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The Flow Of Money Explained

  
  Education
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Money and investment capital are very picky things. They are constantly flowing from those who know how to manage it, to those who do not. Money is not static, it is in constant flux. This is why a person that starts out poor in America can end up wealthy, and also why generational wealth can dissolve in one generation due to bad management. The flow of money is why a lottery winner that wins a jackpot and does not know how to manage it can quickly find themselves in bankruptcy. No amount of money will overcome consistently bad decisions. In a free market, capitalistic system, money flows continually to those that create value and away from those who do not.

  • Money leaves those who risk it’s loss too many times, and ends up with those that protect it and make it grow.
  • Money flows from consumers of goods and services to the owners of the businesses that provide the right products.
  • Money flows to entrepreneurs when they create desirable goods and services. Money flows away from consumers that do not have self control.
  • Money flows to employees that develop skills that employers will pay a premium for. Little money flows to employees that lack skills, or the work ethic to attain them.
  • Money flows from customers to businesses.
  • Money flows to innovators and away from outdated, stagnant businesses.
  • Money flows to well managed businesses and away from mismanaged ones.
  • Money flows from bad traders to good traders.

2 Questions & Answers For Traders

  
  Education
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It is impossible to make money trading without an edge.

There are many ways to create an edge in the markets, but one this is true—it is very, very hard to do so. Most things that people say work in the market do not actually work. Treat claims of success and performance with healthy skepticism. I can tell you, based on my experience of nearly twenty years as a trader, most people who say they are making substantial profits are not. This is a very hard business.

Every edge we have is driven by an imbalance of buying and selling pressure.

The world divides into two large groups of traders and investors: fundamental traders who base decisions off of financial analysis, understanding of the industry and a company’s competitive position, growth rates, assessment of management, etc. Technical traders base decisions off of patterns in prices, volume or related data. From a technical perspective, every edge we have is generated by a disagreement between buyers and sellers. When they are in balance (equilibrium), market movements are random.

7 Warning Signs For Trader

  
  Education
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There are warning signs that a trader is going down the road road in a trade or in their trading in general. Traders have to go with the flow of the market, manage risk, and keep their mind open to actual price action. Departing from these principles are dangerous and could result in huge draw downs in capital and even blowing up their accounts. Trading through the filters of fear, greed, or ego are very dangerous.

  1. You stop trading your plan and start “shooting from the hip” you are losing or winning so you believe that you are above your own rules, you start trading your opinions instead of your plan.
  2. You are about to take a trade you are 100% sure of, you have no doubt that it will work out. Trades that feel good to do and feel like can’t lose trades rarely win because everyone is already positioned in those trades.
  3. When you ignore your first stop and start deciding that you should give your trade “more room”, when you allow a loss to grow and rationalize why you should hold it instead of following your plan and stopping out you are in trouble.
  4. Averaging down in a position that is going against you is never a good idea, fighting trends are very dangerous amplifying your losses by increasing your position size can be fatal to your account.
  5. Fighting against the prevailing market trend over an over again can chop your account to pieces. (more…)

Stress hormone linked to financial crisis

  
  Education
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STRESS TRADINGThe stress that financial traders suffer during periods of high volatility in the markets reduces their appetite for risk, according to a study led by Cambridge university neuroscientist and former Wall Street trader John Coates. This may prolong financial crises.

The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combines field and lab work. Prof Coates and colleagues discovered that levels of the stress hormone cortisol increased by 68 per cent on average in a group of City of London traders over eight days in which market volatility increased.

 The scientists took this finding to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge where they used pharmacology – hydrocortisone tablets – to raise cortisol levels in volunteers, also by 68 per cent over eight days. Participants then played an incentivised risk-taking game. The appetite for risk collapsed, by as much as 44 per cent according to one measure, in those with raised cortisol. (The study was double-blinded with a control group taking dummy tablets.) (more…)

The Essence of a Trading Process

  
  Education
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At the broadest level, trading consists of analyzing, synthesizing, and doing.

Analyzing is extracting information from markets, immersing ourselves in data.  It is our look through the microscope.

Synthesizing is assembling those data into a coherent picture, extracting pattern and meaning from the reams of market information.  It is our telescopic view.

Doing is taking action on the meaning we have extracted from studying markets.  It includes everything from determining the best expression of a view to managing risk and reward once the view has become a position.

In trading, the microscope and telescope of viewing are transformed into real world doing.

At the end of a trading day, week, or month, we repeat the process–only we turn the lens inward.

