The majority of unskilled investors stubbornly hold onto their losses when the losses are small and reasonable. They could get out cheaply, but being emotionally involved and human, they keep waiting and hoping until their loss gets much bigger and costs them dearly.”
William O’Neil
The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading… I know this will sound like a cliche, but the single most important reason that people lose money in the financial markets is that they don’t cut their losses short.”
Victor Sperandeo
Some people say, “I can’t sell that stock because I’d be taking a loss.” If the stock is below the price you paid for it, selling doesn’t give you a loss; you already have it.
William O’Neil
When I became a winner I went from ‘I figured it out, therefore it can’t be wrong’ to ‘I figured it out, but if I’m wrong, I’m getting the hell out, because I want to save my money and go on to the next trade.’”
Marty Schwartz
Archives of “losses” tag
rssWhy Trend Followers Mint Money ?
The reason trend traders make money in the long term is because due to supply and demand and the flow of capital equities, currencies, commodities, and future contracts tend to trend in one direction or the other in different time frames, trend traders and trend followers are there to capitalize on those trends by letting the market action determine their buy and sell decisions seeking to be on the right side of the market’s trend the majority of the time.
Here is why it works:
- Bear markets have no supports, they keep falling until a new support level is found.
- Bull markets have no resistance, they keep keep going up until a new resistance level is found.
- The world’s capital is always flowing and seeking to find returns; this flow causes trends to emerge.
- Monster stocks can double due to earnings growth expectations.
- Currencies can plunge based on fear of a nations solvency.
- Commodities can run to absurd levels based on supply expectations.
- Fear can bring markets down far below what any one thinks is rational.
- Greed can inflate markets up far above any reasonable valuations.
- Trend traders are not predicting price action they are simply following it. They let reality guide them not opinions.
- Markets tend to trend and systems that are able to capture trends and minimize losses in choppy environments are robust in the long term.
Ed Seykota’s 6 Rules from the Whipsaw Song
1. Do not be overly concerned about whipsaws a good trend pays for them all.
A whipsaw is when you enter a position but get stopped out quickly when the market reverses opposite to your position. If you are a trend trader this may happen many times in a row in a range bound market. This can be very frustrating to a trader and it may cause them to completely change their method. The fact is that one really good trend will pay for all of these whipsaws as long as you keep your losses small, and if you change your system you lose the benefit of that big trend.
To avoid whipsaw losses, stop trading. -Ed Seykota
2. When you catch a Trend, ride it to the end.
Your system must be able to take a position in a trending market, but then also be able to ride that trend to the end. Most new traders will jump out of trades before they are finished trending because they are scared the market has gone too far and will take back their paper profits. Let a trailing stop take you out of a trade when the trend is over, and only exit once you are stopped out.
“The trend is your friend except at the end where it bends.” -Ed Seykota (more…)
Betting Rules by Phantom of the Pits
In a losing game such as trading, we shall start against the majority and assume we are wrong until proven correct! (We do not assume we are correct until proven wrong.) Positions established must be reduced and removed until or unless the market proves the position correct! (We allow the market to
verify correct positions.)
It is important to understand that we are saying the one criteria forremoving a position is because it has not been proven correct. We at no time use as criteria for removing a position the fact that the market proved the position incorrect.
There is a big difference here as to how we treat all positions from what most traders use. If the market does not prove the position correct, it is still possible the market has not proven the position wrong. If you wait until the market proves the position wrong, you are wasting time, money and effort in continuing to hope it is correct when it isn’t.
How many traders ever hoped it wouldn’t be proved wrong instead of hoping it was correct? If you are hoping it is correct, it obviously wasn’t ever proven to be correct. Remove the position early if it doesn’t prove correct.By waiting until a position is proved wrong, you are asking for more slippage as you will be in the same situation as everyone else getting the same message.
What makes this strategy more comfortable is that you must take action without exception if the market does not prove the position correct. Most traders do it the opposite by doing nothing unless they get stopped out, and then it isn’t their decision to get out at all — it is the market’s decision to get you out.
