The first step in dealing with any addictive pattern is identifying it–and identifying it as a problem. Here are a few questions that you might ask yourself:
* Have there been times when I told myself to stop trading, but still found myself placing trades any way?
* Do I find myself overtrading by putting on positions with too large size or by trading during periods when nothing is happening?
* Have my trading losses created problems for me in my relationship(s), or have they caused financial problems for me?
* Have people close to me told me that I need to stop trading?
* Is the pain from losing more extreme than the satisfaction from winning?
* Do I find my moods fluctuating with my P/L?
* Do I trade simply out of boredom sometimes?
* Do I find myself preoccupied with trading outside of market hours at the cost of other work and relationships?
Notice that, for many of these questions, you could substitute the word “drinking” or “gambling” for “trading”. The dynamics of addictions are the same across the board. If you answered yes to three or more of these questions, I would suggest that trading has become a problem for you.
How does one deal with addictive trading? The first step is to identify it, but the second–and harder–step is to acknowledge that you need help for it. It’s pride that tells us we can handle it on our own through will power, but addictions wouldn’t occur in the first place if will power were sufficient to prevent consequences. (more…)
Archives of “periods” tag
rssProfile Of The Successful Trader:
Trading is being young, imperfect, and human – not old, exacting, and scientific. It is not a set of techniques, but a commitment. You are to be an information processor. Not a swami. Not a guru. An information processor.
Participating in the markets can only develop your trading skills. You need to become a part of the markets, to know the state of the markets at any given time, and most importantly, to know yourself. You need to be patient, confident, and mentally tough. (more…)
Activity and Inactivity
I’ve noticed that my trading is more and more characterised by periods of doing a lot of trading, followed by periods of doing nothing except watching.
This seems to be a positive thing, as the old days consisted of trading every day no matter what the conditions, where as now I find that the markets will go into a mode that I just do not like the look of. In such cases if I try to force something, to “find a trade”, then I’ll get burned for sure.
To some degree I think this is because I have not yet spent much time on developing my strategies for trading insides large consolidation patterns. Of course it gets easier as they become more developed but by that time they are also getting old, and in the past I start making good trades in them just as they are about to end. The hard parts to trade are the start of trends / end of consolidation, and the end of trends / start of consolidation. These are times when the market is changing its basic mode, and are great places to lose money.
7 Weakest Points of Trading
The weakest part of any trading method is the trader themselves. There are many, many, robust trading systems and methods that do make money in the long term. The problem is the trader having the discipline and mental toughness to trade one of them consistently. The vast majority of time it is not a system failure but traders that fail in this game through one of seven common errors. If you can understand these error and overcome them you could make a lot of money in the right market conditions.
- The trader must have the discipline to take the system’s entries and exits.
- The trader must have the discipline to take the stop loss on a losing trade when it is hit and not keep holding and start hoping.
- No matter the method the trader has to manage risk through proper position sizing, getting greedy and trading too big will blow up even the best systems.
- It is the trader that must have the perseverance to stick to the method even during losing periods, and also stick with trading until success is reached.
- If a trader can not manage their mind then the stress will break them, I have seen this happen many times. If you can’t handle losing you can’t trade.
- The trader must find a robust method, must understand why it has an edge, and must believe in their methodology.
- The trader has to know themselves and trade the method that fits their risk tolerance levels and own psychology. (more…)
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
Volatility
In periods of higher volatility and shocks across the board, as in the last week, be prepared to alter your trading plan as a position taker.
Where once a constructive market under low-medium volatility allowed you to set defined price entries, and the usual patterns and trading synergies of a particular market held true, which in effect gave you your original edge, now to perform when volatility picks up and markets change, don’t be so cute on your entries and exits.
In effect, if it gets close and you want a position, pull the trigger, reduce size and get involved, and be prepared to reload.
The added volatility and your experience in the market should more than make up for any short term hits.
How do *your* coping efforts work for you?
Take a look at how well you trade after a position has gone against you. Do you trade better after a drawdown or worse?
How about after you have a few winning trades, days, or weeks in a row? Do you trade better or worse? Breaking down your performance as a function of recent performance will tell you a great deal about how effective you are in coping with risk and reward.
The other excellent indicator of whether your coping is working for you is your emotional experience during trading. If you find that anxiety, overconfidence, frustration, and stress are pushing you into poor decisions, you know that you’re not coping well with the uncertainties of markets.
