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.? |
Archives of “probability” tag
rssEXIT in Trading
Exit– The exit is critical to being a successful trader. Let your winners run and your losers run out quickly. Two factors determine your exit, the Target and the Stop loss you have set on entering the trade.
1. The Target is determined by the type of market and the trading history of the stock.
2. If the trade proceeds in your direction move the Stop loss keeping it tight.
3. It the trade continues to move, you may want to take your money off the table!
4. Profits should be taken before reaching a S/R. SO WHAT if it continues to run after you left!
5. Take Profits quickly and often! And remember discretion is the better part of valor.
6. The two most important factors in determining the Stop loss are the last S/R and providing enough margin for the trade to be successful. You must balance these against each other.
7. The Stop loss can be predetermined by your maximum loss limit but understand a small loss limit can positively impact your probability of success.
8. I must balance courage and common sense when staying in the trade. The money may be better used in another trade.
9. Remember small losses are the key to success in an environment where you may be wrong greater than 50% of the time.
10. Don’t give back, remember you can always get back in!
11. Don’t change my rules and therefore my settings.
Winning Streaks vs. Losing Streaks
All traders who last long enough will go through periods of winning and losing streaks.Mathematicians refer to the process as the theory or run known to gamblers as a “streak.”Games of chance such as roulette ,craps and blackjack are predicated that the house has an edge over the player.Trading has a distinct advantage because the trader has the ability to be the house.A mathematical edge is all that is all that is needed by the trader to increase his probability of success.Sound money management advantage begins to work.What happiness in real time trading is that after a series of losing trades the trader will begin to question the system or his ability to execute the system properly. Tow things are necessary to get though the bad losing times !Belief in your system is very important but it ranks second to the sound money management system.Mediocre trading systems can have positive results with the use of a good money management system.The rule of thumb is to reduce your risk on any trade to 2% of working capital.This should prevent a meltdown but remember trading is about probability not certainty ! |
The 7 Best Ways to Exit a Trade
In trading the money is not made in the entry, it is in the exit. The art of the exit is crucial to a traders success in the markets. Profits can disappear if you do not take them at the right time, small losses can become huge losses if you do not cut them. Small profits can become huge profits if you let them run until they truly stop. Keeping capital tied up in a trade going nowhere and just letting it sit there can cause you to miss out on other great opportunities.
So what is a trader to do?
- Use stop losses, only risk 1% of your total trading capital on any one trade, when you have lost that 1%, get out. Position sizing, stop losses, and understanding volatility is key.
- Enter trades right at break out points to new highs or off key price support levels or key moving average support levels. If it loses that support later and fails to retake it quickly then sell it.
- Buy when a stock is one ‘R’ multiple above a key support level, sell if it falls back and loses that support level. (One ‘R’ multiple = 1% of total trading capital).
- Use a ‘stale’ or ‘time’ stop: Set a time limit on how long you will give a trade to move a certain amount, if it fails to move enough fast enough, get out.
- Volatility stop. The market or your stock has a big expansion in its daily price range or starts moving against you the full daily range. You either cut your position down in size or get out due to increased risk.
- You trail a stop loss behind your winner, when it reverses and hits that stop you sell. A trailing stop can be a moving average or a percentage you your gain.
- You sell your position because you have found a much better trade with a better probability of success or a bigger upside.
The key above all else is always to have a plan to get out of every trade before you get in. Before each trading day begins think about what you will do based on the price levels your open trade is at.
Probability in Trading
The indulgence of probability
Probability in day trading is an extremely flexible and equally subjective authority. It is one such aspect that provides for a comprehensive room in terms of making decisions and analysing the potential effects of the decision as well. It can be envisioned as a semi-mechanical process which is based on an automated system comprising of various probabilities that depict two possible results at the end of it all.
Application of the laws of probability to determine market curve
The laws of probability are majorly applied to the stock market arena in speculating the growth curve. One of the most common examples is the influence of present growth on a stock. For instance the laws of probability in stock market confers to the fact that a stock is expected to underperform following an adverse growth session since major players tend to reap in the benefits without further risk involvement.
