Archives of “Arithmetic mean” tag

rss

3 destructive habits every trader must avoid.

  
Analysis, Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Three destructive habits that will kill your trading day, week, month, or career.

Not having a plan. Get a plan, who cares if it is bad, start with something. You can build off of it and refine it. You have to be willing to spend the time to make the plan yours. You do not start anything without some level of planning. Trading is hard; your brain spends a lot of time in fast forward, affecting your memory. You can slow it down by having a plan and increase your brains ability to remember.  A plan makes it possible to improve. Most importantly, a plan gives you a chance at removing emotion.

Forgetting why you are trading.  The purpose of trading is to make money.  Every action should bend to that goal. That does not mean every trade makes money.  It means every trade gets to closer. If you are looking for comfort, get a teddy bear. If you are looking to be right, play trivial pursuit.  If you want excitement, drive fast.

Letting it go. It is really important to separate what happened from how you felt. The more distance between the two the less time it takes to learn from that situation.  Admitting you made a mistake or are wrong are necessary for letting it go.  Unlike life, you get no credit for admitting you are wrong, it is just a part of trading. Neither matter unless you take action.

You don't even need to beat the market to make a billion

  
Analysis, Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Forbes on 2016 hedge fund performance


The average hedge fund returned 5.6% last year compared to 12% for the S&P 500 but that doesn’t mean the managers of the SPY ETF earned the most.
Forbes put together a list of the hedge fund managers who earned the most in 2016 and the results probably won’t surprise you. The familiar names are there and the paychecks are out-of-sight.

  1. James Simons – Renaissance Technologies $1.5 billion
  2. Michael Platt – BlueCrest $1.5 billion
  3. Ray Dalio – Bridgewater $1.4 billion
  4. David Tepper – Appaloosa $750 million
  5. Ken Griffith – Citadel $500 million
  6. Dan Loeb – Third Point $400 million
  7. Paul Singer – Elliott $400 million
  8. David Shaw – DE Shaw $400 million
  9. John Overdeck – Two Sigman $375 million
  10. David Sieger – Two Sigman $375 million
  11. Michael Hintze CQS $325 million
  12. San Druckenmillier – Duquesne $300 million
  13. Brett Ichan – Ichan Capital $280 million

(more…)

Probability and reward-to Risk Assessment -Traders Must Read

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #
  • Never open a position without knowing the initial risk.
  • Define your profits and losses as a multiple of your initial risk (R-multiples).
  • Limit your losses to 1R or less.
  • Make sure your profits on the average are bigger than 1R.
  • Never take a trade unless the reward-to-risk ratio of that trade is at least 2:1 and perhaps even 3:1.
  • Your trading system is a distribution of R-multiples.
  • When you understand #6, you should be able to hear/see a description of a system and know the kind of R-multiple distribution it would generate.
  • The mean of that distribution is the expectancy, and it tells you what you’ll make on the average trade. It should be a positive number.
  • The mean, standard deviation, and number of trades determine the SQN score for your system.
  • Your SQN score tells you how easy it will be to meet your objectives using position sizing strategies. Other than that, your system has nothing to do with meeting your objectives.
  • Systems are usually named after their setups, which are usually based on some attempt to predict future prices. Prediction has nothing to do with trading well.
  • System performance has to do with controlling risk and managing the position through your exits.
Go to top