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Some Rules for Living Applied to Trading

  
  Education
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I ran across these rules for living, and thought they apply beautifully to the process of trading successfully.  They are as follows:

  1. Show up.
  2. Pay attention.
  3. Live your truth.
  4. Do your best.
  5. Don’t be attached to the outcome.

Show up.  Woody Allen has said 90% of the story is showing up.  And I think that can be true for trading.  Showing up means being prepared and ready before the market opens.  It means getting your entry and exit orders in the market in a timely fashion.  You’ve done your research, and you’re clear about your intentions.

Pay attention.    Watch the price action.  Be cognizant of what your chosen indicators are saying.  Know what news is breaking, and watch the market’s reaction to the news.  Be alert to twists and turns in market direction.  Don’t wander off mentally or physically.

Live your truth.  Your truth could be fundamental or technical or a combination of the two.  But if you don’t trade in accordance with your guidelines, you can get yourself on the wrong side of the situation and yourself.  Be who you say you are as a trader.  Are you honest, perceptive, courageous, steady, and disciplined?  Are you trading in the manner you have chosen or committed to trade.

Do your best.  Honestly, all you can do is your best.  But your best can get better as you practice and learn.  Learn from your mistakes, and forgive yourself past digressions.  Each day is a new day, and each day brings new opportunities.  It’s your job to capture what you can of the opportunities even as you rigorously protect your capital.

Don’t be attached to the outcome.  This is the hard part, and this is the essential part.  The results of any given trade or trading day are really not indicative of whether or not you will be profitable.  One trade or day is simply not the measure of success, and is really irrelevant.  If you’re showing up, and paying attention, and living your viable truth, and doing your best, you can accept whatever outcome develops.  Of course, if the outcome is disastrous over time, you need to go back to the drawing board and develop better methods.

How to Pick Your Money from Trading

  
  Education
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There is a famous saying about trading the markets;

“I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up.”

I always thought that it was first said by Jim Rodgers in Market Wizards, but someone told me the other day that it was actually Jesse Livermore who said it (or a version of it) first.

I really don’t care who said it, so for the purposes of this post let’s just say it was Joey Heatherton who said it after a two-week sold out run at The Sands. (more…)

Biases That Cause You To Make Mistakes

  
  Education
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You are your own worst enemy.

Those are the six most important words in investing. Shady financial advisors and incompetent CEOs don’t harm your returns a fraction of the amount your own behavior does.

Here are 15 cognitive biases that cause people to do dumb things with their money.

1. Normalcy bias
Assuming that because something has never happened before, it won’t (or can’t) happen in the future. Everything that has ever happened in history was “unprecedented” at one time. The Great Depression. The crash of 1987. Enron. Wall Street bailouts. All of these events had never happened… until they did. When Warren Buffett announced he was looking for candidates to replace him at Berkshire Hathaway, he said he needed “someone genetically programmed to recognize and avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered.“ Someone who understands normalcy bias, in other words.

2. Dunning-Kruger effect
Being so bad at a task that you lack the capacity to realize how bad you are. Markus Glaser and Martin Weber of the University of Mannheim showed that investors who earn the lowest returns are the worst at judging their own returns. They had literally no idea how bad they were. “The correlation between self-ratings and actual performance is not distinguishable from zero” they wrote.

3. Attentional bias
Falsely thinking two events are correlated when they are random, but you just happen to be paying more attention to them. After stocks plunged 4% in November 1991, Investor’s Business Daily blamed a failed biotech bill in the House of Representatives, while The Financial Times blamed geopolitical tension in Russia. The “cause” of the crash was whatever the editor happened to be paying attention to that day.

4. Bandwagon effect
Believing something is true only because other people think it is. Whether politicians or stocks, people like being associated with things that are winning, so winners build momentum not because they deserve it, but because they’re winning. This is the foundation of all asset bubbles. (more…)

Jim Rogers :I guarantee by 2012 next recession

  
Analysis, Education, Video
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Last night in London, Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, was interviewed by CNBC after US Fed announced its decision of leaving the rates alone.