The substantial loss is incurred since major proportions of the people seemingly think alike and want to either cash out with the profits they have made or simply by virtue of the fear of losing money. Either way the scenario is completely structured owing to the presumptuous thinking of the common people and the misguiding statistical analysis with probability at its core.
It is therefore easily understandable that probability plays a comprehensive role at the crux of shaping the stock market manoeuvres. Probability in day trading is completely speculative yet self-induced as well. In an easier and subtle language it can be envisioned as a pseudo element that helps to shape the movements. It is significantly a common entity that is extensively present at the back of the mind in each trader.
Probability based trading (more…)
Nassim Taleb: Soros versus Buffett
If given a choice between investing with Buffett and billionaire investor George Soros, Taleb also said he would probably pick the latter.
“I am not saying Buffett isn’t as good as Soros,” he said. “I am saying that the probability Soros’s returns come from randomness is much smaller because he did almost everything: he bought currencies, he sold currencies, he did arbitrages. He made a lot more decisions. Buffett followed a strategy to buy companies that had a certain earnings profile, and it worked for him. There is a lot more luck involved in this strategy.”
[From: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-25/obama-s-stimulus-plan-made-crisis-worse-taleb-says.html]
I have high respect for your intelligence and thinking, and I believe that “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan” are must-read books for everyone. However, I believe your observation on Warren Buffett is wrong.
You justified your pick on Soros because you have observed his thousands if not millions of trades; therefore, giving you comfort that he is making decisions and his success, to quote what you said, is “2 million times more statistically evidence that his results are not by chance than Buffett does”.
You are implying that Soros is making thousands more decisions that Buffett. It seems to me that your understanding of Buffett is superficial, leading to your flawed conclusion.
During a meeting with MBA students from the University of Georgia in early 2007, Buffett told the group of students that “There were four Moody’s manuals at the time. I went through them all, page by page, over 10,000 pages twice. On page 1433, I found Western Insurance Securities. Its earnings per share were as follows: 1949 – $21.66, 1950 – $29.09. In 1951, the low-high share price was $3 – $13. Ten pages later, on page 1443, I found National American Fire Insurance….”
Again, in 2004, Buffett searched through the entire Korean stock market by reading Citigroup Investment Guide to Korean Stocks (that is over 1,700 companies). In 4 hours he found 20 companies that he liked and put $100 million to work.
These two examples illustrated that Buffett did make thousands of decisions of not to invest. Those who study Buffett intensely know that he works extreme hard and study all companies available from A to Z, leaving no stone unturned. Deciding not to buy is just as important as deciding to buy. However, inactivity is commonly misunderstood for not making any decision.
To quote Albert Einstein, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.”
How hard is it to time the Market?
As a simplified illustration of how hard it is to time the market, assume that you are 70% accurate calling market turns. If you are in the market, two calls are required: a sell and a subsequent buy. The probability of being correct (buying back in at a lower price than your selling price) is 70% times 70%, or 49%. That shows you have to be very good (and most people are not much better than a coin toss) to be successful at market timing.
Seven Insights for Disciplined Trading
I’ve always been a fan of Mark Douglas’ work, as my copy of his initial book on trading psychology, The Disciplined Trader, is thoroughly marked up thanks to Douglas’ many innovative ideas about mastering the internal challenges we all face with trading. His newest book, Trading in the Zone, is full of more great insights. I recently finished reading his excellent follow-up work, and it sparked my review of key points I take out of Douglas’ ground-breaking insights:
1) Develop consistency. Douglas focuses on how we can create a mindset of consistency by developing beliefs which support us in obtaining this result. In order to develop consistency, Douglas emphasizes beliefs such as objectively identifying your edges, defining the risk in each trade in advance, accepting the risk to be able to exit a position when a defined loss level is realized, and many other key mindsets that help traders work through the issues they face in taking a trade, making the trade and executing their exit from the trade.
2) Trading is a probability game. You can’t be a perfectionist and expect to be a great trader. Your losses (that you hope will return to breakeven) will kill you.
