Archives of “confidence” tag

rss

Trading and Tennis

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

The accompanying comments  were inspired from Brad Gilbert‘s book,  Winning  Ugly, which was written about tennis. There are many parallels between tennis and trading, both being individual performance disciplines. 

And on that last note, remember that ATTITUDE is everything. How you frame out an individual experience or event will affect your success in the long run. Do you see a trading loss or bad drawdown period as a major setback, or do you see it as a learning experience from which you can figure out how to be on the RIGHT 

The accompanying comments (see sidebar) were inspired from Brad Gilbert‘s book,  Winning  Ugly, which was written about tennis. There are many parallels between tennis and trading, both being individual performance disciplines.

 

 

And on that last note, remember that ATTITUDE is everything. How you frame out an individual experience or event will affect your success in the long run. Do you see a trading loss or bad drawdown period as a major setback, or do you see it as a learning experience from which you can figure out how to be on the RIGHT

●     Desire. The most successful players are the ones who have a burning desire to win.

●     Defy Failure! Don’t check out of the game. Never give up!

●     Consistency. Improve your consistency. Stay active, stay involved, and keep your feet moving.

●     Patience. Be patient. Do not force a trade that isn’t there. Wait for the play to set up.

●     Management. When you get a good trade, go for it.

Manage it. Trail a stop. Don’t be too eager to get out.

●     Flexibility. Be flexible – if what you are doing isn’t working, change what you are doing!

●     Confidence. When down, get a little rhythm and confidence going. Don’t worry about being too ambitious.

●     Concentration. Stay with your game. Don’t let outside distractions bother you. They take energy and break your concentration.

●     Know Yourself. Match your particular strengths to the type of market conditions.

●     Clean Up Your Act. Hate making stupid mistakes and unforced errors. This includes not getting out of a bad trade when you know you are wrong.

●     Stay Positive. Many players will play their best game when they are coming from behind.

My Trading Lessons for Traders

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

Read….When ever you are Free.

  • Prepare, be confident & be decisive

  • Follow my trading rules without exception

  • Plan every trade with profit exit, stop exit and risk/reward ranking

  • Trade only when you have time AND you have an edge

  • Formulate and write down a trading/investing plan

  • Exit a position at my stops and not “hope” it will recover tomorrow

  • Trade the market I actually see, not the one I think I will see

  • Focus more on what’s actually happening rather than what I wish would happen

  • Learn to prevent my skepticism and opinion over the economy from keeping me from making good trades

  • Have a plan every day to trade the market and to not let my opinions of the market interfere with my trading

  • Concentrate on rule based trade management and not the outcome of the specific trade

  • Follow price action as opposed to listening to the fundamental “experts”

  • Listen to the market signal rather than market noise

  • Don’t be afraid of making mistakes

  • To pay more attention to technical signals to determine purchase/sell points rather than emotion & personal reasoning

  • Have more confidence in my trade ideas and believe in myself more often

  • Do not have a bias but instead let the charts be the guide

  • Have the discipline and fortitude to stick to my trade plans

  • To improve my organization of stock lists and automation of stock alerts

  • Do not over-leverage

  • Select only the most favorable setups

  • Try not to over analyze every potential trade

  • Lose less when I am wrong

  • Spend less time reading words and more time reading charts

  • Stick with winners and sell the losers

  • Allocate 2-3 hours each day & 5 hours every weekend to finding attractive setups

  • Increase position size and be in the market more (more…)

    • Success is the mother of confidence

      
      Education
    #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #
    How do you build confidence?  There are many ways but only one process: multiple small successes.  I am very much an advocate for boring trading.  What I mean by that is I trade the same edge over and over again without variation.  By trading the same edge over and over again I know when to get in and when to get out.  I know what to look for when a trade is working and I can safely add to my position.  On the other hand, I know what to look for when the trade is not working and I can exit with a small loss.  By following the rules EVERY TIME you can succeed, not in making money every time (impossible!), but by following the same plan every time.  These small successes give you the confidence to trust yourself each and every time your edge presents itself.  This is true in any new venture, whether it be golf, bowling, drawing, flying, etc.  Each small success gives birth to greater confidence which in turn brings further successes.  You can then replace a vicious circle of failure with a confident circle of success.  It is so EASY to want the lottery ticket or the home run every time at bat but HARD to accept when the numbers do not add up or when all the preparation leads to nothing more than the hard earned single.

