1. Simplicity – have a simple, well defined way to generate trading ideas. Have a simple approach towards the market. You can’t take everything into account when you try to make an educated decision. Filter the noise and focus on several key market components. For me, they are relative strength and earnings’ growth.
2. Common sense – create a trading system that is designed on the basis of proven trading anomaly. For example, trend following in different time frames.
3. Flexibility – be open to opportunities in both directions of the market. Be ready to get long and short.
4. Selectivity – chose only trades with the best risk/reward ratio; stocks with the best set ups; it doesn’t make sense to risk a dollar to make a dollar.
5. Don’t overtrade – two or three well planned trades in a week (month) might be more than enough to achieve your income goals. Patiently wait fot the right set up to form and to offer good risk/reward ratio.
6. Exit strategy – Always, absolutelly always have an exit strategy before you initiate a trade. Know at which point the market is telling you that you are wrong and do not hesitate to cut your losses short immediatelly. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to take a trading loss. Everyone has them. Just make sure that you keep their size to a minimum.
7. Let’s profits run – one or two good trades might make your month. One or two good months might make your year. Letting profits run is as important as cutting losses short. Bigger winners will allow you the luxury to be right in less than half of the trades and still be profitable.
8. Consistency – Stick to your method of trading ideas’ generation.
9. Specialize – Specialize in one or two distinct setups. It could be a combination of technicals and fundamentals, certain timeframe or special event as a trading catalyst, certain sector or trading vehicle.
10. Have a plan – Which are the stocks that you will be paying special attention to – this week, today. Why those stocks? In which direction you expect them to continue their move? What will give you a clue for the beginning of the move? Follow them exclusivelly and enter without a hesitation when they give you a signal. Don’t just wake up and sit in front of your monitor without having a clue what you are going to trade today.
Archives of “different time” tag
rss4 Points to be Successful Traders
1) Diversify: If you have a pattern you trade successfully, you don’t have to grow your size. Instead, look to diversify to a different pattern (different market, different time frame) not correlated with the first. You’ll smooth out your returns, as one pattern makes money while the other experiences drawdown. You’ll also achieve the portfolio manager’s goal of superior return for less risk exposure.
2) Review Entries: Review your trades for the week and see how much heat you took on your winners. This will give you an idea of how good your entries are.
3) Review Exits: Review your trades for the week and see if the market went in your favor or against you after you exited. This will give you an idea of how good your exits are.
4) Work Orders: Get into the habit of working orders to buy at bid, sell at offer or to place orders between the bid and offer to avoid paying a price that is out of line with “fair value”. For the frequent trader, the single tick saved by good execution adds up over time.
The successful traders I’ve worked with never stop working on themselves. This is equally true of successful athletes, musicians, and chess champions. Small, steady improvements can create massively greater performance over time.
Traps and Pitfalls
Realistically, there are many ways to lose money in the financial markets and, if you play this game long enough, you’ll get to know the most of them intimately. Fortunately, a survivalist plan empowers you to avoid many of the traps and pitfalls faced by other traders. Above all else, learn the five market scenarios that place you at the most risk.
- Bad Markets – A good pattern won’t bail you out of a bad market, so move to the sidelines when conflict and indecision take hold of the tape. Your long-term survival depends on effective trade management. The bottom line: don’t trade when you can’t measure your risk, and stand aside when you can’t find your edge.
- Bad Timing – It’s easy to be right but still lose money. Financial instruments are forced to negotiate a minefield of conflicting trends, each dependent on different time frames. Your positions need to align with the majority of these cycles in order to capture the profits visualized in your trade analysis.
- Bad Trades – There are a lot of stinkers out there, vying for your attention, so look for perfect convergence before risking capital on a questionable play, and then get out at the first sign of danger. It’s easy to go brain dead and step into a weak-handed position that makes absolutely no sense, whether it moves in your favor or not. The bottom line: it’s never too late to get out of a stupid trade.