Finally, it is helpful to identify the sequences of coping behaviors that you utilize when you’re making good decisions and the sequences when you’re trading poorly. Knowing how your individual coping responses come together to form coping strategies can help you cultivate your coping strengths.
Tracking how you deal with challenges when you are at your most effective enables you to create a mental model of that coping that you can call upon during periods of high stress. We cannot avoid the stresses of trading, but those do not have to generate distress and biased decisions.
Markets are changing all the time
You have to have the ability to change and see how the markets are changing and adapt to it. That’s a constant process. That’s why I think you see some people do well for four or five years and then just disappear.
History can be a useful benchmark but only if everything is put into the right context. Markets are dynamic and people’s reactions are different. It is much more subtle and nuanced than looking at what happened the last time.
No setup works all the time and in all types of market environment. The success rate of any setup fluctuates in cycles – there are periods when it is high and periods when it is low. Most successful speculators have specialized in a small number of setups. The question is, do you change when the market dynamics change and do you adapt new setups or do you wait for the proper market environment to come back before you risk any money?
Profile Of The Successful Trader
Trading is being young, imperfect, and human – not old, exacting, and scientific. It is not a set of techniques, but a commitment. You are to be an information processor. Not a swami. Not a guru. An information processor.
Participating in the markets can only develop your trading skills. You need to become a part of the markets, to know the state of the markets at any given time, and most importantly, to know yourself. You need to be patient, confident, and mentally tough.
Good traders offer no excuses, make no complaints. They live willingly with the vagaries of life and the markets.
In the early stages of your trading career, pay attention not only to whether you should buy or sell but also to how you have executed your trading ideas. You will learn more from your trades this way.
Never assume that the unreasonable or the unexpected cannot happen. It can. It does. It will.
Remember, you can learn a lot about trading from your mistakes. When you make a mistake – and you will – do not dwell on the negatives. Learn from the mistake and keep going.
Never forget that markets are made up of people. Think constantly about what others are doing, what they might do in the current circumstances, or what they might do when those circumstances change. Remember that, whenever you buy and hope to sell higher, the person you sell to will have to see the same opportunity at that higher price to be induced to buy.
Traders who lose follow one of several typical patterns. Some repeatedly suffer individual large losses that wipe out earlier gains or greatly increase a small loss. Others experience brief periods during which their trading wheels fall off: they lose discipline and control and make a series of bad trades as a result.
Wise traders make many small trades, remain involved, and constantly maintain and sharpen their feel for he market. For all of their work, they hope to receive some profit, even if it is small in terms of dollars. In addition, continual participation allows them to sense and recognize the few real opportunities when they arise. These generate large rewards that make the effort of trading truly worthwhile.
Trading is being young, imperfect, and human – not old, exacting, and scientific. It is not a set of techniques, but a commitment. You are to be an information processor. Not a swami. Not a guru. An information processor.At the end of the chapter he lists specific observations that have a high enough probability of reoccurring he considers them rules:
- If you find yourself holding a winning position, adding up your profits, and confidently projecting larger gains on the horizon, you are probably better off exiting the trade. The odds are that the trade has run its course.
- When entering a trade with a market order and your fill is clearly better than expected, odds are it will end up being a losing trade. Good fill, bad trade. Get out!
- If all your ‘trading buddies’ agree with your expectations regarding the next big move, it probably will not work out. If everyone’s conviction level is as strong as the consensus, do the opposite.
How do *your* coping efforts work for you?
Take a look at how well you trade after a position has gone against you. Do you trade better after a drawdown or worse?
How about after you have a few winning trades, days, or weeks in a row? Do you trade better or worse? Breaking down your performance as a function of recent performance will tell you a great deal about how effective you are in coping with risk and reward.
The other excellent indicator of whether your coping is working for you is your emotional experience during trading. If you find that anxiety, overconfidence, frustration, and stress are pushing you into poor decisions, you know that you’re not coping well with the uncertainties of markets.
Finally, it is helpful to identify the sequences of coping behaviors that you utilize when you’re making good decisions and the sequences when you’re trading poorly. Knowing how your individual coping responses come together to form coping strategies can help you cultivate your coping strengths.
Tracking how you deal with challenges when you are at your most effective enables you to create a mental model of that coping that you can call upon during periods of high stress. We cannot avoid the stresses of trading, but those do not have to generate distress and biased decisions.