3) Jumping in too soon or getting in too late. These mistakes come from traders not having a well-defined plan of how they will enter the market. This positions the trader as a reactive trader instead of a proactive trader, which increase the level of emotion the trader will feel in reacting to market movements. A written plan helps make a trader more systematic and objective, and reduces the risk that emotions will cause the trader to deviate from his plan.
4) Not taking profits on winners and letting winners turn to losers. Again this is a function of not having a properly thought-out plan. Entries are easy but exits are hard. You must have a plan for how you will exit the market, both on your winners and your losers. Then your job as a trader becomes to execute your plan precisely.
5) Great traders don’t place their own expectations on to the market’s behavior. Poor traders expect the market to give them something. When conditions change, a smart trader will recognize that, and take what the market gives.
6) Emotional pain comes from expectations not being realized. When you expect something, and it doesn’t deliver as expected, what occurs? Disappointment. By not having expectations of the market, you are not setting yourself up for this inner turmoil. Douglas states that the market doesn’t generate pain or pleasure inherently; the market only generates upticks and downticks. It is how we perceive and respond to these upticks and downticks that determine how we feel. This perception and feeling is a function of our beliefs. If you’re still feeling pain when taking a loss according to your plan, you are still experiencing a belief that your loss is somehow a negative reflection on you personally.
7) The Four Major Fears – fear of losing money, being wrong, missing out, leaving money on the table. All of these fears result from thinking you know what will happen next. Your trading plan must approach trading as a probabilities game, where you know in advance you will win some and lose some, but that the odds will be in your favor over time. If you approach trading thinking that you can’t take a loss, then take three losses in a row (which is to be expected in most trading methods), you will be emotionally devastated and will give up on your plan.
The Secret Sauce: A Knowledge Advantage
“What is your secret sauce?
No. 1, it’s possible, especially in inefficient markets, to gain a knowledge advantage. By definition, an inefficient market is one where hard work and skill can pay off. We can also control our psyche and emotions so that we don’t make the human mistakes that are so common. Of course the other thing is we have a philosophy of controlling risk. So that doesn’t necessarily make us the winner rather than the loser in the transaction, but it increases the probability that we engage in transactions of the sort that we and our clients want.”
There are a few ways to access better knowledge in an inefficient market. You either have better sources, illegal information or you just simply have a superior understanding. That’s why I always emphasize the importance of a sound top-down approach. If you don’t understand the monetary system you’re more inclined to make mistakes in micro managing your portfolio. You make silly mistakes like misunderstanding how the Fed operates, how QE works, how fiscal policy impacts the economy, how bond auctions works, etc etc. Misunderstanding these important macro functions has resulted in endless predictions for hyperinflation, rising bond yields, falling stock prices, etc. But if you had a sound understanding of the system – if you had a better understanding – you sidestepped all of these predictions that were clearly wrong if you understood how the system works.
You don’t need to cheat or steal to get better information or knowledge. Sometimes it’s a matter of putting in the effort to obtain it.
Characteristic of losing trader
Losing traders spend a great deal of time forecasting where the market will be tomorrow. Winning traders spend most of their time thinking about how traders will react to what the market is doing now, and they plan their strategy accordingly.
CONCLUSION:
Success of a trade is much more likely to occur if a trader can predict what type of crowd reaction a particular market event will incur. Being able to respond to irrational buying or selling with a rational and well thought out plan of attack will always increase your probability of success. It can also be concluded that being a successful trader is easier than being a successful analyst since analysts must in effect forecast ultimate outcome and project ultimate profit. If one were to ask a successful trader where he thought a particular market was going to be tomorrow, the most likely response would be a shrug of the shoulders and a simple comment that he would follow the market wherever it wanted to go. By the time we have reached the end of our observations and conclusions, what may have seemed like a rather inane response may be reconsidered as a very prescient view of the market.
Losing traders focus on winning trades and high percentages of winners. Winning traders focus on losing trades, solid returns and good risk to reward ratios.
CONCLUSION:
The observation implies that it is much more important to focus on overall risk versus overall profit, rather than “wins” or “losses”. The successful trader focuses on possible money gained versus possible money lost, and cares little about the mental highs and lows associated with being “right” or “wrong”.