Archives of “mindset” tag

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Dealing With Losses

  
  Education
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A few quick caveats:

  1. There is no place for denial in successful investing.
  2. Don’t blame your losses on bad luck or outside manipulators.  Accept the responsibility yourself.
  3. Don’t be dependent upon trading for all your fulfillment and happiness.
  4. Focus on opportunities, not on regrets.
  5. Proper risk control and discipline is non-negotiable for every trade everyday.
  6. Revenge trading – trying to make back a loss – carries with it far too much emotion and is always costly.
  7. Poor money management skills are the number one reason that novice traders wash out.
  8. Learn to recognize your impulsive state of mind and take action to stop it.

Even the best traders in the world book small losses on a regular basis.  If you manage your emotions with consistency and if you strive for a disciplined trading mindset, then you should have no problem surviving a string of bad trades and showing profits at the end of the year.

Trading in the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes- Book Review

  
Analysis, Education
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Some books are too clever by half. Anthony Trongone’s Trading in the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes: Balancing Probabilities for Successful Investing (W & A Publishing/Traders Press, 2010) is one of them. The idea—to encourage traders to adopt an analytical mindset and achieve emotional discipline by relying heavily on quotations from Sherlock Holmes novels and stories—sounded promising, even fun. And fun is a rare commodity in trading books. Although the book started off well, as it progressed Holmes became a less and less useful coach and analogies from detecting to trading became increasingly strained. It’s hard, for instance, to invoke Holmes in a discussion of order types.

But why waste a post emphasizing the negative when there are so many passages that will undoubtedly delight traders who are fans of Sherlock Holmes? Herewith a very limited sampling. (more…)

Time – Space – Reality – Oneness – Markets

  
  Education
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What do the above all have in common? That’s right, “nonlinear” concepts!

It is interesting that one of the great minds of humanity, Albert Einstein spent his time on “nonlinear” concepts such as “time, space, reality, and oneness.” I find it more interesting that the interdependence of these “nonlinear” concepts is what makes a market tick as well.

As a trader, “timing” your trade within the “market” is based on “reality” in relation to the “oneness” of other traders and your outcome is determined by the “space” or movement of your position.

It is my opinion based on consulting with many traders that most traders incorrectly view the markets from purely a “linear” mindset and instead should view the markets from a “nonlinear” mindset as the markets are “nonlinear” themselves.  This is why rigid logical thinkers or “linear intellectuals” find trading the markets so frustrating.  Since they operate from their logical “linear” “beta” mind state, and become frustrated when market behavior does not do what it “should.” This is also why I feel that successful trading has to be both “art” & “science.”

Think about how you approach the markets and to what degree you are a “linear” vs. a “nonlinear” mindset. Also try and remember a trade or trading day where it seemed effortless and you just “let-go” and flowed with the market. In days like these, I’ll bet logical thinking was secondary to enjoying yourself, and selecting trades based on both your trading “tools” and your “intuition” which represents trading the markets as an “art” & “science.” Compare that to days when you where frustrated because the market did not do what it was suppose to based solely on logical assumptions.

Usually fear and greed are by products of logical thinking. Fear and greed are emotions and “nonlinear” in concept, but created by “linear” thinking. Isn’t it interesting that fear and greed are present in the markets and are “nonlinear” as well. Or is it because fear and greed are “nonlinear” and that they are present in the markets?

Maybe the key to a good trading system should be based on how to measure or determine “nonlinear” market events such as fear and greed. The purpose of this article is to have you look at the markets from a “nonlinear” point of view so that you can perhaps “see” market relationships that where invisible to you before.

Traders needs High level of Catecholamines, acetylcholine, and vasopressin

  
  Education
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Catecholamines, acetylcholine, and vasopressin, are three [among many] of the beneficial hormones and other helpful neuropeptides that are produced in specific brain frequencies. Studies have shown that acetylcholine is vital for long term memory. They have also found that when acetylcholine production [in the brain] is high, we experience boosts in our long-term memory. Individuals who have lower levels of acetylcholine usually struggle with tasks involving learning and memory. At the end of your day listening to Traders Mindset produces the neuropeptide vasopressin – a neuropeptide which improves reaction time, ability to learn, and ability to remember. 
It is not only our production of neuropeptides that allows us to learn more effectively we experience decreased blood pressure, heart rate, and our entire body feels relaxed. This boosts the overall oxygen level in our brains and maximizes blood flow to our cortex. This naturally boosts our attention span and level of alertness. Boosted attention and alertness makes it much easier to memorize and learn new things.

