Archives of “Business_Finance” tag

rss

Trading Difficulties -One Liners

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Trading Difficulties

  • Cut winning trades short even though you know your trade setup is solid.
  • Failed to pull the trigger on a perfectly good trade because of fear of loss.
  • Let losing trades run hoping for a return to breakeven.
  • Added to a losing position in the hope that the market would turn around.
  • Made profi ts in the morning but gave them back in the afternoon.
  • Became more aggressive after losing money.
  • Took unplanned trades when the market suddenly moved.
  • Stopped trading or reduced position size after a loss.
  • Traded greater position size than prudent money management practice would advise.
  • Held trades longer than they should have been held looking for a “home run.”
  • Failed to take a perfectly sound setup because the last two trades were losers.
  • After a day of big profits, your confidence soared and your trading suffered.
  • Consistently made small money but have been unable to elevate your trading performance.

These trading difficulties hurt. They not only hurt your account, but they also cause mental and emotional suffering. No other profession tests your psychology as does trading. These difficulties and unskilled trading behaviors arise from the underlying mental and emotional challenges traders face.

Physics To Help Deal With Market Risks

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

READANDLEARNMisako Takayasu, a Tokyo Institute of Technology associate professor, spoke with The Nikkei about how “big data” will be used in the future to help market players manage risks based on principles of physics.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How do you use big data in your research?

A: Big data has allowed us to record human behavior and analyze it mathematically. Broader economic or social phenomena can be observed more clearly (in this way), like particles in physics.

As more and more trading data is accumulated, it is becoming increasingly possible to analyze and predict fluctuations using methods common in physics. The exponential growth of computer calculation speeds has also helped the process.

Q: What can you deduct from market data using these tools?

A: Data on ticks — the smallest increment of movement in the price of a security — can be used to gauge investor sentiment and how volatility is triggered. Market swings cannot be explained by a simple random-walk theory.

Markets become more stable when the number of contrarian investors increases. Conversely, they become unstable when more and more investors follow a market trend.

If market-followers dominate a market as it continues to climb, it will crash in the end. We may be able to explain the dynamics of a bubble with big data.

Q: What are the possible applications of big data in the market? (more…)

Difference between successful and unsuccessful Trader

  
  Education
#  #  #  #

“A trader who has a good chance of success has the following attributes: (1) is properly capitalized; (2) treats trading like a business; (3) has a low tolerance of risk; (4) trades only when the market provides an opportunity; (5) can control emotions; (6) has a trading plan; (7) has a risk management plan; (8.) is incredibly disciplined; (9) is focused; and (10) has backtested his trading methodology.”  

“A trader who has a good chance of failure has any of the following attributes: (1) is undercapitalized; (2) lacks discipline; (3) overtrades; (4) does not understand the markets; (5) rushes into trades; (6) chases the market; (7) is afraid of missing a move; (8.) is stubborn and marries a position or idea; (9) misinterprets news; (10) is always looking for home runs; (11) lets losers get too big; (12) takes winners prematurely; (13) takes trading too lightly; (14) takes large risks; and (15) has little control of his emotions.” 

11 Thoughts on Trading Stress and Emotion

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #

 *Everyone has a stop-loss level: For some, it’s a price; for others, it’s a pain threshold.11RULES
* It’s not stress and emotion that get in the way of trading; it’s the stress and emotion that results when trading becomes personal: about you, rather than about supply and demand.
* The measure of a trader is how hard he or she works when markets are closed.
* Much bad trading is hormonal: too much testosterone, too little.
* When traders don’t track their results, it’s because they don’t want to know them.
* The best traders have a passion for markets; the worst have a passion for trading. (more…)

10 Unsuccessful Trading Behaviors

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #
  1. Refusing to define a loss.
  2. Not liquidating a losing trade, even after you have acknowledged the trade’s potential is greatly diminished.
  3. Getting locked into a specific opinion or belief about market direction.  I.E. “I’m right, the market is wrong.”
  4. Focusing on price and the money
  5. Revenge-trading to get back at the market from what it took from you.
  6. Not reversing your position even when you clearly sense a change in market direction
  7. Not following the rules of the trading system.
  8. Planning for a move or feeling one building, then not trading it.
  9. Not acting on your instincts or intuition
  10. Establishing a consistent patter of trading success over a period of time, and then giving your winning back to the market in one or two trades.