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India:A Downhill Slide

  
Analysis, Education
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After recording a higher-than-average (i.e. >3.2%) growth rate in three of the last four years (FY11-14), rural economic growth stepped off the pedal in FY15 and rural consumption looks increasingly likely to remain subdued through FY16 with: a) government measures to curb inflation by lowering wages growth and crop MSPs (minimum support prices); and b) unseasonal heavy rainfall in early 2015 and forecasts of a consecutive year of weak monsoon further clouding the outlook.  
State of the Agricultural households: Agriculture sector GDP grew at a tepid 1.1% in FY15, as per initial government estimates. With monsoon rainfall coming in 12% below average in 2014 and unseasonal rainfall in early 2015 causing crop damage on up to 8-10mn hectares of cultivation (4-5% of total cropped area in India), rural consumption will likely remain weak in the medium term. Our analysis of NSSO survey data on the state of rural agriculture households over the past decade reveals little structural progress has been achieved – although income (12% CAGR) and fixed capital spending (15% CAGR) have increased impressively, structural issues persist because monsoon-dependent farming remains the principal source of income, improvement in institutional credit penetration has been weak and a lack of awareness of modern agricultural practices is pervasive. Legislative agenda progressing: 

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Diagnosing trading problems.

  
  Education
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1) Problems of training and experience – Many traders put their money at risk well before they have developed their own trading styles based on the identification of an objective edge in the marketplace. They are not emotionally prepared to handle risk and reward, and they are not sufficiently steeped in markets to separate randomness from meaningful market patterns. They are like beginning golfers who decide to enter a competitive tournament. Their frustrations are the result of lack of preparation and experience. The answer to these problems is to develop a training program that helps you develop confidence and competence in identifying meaningful market patterns and acting upon those. Online trading rooms, where you can observe experienced traders apply their skills, are helpful for this purpose.
2) Problems of changing markets – When traders have had consistent success, but suddenly lose money with consistency, a reasonable hypothesis is that markets have changed and what once was an edge no longer is profitable. This happened to many momentum traders after the late 1990s bull market, and it also has been the case for many scalpers after volatility came out of the stock indices. Here the challenge is to remake one’s trading, either by retaining the core strategy and seeking other markets with opportunity or by finding new strategies for one’s market. The answer to these problems is to reduce your trading size and re-enter a learning curve to become acquainted with new markets and methods. Figuring out how you learned the markets initially will help you identify steps you need to take to relearn new patterns. 
3) Situational emotional problems – These are emotional stresses that are recent in origin and that interfere with decision making and performance. Some of these stresses might pertain to trading, such as frustration after a slump or loss. Some might stem from one’s personal life, as in a relationship breakup or increased financial pressures due to a new home or child. Very often these problems create performance anxieties by putting the making of money ahead of the placing of good trades. The answer to these problems is to seek out short-term counseling to help you gain perspective on the problems and cope with them effectively.  (more…)

MRI’s of Succesful Traders

  
  Education
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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”:

“Seeing what’s going on in people’s brains when they are trading suggests that Buffett was right on target,” says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics at Caltech.

That is because in their experimental markets, Camerer and his colleagues found two distinct types of activity in the brains of participants—one that made a small fraction of participants nervous and prompted them to sell their experimental shares even as prices were on the rise, and another that was much more common and made traders behave in a greedy way, buying aggressively during the bubble and even after the peak. The lucky few who received the early warning signal got out of the market early, ultimately causing the bubble to burst, and earned the most money. The others displayed what former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance” and lost their proverbial shirts.

Taleb reveals unsettling truths

  
Analysis, Education
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How fragile we are. Five years on from the Lehman Brothers collapse, political and regulatory errors have made the world’s financial system even more fragile.

This alarming line of thought comes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best known for The Black Swan, which explained markets’ difficulties in pricing extreme events for which they had no precedent.

 Mr Taleb, who spoke to me in London last week, divides opinion. For some he is a genius, for others a charlatan. What seems clear, however, is that his gloriously charismatic act and polymath choice of imagery, drawn from philosophy, mathematics and the Classics, can get in the way of underlying ideas which are not in fact far-fetched. Indeed they contain a hard kernel of commonsense truth.

Here, then, is an attempt to render Mr Taleb’s poetic arguments in prose.  (more…)

16 +1 Differences Between Good Trades & Bad Trades

  
  Education
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Good Trades are made by managing the mind, ego, and emotions.

1. A good trade is taken with complete confidence and follows your trading method; a bad trade is taken on an opinion. 
2. A good trade is taken with a disciplined entry and position size; a bad trade is taken to win back losses the market owes you.
3. A good trade is taken when your entry parameters line up; a bad trade is taken out of fear of missing a move. 
4. A good trade is taken to be profitable in the context of your trading plan; a bad trade is taken out of greed to make a lot of money quickly. 
5. A good trade is taken according to your trading plan; a bad trade is taken to inflate the ego.
6. A good trade is taken without regret or internal conflict; a bad trade is taken when a trader is double-minded.

Good trades are just one trade inside a robust methodology that gives the traders an advantage int eh long term.

7. A good trade is based on your trading plan; a bad trade is based on emotions and beliefs. 
8. A good trade is based on your own personal edge; a bad trade is based on your opinion. 
9. A good trade is made using your own timeframe; a bad trade changes timeframe due to a loss. 
10. A good trade is made in reaction to current price reality; a bad trade is made based on personal judgment. 
11. A good trade is made after identifying and trading with the trend; a bad trade fights the trend. 
12. A good trade is made using the trading vehicles you are an expert in; a bad trade is when you trade unfamiliar markets. (more…)

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