| 1. Trading is simple, but it is not easy. 2. When you get into a trade watch for the signs that you might be wrong. 3. Trading should be boring. 4. Amateur traders turn into professional traders once they stop looking for the “next great indicator.” 5. You are trading other traders, not stocks or futures contracts. 6. Be very aware of your own emotions. 7. Watch yourself for too much excitement. 8. Don’t overtrade. 9. If you come into trading with the idea of making big money you are doomed. 10. Don’t focus on the money. 11. Do not impose your will on the market. 12. The best way to minimize risk is to not trade when it is not time to trade. 13. There is no need to trade five days a week. 14. Refuse to damage your capital. 15. Stay relaxed. 16. Never let a day trade turn into an overnight trade.17. Keep winners as long as they are moving your way. 18. Don’t overweight your trades. 19. There is no logical reason to hesitate in taking a stop. 20. Professional traders take losses because they trust themselves to do what is right. 21. Once you take a loss, forget about it and move on. 22. Find out what loss parameters work best for your setup and adjust them accordingly. 23. Get a feel for market direction by “drilling down” (looking at multiple time frames). 24. Develop confidence by knowing and executing your trade setups the same way every time. 25. Don’t be ridiculous and stupid by adding to losers. 26. Try to enter a full size position right away. 27. Ring the register and scale out of your position. 28. Adrenaline is a sign that your ego and your emotions have reached a point where they are clouding your judgment. 29. You want to own the stock before it breaks out and sell when amateurs are getting in after the move. 30. Embracing your opinion leads to financial ruin. 31. Discipline is not learned until you wipe out a trading account. 32. Siphon off your trading profits each month and stick them in a money market account. 33. Professional traders risk a small amount of money on their equity on one trade. 34. Professional traders focus on limiting risk and protecting capital. 35. In the financial markets heroes get crushed. 36. Stick to your trading rules and you will never blow up your trading account. 37. The market can reinforce bad habits. 38. Take personal responsibility for each trade. 39. Amateur traders think about how much money they can make on each trade. Professional traders think about how much money they can lose. 40. At some point all traders realize that no one can tell them exactly what is going to happen next in the market. |
Archives of “judgment” tag
rssWisdom From Bruce Kovner
On protecting emotional equilibrium:
To this day, when something happens to disturb my emotional equilibrium and my sense of what the world is like, I close out all positions related to that event.
On the first rule of trading:
The first rule of trading — there are probably many first rules — is don’t get caught in a situation in which you can lose a great deal of money for reasons you don’t understand.
On making a million:
Michael [Marcus] taught me one thing that was incredibly important… He taught me that you couldmake a million dollars. He showed me that if you applied yourself, great things could happen. It is very easy to miss the point that you really can do it. He showed me that if you take a position and use discipline, you can actually make it.” (more…)
Psychology of Day Trading
Read today’s paper tomorrow. When you read yesterday’s paper each day with the
knowledge of what the market already did, you will affirm that this mornings paper with yesterday’s news has nothing to do with today’s market.
Your decision to exit a trade means you perceive changing circumstances. Don’t suddenly think you can pick a price, exit at the market.
Remember the “power of a position.” Never make a market judgment when you have a position.
Are U Bull or Bear ?
Casual acquaintances who come to learn know I trade for a living (something I rarely volunteer without being asked) will always ask whether I’m a bullish or bearish on the market or economy. My reply often irritates them when I say “I’m neither one – I’m just an opportunist.”
What I mean by that is that I go out of my way to avoid placing myself into a neat and tidy category that can influence my analysis of the markets and the stocks I trade. Although I’m far from perfect and sometimes let my opinions cloud my judgment (I am human after all), I do really try to do everything I can to look for opportunities on both sides of the market.
Many investors and also traders try to fit themselves into one neat category based on their opinions or of others who’ve they have come to respect. Even worse, those views are frequently tainted by how their portfolio is currently positioned (people want to be right after all) which can be both dangerous and quite unprofitable.
Case in point, I know several traders who are struggling now because they are very bearish about the market. While in principle I agree many of their views, I cannot let those views cloud both my analysis and trading. While I’m fairly certain there will be a time when their views will be proven correct, in this business timing is everything. Opinions after all, don’t pay the bills – only profitable trades do!
Remember this – in trading it isn’t about who is right or wrong. Instead it is all about who can make money and take advantage of the most opportunities in the present. Opinions are terrific things, but in most cases, you would be wise to set them aside and trade the market you see rather than the market you think you should or want to see.
Jesse Livermore’s trading rules
Lesson Number One: Cut your losses quickly.
As soon as a trade is contemplated, a trader must know at what point in time he’ll be proven wrong and exit a position. If a trader doesn’t know his exit before he takes the entry, he might as well go to the racetrack or casino where at least the odds can be quantified.
Lesson Number Two: Confirm your judgment before going all in.
Livermore was famous for throwing out a small position and waiting for his thesis to be confirmed. Once the stock was traveling in the direction he desired, Livermore would pile on rapidly to maximize the returns.
There are several ways to buy more in a winning position — pyramiding up, buying in thirds at predetermined prices, being 100% in no more than 5% above the initial entry — but the take home is to buy in the direction of your winning trade – never when it goes against you.
Lesson Number Three: Watch leading stocks for the best action.
Livermore knew that trending issues were where the big money would be made, and to fight this reality was a loser’s game. (more…)
Desire
This post is about one of the most important, but often overlooked rule, having huge philological impact on trader’s course of actions and decision making process.
Never confuse “Making money for the sake of fulfilling material desires” with “Making money as having profit on a trade”.
