Archives of “probability” tag

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What should you look for in a trading system?

  
  Education
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1. Profitability: This is a must when we look for a system .Lowering the risk factor and increasing the reward is simply the answer to a profitable system

2. Probability: One of the important elements of a trading system, but it does not always mean it will be a profitable trading system, if the proper money management is not in use.
3. Consistency: Without consistency we will not be able to breath in the on going changing market condition. A consistently profitable system will pick up some drawdown as soon as the extreme condition is over.

4.Flexibility: Providing Simple, Easy and Powerful System which can be used in any time frame and on any financial instrument.

4 Trading Quotes From Mark Douglas

  
  Education
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There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge. In other words, based on the past performance of your edge, you may know that out of the next 20 trades, 12 will be winners and 8 will be losers. What you don’t know is the sequence of wins and losses or how much money the market is going to make available on the winning trades. This truth makes trading a probability or numbers game. When you really believe that trading is simply a probability game, concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘win’ and ‘lose’ no longer have the same significance. As a result, your expectations will be in harmony with the possibilities.

If you really believe in an uncertain outcome, then you also have to expect that virtually anything can happen. Otherwise, the moment you let your mind hold onto the notion that you know, you stop taking all of the unknown variables into consideration. Your mind won’t let you have it both ways. If you believe you know something, the moment is no longer unique.

To whatever degree you haven’t accepted the risk, is the same degree to which you will avoid the risk. Trying to avoid something that is unavoidable will have disastrous effects on your ability to trade successfully.

The less I cared about whether or not I was wrong, the clearer things became, making it much easier to move in and out of positions, cutting my losses short to make myself mentally available to take the next opportunity.

List of Mistakes by Traders

  
  Education
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Hesitation – fear of putting on a trade where price signals an entry because of what you think could possibly happen. Hey, it’s game of probability, and you’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Chasing – running after the trade you hesitated on because of thinking about it too much, and now you think it will go forever without you. (It may go a long way without you, but don’t worry, another train will come along in a while.)

Overleveraging, averaging down, letting a loser run, trading without protective stops – all caused by the fact you are so certain price will do a certain thing that risk management is for stupid amateurs who get shaken out of “good” positions just when price is about to finally run their way.

Trading against a strong trend – you think price has run too high or too low because you have special indicators that tell you price is “overbought” or “oversold” and therefore has to reverse, even though price is showing you otherwise.

Taking profits too soon – you think no one ever went broke taking a profit and you think that normal price action retracements are reversals, so you grab tiny profits, while allowing losing trades to hit full stop, leaving you with a very poor reward:risk ratio.

Over-trading

  
  Education
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56703773SO002_Markets_ReactToday I want to consider the subject of over-trading. This can take two forms:

  • Frequency of trading: we over trade when we take trades in breach of our strategy.
  • The amount at risk relative to our capital: we over trade when the size of our position threatens risk of ruin.

Frequency of trading assumes that firstly we have some sort of strategy and that you have have developed some rules to implement that strategy. And, secondly, we execute trades in breach of those rules – we take trades not within our rules. (more…)

Day Trading & Poker

  
  Education
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PokerandtradingI learned how to play poker at a very young age.  You don’t just play every hand and stay through every card, because if you do, you will have a much higher probability of losing. You should play the good hands, and drop out of the poor hands, forfeiting the ante. When more of the cards are on the table and you have a very strong hand — in other words, when you feel the percentages are skewed in your favor — you raise and play that hand to the hilt.If you apply the same principles of poker strategy to trading, it increases your odds of winning significantly.
I have always tried to keep the concept of patience in mind by waiting for the right trade, just like you wait for the percentage hand in poker. If a trade doesn’t look right, you get out and take a small loss; it’s precisely equivalent to forfeiting the ante by dropping out of a poor hand in poker. On the other hand, when the percentages seem to be strongly in your favor, you should be aggressive and really try to leverage the trade similar to the way you raise on the good hands in poker.

