade can go against me, but if I take all the good trades I can, eventually I’ll benefit from good odds and a good risk-reward ratio. If I lose money on the trade, I’ll figure out why and what that might be telling me about the current market. (more…)

Psychological Mindset!

  
  Education
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mindset1

Approach the market like a robot. Emotionless and effective!”

 Understand your maximum loss
 Understand it’s OK to take a loss

 Don’t become emotionally attached to your trades
 Take adequate position sizes
 Be in total control

Your psychological mindset is one of the most important ingredients to your success in the market.
Be disciplined and you will put yourself ahead of the majority of other traders/investors.

Jesse Livermore – A Great Trader?

  
  Education
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  1 Comments

There are however, significant question marks over Jesse Livermore’s trading record. He bankrupted himself more than once during his career. Then, having made one of the biggest inflation adjusted stock-market coups in history shorting the markets in 1929, he had lost it all by 1934.

Reasonable observers – for the sake of argument I shall include myself in this group – would not try to claim that Livermore was a flawless trader. Livermore is, however, remembered, while most of his trading contemporaries are long forgotten.

Livermore’s continuing fame arises from several significant factors:

  • Livermore was a skilled reader of the now defunct ticker tape. In more modern terms, we would say that he was skilled in using price/volume data to predict where a stock’s price was heading.
  • Not only did he read the tape successfully, amazingly he told the public how he did it. Trading concepts that we now call support, resistance and momentum can be clearly identified from Livermore’s work.
  • The idea of giving up the day job and making a living on the markets is as attractive now as it was in Livermore’s day.
  • Livermore stayed in the public eye when, in 1935, following a drunken argument, his ex-wife shot and injured Livermore’s oldest son Jesse Jr.
  • Livermore successfully sold the idea to small time traders that they should ride their winners and sell their losers. Although many of them failed to heed his advice for psychological reasons (and continue to fail today, for the same reasons,) even the least educated of today’s traders are aware of this powerful method.
  • Livermore lost one of the largest personal fortunes in history. Everything he had taken from the stock-market, he gave back. In the end, just like the bit-players, he failed to obey his own favorite rule – sell your losing trades.

Despite the question marks over his career, even today a trader can make money in the markets using Livermore’s methods. More recent trading gurus – such as Martin Zweig and Alexander Elder – owe a debt to Jesse Livermore for the methods they either use or publicize. There is no other figure in the history of the markets whose methods continue to figure so strongly in market trading than Jesse Livermore’s.

15 Quotes from Trading Psychology 2.0

  
Analysis, Education

1Trading Psychology 2.0 is based on four major themes: Adapting to changing markets; Building strengths; Cultivating creativity; and Developing best practices and processes. Here are fifteen interesting quotes from the book:

1. Discipline, while necessary for success, is never sufficient. Discipline does not substitute for skill, talent, and insight. Strict, disciplined adherence to mediocre plans can only lock in mediocre results. If it were otherwise, there would be no losing automated trading systems.

2. It is not enough to find an “edge” in financial markets; as any tech entrepreneur can attest, competitive advantages are perishable commodities. Those who sustain success continually renew themselves, uncovering fresh sources of competitive advantage. That requires processes for assessing and challenging our most basic assumptions and practices. It takes a good trader to create success, a great one to recreate it. Nothing is quite as difficult— and rewarding— as letting go of what once worked, returning to the humble status of student, and arising phoenix-like from performance ashes.

3. This productivity is readily apparent on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis: The greats simply get more done than their colleagues. They organize their time and prioritize their activities so that they are both efficient (get a lot done per unit of time) and effective (get the right things done). How much time do we typically waste as traders, staring unthinkingly at screens, chatting with people who offer little insight, and reading low-priority/ information-poor emails and reports? The successful traders invariably are workhorses, not showhorses: They get their hands dirty rooting through data and make active use of well-cultivated information networks.

4. Successful traders I’ve known work as hard on themselves as on markets. They develop routines for keeping themselves in ideal states for making trading decisions, often by optimizing their lives outside of markets. (more…)

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