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GBP/JPY is on a remarkable run

The pair is up 850 pips in the past four trading days

The pair is up 850 pips in the past four trading days
The best place to see the combination of the turn in sentiment on Brexit and the US-China trade deal is in GBP/JPY. The pair has rallied to 139.24 from 130.73 early on Friday.
That’s a monster rally by any standards and captures the squeeze in the pair. Once again today it’s the best-performing duo in a signal that there might be more of a squeeze left.
In the bigger picture, we’re now at the highest levels since May and resistance has now turned to support. The 135.66 level proved to be the retracement to buy this week and unless talks fall apart, I don’t think we will see that again.
Instead, look to the 137.80-138.00 range as an opportunity to buy.

3 Trading Truth

TRUTHLINKSHumility:  We are in a business with change.  I have never met a person who has been successful at anything who thought they had it all figured out.  Yes, celebrate and enjoy but tomorrow you start over at the beginning.  Celebrate later and not until the play is over.

Perspective: Trading is emotional.  Eliminating the highs and lows is important because it takes out so much energy.  Yes it would have been cool to dive into the end zone but I would have had to pick myself off the ground and had to be on the extra point team the next play. The low is never as low or the high is never as high as it is in reality, generally.  Having perspective is how it all evens out.

Preparation:  When asked why athletes make better traders I always respond because they are willing to work long hours for the few times when it all lines up.  For football, you train 6 months the play a season.  You have 12 games.  You spend 4 days preparing, 1 day playing, 1 day reevaluating, and 1 day resting.  We prepare for those times and we always are waiting for the next time.  One trade can make your day, one week can make your month, one month can make your year, one year can make your career. (more…)

Thought on Risk

Risk ManagementRisk is a very negative word for many, but as a trader you have to face financial risk (even ruin for some kamikaze traders) every day. But to make a living trading stocks you have to face risk in a bold way. IMO, the greatest opportunity for success goes to those who are not afraid of taking risks and at the same time managing risk in a proper way (and knowing excessive risk may lead to total ruin). By that you have to analyze risk in accordance to potential reward and to feel a little bit of fear. Success may come to those without fear, but many of the fearless have fallen by the wayside (and we never hear about them).

Actually, the biggest risk is not taking any risk! If you want to make money trading, you have to take risk. There is no way you will make money by being risk-averse.

That also means not afraid of looking stupid. Remember that learning is inhibited by caution and experimentation. Children who are afraid will never learn. Children with totally risk-averse parents will struggle in an uncertain world.  Children are in general not afraid of looking stupid and they are therefore much more adaptive than adults. Just look at how easy they learn a new language. (more…)

The Traders Mindset

So far the Apprenticed Investor series has discussed a lot of don’ts. Don’t do this, don’t do that; avoid talking to these kinds of traders; don’t say or think these kinds of things.

Well, it’s time to shift gears, and since trading is an active enterprise, I’ll discuss some things you should do. I plan to expand on these ideas significantly in future episodes.

Taken together, the following 10 rules will not only help you with the philosophical grounding necessary for thoughtful — and successful — investing, they will help you avoid some of the more common mistakes made by investors and traders early in their careers.

This is the “Zen of Trading;” It is more than an overview — it’s an investment philosophy that can help you develop an investing framework of your own.

1. Have a Comprehensive Plan: Whether you are an investor or active trader, you must have a plan. Too many investors have no strategy at all — they merely react to each twitch of the market on the fly. If you fail to plan, goes the saying, then you plan to fail.
Consider how Roger Clemens approaches a game. He studies his opponent, constructs his game plan and goes to work.

Investors should write up a business plan, as if they were asking a Venture Capitalist for start-up money; just because you are the angel investor doesn’t mean you should skip the planning stages.

2. Expect to Be Wrong: We’ve discussed this previously, but it is such a key aspect of successful investing that it bears repeating. You will be wrong, you will be wrong often and, occasionally, you will be spectacularly wrong.
Michael Jordan has a fabulous perspective on the subject: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Jordan was the greatest ball player of all time, and not only because of his superb physical skills: He understood the nature and importance of failure, and placed it appropriately within a larger framework of the game.

