Does this trade fit my chosen trading style? Whether it is: swing trading, momentum, break out, trend following, reversion to the mean, or day trading? Does this trade fit into the parameters of who I am as a trader, or is it just based on my own fear or greed?
- How big of a position do I want to trade? How much capital am I going to risk? Am I limiting my risk to 1% or 2% of my trading capital? Knowing where my stop will be how big should my position size be to limit my risk?
- What are the odds of my risk of ruin based on my capital at risk?
- Why am I entering the trade here? What is the entry trigger to take the trade? Is this a quantified entry on my trading plan?
- How will I exit with a profit? A price target or trailing stop? (more…)
Archives of “odds” tag
rssGet Out When You’re Wrong
Successful traders know that discipline is what allows them to enter their trades when the odds are in their favor and, more importantly, to get out when they’re wrong.
Being right is not the problem. What you do when you’re wrong is the crucial issue.
There are a lot of traders who buy then pray while the market goes against them, because they think that it will eventually go their way.
Most traders average down and wait for the market to turn their way.
Trading my way, I always have defined amount of money that I am willing to lose.
I let the market decide how much money I’m going to make.
Profitability -Market Timing
How often you are right on a trade is only half of the equation. The other half is how much do you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong. You can remember that with this formula: Probability (odds of it going up or down) x Magnitude (how much it goes up or down) = Profitability. “Market timing is the art of making investment decisions using indicators and strategies to observe and determine the direction of prices. Many believe that market timing involves predicting the future, when in reality, the goal of market timing is to participate in periods of price strength and avoid periods of price weakness.? |
Peter Lynch Quotes
“You can’t see the future through a rear view mirror.” – Peter Lynch
“The best stock to buy may be the one you already own.” – Peter Lynch
“You should not buy a stock because it’s cheap but because you know a lot about it.” – Peter Lynch
“An investment is simply a gamble in which you’ve managed to tilt the odds in your favor.” – Peter Lynch (more…)
7 Scariest Things A Trader Can Do…..
- Taking a trade with NO EXIT STRATEGY that is a horror movie. It is dangerous to not have a stop loss when you enter a trade becasue if a trader thinks they bought in at a great price the price starts looking better the lower it goes, and terror of all terrors the trader adds more to the trade! It only takes one mistake letting one trade run into a huge loss and add to it to blow up an account.
- Shorting the strongest stocks in the market during a bull market is scary as they continue to go up.
- Going long a stock in a death spiral due to a business misstep or earnings decline is like riding a roller coast that generally ends up much lower when the trade is finally closed.
- “Going all in” on one trade, with this plan all it takes is one bad trade to blow up your account, those are scary odds.
- When you are losing you go from your trading plan to “plan B” “hoping” maybe even praying for a reversal. When a trade turns you religious and leads you to pray it is definitely time to get out!
- Asking for others opinions instead of following your trading plan or methodology is very scary, time for homework not tips.
- It is terrifying to watch someone fight a trend instead of follow it. The bigger they go against the trend the scarier it gets. They are trying to stand in front of an elephant walking and tell it where it should be going.
Nicholas Darvas: Trend Trader
From a Time Magazine article in 1959:
Darvas places his buy orders for levels that he considers breakout points on the upside. At the same time, he places a stop-loss sell order just below his buy order, so that if the stock does not move straight up after he buys, he will be sold out and his loss cut. “I have no ego in the stock market,” he says. “If I make a mistake I admit it immediately and get out fast.” Darvas thinks his system is the height of conservatism. Says he: “If you could play roulette with the assurance that whenever you bet $100 you could get out for $98 if you lost your bet, wouldn’t you call that good odds?” If he has a big profit in a stock, he puts the stop-loss order just below the level at which a sliding stock should meet support. He bought Universal Controls at 18, sold it at 83 on the way down after it had hit 102. “I never bought a stock at the low or sold one at the high in my life,” says Darvas. “I am satisfied to be along for most of the ride.”
On Trading Psychology
From “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre, the 1923 classic pseudo-autobiography of legendary trader Jesse Livermore:
… I didn’t always win. My plan of trading was sound enough and won oftener than it lost. If I had stuck to it I’d have been right perhaps as often as seven out of ten times. In fact, I always made money when I was sure I was right before I began. What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game — that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my play. There is a time for all things, but I didn’t know it. And that is precisely what beats so many men in Wall Street who are very far from being in the main sucker class. There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily — or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.
