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Daiwa to launch 'Trump-related' mutual fund

Daiwa Asset Management is set to start operating a mutual fund that invests in stocks related to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure investment policy. Daiwa will launch the product on Tuesday.

The open-end mutual fund — the first of its kind in Japan since Trump’s election victory in November 2016 — is likely to be made available to retail investors by the end of the month.

 The U.S. infrastructure builder equity fund, which invests in U.S. companies, will quantify how much each stock will benefit from Trump’s infrastructure policy, based on criteria such as sales ratio in the U.S. and the degree of obsolescence of the target infrastructure. The details of the portfolio will be determined by how much share prices are undervalued and how competitive the companies are.

The portfolio, comprising 30-50 companies — mostly in the construction, transport and materials sectors — will be adjusted as appropriate as Trump’s policy takes form.

Trump has pledged to spend $1 trillion to overhaul the country’s aging infrastructure over the next decade.

10+10+10 Trading Rules

1.    Be flexible and go with the flow of the markets price action, stubbornness, egos, and emotions are the worst indicators for entries and exits.
2.    Understand that the trader only chooses their entries, exits, position size, and risk and the market chooses whether they are profitable or not.
3.    You must have a trading plan before you start to trade, that has to be your anchor in decision making.
4.    You have to let go of wanting to always be right about your trade and exchange it for wanting to make money. The first step of making money is to cut a loser short the   moment it is confirmed that you are wrong.
5.    Never trade position sizes so big that your emotions take over from your trading plan.
6.    “If it feels good, don’t do it.” – Richard Weissman
7.    Trade your biggest position sizes during winning streaks and your smallest position sizes during losing streaks. Not too big and trade your smallest when in a losing streak.
8.    Do not worry about losing money that can be made back worry about losing your trading discipline.
9.    A losing trade costs you money but letting a big losing trade get too far out of hand can cause you to lose your nerve. Cut losses for the sake o your nerves as much as for the sake of capital preservation.
10.    A trader can only go on to success after they have faith in themselves as a trader, their trading system  as a winner, and know that they will stay disciplined in their trading journey.

Bring your risk of ruin down to almost zero. (more…)

Getting Started in Chart Patterns -Thomas Bulkowski (Book Review )

CHART PATTERNSThomas Bulkowski is probably the best known chart pattern researcher. Among his credits are theEncyclopedia of Chart Patterns and the three-volumeEvolution of a Trader. In this second edition ofGetting Started in Chart Patterns (Wiley, 2014), a book originally published in 2006 and newly revised and expanded with updated statistics, he introduces more than forty chart formations. Better yet, he explains how to trade using them.

Although the title indicates that the book is for novices, it is equally valuable—perhaps even more valuable—for more experienced pattern traders. Without continually reviewing, testing, and revising pattern trading strategies, it’s all too easy to trade yesterday’s market.

In two action-packed chapters Bulkowski explores trendlines and support and resistance. He considers support and resistance to be “the most important chart patterns” because “they show how much you are likely to make and how much you are likely to lose on each trade. That’s like playing poker and knowing the hands of your opponents. You won’t always win, but it helps.” (p. 35)

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10+1 Rules If You USE Charts

Rule 1 – If you cannot see trends and patterns almost instantly when you look at a chart then they are not there. The longer you stare, the more your brain will try to apply order where there is none.

If you have to justify exceptions, stray data points and conflicting evidence then it is safe to say the market is not showing you what you think it is.

Rule 2 – If you cannot figure out if something is bullish or bearish after three indicators then move on. The more studies you apply to any chart the more likely one of them will say “something.” That something is probably not correct.

When I look at a chart and cannot form an opinion after applying three or four different types of indicators – volume, momentum, trend, even Fibonacci – I  must conclude that the market has not decided what it wants to do at that time. Who am I to tell it what it thinks?

Rule 3 – You can torture a chart to say anything you want. Don’t do it.

This is very similar to Rule 2 but it there is an important point to drive home. You can cherry pick indicators to justify whatever biases you bring to the table and that attempts to impose your will on the market. You cannot tell the market what to do – ever. (more…)

Free 34 page technical analysis book to download

I cam across this yesterday and though it might be interesting for some weekend technical analysis reading. I haven’t read it yet.

Its from the Market Technicians Association, the August issue of “Technically Speaking”.

Free download etc. etc. The link is here.

Whats in it? …

Free technical analysis book 08 August 2014

How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas

Excerpt: “Hungarian by birth, Nicolas Darvas trained as an economist at the University of Budapest. Reluctant to remain in Hungary until either the Nazis or the Soviets took over, he fled at the age of 23 with a forged exit visa and fifty pounds sterling to stave off hunger in Istanbul, Turkey. During his off hours as a dancer, he read some 200 books on the market and the great speculators, spending as much as eight hours a day studying. Darvas invested his money into a couple of stocks that had been hitting their 52-week high. He was utterly surprised that the stocks continued to rise and subsequently sold them to make a large profit. His main source of stock selection was Barron’s Magazine. At the age of 39, after accumulating his fortune, Darvas documented his techniques in the book, How I Made 2,000,000 in the Stock Market. The book describes his unique “Box System”, which he used to buy and sell stocks. Darvas’ book remains a classic stock market text to this day.”

