1.Does your self-esteem rise and fall with your latest trading ?
2.Have you ever taken a trade just to prove your ability as a trader ?
3.Do you brag about your winning trades to others ?
4.Do you try to hide your losing trades from others ?
5.Do you ever make up false stories about your trading to impress others ?
6.Do you worry about what other people think of your as trader ?
7.Make an honest self-assessment of your trading.
8.Complement yourself and give yourself credit when you do something right.
9.When you make a mistake or do something that doesn’t serve your trading ,plan how you will correct this tomorrow or in the future.Say to yourself ,”That’s not like me.I can do better.”
10.Notice your improvement and commit to doing better each day ,week ,month ,and year
Archives of “Bullying” tag
rssCHARLES T. MUNGER AND THE PRESCRIPTION FOR A LIFE OF MISERY
On June 13, 1986 Charles T. Munger delivered the commencement address at Harvard University.
In it, Munger borrows from an earlier commencement address by the late night host Johnny Carson. Carson shared with the graduating class that although he could not not tell them how to be happy, he could share with them from personal experience how to be miserable.
Carson’s prescription for a life of misery?
- ingestion of chemicals to alter mood or perception
- envy
- resentment
Munger adds to Carson’s prescription with four more ways to guarantee a life of misery:
- be unreliable: do not faithfully do what you have promised yourself or others
- learn everything you possibly can from your own personal experience, minimizing what you can learn from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead
- go down and stay down when you get your first, second, and third severe reverse in the battle of life (i.e., if at first you do not succeed then do not try again)
- ignore evidence contrary to your opinion by remaining certain in your views
UK Trader Fined 60,000 Pounds For Outsmarting Algos
Yet another UK trader is being punished by overzealous regulators for an accomplishment that should instead have earned him accolades: Outsmarting the machines.
In a case that echoes some of the circumstances surrounding the scapegoating of former UK-based trader Nav Sarao, former Bank of America Merrill Lynch bond trader Paul Walter has been fined 60,000 pounds by the FCA for a practice that regulators call ‘algo baiting’.
Algorithm baiting is similar to spoofing – a practice that has been banned by stock-market regulators as those markets have embraced high-frequency trading practices that have broken markets and made them more vulnerable to this type of manipulation. But fixed income markets, like the Dutch loan market Walter is accused of manipulating, have been slower to embrace HFT-type trading. Because of this delay, Walter is a pioneer. Using BrokerTec, a popular fixed-income trading platform, Walter would place a bunch of bids for a given bond, triggering trend-following algos to follow suit. Then he would quickly cancel the bids. Here’s a more complete explanation per the Financial Times.
Mr Walter entered bids for Dutch state loans that pushed up their price. Then, when other algorithmic trades followed him in response and raised their bids, Mr Walter sold to them and cancelled his quote. This happened 11 times between July and August 2014 while he was working for the bank, the FCA said, while on one occasion he did the opposite. He netted a total of €22,000 profit from this “algo baiting”.
Mark Steward, the head of FCA enforcement, said the FCA would remain “vigilant” in detecting abusive practices like “algo bating”. Of course, programmers could also build better algorithms, stamping out the practice without any help from the government.
(more…)
12 Reflections on Life and Markets
I’ve never seen a trader succeed whose explicit or implicit goal was to not lose. The trader who trades to not lose is like the person who lives to avoid death: both become spiritual hypochondriacs.
No union was ever destroyed by a failure of romance. It is the loss of respect, not love, which ends a relationship.
Love, once present, never dies. It must be killed.
Sometimes we select markets–and trading styles–much as we choose romantic partners: by their ability to validate our deepest-held images of ourselves. Our choices generally succeed, for better or for worse.
Many a trader fears boredom more than loss, thereby experiencing the two in sequence.
1+14 Mental Behavior of Traders
Boredom: The trader wants some “action” so they put on a trade. Trades are for when entry signals are hit not to alleviate boredom.
- Pessimism: The trader starts to have a negative attitude about losing money. Be positive if you are learning form losses becasue you are paying tuition for this education.
- Frustration: Frustration comes from expectations not being met. Don’t focus on your P& L, focus on executing your trading plan.
- Overwhelm: Focus and simplicity are the keys to profits, complexity and lots of information are the road to be overwhelmed and unprofitable.
- Disappointment: Disappointment should not come from losing trades, disappointment should only come because of a lack of discipline in trading your plan.
- Doubt:Only trade a system AFTER you have thoroughly researched, back tested, or studied it in real time. Trade only with proven faith in a system, naive hope quickly leads to doubt and failure. (more…)
How to Handle a Justifiable Loss
- Accept the loss and forget about it.
- Record it in your record book and do not rehash it.
- Do not discuss the loss with anyone.
- Do not recruit anyone’s sympathy or sorrow.
- Do not feel sorry for yourself.
- Do not soothe your loss by going overboard on food, drink, or sex.
- Do not feel as if you have been punished.
- Do not punish or hate yourself for losing.
- Do not allow yourself to accept any punishment from loved ones.
- Do not accept ridicule or blame from your broker.
- Do not blame your trading system.
- Do not alter your technique, system, or methods.
- Do not fear making the next trade
- Do not respond by allowing your market studies to fall behind.
More Signal, Less Noise
1. News is Old — it is misnamed and not especially forward looking;
2. Data first and foremost; avoid the anecdotes and narratives;
3. Everyone talks their book (i.e., Whats their agenda?)
4. Recognize what financial chatter is merely idle gossip;
5. What is within your control? What is not?
6. Understand empiricism and probability analysis;
7. Eliminate all sources that are biased, or are not driven by your goals, or have a different agenda; (Delete money losers with Extreme Prejudice)
8. Understand the concept of time, and the long game
9. Separate what is for Fun and what is for Real
10. Refining your process is your goal. Get that right and the outcomes will improve naturally;
Your consistent focus should be to keep yourself concentrating on that which truly matters and learning to reduce or even better, ignore that which does not . . .