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Good Luck-Advice for Traders

  
  Education
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Always seek out differing opinions and challenge your beliefs. Except when you know you’re right, then that other bullshit just becomes a distraction. Good luck with that.

It is very important to be flexible and open-minded. But invest with set rules and an iron discipline. Good luck with that.

Technical analysis and charts only tell you about what has already happened in the past. It’s much better to use the information from the future that we have when making decisions.  Good luck with that.

Never run with the herd. It’s much better to be all alone on open ground, running in the wrong direction and wholly conspicuous to predators. Good luck with that. (more…)

Paul Counsel-Trading Wisdom

  
  Education
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Successful trading has absolutely nothing to do with making money and everything to do with trading successfully. Making money will only ever be a by-product of successful trading. Successful trading is not a by-product of making money. When you attach trading to money and money to emotions and emotions to money you’ll have taken your first loss but you won’t know it yet.

Trading has everything to do with personal psychology, rules, systems, discipline, focus and skill. Like anything else that’s skill based, once you start it takes time and practice to become skilful.Ultimately trading is about making decisions between two choices, to buy or sell. As simple as these two choices are the variables that effect the decisions surrounding them can be as complex as the human mind can make them.

As a trader your central focus should be on your system. You should know your system inside out, its strengths and weaknesses. Your system should be comprised of a set of rules that ultimately guide you in making either of two decisions, to buy or sell. You should be able to read your system with respect to market conditions and base your trading choices on what your system is telling you.

As a trader you must understand that you’re the weakest link in the system because the complexity will reside with you. Good systems are simple. They are nothing more than a series of instructions called trading rules. The primary thought that should be central in your mind is that it’s the system that makes the money, not you. The more skilled you become at reading market conditions and marrying these conditions to your system the better a trader you’ll be.

Wealth creation is an uncertain activity for most people and, to do something without certainty of outcome, takes courage. It takes courage to do what the majority is not doing. It takes courage to overcome scepticism and cynicism. It takes courage to deal with fear and overcome fear barriers.

Common Trading Mistakes

  
  Education
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In trading, as in life in general, we all know that experience is the best teacher. However, failures in stock market trading bear more weight since you stand to lose thousands of dollars (or more) with each mistake that you make. So as to help you recognize red flags and prevent you from losing money further, here is a list of some common mistakes you might want to avoid.

# 1: Lack of proper knowledge
Many people who come into stock trading with the notion that they can simply learn the ropes along the way may be fatally mistaken. This is because this kind of activity requires some degree of stock market know-how, as well as experience. First, you have to learn how to trade stocks, because this is the only that you can be familiar with terms, such as “stocks,” “shares,” “dividends,” “trends,” and so on. Without proper education, you might make decisions that could prove to be costly in the future. If you want to engage in trading, the first rule is for you to learn about the basics-read a book, enroll in a course, attend lectures by experts-anything that can help you understand what this is all about.

# 2: Acting on Impulse
In learning stock trading, you will realize that many emotions may come into play as you go through each and every transaction-impatience, greed, fear, and over confidence are some of these emotions. One of the most common mistakes people commit while trading is making decisions based on impulse. While it is true that you can feel a wide range of emotions as you evaluate the data in front of you, do remember that a cool, logical reasoning must prevail. Do whatever you can to always make decisions on a clear head.

# 3: Not having enough practice
As you engage in trading, the saying that “practice makes perfect” could not be truer. Again, if you want to learn how to trade stocks and are serious about engaging in trading, then you should also enhance your skills apart from just learning the basics. However, you could not afford the trial and error method using real money, because this is impractical and a waste of time. Fortunately, there are now some sophisticated tools that can help you practice through simulated trading and practice accounts. For a fee, companies can help you set up a practice account, through which you can execute “simulated trading.” What this does is it helps you learn how to trade stocks by honing your skills without the risk of losing actual money.

# 4: Having unrealistic expectations
Finally, another common mistake in trading is having unrealistic expectations. Sure, we may have all heard of those who got rich quick because of the stock market, but you cannot expect to earn millions without being able to make sound decisions based on fact. In the process of learning stock trading, you must be able to set a clear set of objectives, and not unrealistic expectations that could lead you to make rash (and costly) decisions.

In the future, try to avoid committing similar mistakes so that you can truly benefit from the time and effort you are trading in the stock market.

HOW TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS

  
Education, Video
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When you have the time make a decision to watch the following program on making better decisions.  You may find that you made the right decision to do so.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:According to science: We are bad at making decisions. Our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice. And that’s assuming that we haven’t already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!
Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil!

Preserving Psychological Capital

  
  Education
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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.

Concept of Risk

  
  Education
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concept of riskSuccessful trading has absolutely nothing to do with making money and everything to do with trading successfully. Making money will only ever be a by-product of successful trading. Successful trading is not a by-product of making money. When you attach trading to money and money to emotions and emotions to money you’ll have taken your first loss but you won’t know it yet.

Trading has everything to do with personal psychology, rules, systems, discipline, focus and skill. Like anything else that’s skill based, once you start it takes time and practice to become skilful. Ultimately trading is about making decisions between two choices, to buy or sell. As simple as these two choices are the variables that effect the decisions surrounding them can be as complex as the human mind can make them.

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