Comments by ECB president, Christine Lagarde

- Warns European leaders of a major economic shock
- Told European leaders that urgent action is needed now
- ECB also looking at all policy tools
Highlights for today’s near trading session:
“[Michael Marcus] also taught me one other thing that is absolutely critical: You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. [He] taught me about making your best judgment, being wrong, making your next best judgment, being wrong, making your third best judgment, and then doubling your money.”
– Bruce Kovner, Market Wizards
Bruce Kovner, now retired, is one of the all-time trading greats.
His observation is strikingly similar to the Soros observation (paraphrase): “It doesn’t matter how often you are right or wrong — what matters is how much you make when you are right, versus how much you lose when you are wrong.”
In many ways trading is remarkably different from any other profession. Imagine if doctors, lawyers, or company executives were encouraged to “make mistakes” on a regular basis. (They do make mistakes of course. They just can’t admit them, let alone be open about them.) (more…)
“[Michael Marcus] also taught me one other thing that is absolutely critical: You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. [He] taught me about making your best judgment, being wrong, making your next best judgment, being wrong, making your third best judgment, and then doubling your money.”
– Bruce Kovner, Market Wizards
Bruce Kovner, now retired, is one of the all-time trading greats.
His observation is strikingly similar to the Soros observation (paraphrase): “It doesn’t matter how often you are right or wrong — what matters is how much you make when you are right, versus how much you lose when you are wrong.”
In many ways trading is remarkably different from any other profession. Imagine if doctors, lawyers, or company executives were encouraged to “make mistakes” on a regular basis. (They do make mistakes of course. They just can’t admit them, let alone be open about them.) (more…)
Proper money management is essential for successful trading.
A disciplined trader cuts his losses short and outperforms a loser who keeps hanging on and hoping.
As soon as you buy, place a stop-loss order.
Greed and fear destroy traders by clouding their minds. The only way to succeed in trading is to use your intellect.
The goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary. If this surprises you, think how good professionals in any field operate. Good teachers, doctors, lawyers, farmers and others make money – but they do not count it while they work. If they do, the quality of their work suffers.
Serious traders place stops the moment they enter a trade.
We all like to hope that a trade will succeed – and a stop is a piece of reality that prevents traders from hanging on to empty hope.
Learning to place stops is like learning to drive defensively.
A stop is not a perfect tool but it is the best defensive tool we have.
100% return in 4 weeks ! (Guaranteed)
Trick 1) ; Client has to show that he has at least 1 M $USD (with due diligence done on the source of the funds)
Trick 2) ; Client’s funds are never removed from his bank (they show you their contracts, urgent you to show your lawyers, and bankers).
Trick 3) ; Bank issues a confirmation that client has the 1 M $ (clean money)
Trick 4) ; The salesmen then pretends that traders in London will borrow money based on that “confirmation document” and invested in the Forex market ; he then pretends that my client will collect 100% in 4 weeks.
Salesmen usually look above 40, well dressed.
Where is the trick ? Psychological ……….
1) Safety ; they repeat over and over that your money stays with you
2) They call you everday (after market close), and tell you what they traded 🙂
3) After 4 weeks of daily calls, you are so pumped up that you want your 100%
NOW.
4) Before paying you, they ask you to pay the traders, and the salesmen
commissions.
5) You pay 5% ……. then ? Nothing comes …….
Pure psychology ……
Pass this info around
PS : your friends will be in denial at first ; telling you that your are jealous ….
Estimates are that 75-95% of all traders lose all their trading capital in the first year, and only about 5-10% of those that get into trading are able to stay profitable on a consistent basis after 5 years. This is not encouraging. However, since the majority of people tend to be overconfident, most believe that they are not going to be among the casualties.
What is behind this overconfidence?
Some of the most highly educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers who are used to being first in their class–the best of breed in whatever they do– fail miserably as traders and investors. The reason is that the process of trading and investing is completely different from activities and ways of thinking that bring success outside of the markets. Trading is a counterintuitive to what we are taught growing up. As we grow and develop, we acquire levels of control. We learn to control our bodies, movements, environments, who we chose as friends, lovers and mates, our educational goals, where and how we live. We get cozy and comfortable in our little worlds where we make the rules, and live out our lives in accord with them. Yes, there is a lot going on in the world, but it really doesn’t mean all that much unless it affects us directly. When external challenges face us in our personal lives, we take control, problem solve, and get done what needs to be done.
In the markets things are quite different. There is no way to control the market forces. Markets are larger than life, yet they are life. Millions of people from every part of the world are there making decisions that affect you in either a positive or a negative fashion. Millions of nameless and faceless people are trying to take your money before you take theirs. There is no situation in the life of most people that compares with this. That is why successful trading and investing requires one to adopt an entirely new brain-set.
The majority of people are simply not neurologically flexible enough adapt to this new environment. They insist on adapting the markets to their own worldview, and they fail—sometimes miserably so.
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Small losses almost always become larger and larger losses, leading to every manner of emotional distress as you are holding and hoping, or in complete denial that the position could possibly turn against you. Holding and hoping leads to larger losses and more emotional carnage until you are a financial and neuropsychiatric basket case and you just want out at any cost. Desperation, anxiety or depression set in and remind you of every time in your life you were told that you were not good enough, that you would never amount to anything or that you didn’t deserve to win or be successful. You are now in a state where both financial and psychological capital are depleted–all because you didn’t take a small loss.
How do you preserve your financial and psychological capital? You learn to embrace risk by using rigorous risk management techniques. The most important of these are position sizing, stops and money management. You take small losses. You take small losses! You let winning positions run and take profits and trail stops as they are running. Please memorize this until it is burned into the connections in your brain: The single biggest reason for failure as a trader or investor is the inability to take small losses and letting them grow into larger losses.