Understanding the perils of overconfidence (Links )

  
Education, LINKS
#  #  #  #

A thorough explanation of the overconfidence effect. (Wikipedia)

The Art of Thinking Clearly. (Psychology Today)

Examples of overconfidence outside the charts.  (Your Dictionary)

Key concepts of overconfidence. (Albert Phung via Investopedia)

There are three ways overconfidence can make a fool of you. (Christine Riordan via Forbes)

Managing Overconfidence. (Russo and Schoemaker via Sloan Management Review)

Two types of overconfidence. (Synapse Trading)

The dynamics of overconfident stock market forecasters. (Deaves, Luders, and Schroder via ZEW)

Can we use the overconfidence bias to game the system?  (Scott, Stumpp, and Xu via The Journal of Portfolio Management)

Overtrading is a by product of overconfidence. (Irwan Trinugroho via IJBM) and (Barber and Odean via Berkeley)

Do not be overconfident when investing. (Larry Swedroe via CBS Money Watch)

Overconfidence is more prevalent in… men? (Jeff Sommer via NYT)

A simple Idea to improve your trading

  
  Education
  Tags

I feel certain that my discipline in executing each and every trade according to my trading methodology is the secret to my success. If you want to improve your trading, what you need to do is very simple. Before you enter any trade, imagine that you will have to explain this trade to a panel of your peers, by explaining to them the reason for your entry, your money, trade, and risk management guidelines, and why you exited the trade. Imagine having to explain why you chose this particular market and this particular time frame, along with how you set objectives for the trade, and how you determined where your initial protection would be. If you can truly do this, I strongly believe that you can be successful.

9 Rules by Nassim Taleb’s Risk Management

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Rule No. 1- Do not venture in markets and products you do not understand. You will be a sitting duck.

Rule No. 2- The large hit you will take next will not resemble the one you took last. Do not listen to the consensus as to where the risks are (that is, risks shown by VAR). What will hurt you is what you expect the least.

Rule No. 3- Believe half of what you read, none of what you hear. Never study a theory before doing your own observation and thinking. Read every piece of theoretical research you can-but stay a trader. An unguarded study of lower quantitative methods will rob you of your insight.

Rule No. 4- Beware of the nonmarket-making traders who make a steady income-they tend to blow up. Traders with frequent losses might hurt you, but they are not likely to blow you up. Long volatility traders lose money most days of the week.

Rule No. 5- The markets will follow the path to hurt the highest number of hedgers. The best hedges are those you alone put on. (more…)

Three Best Practices For Traders

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #

*  Keeping risk-taking down until you see markets clearly– Losing small and gaining big is what makes for excellent risk-adjusted returns.  Accepting that you’re not seeing things well is half the battle.  By continuing to actively engage markets in small size, you give yourself an opportunity to regain perspective.  Trading larger or more often out of the frustration of losing is a recipe for disaster.
*  Focusing on yourself – Very often, losses occur because market patterns have changed.  Slumps occur because your mindset has changed.  By working on yourself before you go hard at markets, you place yourself in an optimal mindset to press your advantage when things line up.  Stepping back from trading, renewing your energy, getting back to core strengths–all can help create the mindset to see markets freshly.
*  Searching and re-searching – Stepping back from trading doesn’t mean you step back from markets.  When times are tough, great traders double down on research and idea generation.  It’s that pipeline of ideas that will produce the next winning trades.  Research and development is what ultimately keeps your trading business alive; turning the search for trades into trading re-search turns a losing period into an opportunity for advancement.
Drawdowns are inevitable.  Slumps are not.  Your job in coaching yourself is to learn from the drawdowns and use them as opportunities to make yourself better.  A drawdown only becomes a slump when it gets inside our heads and takes us away from our core strengths.  Drawdowns become business opportunities when they focus us on those strengths and prod us to expand them.

3 Trading Mistakes

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #

mistake-1) Trading Without Context – Many traders will enter positions with little more than a chart-based “setup” or a hunch that the market is heading lower. They don’t locate where the market is trading with respect to its daily range and often can’t identify where the relevant ranges are located. Is the most recent market move gaining or losing volume/participation? Are most sectors participating in the move? Without context, traders trade reflexively, not proactively.
2) Trading Without Targets – Focused on entries, traders often don’t explicitly identify where they would harvest profits. They hold trades too long, exiting in a panic after reversals, or they take profits quickly, missing opportunity. They don’t factor current volatility into estimates of how far the market could move on their time frame, and they often don’t explicitly look for targets based upon prior moves and ranges.
3) Trading Without Reflecting – The slow times of day are excellent opportunities to review trading for the day, reformulate market views, correct mistakes, and set goals going forward. Many traders, however, never stop looking for the next trade, lured by the siren’s promise of breakout. Without the benefit of reflection, they compound errors, turning mistakes into blowups and blowups into slumps.

Go to top