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Two Types of Traders

In general, I find there are two kinds of traders. The first kind trades visually, from patterns that are evident on visual inspection. Those include chart patterns, oscillator patterns, Elliott waves, and the like. Their trading decisions are discretionary, in that they elect to buy, hold, and sell based upon their perception of patterns and their judgment as to their meaning.
The second kind of trader distrusts visual inspection. Such traders are more likely to buy into the behavioral finance notion that unaided human perception and judgment are subject to a variety of biases. Accordingly, these traders use some form of historical/statistical analysis and/or system development to test ideas and trade only those that test out in a promising way.
Now here’s the interesting part: The first group of traders almost universally asks me to help them tame their emotions. They have problems with impulsive trading, failing to honor risk limits, failing to take valid signals due to anxiety, etc. The second group of traders, having researched successful strategies, almost universally asks me to help them take maximum advantage of their edge. They want help taking *more* risk and trading larger positions. (more…)

Two Emotions

Two emotions that plague the inexperienced trader are Anticipated Loss  and Buyers Remorse.

Does your trading life go something like this? You see a trade line up, and suddenly a cramp in your solar plexus appears as you anticipate a possible loss. You put this down to simple fear and make an effort to mentally overcome this internal barricade so as to enter the trade. Acting quickly so as not to miss out, you swiftly enter the position and your trading platform indicates that you are filled. Now you are gripped by the sensation of buyers remorse – too late to back out now… A small voice in the back of your subconscious says “what have I done?”

To your great delight and surprise, the trade soon goes in your favour, and for a while you feel a warm fuzzy glow and give yourself a little compliment, but soon the old feeling returns in the form of a hot flush. Anticipated loss is back again as you worry about the market turning against you and taking away the profit you now have. (more…)

Money-Mind-Method

Mind: The key to winning is inside the Mind. As Master of your mind, you have to manage and understand your emotions very well. It is extremely important to understand not just the individual’s psychology, but also the crowd psychology of the markets. To become a successful trader, you must have sheer perseverance and discipline.

Method: There is no Holy Grail in the search for the perfect method to trade. Follow the wisdom of ‘Plan your Trade and Trade your Plan’. A good trading plan should cover your entry, exit and position sizing requirements. My method consists of discretionary trading techniques that combine both fundamental and technical analysis, in addition to my own proprietary automated trading system. Coming up with a good trading plan requires lots of market experience, as you modify, conquer and solidify your trading techniques. Don’t be duped by charming salesmen selling get-rich-quick-without-effort secret recipes. 

Money: Overall profit/loss depends on money management. The first goal of money management is capital preservation. If you lose 10% of your capital, you have to make 11% just to break even. If you lose 40%, you need to make 67%, and if you lose 50%, guess what? You have to make 100% just to recover! So before you think about making big money, first you got to think about not risking your capital unnecessarily. Money management is too important to be overlooked.

Minimize The Impact Of A Setback!

First, minimize its symbolic importance. Many people over interpret setbacks by imbuing them with more emotions than are warranted. They view setbacks as a form of punishment, as if a teacher or parent is punishing them for doing something wrong. Take the setback in stride and move on to the next winning trade.

Second, don’t confuse trading outcomes with personal significance. If you lose big, for example, the loss may have great financial significance but it doesn’t need to have great personal significance. You can wipe out your entire account, but that doesn’t mean you are diminished in the eyes of friends and family. You don’t need to let a loss or setback make you feel less worthy as a person.

Ironically, when you psychologically minimize the impact of a setback, and treat it as if it isn’t important, you’ll stay calm, free, and objective. And when you feel this way, you’ll trade profitably.

Plan the Trade, Trade the Plan

This is where all the thinking in trading comes into play, while writing your trading plan. Once you have created your rules to trade by, you become more systematic and logical in your thought process for executing successful trades. Your personal trading plan will include every step of the trade from identifying to exiting your trade. By having your setup written down in your plan, you will have a better chance of using patience and discipline to wait for your entry. Otherwise, you will use emotions to enter trades and we all know where that will get you. After entering your trade, you will have more confidence because you have back-tested your strategy and know that it has a successful track record and will give you that extra edge over your competition. Identifying your entry strategy will help you execute your strategy in an efficient manner with no hesitation. There will be no guessing or wondering what to do once your setup is identified, you just click and go. Your risk management is also pre-defined so your initial protective stop is set on entry and you know when you will be moving your protective stop to breakeven after the market moves in your direction by a certain amount. Of course, our price target is also known in advance and how we will exit the market at this target. Will we have a set price target, a trailing stop, a time stop, etc.?