    Trade in Private

      
      Education
    #  #  #  #

    do_not_disturb_signs

    Never under any circumstances reveal your trading positions to anyone. Your mind must be in complete harmony with your trading positions. When you reveal your positions to someone, they will immediately start to question the trade and start to erode your confidence and concentration in the trade. You will then be a less effective trader and eventually lose.

    36 Steps To Becoming A Better Trader

      
      Education
    #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

    1. We accumulate information – buying books, going to seminars and researching.
    2. We begin to trade with our ‘new’ knowledge.
    3. We consistently ‘donate’ and then realise we may need more knowledge or information.
    4. We accumulate more information.
    5. We switch the commodities we are currently following.
    6. We go back into the market and trade with our ‘updated’ knowledge.
    7. We get ‘beat up’ again and begin to lose some of our confidence. Fear starts setting in.
    8. We start to listen to ‘outside news’ and to other traders.
    9. We go back into the market and continue to ‘donate’.
    10. We switch commodities again.
    11. We search for more information.
    12. We go back into the market and start to see a little progress.
    13. We get ‘over-confident’ and the market humbles us.
    14. We start to understand that trading successfully is going to take more time and more knowledge than we anticipated.

    MOST PEOPLE WILL GIVE UP AT THIS POINT, AS THEY REALISE WORK IS INVOLVED.

    15. We get serious and start concentrating on learning a ‘real’ methodology.
    16. We trade our methodology with some success, but realise that something is missing.
    17. We begin to understand the need for having rules to apply our methodology.
    18. We take a sabbatical from trading to develop and research our trading rules.
    19. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but over all we still hesitate when we execute.
    20. We add, subtract and modify rules as we see a need to be more proficient with our rules.
    21. We feel we are very close to crossing that threshold of successful trading.
    22. We start to take responsibility for our trading results as we understand that our success is in us, not the methodology.
    23. We continue to trade and become more proficient with our methodology and our rules.
    24. As we trade we still have a tendency to violate our rules and our results are still erratic.
    25. We know we are close.
    26. We go back and research our rules.
    27. We build the confidence in our rules and go back into the market and trade.
    28. Our trading results are getting better, but we are still hesitating in executing our rules.
    29. We now see the importance of following our rules as we see the results of our trades when we don’t follow the rules.
    30. We begin to see that our lack of success is within us (a lack of discipline in following the rules because of some kind of fear) and we begin to work on knowing ourselves better.
    31. We continue to trade and the market teaches us more and more about ourselves.
    32. We master our methodology and our trading rules.
    33. We begin to consistently make money.
    34. We get a little over-confident and the market humbles us.
    35. We continue to learn our lessons.
    36. We stop thinking and allow our rules to trade for us (trading becomes boring, but successful) and our trading account continues to grow as we increase our contract size.

    3 Important contributors to lack of trading confidence

      
    Analysis, Education
    #  #  #  #  #  #

    1)  Not putting in the work – When we try to borrow ideas from others, we never really deeply understand those ideas.  The process of independently generating an idea ensures that the idea makes sense to us.  That gives us staying power during temporary periods of adverse price action;
    2)  Negative self-talk – When we focus on everything we could have done better and everything we did wrong, we create mini failure experiences for ourselves over time.  Our self-talk reflects our relationship with ourselves.  How can we feel confident in who we are and in what we do if we’re constantly tearing ourselves down?
    3)  Not playing to our strengths –  Many traders attempt trading styles that don’t match their personality and cognitive strengths.  Over time that generates frustration and erodes confidence.  Trading frequently when we function best as big picture idea generators inevitably exposes us to noise and randomness.

