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Controlling your Emotions

Emotions-asr1The fact is, the majority of traders lose because they cannot control their emotions – and their emotions cause them to make irrational trades and lose.

Trading psychology is one of the keys to investment success, but its impact is not understood by many investors, who simply think they need a good trading method, but this is only part of the equation for winning at currency trading.

The influence Of Hope and Fear

In currency trading psychology, two emotions that are constantly present are:Hope and fear. One of the traders who recognized this was the legendary trader W D Gann.

Hope and fear are destructive emotions and all traders are influenced by them, they are part of all traders’ psychology.

Hope and fear can make traders act irrationally, they know what they should do, but they simply can’t do it.

Executing a trading method with discipline is the only way to overcome destructive emotions.

Human Nature Is Constant – Exploit It for Trading Success It doesn’t matter what market you trade:

Commodities, stocks, currencies, or what type of trader you are, a day or position trader, the fact is, trading psychology influences the majority of traders.

If you can control your emotions and trade with a disciplined plan you can gain a trading edge. (more…)

IMF: Dollar Carry-Trade Creating Bubbles Around The World

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Read a PDF of the IMF’s recent report here.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) highlighted the fact that low interest rates in the U.S., plus an apparent “one-way” bet against the dollar has created a global dollar carry-trade that is driving capital flows into emerging markets.

If not handled properly, this will lead to emerging market asset bubbles, which arguably have already begun to inflate.

We’ve highlighted before how places like Hong Kong are seeing property prices go through the roof due to low U.S. interest rates. (more…)

Latest Jim Rogers video interview on Bloomberg

Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, talks with Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin about China’s yuan policy and calls for the mainland to allow the currency to appreciate. Speaking from Singapore, Rogers also discusses the outlook for global economies, currencies and the commodities market. Bloomberg’s Paul Gordon and Patricia Lui also speak.

Trading Wisdom – Tom Willis and Bob Jenkins

Years back Tom Willis (a friend of Richard Dennis’) and Bob Jenkins, running a hedge fund, offered answers about “price” during an interview. An excerpt:
Bob Jenkins: “Everything known is reflected in the price. It makes inherent sense. I could never hope to compete with Cargill that has soybean agents scouring the globe knowing everything there is to know about soybeans and funneling the information up to Lake Minnetonka, their trading headquarters. Unless I have a friend at Cargill, I can only get this information one way: I can infer it technically. We have friends who have made millions trading fundamentally, but their problems are (a) they can rarely know as much as the commercials [i.e. Cargill]; and (b) they are limited to trading their [one market] specialty. They don’t know anything about bonds; they don’t know anything about the currencies. I don’t either, but I’ve made a lot of money trading them. Every picture’s worth a thousand words.”
Tom Willis: “They’re just numbers. Corn is a little different than bonds, but not different enough that I’d have to trade them differently-not different enough that I would have to have a different system.”
Bob Jenkins: “Some of these guys I read about have a different system for each [market]. That’s absurd. We’re trading mob psychology. We’re trading numbers. We’re not trading corn, soybeans or S&Ps.”
I hope everyone catches the nuance of Bob Jenkins’ last statement? Some great succinct language about what “it” takes. Taken from an interview 20 years ago…

Jim Rogers-I own the dollar.Will I own it in five years, ten years? I don't know.

Jim Rogers decries the growing uncertainty and recklessness of global central planners as the world enters unchartered financial markets:

  For the first time in recorded history, we have nearly every central bank printing money and trying to debase their currency. This has never happened before. How it’s going to work out, I don’t know. It just depends on which one goes down the most and first, and they take turns. When one says a currency is going down, the question is against what? because they are all trying to debase themselves. It’s a peculiar time in world history.

 
I own the dollar, not because I have any confidence in the dollar and not because it’s sound – it’s a terribly flawed currency – but I expect more currency turmoil, more financial turmoil. During periods like that, people, for whatever reason, flee to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven. It is not a safe haven, but it is perceived that way by some people. That’s why the dollar is going up. That’s why I own it. Will I own it in five years, ten years? I don’t know. 

It makes it extremely difficult for the investor looking for acceptable risk/reward, or the saver looking to protect their purchasing power; as in Rogers’ view, all options have their problems:

  

I own gold and silver and precious metals. I own all commodities, which is a better way to play as they debase currencies. I own more agriculture than just about anything else in real assets because of the reasons we discussed before. We were talking before about the risk-free or worry-free investment. Even gold: the Indian politicians are talking about coming down hard on gold, and India is the largest buyer of gold in the world. If Indian politicians do something — whether it’s foolish or not is irrelevant — if they do something, gold could go down a lot. So I own it. I’m not selling it. But everything has problems.

Why Trend Followers Mint Money ?

The reason trend traders make money in the long term is because due to supply and demand and the flow of capital equities, currencies, commodities, and future contracts tend to trend in one direction or the other in different time frames, trend traders and trend followers are there to capitalize on those trends by letting the market action determine their buy and sell decisions seeking to be on the right side of the market’s trend the majority of the time.
Here is why it works:

  1. Bear markets have no supports, they keep falling until a new support level is found.
  2. Bull markets have no resistance, they keep keep going up until a new resistance level is found.
  3. The world’s capital is always flowing and seeking to find returns; this flow causes trends to emerge.
  4. Monster stocks can double due to earnings growth expectations.
  5. Currencies can plunge based on fear of a nations solvency.
  6. Commodities can run to absurd levels based on supply expectations.
  7. Fear can bring markets down far below what any one thinks is rational.
  8. Greed can inflate markets up far above any reasonable valuations.
  9. Trend traders are not predicting price action they are simply following it. They let reality guide them not opinions.
  10. Markets tend to trend and systems that are able to capture trends and minimize losses in choppy environments are robust in the long term.
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