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How George Soros Knows What He Knows

georgesoros

I wonder if George Soros can really attribute his financial success to his theoretical framework that he calls the “Theory of Refexivity.” Or perhaps he just simply listens to the clues that his bodily instincts provide him with before making important trading decisions. Hmmm . . . Here’s what his son Robert has to say:
“My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that. But I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, Jesus Christ, at least half of this is bullshit. I mean, you know the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him. It has nothing to do with reason. He literally goes into a spasm, and it’s this early warning sign.”

7 Words for Traders

  • Think risk first and profit second — Profitable traders view every potential and actual trade through the lens of risk or whether they are willing to truly accept the potential damage to their account as opposed to focusing on the potential reward of trades.7
  • Accept risk — Profitable traders truly accept the associated risks once they decide the potential reward is worth it.  These traders understand that in order to win consistently they MUST experience controlled losses.  They know that if they minimize losses and exercise patience with winners, they can reap incredible profits.
  • Think more/Trade less –  Profitable traders know that their profit on every trade lay in the short distance between their ears.  They understand that the siren song of securities is an invitation to trouble much of the time.  They spend more time assessing a security’s overall chart structure and identifying optimal transaction points rather than focusing on the physical activity of clicking an entry or exit.
  • Stalkers — Profitable traders are disciplined and patient.  They will pass up a good entry to wait for a great one.
  • Decisive — Profitable traders make decisions.  They know that as long as their decisions are framed properly (i.e. from a risk perspective), their first thought is generally the right one.
  • Forgetful — Profitable traders have short memories.  As we were told many years ago on a Wall Street trading desk, “If you have a losing trade, forget it quickly… the chance to profit is coming up.  If you have a winning trade, forget it even more quickly… the chance to give up those profits is coming up… stay in the moment.”
  • Group think — Profitable traders care little for any one trade.  They know they have already taken steps to minimize the impact of any single trade.  Instead they focus on groups of trades as groups are more indicative of their process… which is what’s really important.

Confidence

Confidence can be an important psychological tool for the trader – important enough to make the difference between a winning trade and a losing trade. When you develop your trading plan, it is obviously important that you have confidence in its accuracy and usefulness and in your belief that you can follow your plan closely and execute it successfully. 
Often, traders fall into a mental “I know it all” trap, where they use their confidence to nurture their ego instead of using it to be appropriately decisive in their trading and investing decisions. Such misplaced confidence can be crippling to trading success, because any potential influence from the environment (media, others’ opinions, etc.) that could sway the trader from sticking to his trading plan will have far more power. When a trader is caught in this type of trap, his ability to question his opinions and ideas diminishes. If his initial reaction to a suggestion is to accept it, he loses the capacity to question his acceptance; and if his initial reaction is to disagree, then he loses the capacity to question his disagreement, which can cause even the slightest suggestions from news, colleagues, and other influential sources to be magnified in the trader’s psyche.  (more…)

Positive awareness trumps negative self talk

The language you use as a trader can provide either positive reinforcement through honest self awareness or negative results through demeaning self talk.  In other words, when discussing your trading with others or in your journal become aware of how you view yourself.  Do you see yourself as an amateur, a whipping post, a loser?  Do you blame an indicator or the market or an advisor for your failures and lack of discipline?  When you are with others do you brag about your winners and hide your losers?  All of this talk is based on fear:  fear of being wrong, fear of what others might think of you and your decisions; fear of the market; fear of being afraid.  When you practice positive self awareness  you create a fertile learning environment that allows you to grow and progress as a BETTER trader, not focus on BECOMING a GOOD trader (implying that you are a bad one).  When I work with individuals I often hear the following:  “If I would just do this I would become a good trader” or “If I had your discipline I would be a able to make money.”  These statements are grounded in a sense of doubt and fear.  Instead, these statements should be replaced with “I am becoming a BETTER trader because I know the market cannot hurt me” AND “I am becoming a BETTER trader the more I stick with my rules.”  See the difference between the two?  One is focused on the joy of progress; the other on the fear of not being good enough.  Are you focused on progress or failure? Listen to yourself and you will quickly figure it out.  It is EASY to get down on yourself and much HARDER to remain positive in the face of adversity. 

