- Being wrong is acceptable, but staying wrong is totally unacceptable. Being wrong isn’t a choice, but staying wrong is.
- Understand that you will always make mistakes. The only way to prevent mistakes from turning into disasters is to accept losses while they are small and then move on
- Concentrate on mastering one style that suits your personality. Most people just cannot weather the learning curve. As soon as it gets difficult, and their approach isn’t working up to their expectations, they begin to look for something else. As a result, they become slightly efficient in many areas without ever becoming very good in any single methodology.
Archives of “methodology” tag
rss25 rules of trading discipline
- The market pays you to be disciplined.
- Be disciplined every day, in every trade, and the market will reward you. But don’t claim to be disciplined if you are not 100 percent of the time.
- Always lower your trade size when you’re trading poorly.
- Never turn a winner into a loser.
- Your biggest loser cant exceed your biggest winner.
- Develop a methodology and stick with it. dont change methodologies from day to day.
- Be yourself. Dont try to be someone else.
- You always want to be able to come back and play the next day. Once you reach the daily downside limit, you must turn your PC off and call it a day. You can always come back tomorrow.
- Earn the right to trade bigger. Remember: if you are trading poorly with two lots you must lower your trade size down to a one lot.
- Get out of your losers.
- The first loss is the best loss.
- Dont hope and pray. If you do, you will lose. (more…)
Stock Market Rules :There are only two !
The stock market has only two rules, both of which are vague and confusing. It is up to you to make them clear and simple to understand.
Here are the guidelines:
You must write these rules down so that you will not forget them.
You must always follow these rules.
These rules will never change.
You must keep them forever.
These rules are never to be broken.
You must never add to these rules.
Here are the rules: (more…)
When does trading become gambling?
There is a very thin line. I maintain that most traders ARE gamblers. They use markets as a substitute for a casino. Here are some of the sign posts that you have crossed the line.
1. IF you enter trades without a clear trading plan, you just might be a gambler.
2. IF you trade just to be trading, you just might be a gambler.
3. IF your bored and enter a trade, you just might be a gambler.
4. IF you look at potential profit before assessing potential loses, you just might be a gambler.
5. IF you have no impulse control, you just might be a gambler.
6. IF you have no methodology, you just might be a gambler.
7. IF you rely on others for your trading decisions, you just might be a gambler.
8. IF you do not take full responsibility for your trading outcomes, you just might be a gambler.
9. IF you increase your risk due to losses, you just might be a gambler.
10. IF you do not use stop losses or do not adhere to them, you just might be a gambler.
And my all time favorite
11. IF you get an adrenaline rush when your entering trades, you just might be a gambler.
Finicky Traders are Good Traders
In trading focus is crucial. You have to know who you are as a trader and exactly what your method and trading plan is, and you must follow it. In trading discipline makes money, focus makes money, monster stocks make money, while risk management allows you to keep the money that you have made. You could say you must be finicky to be a good trader.
Here are the areas to be finicky about:
- A good trader is picky about the methodology they decide to trade, they study diligently to see what works before they begin trading.
- Be very picky about the stocks you trade, only trade the very best monster stocks long and only short the absolute biggest junk stocks.
- Being picky about your entry point is crucial, stick with your plan, buy only when the odds are in your favor for winning.
- You can not just trade any amount of stock, you have to be picky about the quantity of shares you trade and base it on your risk management guidelines.
- Be very picky about who you follow on twitter, look for a teacher not a stock picker, beware of big egos. (more…)
Trading with No Regrets
Trading is really not as much of a numbers game as it is a mind game. Winning or losing in the long term will come down to whether you quit or keep going on your trading journey. Trading is not for everyone, there is no easy money in the markets. You will fight for your dollars, you will make money by doing the uncomfortable you will lose money when you think you are in a trade that just can’t lose. The emotional and mental pain will be unbearable if you do not believe in yourself and your method. If you are trading with no plan, no rules, and no system or method you will tend to be very hard on yourself for every losing trade. It was your decision that made you lose money, you will beat yourself up, and feel stupid. You will have 100% accountability for your mistake.This will not work.
What you must do is transition the accountability from yourself to your system or method. You must trade a proven methodology that will win based on the market action not your personal actions. You can not control odd out of left field events. You can not help it if you trade a trend or a pattern and suddenly it loses. All you can do is take trades with great probabilities that match your beliefs about the market and if they are losers then you can’t blame yourself you can only cut your losses and look for the next trade that meets your parameters.
When you can shrug off a loss with no emotional or mental pain and move on to the next one you are at the next level. All you can control is your entry parameters, risk management, position size, exit, and mind set, the market determines whether you win or lose, not you. You must have self confidence and faith in a proven method, take your trades let the market separate the winners from the losers.