Your thinking should be: When your position is right, you have to do nothing instead of doing nothing when you are wrong!
I don’t mean to repeat and repeat but, in this case, you will better understand the rule the more you read it. It is very critical to your success in trading. Over time it has proven to be the rule which keeps the losses small and keeps a trader swift and fast to take that loss.
A person’s thinking when the market proves a trade to be bad is counter to what is productive. By using the rule properly, you are productive and don’t have to face the demoralizing effect of the market when you have a proven wrong position. This enables you to continue to trade with the proper frame of mind. You are more objective in your trading this way than letting a negative reinforce your thinking. This way you only let good trading
reinforce your thinking and actions.–Phantom of the Pits
Rule Number Two:
Press your winners correctly without exception.
Sounds pretty elementary but correctly is the key. What you hear quoted most of the time is cut your losses. Cutting you losses is only one side of the coin. Without Rule 2, you will find that trading still isn’t even a 50/50 game. Without a correct method to press your correct positions, you will never recover much beyond your losses. You need rule two to ensure you have a larger position when you are correct. You always want a larger position when you get a great move or trending market than when your position isn’t correct.
There certainly will be debate on how you know when to add to a correct position and on how a market can turn a correct position into a wrong position. We will cover those debates later. First, let us get the rules and reasons established. By knowing what is expected in Rules 1 and 2, we can prove the theorem based on good assumptions and experience.
Rule 2 does not mean just because you have a position in your favor that you must now add to that position. Correctly in Rule 2 means you must have a qualified plan of adding to your position once a trend has established itself. The proper criteria for adding positions depends on your time frame of expectations in your trade plan. (more…)
6 Effective Ways to Trading Success
1. Identify if you really want to be a trader. Is this truly your desire?
Before you can develop persistence and eventually achieve success in the tough trading game, you need to first identify if this is truly what you want to do. If you are only doing this for the money then the odds of you making it through the learning process is very slim. You have to be ‘foolish’ enough through your initial losses to believe that you can rise to the top 10% of profitable traders. Most traders learning curves are measured in years not weeks so trading is more like getting a degree than reading a book over the weekend.
2. Determine your motivation. Why do you want to be a trader?
Motivation comes from a deep reason why we want to achieve or have something. If you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, it gives you more energy to keep moving forward in learning and getting experience. If you are trading to make a quick buck, then you do not make that buck quickly you will join the quitters. If you are trading to have enough money to pay off your house in 5 years that will create the energy to drive you forward against the odds.
You can get through this first learning stage by writing down specifically all the things you want to have or accomplish through your trading. List all your desires and wants, all the rewards that will come through you not quitting the trading game. This is what will get you through if your heart is in it. You need a very big bucket of carrots waiting for you on the other side of trading success to get through the whips the market will hit you with while you are learning.
3. Outline Your Definite Action Step
Identifying your wants or desires speaks of what you want to achieve. Determining your motivation shows the reasons why you want to achieve what you want. Outlining your definite action step is necessary to know howyou will be able to achieve what you want.
When you know how to get what you want, it makes it easier to achieve it. To know how, it pays to do some research and planning of what needs to be done on your part. Be specific on each step you need to take. Identify at least two ways and plans on how you can achieve your goals.
4. Keep the right mindset, believe that you are going to be a winning trader. (more…)
Linda Bradford Raschke – 50 Time Tested Classic Stock Trading Rules
1. Plan your trades. Trade your plan.
2. Keep records of your trading results.
3. Keep a positive attitude, no matter how much you lose.
4. Don’t take the market home.
5. Continually set higher trading goals.
6. Successful traders buy into bad news and sell into good news.
7. Successful traders are not afraid to buy high and sell low.
8. Successful traders have a well-scheduled planned time for studying the markets.
9. Successful traders isolate themselves from the opinions of others.
10. Continually strive for patience, perseverance, determination, and rational action.
11. Limit your losses – use stops!
12. Never cancel a stop loss order after you have placed it!
13. Place the stop at the time you make your trade. (more…)
Win or Lose -It's Upto You
If you want to win then you must create your own trading plan and follow it, if you want to lose just trade whatever you want whenever you want based on your own opinion.