The best investors have no ego tied up in a trade. Those who refuse to recognize the simple truism of “being wrong often” end up giving away unacceptable amounts of capital. Stubborn pride and lack of risk management allow egotists to stay in stocks down 30%, 40% or 50% — or worse.

 

3. Predetermine Stops Before Opening Any Position: Sign a “prenuptial agreement” with every stock you participate in: When it hits some point you have determined before you purchased it, that’s it, you’re out, end of story. Once you have come to understand that you will be frequently wrong, it becomes much easier to use stop-losses and sell targets.
This is true regardless of your methodology: It may be below support or beneath a moving average, or perhaps you prefer a specific percentage amount. Some people use the prior month’s low. But whatever your stop-loss method is, stick to it religiously. Why? The prenup means you are making the exit decision before you are in a trade — while you are still neutral and objective.

4. Follow Discipline Religiously: The greatest rules in the world are worthless if you do not have the personal discipline to see them through. I can recall every single time I broke a trading rule of my own, and it invariably cost me money.
RealMoney’s Chartman, Gary B. Smith, slavishly follows his discipline, and he notes that every time some hedge fund — chock full of Nobel Laureates and Ivy League whiz kids — blows up, the mea culpa is the same: If only we hadn’t overrode the system.

In Jack Schwager’s seminal book Market Wizards, the single most important theme repeated by each of the wizards was the importance of discipline. (more…)

12 Great Chess Quotes For Traders

Some great chess quotes from Garry Kasparov that can apply to chess, trading, or life.chess-trading

  1. You must know what questions to ask and ask them frequently. Questions are what matters. Questions, and discovering the right ones, are the key to staying on course.
  2. The top achievers believe in themselves and their plans, and they work constantly to ensure those plans are worthy of their belief.
  3. Personal style is not generic software that you can download. You must instead recognize what works best for you and then, through trial and error, develop your own method- your own map.
  4. We must also avoid being distracted from our strategic path by the competition.
  5. Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.
  6. You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win.  You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.
  7. Chess is everything: art, science, and sport. (more…)

The Zen of Trading

So far the Apprenticed Investor series has discussed a lot of don’ts. Don’t do this, don’t do that; avoid talking to these kinds of traders; don’t say or think these kinds of things.

Well, it’s time to shift gears, and since trading is an active enterprise, I’ll discuss some things you should do. I plan to expand on these ideas significantly in future episodes.

Taken together, the following 10 rules will not only help you with the philosophical grounding necessary for thoughtful — and successful — investing, they will help you avoid some of the more common mistakes made by investors and traders early in their careers.

This is the “Zen of Trading;” It is more than an overview — it’s an investment philosophy that can help you develop an investing framework of your own.

1. Have a Comprehensive Plan: Whether you are an investor or active trader, you must have a plan. Too many investors have no strategy at all — they merely react to each twitch of the market on the fly. If you fail to plan, goes the saying, then you plan to fail.
Consider how Roger Clemens approaches a game. He studies his opponent, constructs his game plan and goes to work.

Investors should write up a business plan, as if they were asking a Venture Capitalist for start-up money; just because you are the angel investor doesn’t mean you should skip the planning stages.

2. Expect to Be Wrong: We’ve discussed this previously, but it is such a key aspect of successful investing that it bears repeating. You will be wrong, you will be wrong often and, occasionally, you will be spectacularly wrong.
Michael Jordan has a fabulous perspective on the subject: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Jordan was the greatest ball player of all time, and not only because of his superb physical skills: He understood the nature and importance of failure, and placed it appropriately within a larger framework of the game.

The best investors have no ego tied up in a trade. Those who refuse to recognize the simple truism of “being wrong often” end up giving away unacceptable amounts of capital. Stubborn pride and lack of risk management allow egotists to stay in stocks down 30%, 40% or 50% — or worse.

 

3. Predetermine Stops Before Opening Any Position: Sign a “prenuptial agreement” with every stock you participate in: When it hits some point you have determined before you purchased it, that’s it, you’re out, end of story. Once you have come to understand that you will be frequently wrong, it becomes much easier to use stop-losses and sell targets.
This is true regardless of your methodology: It may be below support or beneath a moving average, or perhaps you prefer a specific percentage amount. Some people use the prior month’s low. But whatever your stop-loss method is, stick to it religiously. Why? The prenup means you are making the exit decision before you are in a trade — while you are still neutral and objective.