5 Fundamental Truth about Trading

  
  Education
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5 Fundamental Truth about Trading

  1. Anything can happen.
  2. Does not need to know what’s going to happen next to make money.
  3. Random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that defines an edge
  4. Edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another
  5. Every moment in the market is unique.

If you truly believe in this as well, I’d encourage you to write this down and look at it every day before you look at your charts. Make it a point to remember, embrace and apply it.

Be Imperfect

  
  Education
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imperfectAs a trader – or an investor – you will not be right all of the time. If you can accept your imperfection, and work within it, you will be much more successful:

 

If you have a perfectionist mentality when trading, you are setting yourself up for failure, because it is a “given” that you will experience losses along the way. You must begin to think of trading as a game of probability. Your losses ( that you hope will return to breakeven) will kill you. If you cannot take a loss when it is small ( because of the need to be perfect), then you will watch that small loss grow into a larger loss and so on into a vicious cycle of more and more pain for the perfectionist. Trading on hope does not work. The markets can remain irrational for a lot longer than you can remain solvent.

The object should be excellence in trading, not perfection. Moreover, it is essential to strive for excellence over a sustained period, as opposed to judging that each trade must be excellent. This is a marathon…not a sprint.

The greatest traders know how to take cut losses and let winning positions run. Perfectionists often do exactly the opposite. They get in at the wrong time, stay in too long and then get out the wrong time. Perfectionists are always striving and never arriving. The market will find the flaw in a perfectionistic trader and exploit it day after day.

Ferri, The Power of Passive Investing

  
  Education
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He cites several studies and some of his own tests that demonstrate the futility of seeking alpha. Among the findings, a single actively managed fund has a 42% chance of beating a comparable index fund over the course of a single year, a success rate that drops to 12% over 25 years. The statistics get much worse as you add more active funds. If you own ten funds, you have a 27% chance of beating an all index fund portfolio over one year and a mere 1% chance over 25 years.

Ferri’s own work analyzed the returns of actively managed funds within a generic asset class over five years. He found that a portfolio of five randomly selected active funds had only a 16% chance of beating an index fund, that only 5% of them won by 0.5% or more, and that 63% of them lost by 0.5% or more. When the portfolio was expanded to ten active funds, the numbers were much worse. Only 8% were winning portfolios, 1% of them won by 0.5% or more, and 70% lost by 0.5% or more. Ferri then massaged his model to see whether the numbers could be significantly improved; they couldn’t. As he summarized the results, “Active fund investors have strong headwinds against them. The probability of selecting a winning fund is low; the average payout for those winning funds does not compensate them enough for the shortfall from being wrong; the addition of several active funds in a portfolio reduces the probability of success; and the longer that portfolio is held, the odds drop even more. That’s a lot of headwind!” (p. 92) (more…)

5 Naked Truth about Trading

  
  Education
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  1. Anything can happen.
  2. Does not need to know what’s going to happen next to make money.
  3. Random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that defines an edge
  4. Edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another
  5. Every moment in the market is unique.

If you truly believe in this as well, I’d encourage you to write this down and look at it every day before you look at your charts. Make it a point to remember, embrace and apply it.

EWI Article: Blaming Market Manipulation is an Obstacle to Success

  
Analysis, Education
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The folks at EWI (Elliott Wave International) released a provoking new article today entitled:

“Blaming Market Manipulation for Losses is a Huge Obstacle to Success.”

The article encourages traders to take responsibility for losses instead of finding scape-goats to blame.

Losses may have just been the result of a bad outcome from a high-probability trade… or might have been the result of a bad trading habit like doubling down on losers or chasing a fast price move.

Mr. Prechter makes the point that “Losses are part of the game” and should be used as learning experiences.

You won’t learn if your loss was a result of random probability or a bad trading behavior if you do not analyze the loss, and instead sweep it under the rug as a painful memory.

I particularly liked the quote:

“You don’t have to be perfect to win in the markets, either; you “merely” have to be better than almost everybody else, and that’s hard enough.”

The article is actually the 4th Point in an article published years ago (not during the current market melt-up!) by Robert Prechter on what it takes to be a successful trader.

It’s brief, but thought-provoking!

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