Archives of “economics” tag

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MRI’s of Succesful Traders

  
  Education
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I’ve seen this study making the rounds on several websites now as a type of neuroeconomic confirmation of Buffetological principles…

Perhaps procedure might be slightly useful as a means of seeing physical brain improvement by training– such as that found through meditative practices.

“Traders who buy more aggressively based on NAcc signals earn less. High-earning traders have early warning signals in the anterior insular cortex before prices reach a peak, and sell coincidently with that signal, precipitating the crash. These experiments could help understand other cases in which human groups badly miscompute the value of actions or events.”

“Neuroeconomists Confirm Warren Buffet’s Wisdom”:

“Seeing what’s going on in people’s brains when they are trading suggests that Buffett was right on target,” says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics at Caltech.

That is because in their experimental markets, Camerer and his colleagues found two distinct types of activity in the brains of participants—one that made a small fraction of participants nervous and prompted them to sell their experimental shares even as prices were on the rise, and another that was much more common and made traders behave in a greedy way, buying aggressively during the bubble and even after the peak. The lucky few who received the early warning signal got out of the market early, ultimately causing the bubble to burst, and earned the most money. The others displayed what former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance” and lost their proverbial shirts.

A Trader’s Poem

  
Analysis, Education
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The recursive paradox of self-determination or: If you lack the skills to trade, then trade to acquire the skills you lack

I ask for strength,

trading presents obstacles to make me strong;

I ask for wisdom,

trading provokes my critical thoughts;

I ask for courage,

trading challenges me with it’s risk and uncertainty;

I ask for patience,

trading puts me in situations where I am forced to wait;

I ask for discipline,

trading tests my resolve and determination;

I ask for prosperity,

trading gives me the opportunity to profit;

…

I may not get everything I ask for,

yet, trading gives me everything I need.

Atkeson & Houghton, Win By Not Losing-Book Review

  
  Education
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 Nicholas Atkeson and Andrew Houghton, founding partners of Delta Investment Management, have written what, in the words of the lengthy subtitle, is a disciplined approach to building and protecting your wealth in the stock market by managing your risk. Win By Not Losing (McGraw-Hill, 2013) is a mix of stories about some not-so-famous investors (in fact, a few are identified simply by their first names) and an introduction to tactical investing.

The authors contend that “stock prices are influenced by oddities in human behavior that often cause security pricing to be predictable.” (p. 120) They support their contention by sharing some of their observations from the trading floor of an investment bank. Earnings momentum, for instance, can be both predictable and profitable: “the cycle of exceeding analysts’ estimates is often predictable in light of the pressures on analysts to be overly conservative.” (p. 121) And one study found that “over the 60 trading days after an earnings announcement, a long position in stocks with unexpected earnings in the highest decile, combined with a short position in stocks in the lowest decile, yields an annualized ‘abnormal’ return of about 25 percent before transaction costs.” (p. 122) (more…)

Traders-Are You Guilty?

  
  Education
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  1. re you trading without a plan? Trading without a plan makes you emotional and a gambler.
  2. Do you ever trade too big for your trading account size? Big trades are bad trades for the emotional engagement and risk of ruin that they entail over the long term.
  3. Do you risk losing more if you are wrong than you will make if you are right? The biggest driver of profitability in your trading will be big wins and small losses. Big losses and small wins is a sure path to losing your trading capital.
  4. Have you traded without studying charts to see what has happened historically with similiar price patterns? If you do your homework you can make money understanding possibilities and probabilities from past patterns. Trading your own opinions will usually put you on the wrong side of the market. 
  5. Did you trade a system before you back-tested it?Or are you just trading blindly?
  6. Have you ever exited a trade due to fear instead of due to hitting your stop loss or trailing stop? The right exit is what determines your profitability and whether your win is a big one or your loss is a big one.
  7. Have you ever entered a trade becasue of greed without an entry signal? Chasing a trade after the trend is over is a great way to lose money consistently and quickly.
  8. Have you ever copied someone else’s trade not knowing their time frame or position size? Ultimately you have to trade your own system and your own method that matches your own personality and risk tolerance. Only you can make yourself profitable with faith in yourself and your method.
  9. Are you that person that loves to short during market up trends and miss a whole up move?The easy money is on the side of the trend in your time frame going against the trend is a great way to lose money.
  10. Are you that knife catcher that keeps going long at the worn time in a down trend? When everyone is exiting a market that is the worst time to be getting long as wave after wave of holders are leaving. 

