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Marty Schwartz Quotes

Marty has scored enormous percentage gains in every year since he turned full time trader in 1979, but he has done so without ever losing more than 3 percent of his equity on a month-end to month-end basis. In the US Investing Championships held by Stanford University Professor Norm Zadeh, his performance was nothing short of astounding. In nine of the ten four-month championships he entered, he made more money than all the other traders combined. His average return in these nine contests was 210 percent – non annualized! In his single entry in a one-year contest, he scored a 781 percent return.  

“I turned from a loser to a winner when I was able to separate my ego needs from making money. When I was able to accept being wrong. Before that, admitting I was wrong was more upsetting than losing the money.” 
”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.”
”By living the philosophy that my winners are always in front of me, it is not so painful to take a loss. If I make a mistake, so what! “
”Before taking a position always know the amount you are willing to lose.”
”The most important thing is money management, money management, money management. Anybody who is successful will tell you the same thing.”
”I always take my losses quickly. That is probably the key to my success.”
”The best advice I can give to the ordinary guy trying to become a better trader is Learn to take losses. The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand.

RISK MANAGEMENT

1.Never enter a trade before you know where you will exit if proven wrong.
2.    First find the right stop loss level that will show you that you’re wrong about a trade then set your positions size based on that price level.
3.    Focus like a laser on how much capital can be lost on any trade first before you enter not on how much profit you could make.
4.    Structure your trades through position sizing and stop losses so you never lose more than 1% of your trading capital on one losing trade.
5.    Never expose your trading account to more than 5% total risk at any one time.
6.    Understand the nature of volatility and adjust your position size for the increased risk with volatility spikes.
7.    Never, ever, ever, add to a losing trade. Eventually that will destroy your trading account when you eventually fight the wrong trend.
8.    All your trades should end in one of four ways: a small win, a big win, a small loss, or break even, but never a big loss. If you can get rid of big losses you have a great chance of eventually trading success.
9.    Be incredibly stubborn in your risk management rules don’t give up an inch. Defense wins championships in sports and profits in trading.
10.    Most of the time trailing stops are more profitable than profit targets. We need the big wins to pay for the losing trades. Trends tend to go farther than anyone anticipates.

7 Trading Rules for Flash Traders

1. Keep adding to losing positions. 
What the heck, price bound to turn soon. Martingale method sounds great. Consider adding on double to loosing trades. When price turns I’ll laughing all the way to the bank even I have to close my initial entries at loss.

2. Don’t use any stop-loss
Why bother with stop-loss. It’s for pussies anyways

3. Don’t waste time with money management
Thank you very much but I already know how to manage my own money. Why bother with money management nonsense.

I can use my time doing more trading and making money instead delving into all that mumbo-jumbo technical jargon.

4. Keep trading
I cannot afford to loose any opportunities. I need to be always in markets, day in day out. After all life is to short to waste golden opportunities. I cannot afford them passing by me.

5. I trust my great indicators
Why bother to learn to read charts and all that price action garbage while my sweet indicators are doing it for me. Leave the hard work to those suckers.

6. Buy the bottoms and sell the tops
I cannot understand why those people wasting their time trying to read charts. When price moves up significantly I sell, when price moves down I buy. Simple, buy low sell high as the saying goes.

7. Always check media and internet for good tips.
Let those suckers do the hard work again and I just use their work. After all all those experienced people in media cannot be far of from the truth as they have the insight knowledge.

Good Money Management Is The Key

You can give anyone the best tools in the world and if they don’t use them with good money management, they will not make money in the markets….
We’re convinced that a person could make a profit simply by buying and selling the markets according to the dart board if they followed all the right things as far as money management is concerned.

Traders and investors spend all their time in search of the ultimate trading method. They have no clue that the road to stock market riches ultimately lies in sound money management.

10 Rules for Traders

1. You Must Have a Game Plan
2. You Should Follow the Game Plan
3. Always Trade With a Stop Loss
4. Diversify Your Trades
5. Trade the Big Moves While Filtering Out the Small
6. Trade With the Overall Trend
7. Do Not Listen to the News; Only the Market
8. Don’t Listen to Your Broker.
9. Have Money Management Rules
10. Most Important: Have the Discipline to Follow the Rules

Lessons from Paul Tudor Jones

-Never play macho man with the market. Never over-trade relative to the equity in your account
-his first mentor has “steel hard emotional control”
-always liquidate half his position below new highs or lows
-after having 60-70% draw-down, he was so depressed he nearly quit. “Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?”
-he then first decided to learn discipline and money management. Become disciplined and business-like about trading
-“Now I spend my day trying to make myself as happy and relaxed as I can be. If I have positions going against me, I get right out; if they are going for me, I keep them”
-Be quicker and more defensive. Always think about losing money as opposed to making money. He always has a mental stop. If it hits that number, he is out no matter what
-“Risk control is the most important thing in trading” Stop out at near 10% monthly draw-down. He never wants to lose 10% in a month

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Trading Plan for Traders

The Components of a trading plan:
1. Entering a trade: You must know clearly at what price you plan to enter your trade. Will it be a break through resistance, a bounce off support, or a specific price, or based on indicators? You need to be specific.
2. Exiting a trade: At what level will you know you are wrong? Loss of support, a price level, a trailing stop, or a stop loss? Know where you are getting out before you get in.
3. Stop placement: You must either have a mental stop, a stop loss entered, or a time stop alone, or a time stop with an indicator.
4. Position sizing: You determine how much you are willing to risk on any one trade before you decide how many shares to trade. How much you can risk will determine how much you can buy based on the equities price and volatility.
5. Money management parameters : Never risk more than 1% of your total capital on any one trade. (2% maximum for aggressive traders who can handle bigger draw downs.)
6. What to trade: Trade things you are comfortable with. Swing trading range bound stocks, trend trading growth stocks, or trend following commodities or currencies. Trade what you know.
7. Trading time frames: Choose your time frame, are you a day trader, position trader, swing trader, or long term trend follower? If you are a long term trend follower do not get shaken out of a position in the first day by taking profits or getting scared out, know your holding period and adjust your plan accordingly.
8. Back testing: Do not trade any method until you review charts over a few years to see how you would have done, or for the really savvy run software back testing on historical data for your system for as much as can be quantified. There are also precooked systems like CAN SLIM, The Turtles Trading System, and many Trend Following Systems that can be found online or purchased. You need to enter your trading knowing you have an edge.
9. Performance review: Keep a detailed record of your wins and losses with profits and losses. You need to be sure that your method is working in real trading, review this after each 20 trades. Also if you had any issues with discipline then learn from your mistakes or make needed adjustments to improve your system.
10. Risk vs. Reward: Enter high probability trades where you are risking $1 to make $3, or trade a system that wins big in the long term through trend following.

Greed & Fear

Emotions, emotions and emotions, trading will always full of them, movement of the market based on them. Our rush to buy or sell sometimes overflow our plans. The common  traders question was “Why did I do this or do that?”

What is driving us to get into the market when we are not prepared and exit on completely different prices, which completely disagree with our plans? Two major factors, Greed and Fear.

Greed come when market goes as we expected then we want more! We believe it will continue for very long time. We forgot that everything changes. For successful trading you need a good strategy and discipline to execute that strategy. No matter how good it is, trading is completely useless without proper execution of the strategy.

We Fear when we afraid to miss the profitable move or to loose the money. And until fear and greed will dominate us, our results will be very unstable. And worse if our money management is not the strongest point, this is the weakest point for emotional traders, will soon will be out of money, before we even had a chance to establish ourself as a trader.

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