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James P. Arthur Huprich's Market Trusms And Axioms

1. Commandment #1: “Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.”

2. Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the stock market!

3. There is nothing new on Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again, mostly due to human nature.

4. Sell when you can, not when you have to.

5. Bulls make money, bears make money, and “pigs” get slaughtered.

6. We can’t control the stock market. The very best we can do is to try to understand what the stock market is trying to tell us.

7. Understanding mass psychology is just as important as understanding fundamentals and economics.

8. Learn to take losses quickly, don’t expect to be right all the time, and learn from your mistakes.

9. Don’t think you can consistently buy at the bottom or sell at the top. This can rarely be consistently done.

10. When trading, remain objective. Don’t have a preconceived idea or prejudice. Said another way, “the great names in Trading all have the same trait: An ability to shift on a dime when the shifting time comes.”

11. Any dead fish can go with the flow. Yet, it takes a strong fish to swim against the flow. In other words, what seems “hard” at the time is usually, over time, right.

12. Even the best looking chart can fall apart for no apparent reason. Thus, never fall in love with a position but instead remain vigilant in managing risk and expectations. Use volume as a confirming guidepost.

13. When trading, if a stock doesn’t perform as expected within a short time period, either close it out or tighten your stop-loss point.

14. As long as a stock is acting right and the market is “in-gear,” don’t be in a hurry to take a profit on the whole positions. Scale out instead.

15. Never let a profitable trade turn into a loss, and never let an initial trading position turn into a long-term one because it is at a loss. (more…)

Market Truisms and Axioms

Commandment #1: “Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.”

• Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the stock market!

• There is nothing new on Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again, mostly due to human nature.

• Sell when you can, not when you have to.

• Bulls make money, bears make money, and “pigs” get slaughtered.

• We can’t control the stock market. The very best we can do is to try to understand what the stock market is trying to tell us.

• Understanding mass psychology is just as important as understanding fundamentals and economics.

• Learn to take losses quickly, don’t expect to be right all the time, and learn from your mistakes.

• Don’t think you can consistently buy at the bottom or sell at the top. This can rarely be consistently done.

• When trading, remain objective. Don’t have a preconceived idea or prejudice. Said another way, “the great names in Trading all have the same trait: An ability to shift on a dime when the shifting time comes.”

• Any dead fish can go with the flow. Yet, it takes a strong fish to swim against the flow. In other words, what seems “hard” at the time is usually, over time, right.

• Even the best looking chart can fall apart for no apparent reason. Thus, never fall in love with a position but instead remain vigilant in managing risk and expectations. Use volume as a confirming guidepost.

• When trading, if a stock doesn’t perform as expected within a short time period, either close it out or tighten your stop-loss point.

• As long as a stock is acting right and the market is “in-gear,” don’t be in a hurry to take a profit on the whole positions. Scale out instead.

• Never let a profitable trade turn into a loss, and never let an initial trading position turn into a long-term one because it is at a loss.

• Don’t buy a stock simply because it has had a big decline from its high and is now a “better value;” wait for the market to recognize “value” first. (more…)

9 Steps for Traders

1- When you see a trade setup you like, pull the trigger without hesitation

It looks so simple but it isn’t! If your mind is not 100% ready to take the trades when they present themselves to you, you’ll miss them, you’ll be just watching and will let them go without any apparent reason why, and then when you realize what you just did, your reaction is to get angry! Just to make you jump into an unplanned trade and lose… Prepare in advance, market is like playing chess, you have to look ahead for the next move.

2 – Always use STOPs

In case you don’t like to use physical stops, make sure you’ll be able to stop in case it breaks the limits you’ve set for that trade

 

3 – Anything can happen

Try to start the morning with a free state of mind so that you’ll be able “to listen” to the market.

4 – Always lower your trade size when you’re losing

If you make two losing trades in a row, lower trade size until you get in tune with the market again.

5 – Never turn a winning trade into a loser

That’s the reason why I like to take small portions of profit when market makes it available to me, I hate to see a winner turn into a loser, manage your trades well.

6 – Buy or develop a system and stick to it, don’t change it from day to day

Find a trading system that fits your personality and once you have it, if it gives you an edge, stick to it, don’t change it because it didn’t work on one or two days, otherwise you’ll keep changing systems forever and that means: losing money.

7 – Get out of losers

One of the most known market adages is: “Cut your losses and let your profits run.” Much easier said than done, but it’s very important that you do it, usually it’s much easier to do exactly the opposite… make sure you bear that in mind.

8 – Don’t worry about news

This one I like very much, the only thing news will do is to accelerate the targets, nothing else, most of the time, I completely trash the news and just follow what I see on my map.

9 – Monitor your progress, create your own trading journal

It is very important that you have a trading journal to track your success, so that you’ll be able to stop what you’re doing wrong and keep your strong strategies. I’ll talk about this in detail on my next post.

Hope this helps, happy trading!

Technically Yours

ASR TEAM


Art Huprich’s Market Truisms and Axioms

Raymond James’ P. Arthur Huprich published a terrific list of rules . Other than commandment #1, they are in no particular order:

• Commandment #1: “Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.”

• Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the stock market!

• There is nothing new on Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again, mostly due to human nature.

• Sell when you can, not when you have to.

• Bulls make money, bears make money, and “pigs” get slaughtered.

• We can’t control the stock market. The very best we can do is to try to understand what the stock market is trying to tell us.

• Understanding mass psychology is just as important as understanding fundamentals and economics.

