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Trader’s Emotions

The hardest thing about trading is not the math, the method, or the stock picking. It is dealing with the emotions that arise with trading itself. From the stress of actually entering a trade, to the fear of losing the paper profits that you are holding in a winning trade, how you deal with those emotions will determine your success more than any one thing.

To manage your emotions first of all you must trade a system and method you truly believe will be a winner in the long term.

You must understand that every trade is not a winner and not blame yourself for equity draw downs if you are trading with discipline.

Do not bet your entire account on any one trade, in fact risking only 1% of your total capital on any one trade is the best thing you can do for your stress levels and risk of ruin odds.

With that in place here are some examples of emotional equations to better understand why you feel certain emotions strongly in your trading:

Despair = Losing Money – Trading Better

Do not despair look at your losses as part of doing business and as paying tuition fees to the markets.

Disappointment = Expectations – Reality (more…)

TRADING EMOTIONS

The hardest thing to master as a trader once you understand Market Rhythm is not the market, it is YOU. Emotional trading will break you fast.

Trading is not hard, it is mastering your emotions that is. Trading will teach you more about your human short coming than visiting a psychiatrist. As a trader, you must learn the discipline of waiting for proper market set-ups. That is hard!

Your EMOTIONS are screaming for you to jump in or you will miss out. NOT TRUE!! If you miss one trade set-up, the market is generous and will give you another. Learn to trade in harmony with your trend and with proper signals.

The emotions that are deadly to your trading success.

REVENGE, we all know it and have done it. It happens when you are tricked by the market and decide to take another trade before looking at the big picture, then BAM you are on the wrong side of the trade again. Pissed off and refusing to move while your money is going further down the drain. Scared to let go for fear that you are going to get tricked again.

PANIC, that is when you lack the confidence to enter or ride a profitable trade. This happens when you have taken some hits and now you lack the confidence to trade profitably.

IMPATIENCE, this happens when you can’t wait for a proper trade set-up and jump on a price hiccup/retracement, often finding yourself on the wrong side of the trade.

ANGER, you know that feeling that comes over you when you have taken a hit or two and you want to kill your computer. (more…)

15 Great Investor & Trader Quotes

Warren Buffett (Net Worth $39 Billion) – “‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”

George Soros (Net Worth $22 Billion) – ”I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong…I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.”

David Rubenstein (Net Worth $2.8 Billion) – “Persist – don’t take no for an answer. If you’re happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you’ll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.”

Ray Dalio (Net Worth $6.5 Billion) – “More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.”

Eddie Lampert (Net Worth $3 Billion) – “This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can’t wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, “Here’s what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?”

T. Boone Pickens (Net Worth $1.4 Billion) – “The older I get, the more I see a straight path where I want to go. If you’re going to hunt elephants, don’t get off the trail for a rabbit.”

Charlie Munger (Net Worth $1 Billion) – “If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we’d have a pretty average record. It wasn’t hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor.”

David Tepper (Net Worth $5 Billion) – “This company looks cheap, that company looks cheap, but the overall economy could completely screw it up. The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.”

Benjamin Graham  – “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money’s worth for his purchase.”

Louis Bacon (Net Worth $1.4 Billion) – “As a speculator you must embrace disorder and chaos.”

Paul Tudor Jones (Net Worth $3.2 Billion) – “Were you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always, first and foremost protecting your butt. After a while size means nothing. It gets back to whether you’re making 100% rate of return on $10,000 or $100 million dollars. It doesn’t make any difference.”

Bruce Kovner (Net Worth $4.3 Billion) – ” My experience with novice traders is that they trade three to five times too big. They are taking 5 to 10 percent risks on a trade when they should be taking 1 to 2 percent risks. The emotional burden of trading is substantial; on any given day, I could lose millions of dollars. If you personalize these losses, you can’t trade.”

Rene Rivkin (Net Worth $346 Million) – “When buying shares, ask yourself, would you buy the whole company?”

Peter Lynch (Net Worth $352 Million) – “I think you have to learn that there’s a company behind every stock, and that there’s only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.”

John Templeton (Net Worth $20 Billion)– “The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell.”

John (Jack) Bogle (Net Worth $4 Billion) – “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”

Do it once.

Trading is about proving to yourself you can do things. As you get over these barriers you realize that you were holding yourself back for no reason. This will give you confidence to defeat the next one.

