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Overconfidence

  
  Education
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The perfectionist may never be really convinced that a certain market setup is right to enter into a position and the overconfident trader may neglect certain signals that the setup is not worth trading on.

A trader may become overconfident after a few successful trades. It’s very hard to fight the ‘I am the market God’-emotion. Making a number of consecutive successful trades is not necessarily a sign you have figured out how the markets work, the same way a losing streak is not a sign you’re a bad trader.

After a huge success it’s tempting to trade a larger size or accept more risk. The general idea is that simply because of the huge profit in the previous trade, more size and/or risk is acceptable in the next. But when you think about it, a realized profit is part of your account now, it’s no different than money made on earlier trades, it is money you worked hard for. There can be good reasons to increase trading size or risk, but that should be part of a plan, not just an impulsive decision based on a feeling of being ‘invulnerable’.

Ask yourself, which feeling is worse: losing yesterday’s profit, or losing the profit made 10 days ago? If that feels different, the first one being less worse, then it may be wise to stop trading for a few days after a good trade. During those days, the profit will slowly change from being ‘an extra’ to being ‘part of your trading account’. In other words, you get used to it and handle it with more care.

Overconfidence can also come from a (strong) conviction that the market has to go a certain direction based on a personal opinion about the economy, politics, the FED, interest rate, unemployment numbers etc etc. This kind of confidence has been discussed before. The remedy is simple: don’t trade the news.

TRADER’S TWO MOST POWERFUL WORDS

  
  Education
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Let’s face it, no matter the outcome of a trade-lose, win, draw, and even the miss-traders are rarely satisfied with the result.  This is exactly why it is so important that we utilize the two most powerful words in a stock trader’s vocabulary..and no… it does not involve four letters!  The following is a list that you can use these two words with.  You will get my point.  Of course you can add to it if you like.

I missed the trade…SO WHAT!

This trade did not work…SO WHAT!

I excited a profitable trade too early…SO WHAT!

I excited with a loss too quickly…SO WHAT!

My stock gapped against me…SO WHAT!

The stock recovered without me…SO WHAT!

A stock I was bullish on was downgraded by an ANALyst…SO WHAT! (more…)

Word-for-word: What Warren Buffett said about cryptocurrencies Monday

  
Analysis, Education
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Verbatim on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies


Warren Buffett was on CNBC on Monday and was asked about cryptocurrencies after he called Bitcoin “rat poison squared” at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting.
Question: What is it about Bitcoin that gets you so fired up:
Buffett: “When you buy a farm, you look at the crop every year and what prices are and decide whether it was a satisfactory investment. I mean, you look to the asset itself and what it produces for you. When we buy a business, we look at what the business earns and decide how we feel about it in terms of what we paid, but we are buying something that at the end of the period, we have not only what we bought but what the asset produced and when you buy non-productive assets, all you’re counting on is whether the next person will pay you more because they’re even more excited about another ‘next person’ is coming along. The asset itself is creating nothing. (more…)

Market Wisdom From Bernard Baruch

  
  Education
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bernardbaruch

You don’t read a lot about Bernard Baruch anymore, but his teachings about the market are useful today as they always have been. There are several good books about him including his own “Baruch: My Own Story” which I recommend highly especially for those of you looking for a book to take with you on your vacations.

Baruch started out as most traders do – i.e. losing lots of money because he lacked the knowledge, experience, & discipline. “You have to lose money in order to better yourself.” (more…)

Market Thesis

  
  Education
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thesis-paperPurely academic, non applicable information. Writing them out helps me organize these assumptions into ideas. Hopefully you find some use for them.

1) Trading is like any other business, but not only in the conventional sense. The market is manipulated. The underlining principle behind this statement is that equities market is the same as any other market in the economy, whether it be technology or tube sock market – those with the biggest market cap control movement and direction.

2)While prices are moving in a current path identified by trend lines, heads of market are processing information and making preparations for the next shift. During the time traders see the trend forming and change their “bias” in accordance with the trend, heads of market have processed new information and are ready to take prices to a new level.

3)Technical analysis is a visual interpretation of how crowds behave in relation to price. It does not influence how prices will or should behave. When prices reach a certain level, the technical indicator at that level does not dictate how prices will react, rather, (more…)

Uruguay! Home of Great Soccer, Beautiful Women, & Argentina Capital Flight

  
Analysis, Education, Life
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Jan30_Uruguay Punta
Punta del Este, templo de celebridades

Messi’s offshore tax mess

Barcelona star Messi, was already under investigation in Spain on charges that he and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, used offshore companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes when the Panama Papers revealed he owned yet another offshore company: Mega Star Enterprises, based in Panama.  –  The Irish Times

Opportunity Knocking

  
  Education
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OPPORTUNITY KNOCKSTrading provides one of the last great frontiers of opportunity in our economy. It is one of the very few ways in which an individual can start with a relatively small bankroll and actually become a multimillionaire. Of course, only a handful of individuals succeed in turning this feat, but at least the opportunity exists. A rigid stop-loss rule is an essential ingredient to the trading approach of many successful traders. Winning streaks lead to complacency, and complacency leads to sloppy trading.

Is the U.K. the Next Greece?

  
Analysis, Economy, Education, Video
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A day after the EU has come to terms on a bailout to save Greece, this Bloomberg TV analysis is pretty interesting. First, they point out that the rates Greece got were still pretty punitive, despite the fact that they were below market rates. But even more interesting is the notion that the U.K., not Portugal, Spain, or Ireland, might be the next economy to be forced to the brink because they’re not part of the Euro Zone and don’t have the partners to bail them out.



The greater the story, the greater the bubble

  
Analysis, Education
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The greater fool theory explains almost every bubble

Some things have an intrinsic value. The most-obvious example is a stock with a dividend. The absolute floor for an equity is its dividend and so long as their is a profitable business behind it, the value is a multiple of that dividend.

Other things don’t have an intrinsic value. This includes virtually everything that doesn’t produce a yield. Oftentimes, prices of those things rise and fall based on future expectations of what profits or yield might be. In other cases, there is an estimation of utility. Oil, for instance, can be refined into gasoline which can be used to move things or for dozens of other uses.

Oftentimes there is a dispute about utility or a dispute about future profitability, which can lead to a dispute about prices. One way to resolve this is a model but oftentimes that’s so fraught with assumptions that it’s useless.

So how do you establish prices? Obviously, via the market.

This is when storytelling, which is another way of saying a sales job, takes over.

Cryptocurrencies are an obvious example. A Bitcoin has no yield but it has some utility. To some, that utility is replacing the US dollar as a global transparent currency. To others, it’s a way to facilitate transactions. And for others still, it’s a handy tool for criminal transactions. How you price it then, depends on how you view the future utility.

Or does it? (more…)

Buffett: Capitalism Works

  
  Education
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Here’s a recent interview with Warren Buffett in which he discusses a broad array of topics.  It’s worth 15 minutes if you have the time, but here’s the bullet points:

  • The US economy is still growing and “will continue” to grow into 2014.
  • Confidence creeps into a system while fear overwhelms it quickly.  It takes time to get the confidence back.
  • The American system has always persevered.  We’ve questioned capitalism time and time again, but the system works.
  • We’re 6 TIMES better off now than when Buffett was born.
  • The recovery is being driven by the “natural juices of capitalism and not the government”.
  • Advice for entrepreneurs: listen to your customers.
  • The capitalist system works because it unleashes human potential.
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