If you want to win then you must control your risk carefully with only 1% or 2% of your capital at stake in every individual trade, if you want to lose then just trade huge position sizes, put all your chips on the table.
If you want to win plan your entries and exits before you enter a trade then follow them, if you want to lose ask for everyone’s opinion and just make decisions based on other people.
If you want to win cut your losses short and let your winners run, if you want to lose hold your losers and hope that they come back and sell your winners quickly to lock in gains.
If you want to win trade only the best high quality stocks in the market, if you want to lose trade the junk and hope for a miracle come back.
If you want to win then build complete confidence for your system through chart studies and back testing, if you want to lose trade with no idea of if what you are doing even works.
If you want to win go with the current trend of the market, if you want to lose fight the trend and trade against it.
If you want to win then go long the hottest stocks in a bull market, if you want to lose short the hottest stocks in a bull market.
Do what makes money not what you feel like doing.
5 Rogue Traders -They had Broke Banks
So, who are the rogue traders that have experienced all of this? Here’s a small sample (the ones we know of!). They are not in chronological order but in order of how much money they actually lost their banks (from the lowest to the highest):
1. John Rusnak
The guy that brought down the Allfirst Bank and incurred losses of $69.2 million.
He was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison on January 17th 2003 for hiding the losses that he incurred as a currency trader. He hid the losses for a year. He is now under confinement at his home (since January 2009, meaning that he served almost six years for his rogue trading).
He was ordered to pay back $1, 000 per month after his release from prison and despite the fact that he remains in debt to the full sum of $691.2 million he will probably never be able to pay it back. How did it all happen?
- Allfirst Bank wished to make its forex operations go from just hedging to bringing in a yield of profits and thus increase the total profits of the bank.
- John Rusnak was hired to do this.
- Rusnak was bullish on the Yen. He believed that the Yen would not fall any more after the bursting of the Japanese bubble. He believed that the Yen would rise against the Dollar.
- He neglected to hedge his forward contracts believing that the Yen could not fail to rise.
- With the onset of the Asian crisis, the Yen fell.
- He thus entered false options into the systems to make it seem as if the positions were hedged. He also asked for more money from high brokerage accounts in order to try to win back the money that he had already lost.
- The management granted this to him and he invested even more money.
- Rusnak made a personal gain of $550, 000 in bonuses plus his salary.
- The losses only came to light when the bank asked for capital to be released and they realized that Rusnak had been working in the red all the time.
- Rusnak was fired from his position and along with him he brought down 6 senior executives for failing to detect the scam.
One thing is for sure: Rusnak has kept his nose clean since getting out of prison and has managed to fall into relative anonymity. Nobody knows what he’s doing today for work. (more…)
9 Trading Rules
1. Move: Always be flexible. The beauty of the stock market
is polygamy is perfectly acceptable. Never get married to a particular position or a particular strategy. The market is complex, dynamic and always changing. Learn to change with it if necessary.
2. Plan de Vida: Always invest with a plan. Have strict rules and a machine-like approach.
3. Downshift: Pulling yourself out of the game when you’re not certain will help you from making debilitating mistakes. When in doubt get out.
4. 80% Rule: Never let more than 20% of your portfolio put 80% of your portfolio at risk. Position sizing is key to risk management.
5. Hope is a 4 letter word: Holding and hoping is not a strategy. Cut your losses, learn from it and never look back. Never ever get into something you can’t get out of.
6. Understand your risks: You can’t avoid black swans, but they don’t have to rip your face off. Understand your risks and your rewards.
7. Goals and accountability: Set goals and keep track of your performance. You are responsible for your own decisions. Own your mistakes.
8. Psychology: Learn to control your emotions and understand the emotions of those around you. Always remember what General Patton said: “if everyone is thinking the same then someone isn’t thinking”. Also the famous Buffett quote: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”
9. Your Tribe: Always remember that there is more to life than investing. Don’t live to invest. Invest to live. Being the richest man/woman in the graveyard is worthless if there isn’t anyone to bury you there