Top 8 Ways To Lose All The Money In Trading

 tradingloss8 – Put all of your efforts into finding the perfect technical indicator. Once you find this magical indicator, it will be like turning on a water faucet. Go all in. The money will just flow into your account!

7 – Make sure to visit a lot of stock trading forums and ask them for hot stock tips. Also, ask all your friends and family for stock tips. They are usually right, and acting on these tips can make you very rich.
6 – Watch what other traders do and be sure to follow the crowd. After all, they have been trading a lot longer than you so naturally they are smarter.
5 – Pay very close attention to the fundamentals of a company. You MUST know the P/E ratio, book value, profit margins, etc. Once you find a “good company”, consider going on margin to pay for shares in their stock. (more…)

5 Keys to Trading Fear

1. Trade With a Clear Mind

Do not make emotional decisions. Realize that emotions are emotions. What differentiates the successful traders from others is how we recalibrate our reactions to our emotions.

I was watching an interview with a surfer. The interviewer asked him what he does when a big surf comes and he goes underwater. The surfer said it was simple. “If I panic, I only have 3-5 seconds of air to breathe. If I stay calm, I have 45-60 seconds of air.

What does surfing have to do with trading? If you panic and operate from a place of fear, you could lose all of your capital. However, if you take a moment and think about your strategies, you can have much better results.

2. Look at Your Portfolio Objectively

Think about your portfolio as if you are looking at the portfolio of your best friend. How would you advise him/her? (more…)

On Psychology

  • Stop trying to outsmart the market. NO ONE knows exactly where it will go.
  • With each decision you make comes stress:
    • The more decisions you make, the more likely you are to be wrong.
    • The more decisions you are used to making, the more pressure you’ll put on yourself to make even more decisions.
    • No one can be that right.
  • Forget about the “whys’ of the market. After all is said and done, the reasons will be known.
  • Don’t apply logic. Markets move on emotions — period!
  • Plan your trade and trade your plan.
  • Reduce the amount of decisions you make.
  • Make decisions and live with them (also a life lesson!).
    • Good decisions come from experience.
    • Experience comes from bad decisions.

4 Trading Fears

As Mark Douglas points out in his great book about trading psychology is that the majority of traders lose because of wrong thinking, misplaced emotions, and wanting to be right. We know fear and greed drive the market prices far more than fundamentals do. However fear makes traders do the wrong things at the wrong time. Here are four great examples of fear over ruling sound trading strategies.

Here are more thoughts about these four fears:

The fear of being wrong: Traders fear being wrong so much they will hold a small loss until it becomes a huge loss. Even adding to the loss in the hopes of it coming back and getting to even. Don’t do this, holding on to a loser after it hits your predetermined stop loss is like being a reverse trend trader. Do not be afraid of being wrong small be afraid of being wrong BIG.

The fear of losing money: New traders hate to lose money, they do not quite understand yet that they will lose 40%-60% of the time in the long term. We should come to expect the small losses and wait for the big wins patiently. Many times traders fear this so much that they have a hard time taking an entry out of fear of losing. If you can’t handle the losses as part of the business, you can’t trade.

The fear of missing out: The opposite of the fear of losing money is the fear of losing potential profits. This causes traders to watch a stock go up and up, miss the primary trend, then not being able to take it any more and get in late just in time for the trend to reverse and lose money. Trade at your systems proper entry point do not chase a stock because you are afraid to miss out on some profits.

The fear of leaving money on the table: When your trailing stop is hit get out of the trade. If your rules tell you to get out after a parabolic run up and stall then exit. You must be disciplined on taking money off the table while it is there. Being greedy for that last few dollars when your system says to sell could lead to major losses of paper profits. Let your winners run but when the runner gets to tired to continue: bank your profits.