Archives of “efficiency” tag

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Trading To Win

  
  Education
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One of the easiest mistakes any trader can make is not a ‘trading’ mistake at all. Rather, the mistake is complacency with his or her trading skills and knowledge. Unfortunately, trading is not like riding a bike – you can (and will) forget how. Obviously you’ll always know how to enter orders, but the efficiency and accuracy of your trading will diminish without constant renewal of your trading mindset.

The reason that most traders don’t undergo psychological self-development is a lack of time, and that’s understandable. However, a good book, DVD or Coaching Class is actually an investment in yourself, and ultimately an investment in your bottom line. Today as a primer, and a challenge, I’d like to review some self-development concepts that Ari Kiev explores in his book ‘Trading To Win, The Psychology Of Managing The Markets‘. This in no way is a substitute for his excellent book, but they are still useful ideas even in this abbreviated form. None of them are going to be new to you, but all of them will be valuable to you.

1. Plan the entire trade before you enter the trade. Have an entry strategy, and an exit point (both a winning exit point and a non-winning exit point). This will inherently force you to look at your risk/reward ratio. Write these entries and exits down in a journal.

2. Eliminate distractions. It’s difficult enough to find trading time at all if it’s not your regular job. If you’re a part-time trader who trades at work between meetings and phone calls, think about this: there are full-time professional traders who are concentrating on nothing other than taking your money. It’s not that they’re better or smarter than you – they just have the time to focus. If you must trade, set aside blocks of time to study or trade without distraction. Or it may be more feasible to do your trading on an end-of day basis, meaning you
place your orders and do your ‘homework’ the night before when you can
focus on it.

3. Choose a method or a small group of methods, and stick to them. Far too often we see a trader adopt a new indicator or signal only to see it backfire. Become a master of your favorite signals, rather than a slave to any and every signal. Understand that an indicator will fail sometimes. That’s ok. The sizable winning trades should more than offset the small losing trades initiated by an errant signal. This trading method is designed to eliminate the emotional bias of trading.

4. Choosing not to trade can also be a prudent choice. You’ll frequently hear ‘don’t fight the tape’. The same idea also applies to a flat market – you can’t make stocks do something they’re just not going to do. Wait for good entries into a developing trend rather than force a bad entry into an unclear trend. (more…)

Efficiency and Stability in Complex Financial Markets

  
  Education
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Efficiency and Stability in Complex Financial Markets

Abstract:

The authors study a simple model of an asset market with informed and non-informed agents. In the absence of non-informed agents, the market becomes information efficient when the number of traders with different private information is large enough. Upon introducing non-informed agents, the authors find that the latter contribute significantly to the trading activity if and only if the market is (nearly) information efficient. This suggests that information efficiency might be a necessary condition for bubble phenomena – induced by the behavior of non-informed traders – or conversely that throwing some sands in the gears of financial markets may curb the occurrence of bubbles.

via Efficiency and Stability in Complex Financial Markets by Fabio Caccioli, Matteo Marsili :: SSRN.

16 Points for Day Traders

  
  Education
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Accepting risk may cause losses, but accepting unfunded liabilities and negative skew can bankrupt us.

Use models not to predict, but to create a range of possible outcomes for which we can plan.

Markets follow cycles based on the perceptions and actions of its players, and one can gain alpha by using these cycles to manage risk and reward.

Markets SEEK efficiency, but offer tremendous opportunities while traveling from inefficiency to efficiency.

Both people and machines have flaws, so use the best attributes of each for peak performance.

Forecasting is necessary but should be timid in nature, while action is not always necessary but should be BOLD on the occasions when conditions dictate it.

Risk management is made more complete by searching for information that differs from your analysis rather than by that which confirms it.

Successful practitioners turn mistakes into assets by generating learning experiences and continuous improvement.

Remember to distinguish between clues that are necessary, vs. a complete picture revealing a group of necessary AND sufficient measures.

Markets can be generally explained 95% of the time, but extreme events happen much more than a bell curve would indicate…using options guarantees that we’ll survive fat tails and grab positive skew.

We are certain we DON’T know what will happen, so the best approach is to figure out what WON’T happen and blueprint accordingly.

Diversification reduces risk most of the time, but we assume all assets are linked and eventually correlate.

It is critical to have both a brain and a gut; the ability to find an edge, and the fortitude to trade it aggressively.

Profitable opportunities are best entered in the earliest stage of latent power being converted to energy. Too soon is a waste of capital, too late involves too much risk.

Virtually all long-term strategies are positioned to simply ride the tailwinds of rising prices. It is imperative to have methods to protect us from both headwinds and crosswinds to avert disaster.

Treat volatility as a psychological risk to be managed into an ally, not as a financial measure of risk to obsess over.

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