Confidence Without confidence it is not possible to achieve much in other streams of life. In the equity markets, it is doubly true. If you lack in self-confidence, doubts may creep up in your mind. This may lead to indecision, which in turn lead to missed opportunities and losses. For day-trading and short interval trades, confidence is of utmost importance.On the other hand, on down days be careful. In many instances, you may be tempted to book small profits just to make your day balance sheet look pretty. This is not the issue. When you are faced with loss-making trades sooner or later, that same daily balance sheet will not look pretty at all.Never be far away from the correct principles of trading no matter what your mind is tempted to think. It is just too painful to reinvent the wheel.
Discipline
In order to be a successful investor/trader, you must be very disciplined. Stick to the plan of action. This means that you will stick to trading policies, trading plans and so on. Know your objective and work accordingly.
Ideas
Do not seek to implement new ideas that come all the time during markets. Remember, ideas are just ideas. If you feel there is value in them, they have to be thought about, refined, tested and then brought to the trading room. If you try to implement new ideas immediately to trading all you will do is to erode capital and confidence.
Hope
Do not allow hope to loiter anywhere close to your trading system. Hope has the potential to do maximum damage to your capital.
Archives of “doubts” tag
rssChina’s malls are empty, but whole cities?
The China bears tell us that stimulus spending there is largely being wasted. This report from Al Jazeera offers startlingly strong support for that proposition:
China’s economy is continuing to grow despite the global recession, helped by a massive government stimulus package of $585bn.
But doubts remain whether such strong growth can be sustained by public spending alone.Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports from Inner Mongolia, where a whole town built with government money is standing empty.
Justin Mamis – When To Sell
How Professionals Minimize Losses page 73-75:
Blaming ‚them’ is a psychologically and socially acceptable way to avoid blaming oneself. Yet professionals can, and do, make mistakes. When they buy a stock and it doesn’t go up (even if it doesn’t go down) that’s wrong enough for them, simply because it did not perform as expected. The pro reasons that the stock went against his judgement, so he sells it. And he doesn’t expect to be perfect, any more than a professional baseball player expects to bat 1.000. Knowing that losses are inevitable, he seeks to minimize them at all times. To be sure, his ability to take a small loss is enhanced by the benefit of not having to reckon with commission costs, but even so, if he were relatively incompetent he wouldn’t last long in the business; the loss might be less, or slower to pile up, but the return on invested capital would be dismal enough eventually to send him to another field.
Rule One of the professional trader is: When a stock doesn’t do what you expect it to do, sell it. (more…)
Confidence, Discipline and Consistency
Consistently profitable trading comes down to just three simple things. The three are the trading psychology, the system, and the risk and money management. Trading psychology means the big 3: discipline, confidence and consistency.
The trading psychology takes precedence because it is needed to make sure that the other two are followed. When they are not followed, a good system and sound risk and money management rules are of limited value. When you have trading psychology that is not achieved through sheer will, you can have the discipline, confidence and consistency that make the most of your rules and system.
Sticking to your system for any length of time is nearly impossible without having confidence in your system. A trader may be able to focus intently on their discipline, and may even be able to stick to it for a time, but often the first handful of losing trades will kill that confidence and with it goes the discipline.
When the sting of a string of losses comes along, especially for a trader that has not established a solid confidence in their system, the temptation to deviate from the system, to second-guess it, is very strong. The natural impulse to avoid the pain is great and only grows with each subsequent loss. Faith in the system drops each time another loss occurs, even if the loss came to be from the deviation from the system. In these circumstances, doubts, fear and anxiety usually run high.
So what is a trader to do to avoid this situation, or to remedy it if this situation has already been encountered?
A great deal of trading psychology comes from expectations and reality. Frustration comes when expectations aren’t met by reality. When a person doesn’t know what to expect, then anxiety set in. When a person knows what to expect and what to do, then confidence is there. Worst case is when the primary point of reference is the recent and painful losses, and only slightly less difficult to be confident when matters feel very uncertain.
Since trading is an activity where losing trades will occur, the best way to establish confidence is to have a way to know what to expect – from the trading system. What is the way to make this happen? The trader can see what can realistically be expected and what can’t through system analysis and looking at the system metrics. The metrics give one a realistic and measured look at the capabilities and limitations of a system, particularly how many losing trades might be encountered during an overall profitable period of time. The primary benefit regarding the trader’s trading psychology is in the way the numbers from the analysis put things in a perspective that fends off the anxiety and doubt and makes for much easier discipline.
Once this is achieved, then the trader should track their metrics to ensure consistency and continuous improvement. It happens quite commonly for traders to experience major breakthroughs once they put in place the habit of analyzing their system and tracking the metrics. Confidence, discipline and consistency are the natural result of this activity, and frequently initiating this practice marks the turning point in the careers of many traders. It is vital as part of trading psychology that one properly analyze the metrics and track their numbers, as backtesting alone will only help to a limited degree.