We do trade for achieving material independence, when we place the trade we need to think PROFIT, NOT “I need to make Rs 5 lac to buy new car”. Setting material goal as a trade objective is dangerous, it clouds our judgment, messing up initial trade setup and timing and interfere with “close position” decision. What if we are not going to make Rs 5 lac on a trade or “within a month”? Are we going to hold position forever if we only making Rs 2 lac? Are we going to quadruple the size of position to achieve “Rs 5 lac objective” sooner? Remember “counting turkeys” story? Are we going to trade even if market is bad and timing is wrong? I doubt that many of us will answer “yes” to any of these questions.
So here comes the rule:
Trade for profit – you’ll decide how to spend it AFTER you’ll make it.
Key Lessons For All Traders
Find a Trading Method That Fits Your Personality
Traders must find a methodology that fits their own beliefs and talents. A sound methodology that is very successful for one trader can be a poor fit and a losing strategy for another trader. Colm O’Shea, one of the global macro managers I interviewed, lucidly expressed this concept in answer to the question of whether trading skill could be taught:
If I try to teach you what I do, you will fail because you are not me. If you hang around me, you will observe what I do, and you may pick up some good habits. But there are a lot of things you will want to do differently. A good friend of mine, who sat next to me for several years, is now managing lots of money at another hedge fund and doing very well. But he is not the same as me. What he learned was not to become me. He became something else. He became him.
Trade Within Your Comfort Zone
If a position is too large, the trader will be prone to exit good trades on inconsequential corrections because fear will dominate the decision process. Steve Clark, an event driven manager, advises, you have to “trade within your emotional capacity.” Similarly, Joe Vidich, a long/short equity manager warns, “Limit your size in any position so that fear does not become the prevailing instinct guiding your judgment.”
In this sense, a smaller net exposure may actually yield better returns, even if the market ultimately moves in the favorable direction. For example, Martin Taylor, an emerging markets equities manager, came into 2008 with a very large net long exposure in high beta stocks in an increasingly risky market. Uncomfortable with the level of his exposure, Taylor sharply reduced his positions in early January. When the market subsequently plunged later in the month, he was well positioned to increase his long exposure.
Had Taylor remained heavily net long, he might instead have been forced to sell into the market weakness to reduce risk, thereby missing out in fully participating in the subsequent rebound. (more…)
Livermores Seven Trading Lessons
Lesson Number One: Cut your losses quickly.
As soon as a trade is contemplated, a trader must know at what point in time he’ll be proven wrong and exit a position. If a trader doesn’t know his exit before he takes the entry, he might as well go to the racetrack or casino where at least the odds can be quantified.
Lesson Number Two: Confirm your judgment before going all in.
Livermore was famous for throwing out a small position and waiting for his thesis to be confirmed. Once the stock was traveling in the direction he desired, Livermore would pile on rapidly to maximize the returns.
There are several ways to buy more in a winning position — pyramiding up, buying in thirds at predetermined prices, being 100% in no more than 5% above the initial entry — but the take home is to buy in the direction of your winning trade – never when it goes against you.
Lesson Number Three: Watch leading stocks for the best action.
Livermore knew that trending issues were where the big money would be made, and to fight this reality was a loser’s game.
Lesson Number Four: Let profits ride until price action dictates otherwise. (more…)
Amos Hostetter: One Great Trend Trader
Amos Hostetter: Trading Dont’s
- Don’t sacrifice your position for fluctuations.
- Don’t expect the market to end in a blaze of glory. Look out for warnings.
- Don’t expect the tape to be a lecturer. It’s enough to see that something is wrong.
- Never try to sell at the top. It isn’t wise. Sell after a reaction if there is no rally.
- Don’t imagine that a market that has once sold at 150 must be cheap at 130.
- Don’t buck the market trend.
- Don’t look for the breaks. Look out for warnings.
- Don’t try to make an average from a losing game.
- Never keep goods that show a loss, and sell those that show a profit. Get out with the least loss, and sit tight for greater profits.
Amos Hostetter: Dangers in Trading caused by Human Nature
- Fear: fearful of profit and one acts too soon.
- Hope: hope for a change in the forces against one.
- Lack of confidence in ones own judgment.
- Never cease to do your own thinking.
- A man must not swear eternal allegiance to either the bear or bull side.
- The individual fails to stick to facts!
- People believe what it pleases them to believe.
Think about how simple Hostetter’s wisdom appears on the surface. But how many adhere to such principles?
DON’T FIGHT THE MARKET
Fighting the market is not good for two reasons. First, we lose money. How much we lose depends on how well we are managing our money and controlling our risk. Second, fighting the market affects our judgment, and causes us to try to confirm that our judgment is correct. Some very high level market analyst will persist in fighting a trend so that we will eventually be proved to be correct. They figure that if we persist long enough, no matter how long it takes, we will eventually be right. In some cases the “technical price” level is so far away that by the time the forecast is negated, the inventor following the advice will have lost a large sum and missed a fine opportunity on the other side of the forecast!
By analogy, there is a reason for leaving your car downstream, launching your canoe upstream, and paddling downstream. It is much easier and eminently more fun to go with the flow and paddle downstream. We could do the opposite and paddle upstream, eventually we may even get to our destination, but the cost would be substantial. It would take much more time, more physical and emotional stamina, and we would be constantly fighting the current. Reaching the goal would not be worth the cost.
From a system trading point of view, it is seen from a different set of constraints. The technical or priced based strategy that gets you into a trade also has a priced based signal that says “the strategy is wrong get out ” or “the strategy is wrong reverse your positions”. The problem with relaying on price to tell you that you’re wrong is that the market does not care. So like the unmoved market analyst that says “it’s only a bear market rally”, at some point money management, risk manage has to come into play, It is a necessary evil.