4. Follow Discipline Religiously: The greatest rules in the world are worthless if you do not have the personal discipline to see them through. I can recall every single time I broke a trading rule of my own, and it invariably cost me money.
RealMoney’s Chartman, Gary B. Smith, slavishly follows his discipline, and he notes that every time some hedge fund — chock full of Nobel Laureates and Ivy League whiz kids — blows up, the mea culpa is the same: If only we hadn’t overrode the system.

In Jack Schwager’s seminal book Market Wizards, the single most important theme repeated by each of the wizards was the importance of discipline.

5. Keep Your Emotion In Check: Emotion is the enemy of investors, and that’s why you must have a methodology that relies on objective data points, and not gut instinct. The purpose of Rules 1, 2 and 3 is to eliminate the impact of the natural human response to stress — fear and panic — and to avoid the flip side of the coin — greed.
Remember, we, as a species, were never “hard-wired” for the capital markets. Our instinctive “fight or flight response” did not evolve to deal with crossing moving averages or CEOs resigning or restated earnings.

This evolutionary emotional baggage is why we want to sell at the bottom and chase stocks at the top. The money-making trade — buying when there’s blood in the streets, and selling when everyone else is clamoring to buy — goes against every instinct you have. It requires a detached objectivity simply not possible when trading on emotion.

6. Take Responsibility: Many folks believe “the game is fixed.” To them, I say: get over it. Stop whining and take the proper responsibility for your trades, your losses and yourself.
Your knowledge of the game-rigging gives you an edge. So use your hard-won knowledge to make money.

We have a national culture of blame-passing, and it infected investing long ago. Enron did not cause your losses, and neither did stock-touting analysts, or talking heads on CNBC. You did, and the sooner you accept this, the better off you will be.

A Chinese proverb is particularly insightful as applied to trading: “He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.”

7. Constantly Improve: Investing is so competitive that you cannot afford to stand still. Investors should constantly seek to raise their skill level by learning as much as possible about the markets, the economy, trading technologies and various schools of investing thought. But whatever you read, you must do so with a keenly skeptical eye, while retaining an open mind (‘taint easy to do).
One way to constantly improve is to find something for which you have a peculiar natural proclivity for and develop that gift. It may be moving averages, or position sizing, or MACD, or Bollinger Bands or the Arms index. Perhaps you have an expertise in some aspect of technology, or a particular sector.

This is essential because a developed expertise yields ancillary benefits. It bleeds over into everything else, with net positive results. The specific area of expertise you own does not matter as much as having one. Those of you who have been trading for a while will know exactly what I am referring to.

8. Change Is Constant: Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher best known for his “Doctrine of Flux”: “The only constant is change.”
That doctrine is especially true in the markets. Therefore, as you constantly upgrade your skills, you must remain supple enough to adapt to an ever-changing field of play.

Human nature — especially in herds — is unchanging. But these behaviors must be contemplated within their larger context. Add a new element — PCs, lower trading costs, the Internet, vast amounts of cheap data, even CNBC — and you introduce a new factor that impacts all the players on the field.

As conditions change, you must decipher how they impact your strategy, your emotions and your trading — and adjust accordingly.

9. Learn to Short/Hedge Stocks: Short is not a four-letter word. Successful traders learn to play both sides of the fence. That’s less controversial today than it was as the market was first falling apart, but it is no less true.
When a particular strategy isn’t working, the market is telling you something. Thoughtful traders must consider whether there are bigger issues than their own trading mechanics when they enter a losing streak.

In Law School, students learn they have to be ready to argue either side of a case. You never truly knew a case until you could argue both for and against it. Only when you were able to see its warts could you truly appreciate the beauty.

The trading corollary is that you should never own a stock unless you know what makes it an attractive short. Each buy and sell decision should be an argument pro and con.

The market is cyclical; count on a bear market every four years or so. Unless you plan on sitting out for 18 to 24 months once or twice each decade — as much as four years out of 10 — you better learn to either short stocks or hedge long positions.

10. Understand Sector Strength and Market Trend: This rule generates the most “pushback” of any on the list, because it’s so counter-intuitive: Stock selection matters less than you think.
Studies have convincingly demonstrated that about 30% of a stock’s progress is determined by the company itself; a stock’s sector is equal to at least another 30% (if not more). The overall direction of the market is an even bigger factor, counting for some 40%.