20 BOOKS EVERY TRADER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT.

  
  Education
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As with every list, there will be disagreements.  ”Why is that book on the list?”  ”Whyisn’t that book on the list?”  I picked 20 books that stood out for me as a trader, that were a #valueadd (or a #valueloss) for one reason or another.  That doesn’t even have to mean that they are about trading.  For example, the “General Interest” section is made up of books that I think appeal to a trader’s mindset.

With that in mind, feel free to add your picks to the “comments” section, along with a sentence or two as to why you liked (or hated) them.

By the way, I was too lazy to link all the books, but you can find them all at Amazon.

Old School:  

The Market Wizards Series – Jack Schwager:  Chances are you will find these books on the shelf of any serious trader.  They are without a doubt the most comprehensive collection of interviews with superstar traders ever published.  However, their dirty little secret is that although they capture perfectly a moment in time, they are extremely dated and will give you almost no insight into today’s markets or how to trade them. Their value now is in showing how even the greatest traders initially struggled and often blew up (repeatedly) before becoming successful.

Stan Weinstein’s Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets – Stan Weinstein: This book was the first to quantify one of the most important concepts in trading; the four stages in which stocks move, which are the basing, advancing, topping, and declining stages.  Despite the fact that the cover of this book has not been updated since it was published in 1988, stage analysis is still relevant today.

How to Make Money In Stocks – O’Neil:  As an unnamed trader friend of mine recently said, all you need to do is review the charts in the first 150 pages of this book and you will be good to go.    These charts along with O’Neil’s annotations, give you a great foundation to understand the patterns stocks form before they go on massive runs. (more…)

7 Points for Traders

  
  Education
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  1. 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.7numbers
  2. 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. 
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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. 

10,000 hours

  
  Education
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1000hrsIn his recent book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell describes the 10,000-Hour Rule, claiming that the key to success in any cognitively complex field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours equates to around 4hrs a day for 10 years. For some reason most people that ‘try their hand’ at trading view it as a get rich quick scheme. That in a very short space of time, they will be able to turn $500 into $1 million! It is precisely this mindset that has resulted in the current economic mess, a bunch of 20-somethings being handed the red phone for financial weapons of mass destruction. The greatest traders understand that trading much like being a doctor, engineer or any other focused and technical endeavor requires time to develop and hone the skill set. Now you wouldn’t see a doctor performing open heart surgery after 3 months on a surgery simulator. Why would trading as a technical undertaking require less time?

Trading success, comes from screen time and experience, you have to put the hours in.

Lessons Learned

  
  Education
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Lessons learned from the past few years… Taking smart risks means cutting back when necessary and getting back in the game when the opportunity arises. To borrow an example from sports psychology, the fear of re-injury is a feeling experienced by athletes long after they have been hurt and are on the road to recovery. The same holds true for investors who saw their holdings collapse in 2008.

 

True top performers train themselves to rely on their short-term memories, avoiding a mindset of fear that leads to missed opportunities to grow and prosper. The average person can learn from the example of elite investors and traders — never take winning or losing personally – especially when it comes to money. View each situation on its own merits. If there is a great opportunity for success, then take the risk. If not, then don’t. The formula sounds simple enough, but emotions continually cloud our better judgment.

Psychological Mindset!

  
  Education
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mindset1

Approach the market like a robot. Emotionless and effective!”

 Understand your maximum loss
 Understand it’s OK to take a loss

 Don’t become emotionally attached to your trades
 Take adequate position sizes
 Be in total control

Your psychological mindset is one of the most important ingredients to your success in the market.
Be disciplined and you will put yourself ahead of the majority of other traders/investors.

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