Before the Trade
1. Do you know the name and numbers of all your counterparts, especially if your equipment breaks down?
2. When does your market close, especially on holidays?
3. Do you have all the equipment you’ll need to make the trade, including pens, computers, notebooks, order slips, in the normal course and in the event of a breakdown?
4. Did you write down your trade and check it to see for example that you didn’t enter 400 contracts instead of the four that you meant to trade?
5. Why did you get into the trade?
6. Did you do a workout?
7. Was it statistically significant taking into account multiple comparisons and lookbacks?
8. Is there a prospective relation between statistical significance and predictivity?
9. Did you consider everchanging cycles?
10. And if you deigned to do a workout the way all turf handicappers do, did you take into account the within-day variability of prices, especially how this might affect your margin and being stopped out by your broker? (more…)
Archives of “futures contract” tag
rssNassim Taleb’s Risk Management Rules
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…)
Best Practices for Traders
1) Preparation to start the day and week: Having a clearly formulated strategy to guide trading decisions;
2) Keeping score: Using a trading journal to structure learning, document progress, and sustain positive motivation;
3) Managing risk and maximizing opportunity: Trading with more risk/size when trading well and clearly seeing opportunity and pulling back risk when drawing down, trading poorly, and perceiving little opportunity;
4) Taking breaks: Stepping back from markets periodically to gain fresh perspective, reformulate views, and tweak strategies;
5) Treating trading as a business: Limiting overhead, having a clearly defined plan to move toward profitability, focusing on distinctive areas of strengths and opportunity.
So much of what makes traders great is what they do between market sessions, how they do it, and how much of it they do.
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Trading Errors
Ignoring the downside of a trade. Most traders, when entering a trade, look only at the money they think they will make by taking the trade. They rarely consider that the trade may go against them and that they could lose. The reality is that whenever someone buys a futures contract, someone else is selling that same futures contract. The buyer is convinced that the market will go up. The seller is convinced that the market has finished going up. If you look at your trades that way, you will become a more conservative and realistic trader.
Taking too much risk. With all the warnings about risk contained in the forms with which you open your account, and with all the required warnings in books, magazines, and many other forms of literature you receive as a trader, why is it so hard to believe that trading carries with it a tremendous amount of risk? It’s as though you know on an intellectual basis that trading futures is risky, but you don’t really take it to heart and live it until you find yourself caught up in the sheer terror of a major losing trade. Greed drives traders to accept too much risk. They get into too many trades. They put their stop too far away. They trade with too little capital. We’re not advising you to avoid trading futures. What we’re saying is that you should embark on a sound, disciplined trading plan based on knowledge of the futures markets in which you trade, coupled with good common sense.
10 Things that Great Traders have Declared Independence From –
- Great traders do not have to be right about any one trade, their success is based on winning more than they lose on a large amount of trades.
- Great traders do not need trade ideas from other traders, they trade a system and method independent of others opinions.
- The best traders are independent of holding on to losing trades stubbornly trying to prove they are right, they cut losses.
- The best traders are not prisoners of their emotions they can make clear headed decisions due to trading like it is a business not an ego trip.
- Rich traders became rich because they had systems that allowed winning trades to be free to run as far as they would go. They are independent of price targets.
- Rich traders trade independently from BLUE CHANNEL sentiment.
- Great traders trade charts independently of market sentiment.
- Great traders trade independently of talking heads on financial television.
- Winning traders are independent of market gurus they have proven systems and methods.
- Great traders are free from the risk of ruin because they never risk more than 1% to 2% of their total capital on any one trade.
One Liner For Traders
Trade the market, not the money
• Always trade value, never trade price
• The answer to the question, “What’s the trend?” is the question, “What’s your timeframe?”
• Never allow a statistically significant unrealized gain to turn into a statistically significant realized loss (ATR)
• Don’t tug at green shoots
• When there’s nothing to do, do nothing
• Stop adjustments can only be used to reduce risk, not increase it.
• There are only two kinds of losses: big losses and small losses, given these choices – always choose small losses.