If you own the best company in the wrong sector, or buy the greatest stock when the broader market is going the other way — both positions are likely to be losers. But if you see a strong sector, the market trend will help out even the weakest stock in the bunch.

So that’s the 10 rules I call the “Zen of Trading.”

Investing skills are worthless without a broader framework in which to practice them. The above rules will provide you with that frame of reference. They were as true 100 years ago as they will be true 100 years from now. Those who develop a plan and an investment philosophy are on the path to achieving trading success.

Difference between trading and gambling?

Gambling is, usually, an event with:

  • Limited duration
  • Finite upside
  • Finite downside
  • Binary outcome

When you gamble you either win or lose. That event usually takes only a small amount of time.

For example, you can bet on a horserace 10 minutes before it starts and 5 minutes later you have a result. For anyone who plays poker, you know it may take a little bit more time as the stakes are raised. So poker is a little bit closer to trading.

In gambling your risk on any event is usually what you outlay. And your potential return is what the house is offering at the time you agree to the bet.

I love to play blackjack (and for some reason, while I don’t play often, I have been profitable almost every time I’ve played in the last 3 years) like one of my trading mentors who was an original Turtle Trader.

A bet on a Blackjack table can take a minute or two until it’s over. Whereas in trading, a trade has the following characteristics: (more…)

Wisdom from Worthy Individuals

“I measure what’s going on, and I adapt to it. I try to get my ego out of the way. The market is smarter than I am so I bend.” – Martin Zweig

“To be a money master, you must first be a self-master” – J. P. Morgan

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius

“Buy that which is showing strength – sell that which is showing weakness.” – Richard Rhodes

“The rule of survival is not to “buy low, sell high”, but to “buy higher and sell higher.” – Richard Rhodes

“Be patient. Once a trade is put on, allow it time to develop and give it time to create the profits you expected.” – Richard Rhodes

“Be impatient. As always, small loses and quick losses are the best losses.” – Richard Rhodes (more…)

Life’s a Bet

One of my favorite bits of wisdom from trading legend Larry Hite:

Life is nothing more than a series of bets and bets are really nothing more than questions and their answers. There is no real difference between, “Should I take another hit on this Blackjack hand?” and “Should I get out of the way of that speeding and wildly careening bus?” Each shares two universal truths: a set of probabilities of potential outcomes and the singular outcome that takes place. Everyday we place hundreds if not thousands of bets–large and small, some seemingly well considered and others made without a second thought. The vast majority of the latter, life’s little gambles made without any thought, might certainly be trivial. “Should I tie my shoes?” Seems to offer no big risk, nor any big reward. While others, such as the aforementioned “speeding and wildly careening bus” would seem to have greater impact on our lives. However, if deciding not to tie your shoes that morning causes you to trip and fall down in the middle of the road when you finally decide to fold your hand and give that careening bus plenty of leeway, well then, in hindsight, the trivial has suddenly become paramount.

Is stock trading difficult? Depends on who you ask.


Is stock trading difficult?  Depends on who you ask.

A seasoned trader with the discipline to follow well honed principles will say “trading is not difficult.  See how I take losses and let my winners run?”  A battered and bruised, emotionally unstable trader will say “the market is difficult.  I am getting my @ss handed to me on a platter and it hurts!”  A breakeven trader will say, “compared to my broker I am not doing so bad.”

Our perspective makes all the difference in our success of failure.  If we can have the proper perspective then the market cannot hurt us.

The proper perspective includes, but is not limited to, the following:

The market will do what it wants to do when it wants to do it regardless of the technical games we play.

We win some lose some, in no particular order, on any given strategy.

The only trading mistake that matters is when future uncertainty is not properly considered an essential element of risk.

The long-term process, not short term outcomes, builds the consistency necessary to tackle market uncertainty.

Responsibility accepted before the trade becomes the disciple that carries us through the trade.

The best money is oftentimes made by being a non-participating, impartial observer.


 

So the next time someone asks if stock trading is difficult.  What will be our answer?  Will it be based on the proper perspective or on the last trade we made?  On emotions? On our reaction to price action? News? Compared to what?  A successful bust or a skinned knee?  The answer can make a difference.