    Losses

      
      Education
    #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

    losses-ASRLosses are a simple cost of doing business. Don’t try to justify a bad trade by convincing yourself that it will sooner or later turn into a good trade. Accept losses easily!  Successful traders are able to ride through downturn periods. The confidence in their methods reassures them about their future success. 
    The markets offer endless and plentiful possibilities. Missed opportunities  exist only in your mind. Prices keep changing and generate other opportunities. The goal of trading is make a net profit after a sequence of trades. It is, therefore, necessary to accept some losses and to look forward without punishing oneself. 

    10 Most Common Behavioral Biases

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

    I offer my list of Investors’ 10 Most Common Behavioral Biases.  There are a number of others, of course, and more will continue to be uncovered.  But I think that these are the key ones.  Your suggestions of important ones I have missed are welcome.

    1. Confirmation Bias. We like to think that we carefully gather and evaluate facts and data before coming to a conclusion.  But we don’t. Instead, we tend to suffer from confirmation bias and thus reach a conclusion first.  Only thereafter do we gather facts and see those facts in such a way as to support our pre-conceived conclusions.  When a conclusion fits with our desired narrative, so much the better, because narratives are crucial to how we make sense of reality.
    2. Optimism Bias.  This is a well-established bias in which someone’s subjective confidence in their judgments is reliably greater than their objective accuracy. Indeed, we live in an overconfident, Lake Wobegon world (“where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average”).  We are only correct about 80% of the time when we are “99% sure.” Fully 94% of college professors believe they have above-average teaching skills (anyone who has gone to college will no doubt disagree with that). Since80% of drivers  say that their driving skills are above average, I guess none of them drive on the freeway when I do.  While 70% of high school students claim to have above-average leadership skills, only 2% say they are below average, no doubt taught by above average math teachers. In a truly terrifying survey result, 92% students said they were of good character and 79% said that their character was better than most people even though 27% of those same students admitted stealing from a store within the prior year and 60% said they had cheated on an exam. Venture capitalists are wildly overconfident in their estimations of how likely their potential ventures are either to succeed or fail. In a finding that pretty well sums things up, 85-90% of people think that the future will be more pleasant and less painful for them than for the average person.
    3. Loss Aversion. We are highly loss averse.  Empirical estimates find that losses are felt between two and two-and-a-half as strongly as gains.  Thus the disutility of losing $100 is at least twice the utility of gaining $100. Loss aversion favors inaction over action and the status quo over any alternatives. Therefore, when it comes time for us to act upon the facts and data we have gathered and the analysis we have undertaken about them, biases 2 and 3 – unjustified optimism and unreasonable risk aversion – conflict. As a consequence, we tend to make bold forecasts but timid choices.  (more…)

    Positive Affirmations

      
      Education
    #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

    affirmationsRepeat the words yourself to ingrain them in your brain.
    Repeat the words yourself to ingrain them in your brain.

    • –I am a consistent trader.
    • –I have complete confidence in my abilities.
    • – I follow my trading plan.
    • –I know the markets today are capable of doing anything.
    • –I am prepared to trade what I see.
    • –I will have winning and losing trades today.
    • –I set stops immediately after I enter a trade.
    • –I will never add to a losing position.
    • –I have complete confidence in my abilities.
    • –I have supreme concentration.
    • –I will immerse myself into the market flow.
    • –I will take what the market offers up to me.
    • –I know what my trading edge looks like.
    • –I will not hesitate when my system gives me a signal.
    • –I have complete trust in probabilities.
    • –I will buy when my system signals me to buy.
    • –I will sell when my system tells me to sell.
    • –I will trade responsible size, never risking too much.
    • –I am moving closer to my goals everyday.
    • –I am a skillful trader but always striving to do better.
    • –I learn from my mistakes so I do not repeat them.
    • –I have complete confidence in my abilities.
    • –I am an excellent trader.
    Go to top