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Booking Losses Before They Occur

There is a meaningful difference between trading to win and trading to not lose. The average person feels more psychological pain over a loss than they feel pleasure over a gain–particularly once they have already “booked” that gain mentally.

When we enter a trade, we expect to be paid out. Mentally, we book a potential profit. When a loss materializes, it is the unexpected event–and we respond more strongly to the unexpected than to the familiar.

What is the solution to this dilemma? The answer, surprisingly, is to book losses before they occur.

It’s human nature to not want to think about such unpleasant things as losses. But by knowing our maximum possible loss in advance and by mentally rehearsing what we’ll do on those occasions when the loss occurs, we normalize the losing process. That divests it of its emotional grip.

We can never eliminate loss from life or trading; nor can we repeal the basic uncertainties of markets. What we *can* do is develop an edge in the marketplace and, over the course of many trades, let that edge accumulate in our favor.

Great quote by Marty Schwartz which sums up where so many people go wrong in trading.

This paragraph is in my mind one of the most influential in all the trading literature, encompassing so many lessons about trading that its almost hard to know where to start, some of the themes covered in the seven lines of this paragraph include:
  • Ego getting in the way of good practice.  
  • Adaptability.
  • Trading as a psychological game.
  • Overcoming yourself rather than the market.
  • Trying to prove you are right.
  • Relying on hope.
  • Objective assessment of signs and signals from the market. 
  • Maintaining an open mind. 
  • The objectives of trading is to win not to be right.
Traders would do well to keep a copy of this paragraph visible as a reminder to try and ward off the inevitable occasions when they succumb to their trading demons.

4 Trading Quotes for Today's Trading Session

“You must practice being a successful trader first. From that state of mind you will get information about what to do, and that will produce what you want to have.”

“Excellence is about stepping outside the comfort zone, training with a spirit of endeavor, and accepting the inevitability of trials and tribulations. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure.” 

 “Amateurs keep thinking what trades to get into, while professionals spend just as much time figuring out their exits.”

“Confidence doesn’t come from being right all the time: it comes from surviving the many occasions of being wrong.” Brent Steenbarger, The Daily Trading Coach “When you attain some degree of control over yourself, you can then see how other traders are not in control of what happens to them.”

A word from Bruce Kovner

Bruce Kovner is one of the world’s most successful traders. The following below is extracted from his Market Wizardsinterview:

“A greedy trader always blows out. I know some really inspired traders who never managed to keep the money they made. One trader at Commodities Corporation – I don’t want to mention his name – always struck me as a brilliant trader. The ideas he came up with were wonderful; the markets he picked were often the right markets. Intellectually, he knew markets much better than I did, yet I was keeping money, and he was not.”

Q: So where was he going wrong?

“Position size. He traded much too big. For every one contract I traded, he traded ten. He would double his money on two different occasions each year, but still ended up flat”.

And, from further on in the interview:

“First, I would say that risk management is the most important thing to be well understood. Undertrade, undertrade, undertrade is my second piece of advice. Whatever you think your position ought to be, cut it at least in half. My experience with novice traders is that they risk three to five times too big. They are taking 5 to 10 percent risks on a trade when they should be taking 1 to 2 percent risks.”

Prudent risk control, combined with the power of compounding, can lead you a long way in this game.

Great quote by Marty Schwartz which sums up where so many people go wrong in trading.

“Most people think that they’re playing against the market, but the market doesn’t care. You’re really playing against yourself”. – Marty Schwartz.
 
The full quote is was from the following paragraph from Schwartz’z book – ‘The Pit Bull’s Guide To Successful Trading’. Schwartz himself was one of the original interviewees in the original ‘Market Wizards’ book.
 
