Ambitious
Makes and follows long term business plan
•Unambitious
Will ignore long term business plan
•Calm
Will handle times of market volatility and make smart decisions
•Worrying
Will panic when markets are volatile and make stupid decisions (more…)
1) What you’re trading – Why are you selecting one instrument to trade (one stock, one index) versus others? Which instruments maximize reward relative to risk?
2) How much you’re trading – How much of your capital are you going to allocate to the trade idea versus other ideas?
3) Why you’re trading – What is the rationale for the trade? Why does the trade idea provide you with an “edge”?
4) What will take you out of the trade – What would lead you to determine that your trade idea is wrong? What would tell you that the trade has reached its profit potential?
5) Where you will enter the trade – Given the criteria that would take you out of the trade, where will you execute your idea to maximize the reward you’ll obtain relative to the risk you’ll be taking?
6) How you will manage the trade – What would have to happen to convince you to add to the trade, scale out of it, and/or tighten your stop loss?
“Where’s the Dow going to be in a year?”
That’s often asked of financial TV guests. From their responses, you’ll detect two distinct investment philosophies emerge. Which answer resonates with you most strongly probably determines the sort of investor you are. It also affects the odds of how well your portfolio is likely to do.
Imagine it is a random Wednesday, and despite my past warnings about noise, you have a television tuned to a financial news station. That very question is posed to two television guests; let’s call them “Alpha” and “Beta.” Their answers — which are quite different — reflect their competing investment schools of thought.
Guest Alpha’s response is very specific. Yet it incorporates so many factors, it’s hard to keep up with. Rather than fill this in with the news of the moment — Fed raising rates! China devaluation! Greek bailouts! Gold collapse! — I have left the details blank so this remains “evergreen.” This not only shows how many variables are involved, but it avoids the emotional response you may have to any of these specific issues.
So Alpha is asked where the Dow will be in a year, and he responds:
“Our view is that the economy in the U.S. continues to _______, and we foresee _______ problems overseas ______. China is _______, and that has ramifications for the Pacific Rim’s ______. Greece is ______ in Europe. The commodity complex is causing _____ for emerging markets. But many sectors of the U.S. economy remain _______, and some sectors overseas are still _______. The valuation issue continues to be _____, and that means _____ for investors. That has ramifications for corporate profits that will be ______. We think the economy is going to do ______, and you know that means inflation will be _____, which will force interest rates to ______. Under these conditions, the sectors most likely to benefit from this are ______, ______ and ______. The companies best positioned to take advantage of this are ____, ____ and ____. Based on all that, we especially recommend an overweight allocation to ____, ____ and ____. Thus, we believe the Dow will be at ______ next year.”
You can turn on FinTV any day of the week and hear some variation of that discussion. (more…)
The stock market is bipolar creature, driven by sentiment and irrational expectations. One day, it is an ingenious forward-looking mechanism that anticipates and discounts future events beautifully. Another day, it is a stubborn schizophrenic that can’t see further than its nose.
Markets constantly overreact to both, identified risks and opportunities. It is in the nature of financial markets to exaggerate, to magnify. This is why they are not always discounting the future. Sometimes, they are correcting previously incorrect view. Sometimes, they just go bonkers and send prices to levels that cannot possibly be justified by any future scenario. Boys will be boys. Markets will be markets. They’ll fluctuate violently, up and down and to levels that will seem incomprehensible to many. Indexing, robo-advising and social media won’t change that. The Internet might have made people smarter; but it hasn’t made financial markets more efficient. You could complain and whine about financial markets’ irrationality or you could find a way to take advantage of it. Or don’t. It’s your choice.
If you understand people’s incentives, you are very likely to predict correctly their future behavior and sometimes even influence it. Most incentives have expiration date. What is important today, might not be as important tomorrow. This applies perfectly to life, but not always in financial markets that live in their own world. Incentives require the existence of rationality. We have already made the point that more often than not, markets are not rational, but emotional, at least in a short-term perspective. As Howard Marks eloquently puts it: (more…)
“I become quicker and more defensive. I am always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money.”
“Risk control is the most important thing in trading.”
“Don’t be a hero”.
“Don’t have an ego.”
“Always question yourself and your ability”.
“I am more scared now that I was at any point since I began trading, because I recognize how ephemeral success can be in this business. I know that to be successful, I have to be frightened. My biggest hits have always come after I have had a great period and I started to think that I knew something.”
“One of my strengths is that I view anything that has happened up to the present point in time as history. I really don’t care about the mistake I made three seconds ago in the market. What I care about is what I am going to do from the next moment on. I try to avoid any emotional attachment to a market.”
“I never apologize to anybody, because I don’t get paid unless I win.” (more…)
At one point or another, everyone who has interactions with the market asks oneself, “Why is trading so hard?” There are legitimate reasons why trading should be difficult: markets are highly random; whatever edge we can find is eroded by competition from smart, well-capitalized traders; some traders work within various constraints; and markets are subject to very large shocks that can have devastating effects on unprepared traders. Even so, it seems like something else is going on, almost like we are our own worst enemies at times. What is it about markets that encourages people to do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, and why do many of the behaviors that serve us so well in other situations actually work against us in the market?
Part of the answer lies in the nature of the market itself. What we call “the market” is actually the end result of the interactions of thousands of traders across the gamut of size, holding period, and intent. Each trader is constantly trying to gain an advantage over the others; market behavior is the sum of all of this activity, reflecting both the rational analysis and the psychological reactions of all participants. This creates an environment that has basically evolved to encourage individual traders to make mistakes. That is an important point—the market is essentially designed to cause traders to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. The market turns our cognitive tools and psychological quirks against us, making us our own enemy in the marketplace. It is not so much that the market is against us; it is that the market sets us against ourselves.
I cannot even count the number of trading lessons