Sometimes the best play is to not play at all. When playing the market, you have to let the opportunities come to you, and take advantage of them when the odds are in your favor. If you don’t, you’ll get very frustrated — and you’ll lose money.
Self-Control and Discipline
Cultivating discipline and self-control is vital for consistent and profitable trading. You implement proven trading strategies, over and over, so that across a series of trades, the strategies work enough to produce an overall profit. It’s like making shot after shot on the basketball court so as to accumulate a winning number of points. The more shots you take, the more likely you will amass points. But the winning player is the person who first develops the skill to make the shot consistently, so that at every possible opportunity, the ball is likely to go through the basket. To a great extent, consistency is the key. If the player uses one approach one time and a different approach at another time, performance is haphazard.
It’s the same for trading. One must trade consistently, following a specific trading plan on each and every single trade. This allows the law of averages to work in your favor, so that across the series of trades, you will make an overall profit. If you follow the plan sometimes and abandon it at other times, you throw off the probabilities. Suppose you used a strategy that had a track record of 80%. Under the best-case scenario, you could only expect to win 80% of the time. But since history doesn’t always repeat itself, it’s likely that you will win less than 80% of the time. If you don’t execute the trading strategy the same way each time, you will decrease your winning odds. And fewer winning trades may mean an overall loss. That’s why discipline and self-control are so important. (more…)
Quotes from Trading Legends :Paul Tudor Jones-Gary Bielfeldt-Richard Dennis
Paul Tudor Jones:
“We have tested every system under the sun and, amazingly, we have found one that actually works very well. It is a very good system…(under the realm of) trend following. The basic premise of the system is that markets move sharply when they move. If there is a sudden range expansion in a market that has been trading narrowly, human nature is to try and fade that price move. When you get a range expansion, the market is sending you a very loud, clear signal that the market is getting ready to move in the direction of that expansion.”
“The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense.”
“I don’t really care about the mistakes I made three seconds ago in the market. What I care about is what I am going to do from the next moment on. I try to avoid any emotional attachment to a market.”
” I always believe that prices move first and fundamentals come second.”
Gary Bielfeldt:
“The best thing that anyone can do when starting out is to learn how a trend system works. Trading a trend system for a while will teach a new trader the principle of letting profits run and cutting losses short. If you can just learn discipline by using a trend-following system, even temporarily, it will increase your odds of being successful as a trader.”
Richard Dennis:
“You should expect the unexpected in this business; expect the extreme. Don’t think in terms of boundaries that limit what the market might do. If there is any lesson I have learned in the nearly twenty years that I’ve been in this business, it is that the unexpected and the impossible happen every now and then.”
“A good trend following system will keep you in the market until there is evidence that the trend has changed.”
“The correct approach is to say: ‘This structure is up, and this structure means no more, but never that this structure means up this much and no more’.”
“I could trade without knowing the name of the market.”
“The market being in a trend is the main thing that eventually gets us in a trade. That is a pretty simple idea. Being consistent and making sure you do that all the time is probably more important than the particular characteristics you use to define the trend. Whatever method you use to enter trades, the most critical thing is that if there is a major trend, your approach should assure that you get in that trend.”
THE GUESSING OF TRADING
Trading is based on our hypothesis. In other words trading amounts to our educated guesses, which means the more you invest in your education, the more likely you are to find yourself on the right side of the trade. One of the most widely overlooked parts of trading education by traders is the study of past charts. I make personal videos, so that like a football team I can review my plays and create better strategies.
Your chart will tell you almost every thing you need to know to get on the right side of the trade. The one thing it doesn’t tell you is what is going on behind the scenes and it will even give you a hint to that most of the time. Your bullish/bearish ENGULFING patterns are evidence that there are some secrets that the market keeps to itself.
Mastering your candlestick psychology, your support/resistance, and your trendlines are things that you want to major on and learn well. You may not win every trade, but having a firm foundation on these simple techniques can greatly increase your odds of a successful trade. I think the more simple your charts, the better and easier it is for you to enter a good trade.
Sometimes you will have the perfect trade set up and all of your analysis will be right and you will find yourself on the wrong side of the trade. No big deal, it happens to all of us, review that trade and see if you can identify the error. When you have reviewed it, look for the next trading opportunity. There is NO PERFECT TRADING STRATEGY!!!!!!! This is only a guessing game for those of us who like to play the odds. The better your education, the better your odds will be against the house.