– I’ve said it before, and I’m going to say it again, because it cannot be overemphasized: the most important change in my trading career occurred when I learned to divorce my ego from the trade. Trading is a psychological game. Most people think that they’re playing against the market, but the market doesn’t care. You’re really playing against yourself. You have to stop trying to will things to happen in order to prove that you’re right. Listen only to what the market is telling you now. Forget what you thought it was telling you five minutes ago. The sole objective of trading is not to prove you’re right, but to hear the cash register ring. (more…)

Trading and Behaviour

3monkey-GandhiGandhi said a person cannot be different from himself in different areas of his life. He meant a person really cannot be someone at work and a entirely different person at home, with his friends, etc. The personality is a whole –- you can’t have a mask for different occasions. What you do in private life echoes in your business life, and vice-versa. What you do in the different areas of your life (private, professional, friendship, religion, spirituality, fun) echoes in every other part.

If you are a fighter in your work, one cannot expect you to be a daisy flower at home -– you will treat your family with the same authority and discipline. If you are kind, you will be kind whether at home or at office. One cannot really perform different roles separately. The person is an unity.

That means if you are lazy, undisciplined, late, in your behavior, it will reflect in your trading. Have you ever thought your trading problems may not be trading related? If you find yourself… (more…)

Small Things Matter

Ask many experienced traders to describe their most profitable trade, and you’ll hear a fantastic story. It’s usually purely chance. I know it was that way for me on a number of occasions. For example, the trader may have been going long on a large position when suddenly a report came out that shocked the market. Prices shot up as the public heard the news, and the trader made a killing. These stories are thrilling. They inspire you to sharpen your trading skills and master the markets. Who doesn’t want to be at the right place at the right time? But if you want to be a profitable, consistent trader, you can’t sit around waiting for a fantastic trading opportunity to present itself. Most of the time, trading is about making trade after trade to the point that it seems boringly routine. Rather than seek out big, exciting trades, it’s important to remember that small trades matter a lot.

As thrilling as big trades seem to be, it’s the smaller trades that keep you in business. It’s not unusual for traders to feel they have reached a plateau when trading. They make trade after trade and little seems to happen. They don’t suddenly find the Holy Grail of trading and achieve the great wealth and status they’ve dreamed about. Whether they realize it or not, however, they are still making progress. Each new observation of the market, each trade they execute, no matter how small, adds to their wealth of knowledge. They intuitively learn what to do and what not to do. They may see a slight variation in chart pattern that creates an inefficiency in price and learn just how far the pattern can deviate from the norm and still forecast the most likely movement of prices. On another day, they may learn a new way to place a protective stop so that they protect their risk, yet don’t get stopped out prematurely. These small everyday, seemingly insignificant experiences matter a lot.

Trading is challenging. Few survive trading over many years. The traders who do survive, however, know how to stay focused and patient. They don’t go for quick thrills, and unrealistically huge profit objectives. They know that losing is easy and can happen in the blink of an eye, but rebuilding capital usually takes a lot of work over a long period of time.

Instead of going for risky, exciting trades, you must seek out high probability setups, take steps to protect your capital, and execute your trades decisively, according to your trading plan. You may not have an exciting tale to brag about, but you take home steady profits–you get paid to trade. And when you make trade after trade, the small profits add up, and you end up with big profits in the end.

So when you feel that your earnings have reached a plateau, don’t get discouraged. As long as you are making profits, and staying in business, you’re continuing to develop your trading skills. You’re adding to your knowledge base. You’re developing a more intuitive feel for how the markets operate. It may not seem like you’re making the profits of a trading wizard, but if you keep at it, you’ll be one of the rare few that join the ranks of winning traders.
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Trade what you see, not what you think!

101% U all Should Buy this Book and 101% u should read…………..!!

Just completed reading this Book (Already read 3 times and everytime …..Something NEW…..I learn )

Here are 10 Lessons from the Book :

1. The Process and the Practice:  “Confidence doesn’t come from being right all the time: it comes from surviving the many occasions of being wrong” (27). 

2. Stress and Distress:  “Thinking positively or negatively about performance outcomes interfere with the process of performing.  When you focus on the doing, the outcomes take care of themselves” (56). 

3.  Psychological Well-Being:  “We can recognize the happy trader because he is immersed in the process of trading and finds fulfillment from the process even when markets are not open” (72).