How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas
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23 Trading Lessons

1. All successful traders use methods that suit their
personality; You are neither Waren Buffett nor George Soros nor Jesse Livermore; Don’t assume you can trade like them.
2. What the market does is beyond your control; Your reaction to the market, however, is not beyond your control. Indeed, its the ONLY thing you can control.
3. To be a winner, you have to be willing to
take a loss; 
4. HOPE is not a word in the winning Trader’s vocabulary;
5. When you are on a
losing streak — and you will eventually find yourself on one — reduce your position size;
6. Don’t underestimate the time it
takes to succeed as a trader — it takes 10 years to become very good at anything;  
7. Trading is a vocation — not a
hobby
8. Have a business/trading plan; 
9. Identify your greatest weakness, Be honest — and DEAL with it (more…)

Paul Tudor Jones: 13 Insights

13 Insights From Paul Tudor Jones

1. Markets have consistently experienced “100-year events” every five years. While I spend a significant amount of my time on analytics and collecting fundamental information, at the end of the day, I am a slave to the tape (and proud of it).

2. Younger generation are hampered by the need to understand (and rationalize) why something should go up or down. By the time that it becomes self-evident, the move is over.

3. When I got into the business, there was so little information on fundamentals, and what little information one could get was largely imperfect. We learned just to go with the chart. (Why work when Mr. Market can do it for you?)

4. There are many more deep intellectuals in the business today. That, plus the explosion of information on the Internet, creates an illusion that there is an explanation for everything. Hence, the thinking goes, your primary task is to find that explanation.

As a result of this poor approach, technical analysis is at the bottom of the study list for many of the younger generation, particularly since the skill often requires them to close their eyes and trust price action. The pain of gain is just too overwhelming to bear.

5. There is no training — classroom or otherwise — that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it’s the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market. There’s typically no logic to it; irrationality reigns supreme, and no class can teach what to do during that brief, volatile reign. The only way to learn how to trade during that last, exquisite third of a move is to do it, or, more precisely, live it. (more…)

The 8 Downfalls of Jesse Livermore

Jesse Livermore was a pioneer in the trading world. He was one of the very first trend traders, rule based discretionary traders, and traders of pure price action. He was a trail blazer. It was not his methodology that was his undoing, it was other short comings. After reading books about the life of this trading legend along with his own, here are my eight observations that I believe was his ultimate undoing.

  1. Letting losers run: Many times he did not cut his losses. “I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.”– Jesse Livermore
  2. Over Trading: “What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game – that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my play.” – Jesse Livermore
  3. Following tips: “Gradually, as I began to accept his facts and figures, I began to fear I had been basing my previous position on misinformation. Of course I could not feel that way and not cover. And once I had covered because Thomas made me think I was wrong, I simply had to go long. It is the way my mind works.” “It cost me millions to learn that another dangerous enemy to a trader is his susceptibility to the urgings of a magnetic personality when plausibly expressed by a brilliant mind.” – Jesse Livermore
  4. Risk of ruin: From the quantity of his account blow ups and personal bankruptcies it appears that he did not understand the mathematical risk of ruin based on winning percentage and the loss of  capital per trade.
  5. Position sizing: The sheer size of his astounding wins at key times shows that he did not really have a position sizing model to limit his exposure to risk, he was likely all in with leverage on his biggest wins. Which results in inevitable account blow ups.
  6. Discipline: In his writings he seems to always hint that he had trouble following his own rules and advice and lost money when he didn’t follow his own plan.
  7. Lavish lifestyle: Livermore spent money lavishly on his lifestyle with mansions, vacations, and the best things money could buy. He had no number that allowed him to ever really retire and enjoy his wealth. He continued to trade with full size and aggressively through his career.
  8. Mental risk of ruin: In the end, for whatever reason he ended his life. The stress and strain of trading, finances, and his personal life probably took its toll.

Trading vs investing

But let’s use a couple of examples:
– trading: I buy a basket of stocks this morning with the intention of reselling before the close
– investing: I build a portfolio of stocks with the intention to keep it a relatively long time, because I think that these stocks value will increase due to whatever reason, growth, value, the economy…

I also like the following classification, which I believe comes from Minsky:
– Profits on the position neither depend on price variation of the asset, nor on cost of carry: I am investing.
– Profits do not depend on price variation, but only on positive carry: I am trading.
– Profit depend on price variation of the asset: I am speculating.

The example and the definition are not equivalent, but they give a rough idea of what trading is and what investing is. The border between both activities can be blurry. But if you invest, you do not need a market. You can buy a bond with the intention of holding it to maturity. If you trade, you need a market to close the trades.

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