Archives of “god” tag

rss

There's nothing you can do

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #
You might be at a stage of feeling very frustrated with yourself.

I know what this feels like – you begin to marvel at your own lack of discipline and ability to do what you know. It’s like “Arrgh! Why can’t I just WAIT for the damn setup?! Why am I such a screw up at this?!”

Speaking from experience, it’s frustrating because you just want to get on. You have plans and goals and now you see that your own idiocy is preventing you from making any progress towards them. All I can say is that there’s nothing you can do about this period except keep going and wait for it to pass… It’s deeply ingrained. You have to trade through it; six months, a year, two years… Grit your teeth and plow on.

In a way, you have to relax into your own ability to seemingly pick every wrong move in the market. Just accept it. Providing you are not losing big money, you CAN relax into it. The good news is you are in fact building up a tolerance to taking losses during this period – you ARE actually developing a skill. It’s called “risk tolerance.”

If you’re still in that “God dammit!” phase then do this: just keep losing and losing, but begin to try to take the losses without any emotional reaction what so ever and move immediately to the next trade.

Once you can do this, you then move on to learning to let go of your need to have success NOW. This combines with learning to do nothing in the market – learning to wait. Why not wait, you’re gonna lose anyway right? So you might as well wait…

Now you’re building up patience. This is a foundation that leads to a little magic further down the track, when you get to the point where you see that you could take any system and trade it properly to discover its true potential. All those millions of methods you tried for 3 days and abandoned in disgust now sit there like a pile of spare parts in the bike shed. You become interested in them again – there could actually be a few decent ideas amongst that lot.

So learn to lose.
Then learn to wait to lose.

You will be building risk tollerance and patience. There are more steps after that, but there is no way to skip this process, it has to be gone through by all.

Trading Commandments From A Samurai

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

1. “Accept everything just the way it is.”
= accept the market reality in front of you.
2. “Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.”
= don’t trade for pleasure
3. “Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.”
= don’t jump or out of trade on shallow half-baked impulsive feelings.
4. “Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”
= don’t take your trading skills too seriously, take the ability of market to surprise seriously.
5. “Be detached from desire your whole life long.”
= make money, but don’t let money make you.
6. “Do not regret what you have done.”
= smile at your mistake, laugh off your profit.
7. “Never be jealous.”
= what you’ve got is good and enough and incomparable
8. “Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.”
= a loss is never final. it either stays back as lesson or returns as profit.
9. “Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself or others.”
= accept the reality, keep the power with yourself by not complaining.
10. “In all things have no preferences.”
= don’t measure your profit or loss, just measure them by the lesson or experience.
11. “Do not act following customary beliefs.”
= dare to think!
12. “Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.”
= a handful of tools are enough if you are willing to submit.
13. “Do not fear death.”
= do not fear unforeseen loss.
14. “Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.”
= don’t trade under pressure to accumulate profit. if you remain alive, markets will always be there. just keep learning the game.
15. “Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.”
= respect luck, acknowledge god’s blessing, but don’t drag them in the market.

The Power of Elimination

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” – Bruce lee

So what do Bruce Lee and Leonardo Da Vinci have in common?  They both understood, as any good trader should, the essentials of making an impact…the power of subtracting noise.

As a trader you should do the same:

1) Subtract your emotional baggage

In close to twenty years of trading, I have yet to meet ONE successful trader that is emotionally unbalanced. Bring your emotional baggage, your demons, your insecurities to your trading terminal, and you likely to make wrong decisions.

2) Subtract financial entertainment

Blue Channels  and other financial media are a great source of info-tainment and you can surely learn a lot. But if you sit in front of the TV all day without having a solid plan thinking that’s what professional traders suppose to do, you virtually guarantee to trade yourself out of capital very shortly. Understand that the delivery of TV news is designed to hit the emotional part of your brain. You might benefit from shutting it off in the short run.

3) Subtract noise

Good trading is not about having 8 screens, 1500 indicators, live steaming news, Twitter feeds, and a phone line with direct connection to god. Clean up your charts to the essence, price, volume and maybe one or two indicators. Clean up your screens and eliminate as much noise as possible, go over your trading diary and identify which inputs produced the most output, then go back and close the applications that add nothing but flicking lights and funny sounds, subtract until you are left with the essence of your system. (more…)

Jim Rogers: Here's The Most Important Thing On What Investors Should Do

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #
I would say one lesson we all need to learn is that after you’ve had a great success, you really should be very worried. Let’s say you sell and say you’ve made 10 times on your money. You should be extremely worried. You should close the curtains, not read, look at the TV, or anything because that’s when you’re full of hubris, arrogance, confidence. You think, “God, this is something easy,” and you’re desperate to jump around to something new. You should do your very best to avoid making another play until you’ve calmed down a lot. Just wait. It’s a very dangerous time for any investor.

Likewise, if you take a huge loss and there’s a big panic and things are dumped on your head because you’re overextended or wrong for whatever reason, calm down, don’t say, “I’m never gonna invest in stocks again or commodities or whatever.” That’s the time you really should be willing to invest again if you can gather together some capital money. The investments can be terribly emotional. You have to figure out a way to control your emotions and deal with your emotions if you’re going to survive in these markets.