Why Trading is Difficult
1. Need to internalize lots of trading simulation of specific set-ups in real-time to trade effortlessly
2. Need to trust money management system to weather +10 losses in a row
3. Tuff to internalize that its the 5-6 huge monthly runners that is the big pay-off days
4. Must master +3 trade set-ups to make money consistently month to month.
5. It takes considerable time to mathematically think and act like a trader
6. Trading is a performance skill which requires mastery of every element of trading
7. It requires time capital and considerable effort to achieve the experience to make it effortless and automatic
8. It takes several attempts at different trading methodology to sync with a trader’s personality and cognitive strengths
9. It takes time to set and internalize specific rules that embed a sense of mastery
10. To survive in trading requires weathering the lengthy learning curve
Expect To Be Wrong
The reason I bring this up was to share with you two reactions I got when describing these recent trades and cash holdings. I had two separate conversations in July — one with a well known Trader, the other with a Fund Manager (known in the industry, but not a household name) — about our posture prior to yesterday’s drop.
The two responses were polar opposites, 180 degree apart.
The trader respected the discipline of honoring stop losses. Good traders know that opportunistic speculation is a process. Ignore any one single outcome, focus on the methodology that can consistently avoid catastrophic losses, manage risk, preserve capital. A good process can be replicated, a random spin of the wheel cannot.
The fund manager, who was having a decent year being long high vol names (at least before Wednesday), was having none of it. “Stops are for losers” is a quote I shall long remember (and email him after he blows up). Apparently, real men have the courage of their convictions.
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Rather than fight our foibles, people should admit this error stream is real, and repair the errors of our ways as soon as we discover them. I have noticed over the years the difficulty some people have in cutting losses, admitting an error, and moving on. Way back in 2005, I wrote a piece advising investors that they should Expect to Be Wrong (originally published 04/05/05). I noted that “I am rather frequently — and on occasion, quite spectacularly — wrong.” However, if we expect to be wrong, then there will be no ego tied up in admitting the error, honoring the stop loss, and selling out the loser — and preserving the capital.
This is a recipe for investing disaster. We humans make 6 billion errors per day, at the very least. The biggest one is not acknowledging this simple truism.
The reason I bring this up was to share with you two reactions I got when describing these recent trades and cash holdings. I had two separate conversations in July — one with a well known Trader, the other with a Fund Manager (known in the industry, but not a household name) — about our posture prior to yesterday’s drop.7 More Trading Lessons for Traders
- You don’t choose the stock market; it chooses you. A little bit of early trading success can have a profound effect on a person’s soul. If it does choose you, you’ll have to accept that your life and investing will become forever connected.
- Your methodology must provide an unshakeable foundation that you believe in totally, and you must have the conviction to trade based upon it. If your belief is tentative or if you don’t have complete faith in your methodology, then a few bad trades will destabilize and erode your confidence.
- A calm mindset that can focus on the execution and not on the outcome is what produces profits. It takes total emotional control. You must maintain your balance, rhythm and patience. You need all three to stay in the game.
- The markets are always conniving with ingenious techniques to get you to lose your patience, to get you frustrated or mad, to bait you to do the wrong thing when you know you shouldn’t. A champion doesn’t allow the markets to get under his skin and take him out of his game.
- Like a great painting, all good trades start with a blank canvas. Winning traders first paint the trade in their mind’s eye so that their emotional selves can reproduce it accurately with clarity and consistency, void of emotions as they play it out in the markets.
- The “here and now” is all that matters. You can’t think about the last trade or the last shot or worry about the future. You need to put on your “amnesia hat” in order to remain completely unfazed by what came before. Only by doing so can you be totally absorbed in executing your present trade.
- Being prepared and having put in the work results in the bringing together of your intuition and confidence. The two go hand in hand. Extraordinary results can be expected when you are able to see it, feel it and trust it.
10 trading commandments
1.) Respect the price action but never defer to it.
Our eyes are valuable tools when trading, but if we deferred to the flickering ticks, stocks would be “better” up and “worse” down. That’s backward logic.
2.) Discipline trumps conviction.
No matter how strongly you feel on a given position, you must defer to the principles of discipline when trading. Always try to define your risk and never believe you’re smarter than the market.
3.) Opportunities are made up easier than losses.
It’s not necessary to play every day; it’s only necessary to have a high winning percentage on the trades you choose to make. Sometimes the ability not to trade is as important as trading ability.
4.) Emotion is the enemy when trading.
Emotional decisions have a way of coming back to haunt you. If you’re personally attached to a position, your decision-making process will be flawed. Take a deep breath before risking your hard-earned coin. See related link.
5.) Zig when others zag.
Sell hope, buy despair and take the other side of emotional disconnects. If you can’t find the sheep in the herd, chances are you’re it. (more…)