• Risk no more than 1% of AUM on any single position
• Never risk less than 1% of asset under management on any single position (as long as your models are performing well)
• Don’t Anticipate, Just Participate
• Buy the strongest, sell the weakest (RSI)
• Sideways markets eventually resolve themselves into trending markets and vice versa
• Stagger entries & exits – Regret Minimization techniques
• Look for low risk, high reward, high probability setups
• Correlations are for defense, not offense
• Drawdowns are for underleveraged trading and research
• Develop systems based on the kinds of “pain” (weaknesses) endured when they aren’t working or you’ll abandon them during drawdowns.
• Be disciplined in risk management & flexible in perceiving market behavior
• It’s not about the best RAROR, it’s about the best RAROR for your trading personality
5 Steps To Becoming a Long-Term Success in Trading
1. Make Rational, Not Emotional, Decisions — Do you have a plan to enter and exit your trades? Or do you just wing it? If you have a plan, write down your rules, and make sure that you trade your plan. If you don’t, or can’t, follow your rules, hire someone who can.
2. Respect Risk — Stock Market is not going anywhere. If you risk too much, your emotions will take over, and you will likely go broke. Always know where you are going to exit before you enter and how much you are going to risk if wrong.,
3. Don’t Judge Your Success One Trade at a Time — Losing money is part of trading. It happens to everyone. Once you learn to expect that will happen, you can plan for it and get past normal pitfalls, such as giving up on your system after a few losing trades.
4. Think like a winner — Remember that winning starts within. How you think is everything.,
5. Ask For Help — Making money on Wall Street is simple, but it is definitely not easy. Don’t let your ego get in your way of making money. Most people have a hard time asking for help. That’s just one reason why most people lose money on Stock Market . You don’t have to go it alone. Find someone you trust and are comfortable with, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
3 Elements of Trading Success
What all winning traders must have, regardless of timeframe and system are as follows:
Trading System
- They trade a robust system or method that wins more money over time than it loses.
- Their system gives them a reward to risk ratio that is in their favor.
- Their system or method is proven to work with a live trading record over many markets, trades, or has historical back testing.
Trading with Managed Risk
- They manage the risk of ruin to avoid blowing up their account.
- They risk no more than 1%-2% of total account equity on any one trade.
- They manage risk through proper position size so they do not risk their account and their ability to trade in the future.
- They do not risk more than 6%-12% of their capital at one time, across multiple trades.
Must Read Quotes For Traders
“Good investing is a peculiar balance between the conviction to follow your ideas and the flexibility to recognize when you have made a mistake.“-Michael Steinhardt
Do not stay bullish or bearish. Go with the current flow of the market. Be on the team that is making the money.
“There is only one side of the market and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side.” -Jesse Livermore
When putting it all together, it is more than just numbers. Successful traders trade in three dimensions.
“Successful trading depends on the 3M`s – Mind, Method and Money. Beginners focus on analysis, but professionals operate in a three dimensional space. They are aware of trading psychology their own feelings and the mass psychology of the markets. Each trader needs to have a method for choosing specific stocks, options or futures as well as firm rules for pulling the trigger – deciding when to buy and sell. Money refers to how you manage your trading capital.” – Alexander Elder
The money is in the primary market trend, not jumping in and out.
“I think it was a long step forward in my trading education when I realized at last that when old Mr. Partridge kept on telling other customers, “Well, you know this is a bull market!” he really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements-that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.” – Jesse Livermore (more…)
Avoid the pitfalls of ‘over trading’ and ‘under trading.’
* There are basically two types of over trading. Trading too often and trading too many shares/contracts.
* Remember that there really is no good reason to trade constantly, since extreme over-trading creates stress, produces high commissions and can often lead to more losses.
* Market forces do not last forever and time has shown various examples of the law of gravity in the trading market- that whatever comes up must go down. – and vice versa.
* Instead of grabbing every opportunity that comes along (or thinking that it is an opportunity) make sure each trade setup meets the criteria of your trading plan, don’t be over confident or scared of making trades.
* Utilizing a risk calculator to determine the appropriate position size before you enter a trade can help you determine how many shares/contracts you initially buy. You can start off with a small position and add as the trade continues in your favor. It relieves stress to know that the amount at risk for each position you hold is well proportioned to the size of your entire account and this is great asset management.
* Whenever you feel that you did not stick to your trading plan and made a mistake, quickly learn from that and let it go.