12 Rules of Market Cycles

  
  Education
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1. Secular cycles are driven by the inflation rate (deflation, price stability, and higher inflation)

2. Secular bulls occur when P/E starts low and ends high over an extended period

3. Secular bears occur when P/E starts high and ends low over an extended period

4. Cyclical bulls and bears are interim periods of directional swings within secular periods

5. Cyclical cycles are driven by market psychology, illiquidity, or other generally temporary condition(s)

6. Time is irrelevant to the length of secular stock market cycles

7. Secular bulls require a doubling or tripling of P/E

8. Secular bears occur as P/E stalls and falls by one-third to two-thirds or more

9. When real economic growth is near 3%, there is a natural floor for P/E between 5 and 10, a natural ceiling around the mid-20s, and a typical average in the mid-teens

10. If economic growth shifts upward or downward for the foreseeable future, the natural range moves upward or downward, respectively

11. Inflation drives P/Es location within the range; economic growth drives the level of the range

12. The stock market is not consistently predictable over months, quarters, or periods of a few years; the stock market is, however, quite predictable over periods approaching a decade or longer based upon starting P/E

Nassim Taleb’s 9 Risk Management Rules (Must Read )

  
  Education
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Rule No. 1- Do not venture in markets and products you do not understand. You will be a sitting duck.

Rule No. 2- The large hit you will take next will not resemble the one you took last. Do not listen to the consensus as to where the risks are (that is, risks shown by VAR). What will hurt you is what you expect the least.

Rule No. 3- Believe half of what you read, none of what you hear. Never study a theory before doing your own observation and thinking. Read every piece of theoretical research you can-but stay a trader. An unguarded study of lower quantitative methods will rob you of your insight.

Rule No. 4- Beware of the nonmarket-making traders who make a steady income-they tend to blow up. Traders with frequent losses might hurt you, but they are not likely to blow you up. Long volatility traders lose money most days of the week.

Rule No. 5- The markets will follow the path to hurt the highest number of hedgers. The best hedges are those you alone put on. (more…)

7 Ways Your Brain Is Making You Lose Money

  
  Education
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“Investors are ‘normal,’ not rational,” says Meir Statman, one of the leading thinkers in behavioral finance. Behavioral finance aims to better understand why people make the financial decisions they do. And it’s a booming field of study. Top behavioral finance gurus include Yale’s Robert Shiller and GMO’s James Montier. It’s also a crucial part of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) curriculum, a course of study for financial advisors and Wall Street’s research analysts. We compiled a list of the seven most common behavioral biases. Read through them, and you’ll quickly realize why you make such terrible financial decisions.

Read. However, once you get the idea of behavioral finance, keep in mind that the names associated with this article don’t have a wise strategy. Trend following is wise. Predictions, forecasts and other la la statements about what might happen tomorrow are only useful if you are masochist.

 

Accept These 7 Things -If U Are A Trader

  
  Education
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If you truly are serious about being a trader then there are seven things that you will have to accept.

  1. You will have to accept that over the long term at best only 60% of your trades will be winners. It will be much less with some strategies.

  2. Accept that the key to being a successful trader is having big wins and small losses, not big bets paying off. Big bets can lead quickly to you being out of the game after a string of losses.

  3. Accept that the best traders are also the best risk managers, even the best traders do not have crystal balls so they ALWAYS manage their capital at risk on EVERY trade.

  4. If you want to be a better trader then you need to accept that trading smaller and risking less is a key to your success. Risking 1% to 2% of your capital on any single trade is the first step to winning at trading. Use stops and position sizing to limit your losses and get out when your losses grow to these levels.

  5. You must accept that you will have 10 trading losses in a row a few times each year. The question is what your account will look like when they happen.

  6. You have to accept that you will be wrong, a lot.  The sooner you accept you are wrong and change your mind the better off you will be.

  7. If you really want to be a trader then you are going to have to accept the fact that trading is not easy money. It is a profession like any other and requires much work and effort and even years to become proficient. Expect to work for free and pay tuition to the markets through losses until you learn to trade consistently and profitably.

(more…)

7 Trading Wisdom of Paul Tudor Jones

  
  Education
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paultudorDon’t ever average losers.”

When a trade is going against you it means you are wrong. Adding to a loser just usually makes it bigger and your stress overwhelming.

“Never trade in situations where you don’t have control.”

Getting into a trade that you can’t easily get out of is a dangerous trade in itself. Liquidity risk, headline risk, and volatility can be dangerous when you are at their mercy.

“If you have a losing position that is making you uncomfortable, the solution is very simple, Get out.”

Many times exiting a trade is the easiest way to stop a losing trade from getting worse, managing stress, or freeing up capital for other uses. You can always get back in.

“Don’t be too concerned about where you got into a position.”

All that matters about your current positions is what you should do now based on the current price action not your cost basis or entry level. (more…)

5 Qualities-Successful Traders are having

  
  Education
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1) Capacity for Prudent Risk-Taking – Successful young traders are neither impulsive nor risk-averse. They are not afraid to go after markets aggressively when they perceive opportunity;
2) Capacity for Rule Governance – Successful young traders have the self-control needed to follow rules in the heat of battle, including rules of position sizing and risk management;
3) Capacity for Sustained Effort – Successful young traders can be identified by the productive time they spend on trading–research, preparation, work on themselves–outside of market hours;
4) Capacity for Emotional Resilience – All young traders will lose money early in their development and experience multiple frustrations. The successful ones will not be quick to lose self-confidence and motivation in the face of loss and frustration;
5) Capacity for Sound Reasoning – Successful young traders exhibit an ability to make sense of markets by synthesizing data and generating market and trading views. They display patience in collecting information and do not jump to conclusions based on superficial reasoning or limited data.

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