The first step is to recognize it. This is where it is important to see outside yourself. You can do this by writing, taking a break, talking about it, reading about trading, reading something completely opposite of trading, etc.

Here are a list of some of the barriers:

Making twice your goal. (more…)

Emotions & Trading

he hardest thing about trading is not the math, the method, or the stock picking. It is dealing with the emotions that arise with trading itself. From the stress of actually entering a trade, to the fear of losing the paper profits that you are holding in a winning trade,  there are many different types of stress. How you deal with those emotions will determine your success more than any one thing.

Here are some examples of emotional equations to better understand why you feel certain emotions strongly in your trading:

Losing Money and failing to learn to Trade Better results in Despair. 

Do not despair look at your losses as part of doing business and as paying tuition fees to the markets. If you are getting better at trading do not despair even if you are losing money.

When Expectations clash with Reality it causes Disappointment.

Enter trading with realistic expectations. You can realistically expect 20%-35% annual returns on capital with great trading. More than that is possible but unlikely. (more…)

15 Great Investor Quotes

Insightful Investment Quotes

warren-buffett quoteWarren Buffett (Net Worth $39 Billion) – “‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
george-soros quoteGeorge Soros (Net Worth $22 Billion) – ”I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong…I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.”
david-rubenstein-quoteDavid Rubenstein (Net Worth $2.8 Billion) – “Persist – don’t take no for an answer. If you’re happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you’ll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.”
ray-dalio quoteRay Dalio (Net Worth $6.5 Billion) – “More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.” (more…)

ABC’s of Stock Trading

abc
This is not like any other ABC list you might have come across about trading stocks. There are no real terms here. The following is the ABC’s of successful stock trading.
A – Action, nothing happens until you DO SOMETHING.
B – Bear trap, don’t get sucked into it.
C – Cash, not making too much when you are holding cash.
D – Due diligence, don’t jump into a position blindly.
 
E – Early, the best traders make a move before its popular.
F – Fear to lose money, the hardest thing to overcome in trading.
G – Greed, try to make a quick buck, and lose a quick thousand.
H – Humbled, no trader is immune from bad trades.
I – Ignorance, following recommendations blindly puts all the blame on you.
J – Justification, the more you have to convince yourself, the less likely the trade will probably work.
K – Keep discipline, stick to your strategy and have faith it will work.
L – Losses, accept them and move on. Don’t dwindle on the past.
M – Money, what makes the world turn.
N – Never is impossible, in the stock market ANYTHING can happen.
O – Only if I had…, the worst statement a trader can make.
P – Perception, moves the market more than the actual facts.
Q – Quality vs. Quantity, which one works best for your system?
R – Realized Profit, you haven’t made or lost any money until you sell.
S – Strategy, never enter a position until you know the exit plan.
T – Trade Triangle Technology… need I say more?
U – Understatement, everybody succeeds in the stock market.
V – Value, reason traders buy and sell because they think the stock price should be higher or lower.
W – Write downs, something you don’t want to see a company do too often.
X – Xcited (I know, I know), nothing feels better than executing a profitable trade.
Y – Your alone, at the end of the day the only person who cares about your account is you.
Z – Zenith, where we would like to exit your stock position.

Stick to your game plan

the-game-plan-poster-425Sticking to your game plan is the hardest thing to do as a trader.The reason it’s so hard is that it take strict discipline and an emotional detachment from the outcome.Knowing what to do and doing it are two seprate issues.Trading involves so many unforseen elements and market fores the mishaps and fuzzy thinking materialize even at the most advanced levels.The only way to trade suscessfully through this sea of uncontrollable elements is to have the discipline to stick to your game plan.Your plan is the shield that no market force can penetrate ,unless let it.

The main reason experienced traders lose is that they fail to follow their own rules.There are hundreds of reasons and excuses for deviating from a trading plan-for breaking your rules.In the long run ,the reasons make zero difference.In the end ,people are judged by their results ,not the quality of their excuses.In an unstructured environment with multiple sources of reason pulling you in different directions ,rules become the cornerstone for success.

A trading plan is predictable.It provides sources of reason given any number of existing circumstances.It filers out noise and encourages discipline.Remember that having a trading plan and sticking to it is invaluable.The simple recognition of this fact can provide the stimulas to adhere to your own plan.

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