rss

You Should Have All 4 Elements To Be Successful

Trading is a very complex undertaking and if you miss one element you will likely eventually fail  in this endeavor.

Here are the four different elements we must have working for us for success in trading:

The Knowledge

If we don’t do the homework to know what we need to know we will fail due to ignorance. Understanding historical price action, reading books by and about the best traders, seminars, mentor-ships, and  systems testing is all part of the homework we must do to get the needed knowledge.

The Resources

While trading with a small account is a good place to start it is not a good place to stay. Traders must be adequately capitalized for meaningful trading. We must have an affordable broker that does not charge bloated commissions and gives great execution on orders. A trader must have a platform and charting service that is adequate for his trading style. Trading a small account with an expensive broker with poor execution is a path to eventual failure.

The Desire (more…)

8 One Liner Lessons For Traders

– markets change and if a trader doesn’t adapt, he’ll be driving a cab
– becoming a successful trader is not easy, even if you’re experienced
– core competency in one endeavor, does not guarantee competency in another
– working for a living sucks
– always be prepared to trade
– markets aren’t the only thing that reverts to the mean
– never turn down an edge, no matter where you are, or what you have in your hand

– success is fleeting, losing is forever

The Foundation of Technical Analysis

First Principles

  • Markets are highly random and are very, very close to being efficient.
  • It is impossible to make money trading without an edge.
  • Every edge we have is driven by an imbalance of buying and selling pressure.
  • The job of traders is to identify those points of imbalance and to restrict their activities in the markets to those times.
  • There are two competing forces at work in the market: mean reversion and range expansion.
  • These two forces express themselves in the market through the alternation of trends and trading ranges.

The Four Trades

  • Traders usually view market action through charts, which are useful tools, but are only tools.
  • Trades broadly fall into with-trend and countertrend trades. These two categories require significantly different mind-sets and approaches to trade management.
  • There are only four technical trades. Some trades are blends of more than one trade, or an application of one trade to a structure in another time frame, but these are just refinements. At their root, all technical trades fall into one of these categories:
  • Trend continuation.
  • Trend termination.
  • Support and resistance holding.
  • Support and resistance failing.
  • Each of these trades is more appropriate at one phase of the market cycle than another. If you apply the wrong trade to current market conditions, you will lose.

(more…)

MRI’s of Succesful Traders

I’ve seen this study making the rounds on several websites now as a type of neuroeconomic confirmation of Buffetological principles…

Perhaps procedure might be slightly useful as a means of seeing physical brain improvement by training– such as that found through meditative practices.

“Traders who buy more aggressively based on NAcc signals earn less. High-earning traders have early warning signals in the anterior insular cortex before prices reach a peak, and sell coincidently with that signal, precipitating the crash. These experiments could help understand other cases in which human groups badly miscompute the value of actions or events.”

“Neuroeconomists Confirm Warren Buffet’s Wisdom”: (more…)

Kyle Bass on Japanese equities, yen correlation

k

5 brilliant insights from Kyle Bass

1.) “There’s no true science to it, it’s an Art”

2.) He has an incredibly high level of conviction with his trades

3.) He’s a master of structuring his trades

4.) “The past doesn’t necessarily tell you how the future will play out”

5.) His Fund’s strategy is a hybrid between Global Macro and Event Driven

More, and video interview, at the link

 

The Crash of 1929 -Video

Here is a link to the transcript of this documentary.

Narrator: At sea and on land, everyone seemed to be making money. It was a stampede of buying. And major speculators like John Jacob Rascob whipped up the frenzy. He told readers of The Ladies’ Home Journal that now everyone could be rich. September 2nd, Labor Day. It was the hottest day of the year. The markets were closed and people were at the beach. A reporter checked in with astrologer Evangeline to ask about the future of stock prices. Her answer: the Dow Jones could climb to heaven. The very next day, September 3rd, the stock market hit its all-time high.

Ben Karol, Former Newspaper Delivery Boy: My father and I had an ongoing discussion about the stock market. And I used to say, “Pop, everybody’s getting rich but you. You know, you work so hard and you’re never going to make a nickel. All you do is you keep delivering these newspapers and that’s about it. The guy who’s shining shoes is in the stock market, the grocery clerk is in the stock market, the school teacher’s in the stock market. The teller at the bank is in the stock market. Everybody’s in the stock market. You’re the only one that’s not in the stock market.” And he used to sit and laugh and say, “You’ll see. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

Narrator: On September 5th, economist Roger Babson gave a speech to a group of businessmen. “Sooner or later, a crash is coming and it may be terrific.” He’d been saying the same thing for two years, but now, for some reason, investors were listening. The market took a severe dip. They called it the “Babson Break.” The next day, prices stabilized, but several days later, they began to drift lower. Though investors had no way of knowing it, the collapse had already begun

(more…)

10 Questions for Trend Followers ,Yes Just Answer Them

Now, let’s get practical. Answer the following five questions, and you have a trend following trading system:

1. What market do you buy or sell at any time?
2. How much of a market do you buy or sell at any time?
3. When do you buy or sell a market?
4. When do you get out of a losing position?
5. When do you get out of a winning position?

Said another way (Bill Eckhardt inspired):

1. What is the state of the market?
2. What is the volatility of the market?
3. What is the equity being traded?
4. What is the system or the trading orientation?
5. What is the risk aversion of the trader or client?

You want to be black or white with this. You do not want gray. If you can accept that mentality, you have got it.

The Daily Trading Coach- 10 Lessons

1. The Process and the Practice:  “Confidence doesn’t come from being right all the time: it comes from surviving the many occasions of being wrong” (27). 

2. Stress and Distress:  “Thinking positively or negatively about performance outcomes interfere with the process of performing.  When you focus on the doing, the outcomes take care of themselves” (56). 

3.  Psychological Well-Being:  “We can recognize the happy trader because he is immersed in the process of trading and finds fulfillment from the process even when markets are not open” (72).

4.  Steps Toward Self-Improvement:  “Your trading strengths can be found in the patterns that repeat across successful trades” (105).

5.  Breaking Old Patterns:  “Many trading problems are the result of acting out personal dramas in markets” (133)

6.  Remapping the Mind: “When we change the lenses through which we view events, we change our responses to those events” (168)

7.  Learn New Action Patterns: “Find experienced traders who will not be shy in telling you when you are making mistakes.  In their lessons, you will learn to teach yourself” (203)

8.  Coaching Your Trading Business:  “Long before you seek to trade for a living, you should work at trading competence: just breaking even after costs” (230)

9.  Lessons From Trading Professionals:  “If you don’t trust yourself or your methods, you will not find the emotional resilience to weather periods of loss” (267)

10.  Looking For the Edge: “The simplest [trading] patterns will tend to be the most robust” (311).

25 -One Liner For Traders

1. Money management
2. Taking losses while small 
3. Positive expectancy
4. Importance of time out
5. Market can do anything anytime
6. Recognize your mistakes
7. Never indulge in hope
8. Keep things in perspective
9. Concentration, patience
10. Being humble
11. Ride the trends 
12. Define what success is, for you.
13. Do your own research
14. Use sound risk management
15. Lock in your profits when they’re there 
16. Accept that you’ll be wrong.
17. Keep it simple you stupid!
18. Sticking to your plan
19. Contrary opinion
20. Always have a good exit strategy
21. Knowing when to stay out of the market
22. Control your emotions
23. Never average down.
24. DISCIPLINE!
25. Pyramiding profitable positions to maximize profits in the trade.

Go to top