Rogers is very critical to the Fed whose solution to the crisis has been “printing money”, a strategy that he does not see sustainable, “there will be no trees left” if the Fed keep on printing money. Rogers’s contempt to the US Fed is obvious, to a point that he stated that he isn’t paying attention to them at all. He thinks investors are better served to read and think and come up with their our opinions. “Sometimes I got it wrong, sometimes Igot it right” he said.

Commenting on the US Housing market, Rogers thinks that the market will stay low for many years to come to work out the inventories.

I found his answer to the recession question evasive at the best, for the CNBC anchor was looking for a “Yes” or “No” for an imminent double-dip recession. “We’re going to have another recession, I guarantee you… By 2012 say, it’s time for another recession.” – anybody could have said that, for recession comes and goes.

But, “The next time it’s going to be worse because we’ve shot all of our bullets,” he warned us. Rogers has been advocating investing in commodities.

The Tortoise and the Hare

  
  Education
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Once upon a time, there was a young hare, a hotshot rabbit investor who would always brag to anyone that would listen and that he was the smartest, fastest, best performing investor in the world. He would constantly tease the old tortoise about his slow, solid investment style.

Then, one day, the annoyed tortoise answered back: “There is no denying that you are very aggressive in your investment strategy. You take very high risks and get high returns. But even you can be beaten.”

The young hare squealed with laughter. “Beaten? By whom? Surely not by you. I bet there’s nobody in the world that can win against me, because I’m so good. If you think that you can beat me, why don’t you try?”

Provoked by such bragging, the tortoise accepted the challenge. Each of them put an equal amount of money into a new account and the race was on. The hare yawned sleepily as the meek tortoise trudged slowly off.

As might be expected, the tortoise invested in high quality blue chips, companies with household names.

The hare, as anticipated, invested his money in dotcom stocks and options.

You know the story. The aggressive hare jumped out to a big early lead. In a rising market, the highest risk stocks perform the best. This is called momentum investing. Money flows into the investments that are performing the best.

The hare, having jumped out to such a large early lead, stopped paying attention to the market environment. Basically, he fell asleep. He thought to himself, “I’ll have 40 winks and still remain way ahead of that stupid old turtle.” (more…)

The Mind of the Greatest Trader-Livermore

  
  Education
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As revolutionary as this early-day stock guru’s approach to trading was for his time, in truth, Jesse’s stock trading “secrets” just came down to good, sound basics. His success stands as a testament to the fact that the further we wander away from trading breakout stocks and a simple, disciplined approach to trading stocks, the less success we’re inclined to have. Just how unconventional was Jesse Livermore? Take a look:

  • He believed in trading top quality stocks, not “weaker sister” stocks.
  • A stock hitting new highs was a signal of a stock’s strength to Livermore, and meant the stock had broken through its overhead supply of sellers. Today, we call this a “breakout stock”.
  • He was one of the first stock traders to realize that stocks tend to move in industry groups not in isolation.
  • Unlike today’s self-appointed stock pick gurus, Jesse Livermore was a humble student of the market, and never considered himself a master.

Livermore was ever conscious of the part one’s psychology played in achieving stock trading success, so he never spoke about what he was doing to anybody, and actually was known to ask people to keep their stock tips to themselves! He was so protective of his trading psychology that he would not even use the words “bullish” or “bearish,” thinking they would create an emotional mindset that he wanted to avoid. (more…)

"Some Rules for Living Applied to Trading"

  
  Education
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I ran across these rules for living, and thought they apply beautifully to the process of trading successfully.  They are as follows:

  1. Show up.
  2. Pay attention.
  3. Live your truth.
  4. Do your best.
  5. Don’t be attached to the outcome.

Show up.  Woody Allen has said 90% of the story is showing up.  And I think that can be true for trading.  Showing up means being prepared and ready before the market opens.  It means getting your entry and exit orders in the market in a timely fashion.  You’ve done your research, and you’re clear about your intentions.