My advice is that, most of the time, most investors should do nothing. They should look out the window or go to the beach. You should wait until you see money lying in the corner and all you have to do is go over and pick it up. That’s how most investors should invest. The problem is we all think we need to jump around all the time and be jumping in and out and that’s not good. (more…)

How Does Goldman Sachs Make Its Profits?

  
Analysis, Education
#  #  #  #

During the 2nd quarter of 2009, Goldman Sachs made more than $100 million in trading income in each of a record straight 46 days, with only two losing days out of 65.  That’s a remarkable hit rate of nearly 97%.

Maybe that’s why Goldman gets to do “God’s work”!

How do Goldman do it? 

How does Goldman make its profits?


 

The 12 Steps and Counting

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

I admitted I was powerless over my affliction to taking small profits.

I made a decision to turn myself over to the care of those who affably might help me as God has helped others.

I made a searching inventory of all the losses I have taken.

I admitted to other human beings especially the spec list the nature of my wrongs.

I am ready and willing, but perhaps not able, to remove these defects.

I humbly ask all my supporters and friends to help me remove them. (more…)

Excellence Is A Drive From "Inside"

  
Education, Life
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

excellence793681A gentleman was once visiting a temple under construction. In the temple premises, he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he saw, just a few meters away, another identical idol was lying.

Surprised he asked the sculptor, “Do you need two statutes of the same idol”. “No” said the sculptor. “We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage”. The gentleman examined the sculptor. No apparent damage was visible.

“Where is the damage” asked the gentleman.

“There is a scratch on the nose of the idol. Where are you going to keep the idol”.

“The sculptor replied that it will be installed on a pillar 20 feet high. When the idol will be 20 feet away from the eyes of the beholder, who is going to know that there is scratch on the nose?” The gentleman asked.

“The sculptor looked at the gentleman, smiled and said “God knows it and I know it “.

The desire to excel should be exclusive of the fact whether someone appreciates it or not. Excellence is a drive from “Inside” not “Outside“.

Overconfidence

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

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.

Uncoupling your EGO

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

your_ego“If you think that you are God and you go into the financial markets ,you are going to come out broke.The fact that Iam not broke proves that I don’t think Iam God “-George Soros on Sixty Minutes.

Make no mistake about it.A traders’s self concept has to be separate from his trading.Who you are as a person began before you ever thought of trading and who you will be as person will extend beyond your trading.When personal self -worth entwines with trading ,it not only damages self-esteem ,it sabotages the trading.

“Authentic freedom cannnot be experienced untill one learns to tame the ego and move out of self-absorption.”

 

Why do we as traders hold on to our losses?

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Hope,
Fear,
Anger,
Apathy,
Confusion,

When we see ourselves on the wrong side of a trade, we hold on with the thought that the market will soon come back in our favor, because most of the time it does. Hope, one of the greatest gift’s GOD has given us, can get you killed in the market.

The fear that when we let go of that loss, price is going to come back in our favor and we would have taken that hit for nothing.

The thought that we can’t take this loss, because we don’t want to give back some of our profits. Then the loss becomes so large that we really can’t afford to take it, so we leave it in the hands on the market hoping for mercy. In that situation, believe me the market is going to run over You every chance it gets, and will wipe You out as many times as possible. As generous as it is on the right side of the trade, it is a ravenous beast with no mercy on the other.

You have done all of Your analysis right, You have waited for a proper trade set-up and everything says that You have the advantage, You get in the market and the trade goes against you, and You are madder than hell because You were right, so You refuse to cut the loss. Let me say that the market loves that, because Your anger is only giving them more of your hard earned money. Your analysis can be 100% perfect and the market can still go against You, because the market will do as it pleases. It leads and You follow, but make no mistake, the same market that lines your pockets so fully can also turn on you like a mad dog.

Another thing that happens when a loss becomes too large is that thought that “I should have cut it at Rs1000.00, now it is Rs1,0000”. Then the apathy sets in and You just don’t care what happens any more. ‘If it comes around fine’, or ‘if I get wiped out so what’, ‘whatever’, then You turn off your screen and You do something else, but You can’t stop worrying about that loss that is looming over You larger than life. It is so much better for you to cut a loss than to have the market cut it for You.

The other thing is the confusion about when to cut a loss, it can get to be hard, but having a predefined stop before your entry or soon after or a physical SL, will make taking a hit much easier. I never like to try to define people’s SL’s because it is a matter of risk tolerance. You know how much You can afford to loss, and Zero is not an option, while none of us want to lose anything, it is just not realistic in this game. There are people who were prosperous for years in the market and got wiped out in single day or week because they could not stand to take a loss. As long as You have money, you have money to make more money, but when your money is gone, you have to get up from the table.

These things are easy to say in theory but hard to do practically, it is I think the hardest discipline that a trader learns, but we must learn to cut losses quickly. The heartache and money I could have saved by cutting my losses quickly and going in the direction that price was moving would be enough for that new Camaro that I love.

That is the great thing about the market, if You survive to play another day, You eventually get it.

CUT YOUR LOSSES QUICKLY (^_^)!!!!!!!!!!!

A failed long usually makes a good short, and a failed short usually means a good long (^_^). There is always good money to be made in the market, just don’t be the one because of your false hope, or stubbornness, that the market is making money off of. Don’t allow the market to feed on your families hard earned money cut losses quickly!!!!!!!!!!

Go to top