• Learn to take losses quickly, don’t expect to be right all the time, and learn from your mistakes.

• Don’t think you can consistently buy at the bottom or sell at the top. This can rarely be consistently done.

• When trading, remain objective. Don’t have a preconceived idea or prejudice. Said another way, “the great names in Trading all have the same trait: An ability to shift on a dime when the shifting time comes.” (more…)

Some Market Humor

Analyst recommendations: –
Strong Buy – Buy
Buy – Hold
Hold – Sell
Sell – It’s too late.

Back–testing: – the art of adjusting trading system parameters so as to ensure maximum profit in the past and zero profit in the future.

Charting: – “join-the-dots” for adults.

Computerized system testing: – torturing the data until it confesses. See: back-testing

Cycle analysis: – a method of analysis that allows losing trades to be organised into regular patterns.

Derivatives: – securities that are identified by acronyms – CHIPS, COBRAS, LEAPS, PERQS, STEERS, TRIPS, ZEPOS – all of these things are derivatives. Unfortunately, little else is known about them.

Daytrading: – an activity that takes place in between meaningful periods of employment.

Eurodollars: – U.S. Dollars, of course.

False Break: – an actual break of a trendline that triggers a losing trade. False breaks confirm the usefulness of trendline analysis. Only those breaks that are false cause problems, and those breaks don’t count, because they are false.

Float (initial public offering): – stock that is offered to you because other people have turned it down. The guiding principle in relation to floats is as follows: “never participate in a float that you are able to participate in.”

Fundamental analysis: – a method of analysis that provides compelling reasons for why a stock shouldn’t fall in price when it does.

“Fundamentally sound”: – the condition in which an economy finds itself immediately after a stock market collapse.

In-house analyst: – an employee of a broking house who dresses mutton up as lamb and advertises it on special.

Institutional investor: – someone who dumps a stock big-time, a day or two after you’ve bought it, for no apparent reason.

Live feed: – a technology that enables the instant incorporation of bad ticks into a charting program.

Market report: – a concise explanation of why a market traded up or down. 99% of market reports are drawn from other market reports. The remainder are whimsical.

Money-management: – the art of hiding trading losses from a spouse.

Over-bought: – a market is considered to be in an over-bought condition when everyone else appears to have bought it, but you haven’t.

Position trade: – a short-term trade that is in deficit, and will be closed out as soon as it breaks even, however long that takes.

Price/Earnings Ratio: – a ratio that indicates whether the price of a stock is attractive in relation to last year’s earnings. A low number indicates a bargain. However a low number can also indicate a lemon. If a company starts going down the tube, its stock price will appear very attractive in relation to last year’s earnings. The P/E Ratio is a versatile indicator.

Seasonal analysis: – the assumption that other people who trade Heating Oil Futures know nothing about winter.

Stochastics: – a technical indicator so-named because the name sounds technical.

Stop-loss: – the trader’s equivalent of a condom. It’s something you know you should have used after it’s too late.

Support: – a line drawn on a chart, the breaking of which is deemed extremely significant, even if the only people trading the stock at the time are two of three ladies at the tennis club.

Support/Resistance: – supposed allies that flee at the first sign of trouble.

Tankan Index: – a closely watched figure, that measures the extent to which the Japanese economy is tanking.

Technical analysis: – subjective analysis of the markets dressed up in a lab coat.

Technical indicator: – a transformation of a price series that contains less information than the series itself. Different technical indicators throw away information in different ways.

They: – the members of a powerful international conspiracy who target small, private traders in order to make their lives miserable. For instance, “they ran the market to my stop and then turned it around.”

Trading floor: – the traditional venue for the negotiation of securities, now made redundant by screen trading. Trading floors that remain open serve a valuable purpose as colorful backdrops to market reports on television.

Trading genius: – a reckless spirit in a bull market.

Trendline analysis: – a form of analysis that works best on a computer screen, where lines can be erased and re-drawn without trace.

Zero-sum game: – a game in which the players slug it out and the broker wins.

Market Truisms and Axioms

• Commandment #1: “Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.”

• Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the stock market!

• There is nothing new on Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again, mostly due to human nature.

• Sell when you can, not when you have to.

• Bulls make money, bears make money, and “pigs” get slaughtered.

• We can’t control the stock market. The very best we can do is to try to understand what the stock market is trying to tell us.

• Understanding mass psychology is just as important as understanding fundamentals and economics.

• Learn to take losses quickly, don’t expect to be right all the time, and learn from your mistakes. (more…)

Trading Mantra's

“Technical analysis is a windsock, not a crystal ball. It is a skill that improves with experience and study. Always be a student, there is always someone smarter than you!

“Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.”

Let volatility work in your favor, not against you.

Emotions can be the enemy of the trader and investor, as fear and greed play an important part of one’s decision making process.

Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the stock market!

Even the best looking chart can fall apart for no apparent reason. Thus, never fall in love with a position but instead remain vigilant in managing risk and expectations. Use volume as a confirming guidepost.

When trading, if a stock doesn’t perform as expected within a short time period, either close it out or tighten your stop-loss point.

As long as a stock is acting right and the market is “in-gear,” don’t be in a hurry to take a profit on the whole positions, scale out instead.

Never let a profitable trade turn into a loss and never let an initial trading position turn into a long-term one because it is at a loss.

It’s not the ones that you sell that go higher that matters, it’s the ones you don’t sell which go lower, that do.

Don’t think you can consistently buy at the bottom nor sell at the top. This can rarely be consistently done. (more…)

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