Emotional Equations for Traders
Despair = Losing Money – Trading Better Do not despair look at your losses as part of doing business and as paying tuition fees to the markets. Disappointment = Expectations – Reality Enter trading with realistic expectations. You can realistically expect 20%-35% annual returns on capital with great trading after you have experience and have done the necessary homework. More than that is possible but you will have to be one of the very best to achieve greater returns than this. Regret = Disappointment in a loss+ Caused by lack of Discipline If you followed your trading plan and lose money because the market did not move in your direction so be it, but if you went off your plan and traded based on your feelings and opinions then you should feel regret and stop being undisciplined. Enjoying your Trading = Winning Trades – Fear of Ruin Trading is much more enjoyable when you are risking 1% of your capital in the hopes of making 3% on your capital with a zero chance of ruin. It is not enjoyable when you are putting a huge percentage of your capital on the line in each trade and are only a few bad trades away from your account going to zero. Trading Wisdom = Understanding what makes money + Years of successful trading To get good at trading you have to trade real money. Wisdom comes from putting real money on the line for years and proving to yourself that you can come out a winner in the long term. Faith in your system = Belief through back testing + Experience of winning with it for years Whether any individual trade is a winner or loser should not influence your faith in your system and trading method. You should trade in a way that each trade is just one trade out of the next 100. Much of emotional trading can be overcome when you do not have doubts about your method. When you hold an almost religious fervor over believing in your method, system, risk management, and your own discipline you will overcome many of the emotional problems that arise in the heat of action during a live market. |
Spain Sells 3 Year Bonds At 3.717%, 119 bps Higher Than Prior Auction
For a demonstration of the unsustainable course that European sovereign funding is on, look no further than Spain, where earlier the government auctioned off €2.468 billion in three year notes for a whopping 3.717%. The bid to cover was 2.27 compared to 2.16 in October, and it was reported that foreign buyers bid above 60% of the auction (which means the ECB funded domestic banks bought about 40%). However, the same issued priced at 2.527% at the last sale on Oct. 7, a 119 bps difference. Still it wasn’t all bad, considering the bond had traded at almost 4% in recent days. As Reuters reports: “Analysts and bond market players had predicted a leap of as much as 2 percentage points in yields, but Madrid’s situation has been helped by mounting expectations the European Central Bank will step up extraordinary measures to contain the crisis.” The problem for Spain is that it has minimized the amount of debt it is issuing during turbulent times: “The Treasury had cut the amount of bonds on offer in order to trim financing costs as it faces down market doubts on whether it can bring down its deficit due to sluggish economic growth and persistent concerns it might need to bailout its debt-laden banks.” And the problem for the ECB is that it most likely, as many analysts are predicting, will not announce anything of substance, as otherwise the ECB will have to monetize up to €1.5 trillion in total debt and interest through the end of 2011. The result for the EUR will inevitably be disastrous in either case, and if in 25 minutes JCT indeed announces nothing, look for all those who bid up the bond auction earlier to be tearing out their hair as the 3 Year promptly passes 4%.
Inspiration
THINK IT
“What the mind of man can Conceive and Believe, it can Achieve.” – Napoleon Hill
“You become what you think about all day long” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You are today where your thoughts have brought you, you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” – James Allen
“Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself 10 years ago.” – Horace Mann, educator – How many traders feel this way?
BELIEVE IT
“You can have anything you want. There are no limits to your possibilities.” – unknown
“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” – Henry Ford (more…)
Trader's Emotions
Despair = Losing Money – Trading Better
Do not despair look at your losses as part of doing business and as paying tuition fees to the markets.
Disappointment = Expectations – Reality
Enter trading with realistic expectations. You can realistically expect 20%-35% annual returns on capital with great trading. More than that is possible but unlikely.
Regret = Disappointment in a loss+ Caused by lack of Discipline
If you followed your trading plan and lose money because the market did not move in your direction so be it, but if you went off your plan and traded based on your feelings and opinions then you should feel regret and stop being undisciplined.
Enjoying your Trading = Winning Trades – Fear of Ruin
Trading is much more enjoyable when you are risking 1% of your capital in the hopes of making 3% on your capital with a zero chance of ruin. It is not enjoyable when you are putting a huge percentage of your capital on the line in each trade and are only a few bad trades away from your account going to zero.
Wisdom = Square Root of Experience through years of successful trading
To get good at trading you have to trade real money. Wisdom comes from putting real money on the line for years and proving to yourself that you can come out a winner in the long term.
Faith in your system = Belief through back testing + Experience of winning with it for years
While you have to hold the opinion of whether each trade is a winner or loser it is different for your trading method. A lot of emotional trading can be overcome when you do not have doubts about your method. When you hold an almost religious fervor over believing in your method, system, risk management, and your own discipline you will overcome many of the emotional problems that arise with other traders in the heat of action.
Jesse Livermore: Preparation And Experience Is Required For Success
“Of course the same things happen in all speculative markets. The message of the tape is the same. That will be perfectly plain to anyone who will take the trouble to think. But people never take the trouble to ask questions, leave alone seeking answers. The one game of all games that really requires study before making a play is the one he goes into without his usual highly intelligent preliminary and precautionary doubts. He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection than he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.”