- Bad Stops – Poor stops will shake you out of good positions. Stops do their best work when placed outside the market noise, while keeping risk to a minimum. Many traders believe professionals hit their stops because they have inside knowledge, but the truth is less mysterious. Most of us stick them in the same old places.
- Bad Action – Modern markets try to burn everyone before they launch definable trends. These shakeouts occur because most traders play popular strategies that have been deconstructed by market professionals. In a sense, the buy and sell signals found in TA books are turned against the naïve folks using them.
Control
Stocks rise when they are being bought up. Stocks fall when they are being sold off. I always ask myself “Who is in control. The buyers or sellers.” Control changes often and in different time frames you can argue that one party or the other were merely taking a rest.
I generally buy stocks that are going up and short sell stocks that are falling. But I also play the sharp reversals that happen if there is a huge gain or drop as I know gravity will take effect and profit taking will occur. The smart way to day trade is to be on the winning side be it buyers or sellers.
As a small fish in a big ocean I can only ride on the coattails of the big boys who actually move the market. My job as a trader is to recognize when trend or momentum is starting to kick in and climb aboard. Short term trends or momentum are the only thing that I trade. The old cliche’ “the trend is your friend” is so very true.
I only trade in the direction the chart is telling me to. Maybe you can watch the talking heads on TV blathering on or read about how great some stock is without forming an opinion on it. I can’t, so it’s safer to insulate myself from any and all information. I actually don’t care what, where, why, how or when a company does what it does. Who am I to be able to process all this information? I do know that when a stock is rising, more people are buying it than selling it and vice versa. Seems easier to me to only look at and believe the chart and trade accordingly. If I have preconceived notions about what the stock may do, I will not be able to cut my losses when the chart tells me to. I will hold on to the dream all the way to the poor house. Always trade with the trend.
Cutting your losers is one of the most important aspects of trading.Unless you have an unlimited pile of money to fritter away you must admit you’re wrong and exit the trade. If you don’t you will not have enough to remain in the game. End of story.
Letting the winners run is also important. They are winners after all and that is all that counts. Adding size (buying more shares) can turn little winners into big winners.
If you disregard any or all of these 3 simple rules you won’t be around trading very long.
Greed and Fear
Greed and Fear are two of the strongest emotions that can have major influences on our trading behaviours and hence profitability.
We have all experienced these, from the inability to put a trade on to the gut ache seeing money on the table evaporate.
Recently I have been thinking of these two emotions in a different light. What I want to propose is that these two emotions have very different “time-frames” of operation, with respect to trading. Now I have
no detailed research or data to back this up, but I felt I’d put this out there and see what other traders thought…
Fear = Short Term = Most likely to be experienced before or soon after a trade is placed.
Greed = Longer Term = Emotion that plays a major role further into the trade timeline.
My rationale here is that it is FEAR that (some) people feel before putting on a trade, worrying if they should place the trade or not, once in a trade it is FEAR that makes them start hoping that it wont go
against them.
With GREED, I think this starts to come in later. For instance, if the position has become profitable, then starts to loose and become negative, it is GREED for the money that was on the table that keeps you
in the trade, not fear of loss. As it usually takes time for the trade to become profitable, the emotion of GREED by association is the emotion that takes longer to materialise. Indeed, I would argue that when
you think back to the trades ‘that could have been’, you are more likely to remember the trades that ‘could have’ made you a good return, rather than the quick losses you took?
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:
- Bear markets have no supports, they keep falling until a new support level is found.
- Bull markets have no resistance, they keep keep going up until a new resistance level is found.
- The world’s capital is always flowing and seeking to find returns; this flow causes trends to emerge.
- Monster stocks can double due to earnings growth expectations.
- Currencies can plunge based on fear of a nations solvency.
- Commodities can run to absurd levels based on supply expectations.
- Fear can bring markets down far below what any one thinks is rational.
- Greed can inflate markets up far above any reasonable valuations.
- Trend traders are not predicting price action they are simply following it. They let reality guide them not opinions.
- Markets tend to trend and systems that are able to capture trends and minimize losses in choppy environments are robust in the long term.