Pay attention.    Watch the price action.  Be cognizant of what your chosen indicators are saying.  Know what news is breaking, and watch the market’s reaction to the news.  Be alert to twists and turns in market direction.  Don’t wander off mentally or physically.

Live your truth.  Your truth could be fundamental or technical or a combination of the two.  But if you don’t trade in accordance with your guidelines, you can get yourself on the wrong side of the situation and yourself.  Be who you say you are as a trader.  Are you honest, perceptive, courageous, steady, and disciplined?  Are you trading in the manner you have chosen or committed to trade.

Do your best.  Honestly, all you can do is your best.  But your best can get better as you practice and learn.  Learn from your mistakes, and forgive yourself past digressions.  Each day is a new day, and each day brings new opportunities.  It’s your job to capture what you can of the opportunities even as you rigorously protect your capital.

Don’t be attached to the outcome.  This is the hard part, and this is the essential part.  The results of any given trade or trading day are really not indicative of whether or not you will be profitable.  One trade or day is simply not the measure of success, and is really irrelevant.  If you’re showing up, and paying attention, and living your viable truth, and doing your best, you can accept whatever outcome develops.  Of course, if the outcome is disastrous over time, you need to go back to the drawing board and develop better methods.

Act Like A Lion When Trading

  
  Education
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Many times day traders are very anxious and want to be involved in a trade all day. The market only gives a few good opportunities a day and that is when traders should react and take what the market is offering. 
Trading is very similar to the lion in the jungle. The lion stalks his pray in the brush and he does not pick on the strongest animal in the pack. He looks for the one that is wounded or the animal that is not paying attention. Therefore, as a trader we must do the same thing. 
Patience is what pays. Patience is what gives the lion a full belly when he has not eaten all day. Take a page from nature and only take the best chart setups at the most opportune times. As a trader we cannot impose our will on the market we can only take what the market gives us.

The Greatest Investment Book Ever Written

  
  Education
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No, I’m not talking about Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham or even Greenblatt’s You Can Be a Stock Market Genius.  I’m talking about Doyle Brunson’s Super System: A Course in Power Poker.  
OK, so the title of this post is a bit of an exaggeration and yes, there are probably tons of better poker books out there now post-extended-poker-boom.  The first edition of this book was published in 1978.  The connection between poker and trading is nothing new.  Just google “poker and trading” and there’s a lot of stuff out there; how poker guys started hedge funds, how a hedge fund guy became a poker guy, how they are similar/different, what can be learned from one or the other etc.   And the connection between gambling and trading was well documented in Fortune’s Formula.
But I just wanted to make a post about this book because I’m starting to reread it again (don’t ask).  I am not a poker player, but I remember reading this book a few years ago having borrowed it from a poker-playing friend.  Knowing that many traders and investors are very good poker players, I wanted to see what I can learn from reading about poker. 
I remember falling out of my chair at the similiarites between poker and investing.  I come from more of a trading background than an investing one and what was written in this book, particularly the early chapter “General Poker Strategy”,  has great advice that applies to traders and investors too.   I would make that chapter required reading along with the other investment “must reads”.
Anyway, here are some comments about what Brunson talks about in this chapter by sections.  I only comment on some of the stuff so this isn’t a summary of the chapter by any means.  (more…)

Risk Management for Traders

  
  Education
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RISK-MANAGEMENT

  • Your first loss is the best loss.
  • Let winning positions run and cut losing positions short. The market is always right.
  • I finally understand why Kirk always says risk management is the most important thing.
  • Always know your exit. Before any trade is made, you must always identify your stop beforehand and then follow it without hesitation if it triggers.
  • Patterns and trends matter more than I thought…paying attention to them can provide better entry/exit points.
  • Patterns and measured moves are key but you have to wait until a pattern is triggered and the trigger holds.
  • Being patient and waiting for confirmation instead of trying to anticipate market movements.
  • Risk is greatest when everyone who wants to buy has already done so – Apple is the latest example!
  • Position sizing is my first and last line of defense.
  • Leverage is for losers.
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