4.  Steps Toward Self-Improvement:  “Your trading strengths can be found in the patterns that repeat across successful trades” (105).

5.  Breaking Old Patterns:  “Many trading problems are the result of acting out personal dramas in markets” (133)

6.  Remapping the Mind: “When we change the lenses through which we view events, we change our responses to those events” (168)

7.  Learn New Action Patterns: “Find experienced traders who will not be shy in telling you when you are making mistakes.  In their lessons, you will learn to teach yourself” (203)

8.  Coaching Your Trading Business:  “Long before you seek to trade for a living, you should work at trading competence: just breaking even after costs” (230)

9.  Lessons From Trading Professionals:  “If you don’t trust yourself or your methods, you will not find the emotional resilience to weather periods of loss” (267)

10.  Looking For the Edge: “The simplest [trading] patterns will tend to be the most robust” (311).

And a final admonition:  “Know what you do best. Build on strengths. Never stop working on yourself. Never stop improving. Every so often, upset the apple cart and pursue wholly new challenges.  The enemy of greatness is not evil; it’s mediocrity.  Don’t settle for mediocre” (341).

Technically Yours

Anirudh Sethi/Baroda

Solution focused approach

focusedWhat did we do differently on those successful occasions?

* I have planned the trade well in advance with research; it is not a spontaneous trade, so I’ve had time to think clearly about what I want to do.
* I have a clear profit target in mind based on research and refuse to waver from that target unless the market takes me out with a predefined stop. I consider myself a person of integrity, so I tell myself that I have to show integrity and loyalty to my trade idea and target;
* I don’t follow the position tick for tick. Either the trade will hit my target or it will hit my stop. I make a conscious effort to let go and not micromanage the trade;
* I keep myself calm and clearly focused by purposely getting up from my chair, doing some stretches, breathing deeply, and getting away from the screen. I keep myself in a state that is incompatible with anxiety;
* I rehearse constructive self-talk during the trade. I tell myself that I’ve done my preparation and established my edge. Any individual trade can go against me, but if I take all the good trades I can, eventually I’ll benefit from good odds and a good risk-reward ratio. If I lose money on the trade, I’ll figure out why and what that might be telling me about the current market. (more…)

GEMS from :The Daily Trading Coach

The Daily Trading Coach covers just about any psychology or behavioral issue  the trader may face.  I cannot help but recommend it.  There are 101 lessons here divided into 10 chapters.  Let’s dig into each chapter and uncover a gem within.

Today again completed reading this Book…Yes 5th time !!

1. The Process and the Practice:  “Confidence doesna’t come from being right all the time: it comes from surviving the many occasions of being wrong” (27). 

2. Stress and Distress:  “Thinking positively or negatively about performance outcomes interfere with the process of performing.  When you focus on the doing, the outcomes take care of themselves” (56). 

3.  Psychological Well-Being:  “We can recognize the happy trader because he is immersed in the process of trading and finds fulfillment from the process even when markets are not open” (72).

4.  Steps Toward Self-Improvement:  “Your trading strengths can be found in the patterns that repeat across successful trades” (105).

5.  Breaking Old Patterns:  “Many trading problems are the result of acting out personal dramas in markets” (133)

6.  Remapping the Mind: “When we change the lenses through which we view events, we change our responses to those events” (168)

7.  Learn New Action Patterns: “Find experienced traders who will not be shy in telling you when you are making mistakes.  In their lessons, you will learn to teach yourself” (203)

8.  Coaching Your Trading Business:  “Long before you seek to trade for a living, you should work at trading competence: just breaking even after costs” (230)

9.  Lessons From Trading Professionals:  “If you don’t trust yourself or your methods, you will not find the emotional resilience to weather periods of loss” (267)

10.  Looking For the Edge: “The simplest [trading] patterns will tend to be the most robust” (311).

And a final admonition:  “Know what you do best. Build on strengths. Never stop working on yourself. Never stop improving. Every so often, upset the apple cart and pursue wholly new challenges.  The enemy of greatness is not evil; it’s mediocrity.  Don’t settle for mediocre” (341).

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