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Overconfidence

  
  Education
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The perfectionist may never be really convinced that a certain market setup is right to enter into a position and the overconfident trader may neglect certain signals that the setup is not worth trading on.

A trader may become overconfident after a few successful trades. It’s very hard to fight the ‘I am the market God’-emotion. Making a number of consecutive successful trades is not necessarily a sign you have figured out how the markets work, the same way a losing streak is not a sign you’re a bad trader.

After a huge success it’s tempting to trade a larger size or accept more risk. The general idea is that simply because of the huge profit in the previous trade, more size and/or risk is acceptable in the next. But when you think about it, a realized profit is part of your account now, it’s no different than money made on earlier trades, it is money you worked hard for. There can be good reasons to increase trading size or risk, but that should be part of a plan, not just an impulsive decision based on a feeling of being ‘invulnerable’.

Ask yourself, which feeling is worse: losing yesterday’s profit, or losing the profit made 10 days ago? If that feels different, the first one being less worse, then it may be wise to stop trading for a few days after a good trade. During those days, the profit will slowly change from being ‘an extra’ to being ‘part of your trading account’. In other words, you get used to it and handle it with more care.

Overconfidence can also come from a (strong) conviction that the market has to go a certain direction based on a personal opinion about the economy, politics, the FED, interest rate, unemployment numbers etc etc. This kind of confidence has been discussed before. The remedy is simple: don’t trade the news.

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.

The World’s Worst Teacher

  
  Education
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The market often rewards bad behavior. You exit a stock because your stop is hit. You are okay with this because you followed your plan. The market then immediately reverses. You begin to think, “If only I stayed with the position.” The next time the market goes against you, you decide you are not going to get tricked again. This time though, the market does not reverse and what started out as a small manageable loss is now huge.

The market will give you loss after loss forcing you to abandon a methodology right before it takes off without you. On the flip side, the market will lull you into a false sense of confidence. You trade larger and larger, taking on excessive risk. You print money until your risks become so excessive that one or two bad trades wipe you out.

Learn from the market, but realize that sometimes it can be a lousy instructor.

What if Money Was No Object?

  
Education, Video
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Alan Watts:

“So I always ask the question: What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life? Well it’s so amazing as the result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say ‘Well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers’ But as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way! Another person says ‘Well I’d like to live an out-of-door’s life and ride horses.’ I said ‘You wanna teach in a riding school?’

Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do I will say to him ‘You do that! And forget the money!’ Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time! You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living – that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing! Which is stupid! Better to have a short life that is full of which you like doing then a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you are doing – it doesn’t really matter what it is – you can eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way of becoming the master of something, to be really with it. And then you will be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much, somebody is interested in everything. Anything you can be interested in, you’ll find others who are. (more…)

Market Promises

  
  Education
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This is not going to endure me to my fellow traders but I think it is important that we all are reminded what the market promises us.I am not talking from my gold and diamond encrusted throne. I am not exactly killing it. I am not perfect; I do not make money every trade or every day. This is a reminder to me, more than a reminder to you.

Market Promises:

It promises a playing field, not the game.
It promises to reward risk, not proportionately.
It promises opportunity, it does not promise profits.
It promises a lesson, not learning.
It promises that the quality of indicators and analysis is proportionate to quantity of participants, not quality.

Once again I am not without my struggles; this market is not easy for me or anyone I talk to regularly. I have had to make changes that I did not want to make. I thought once 2008 happened it would always be like that. It has been a rude awakening. Is there something I missed? Let me know.

Word-for-word: What Warren Buffett said about cryptocurrencies Monday

  
Analysis, Education
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Verbatim on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies


Warren Buffett was on CNBC on Monday and was asked about cryptocurrencies after he called Bitcoin “rat poison squared” at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting.
Question: What is it about Bitcoin that gets you so fired up:
Buffett: “When you buy a farm, you look at the crop every year and what prices are and decide whether it was a satisfactory investment. I mean, you look to the asset itself and what it produces for you. When we buy a business, we look at what the business earns and decide how we feel about it in terms of what we paid, but we are buying something that at the end of the period, we have not only what we bought but what the asset produced and when you buy non-productive assets, all you’re counting on is whether the next person will pay you more because they’re even more excited about another ‘next person’ is coming along. The asset itself is creating nothing. (more…)

Essentials of a Winning Psychology

  
  Education
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fear-1
Four fears that block a winning psychology:

  1. Fear of Loss
  2. Fear of being wrong
  3. Fear of missing out
  4. Fear of leaving money on the table.

Realize that trading is based on probabilities, as such, every trade is unique. In other words, the past does not equal the future.

Probability thinking manifest other states and beliefs:
  • Because we know that we will succeed in the long run and because we know we will protect ourselves no matter what the market does, we acquire the state of “self trust” and the state of being “carefree”.

In turn these states allow us to remain….

  • Focused, confident and carefree when we are experiencing the inevitable prolonged drawdown.
  • Because at the micro level we know that the market is random, we will not allow euphoria to set in and lead us to reckless trades. Each trade will only be one in a series of probabilities.
  • We will view market information not as a source of pleasure or pain but merely as data providing us with opportunities.

Personal Attributes Essential to a Winning Mentality
  • Awareness – the ability to step outside ourselves and observe. The more effectively we can do this, the easier our progress to “Acceptance”.
  • Honesty – the ability to seek to perceive reality in spite of our filters.
  • Courage – the willingness to bear the pain brought about by our awareness and honesty.
  • Commitment – the willingness to do whatever is necessary to achieve our goals

To succeed, a trader must have a vision about where he is heading, and must internalise that a winning attitude is total submission to the trading outcome.
This means managing Fear and Euphoria. To do this, we need to ACCEPT, with every fibre of our body, the belief that at the micro level the market is uncertain and unpredictable and at the macro level it is relatively certain and predictable.

Control Your Emotion or Other People Will Control You

  
  Education
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Many people are controlled by fear. Fear of losing an opportunity causes you to act in haste. Fear of losing your paper profit causes you to sell out too early. And fear of losing everything causes you to sell right at the bottom. Although selling right at the bottom is caused more by frustration than anything else, fear also plays a part. How do we overcome these kind of fears? Knowledge is the best weapon. When you know, people cannot scare, frighten or intimidate you. They can’t con you in anyway. Knowledge is your first key to success.
Hope causes you to hold on to a falling stock. Sometimes your hope is rewarded; your stock turns around and you make a profit. Unfortunately, hope often becomes hopeless. Experience tells me that it is much better to keep an uptrend stock and let go a falling one. This strategy is vital, simply because a trend in motion is likely to continue. Hope also causes people to buy into excessively high PE stocks. I prefer what is good today and better tomorrow.  (more…)

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