20 Trading Advice for Traders

  1. You have to love trading to do the work that takes you over the hump to winning.

  2. Successful traders are not born, they are built through hard work and discipline.

  3. Trading is not complicated, discipline, perseverance, risk management, passion, and a winning method that fits your personality is all you need. If you have them you will win, if you are missing one you lose.

  4. Where you are currently as a trader is not where you have to stay, the right homework done with an open mind can move you into a different place.

  5. Trading skill is built through work ethic.

  6. You must dedicate yourself to winning at trading. Every day you improve by working at it. (more…)

The Market is Not Flexible, But You Are

In trading, and in anything in life, we need to be focus and committed to achieving excellence in what ever we do. However, you need to remember that there will always be more than one way to reach a destination. Yes, let me repeat, there will always be more than one way to achieving a goal.

Stay committed to your decisions but stay flexible in your approach.

If you believe what I say, and you should at least try to, then you’ll realise that the methodology that you’ve learnt about trading is the only thing you know at the moment. And, unfortunately for many, you don’t know what you don’t know.

To overcome that, you need to be hungry and curious about learning new markets and new trading systems all the time – continuous development. Nonetheless, you’ll also need to be discipline and structured about how you learn them. The last thing you want to do is to be jumping around trading everything that moves in the market place. Do you get my point?

Once you become a flexible trader, you can trade anything you want and make as much money (from the market) as you like. Right?

Now, the key question. If the market has no influence on you (as to how you make money), how can it have any influence on you now?

My 11 Trading Rules

Trading in the markets is a process, and there is always room for self improvement. Here are my 11 rules that help me navigate the markets. By no means is this list exhaustive or exclusive.

Rule #1
Be data centric in your approach. Take the time and make the effort to understand what works and what doesn’t. Trading decisions should be objective and based upon the data.

Rule #2
Be disciplined. The data should guide you in your decisions. This is the only way to navigate a potentially hostile and fearful environment.

Rule #3
Be flexible. At first glance this would seem to contradict Rule #2; however, I recognize that markets change and that trading strategies cannot account for every conceivable factor. Giving yourself some wiggle
room or discretion is ok, but I would not stray too far from the data or your strategies.

Rule #4
Always question the prevailing dogma. The markets love dogma. “Prices are above the 50 day moving average”, “prices are breaking out”, and “don’t fight the Fed” are some of the most often heard sayings.
But what do they really mean for prices? Make your own observations and define your own rules. See Rule #1. (more…)

You Might be a Trend Following Trader if…..

Trend Follower“Trend  followers use reactive technical analysis. Instead of trying to predict a market direction, their strategy is to react to the market’s movements whenever they occur. This enables them to focus on the market’s actual moves and not get emotionally involved with trying to predict direction or duration.” -Michael Covel/ Trend Following

You Might be a Trend Following Trader if…..

  1. …you love buying break outs above resistance and new all time highs.
  2. …big trends make you happy not angry.
  3. …you do not trade the concept of something being overbought you just use a trailing stop.
  4. …your trading decisions are based on what is happening now, not your opinions, your fears of what will happen, or your hopes of what will happen later.
  5. …you risk a little capital over and over again to make a lot of capital eventually.
  6. …you are great at letting your winners run.
  7. …trend followers don’t need a story they follow actual price action.
  8. …you look for longs in a bull market and shorts in a bear market you are likely a trend follower.
  9. …higher highs and higher lows are one of your best indicators to go long.

The Probability of Self-awareness

With 20 years of trying different things and hearing from others I made an important discovery that has shaped me as a trader and a coach.  What I found is that more people will improve using an approach to change that emphasizes expanding self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

(With so many different approaches advertised as a ‘change process’, I think its important to share what I’ve found to work. That’s really what we have to do, right?  Doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.)

Very briefly, what I mean by expanded self-awareness is:

1) the recognition that our thinking and our emotions are intertwined and both influence our perception and judgment that leads to our decisions and actions (this view also happens to be consistent what the leading brain scientists are now saying)

2) much of our motivation – the intertwined thinking/emotion that drives our behavior – is actually subconscious, e.g. we assume we are trading the market but on other levels we are also trading our P&L and our feelings about our P&L  (and what our P&L represents to us) is just one example. (more…)