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How does the mind of a trader work?

MindpowerIn order to understand behavioral finance and crowd behavior on the capital market, first of all we need to understand the factors that influence the trader mindset. Traders are “misled” by many things. Let us put these factors in two main categories, depending simply on their source, external or internal.

The most important external factor is “everyone else”, the trading crowd, the general opinion. We form an opinion about the others. We believe them to be either smart or stupid, either right or wrong, then choose one of the two main psychological trading strategies: “go along to get along” or be a contrarian. Then we have other external factors like payoffs, scale, psychological and academic background, social structure, external advisory and resources. (more…)

A Good Reminder

Trend follower Ken Tropin: In this business you need to have ample payoffs from your winning trades but make sure your losing trades do not generate big losses—so the returns have a fat right tail but not much left tail! Suppose over time you make money on half your trades and lose money on the other half. If the winning trades are double the size of the losing trades, then you have a pretty profitable investment.