The expectancy in gambling is ALWAYS terrible, while market speculation at times offers outstanding opportunities. To get a 2:1 or 3:1 opportunity in gambling, one needs to accept incredibly low odds of victory. In financial markets, those 2:1 or above opportunities come around like clockwork and offer high enough probability that long-term positive expectancy is possible. Not only that, but the market speculator has the opportunity to adjust his or her position after the game begins…when was the last horse race where you could take a little off the table after the first turn? Or reclaim most of your bet when your horse stumbles out of the gate?
Archives of “probability” tag
rss100 TRADING TIPS
1)Nobody is bigger than the market.
2)The challenge is not to be the market, but to read the market. Riding the wave is much more rewarding than being hit by it.
3)Trade with the trends, rather than trying to pick tops and bottoms.
4)There are at least three types of markets: up trending, range bound, and down. Have different trading strategies for each.
5)In uptrends, buy the dips ;in downtrends, sell bounces.
6)In a Bull market, never sell a dull market, in Bear market, never buy a dull market.
7)Up market and down market patterns are ALWAYS present, merely one is more dominant. In an up market, for example, it is very easy to take sell signal after sell signal, only to be stopped out time and again. Select trades with the trend.
8)A buy signal that fails is a sell signal. A sell signal that fails is a buy signal.
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Great Quotes of Mark Douglas
“I know it may sound strange to many readers, but there is an inverse relationship between analysis and trading results. More analysis or being able to make distinctions in the market’s behavior will not produce better trading results. There are many traders who find themselves caught in this exasperating loop, thinking that more or better analysis is going to give them the confidence they need to do what needs to be done to achieve success. It’s what I call a trading paradox that most traders find difficult, if not impossible to reconcile, until they realize you can’t use analysis to overcome fear of being wrong or losing money. It just doesn’t work!”
-Mark Douglas
“There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that defines 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.”
-Mark Douglas (more…)
Mastering Reward/Risk
Most traders ignore reward/risk ratios, hoping that luck will save them when things start to go bad.
This is probably the main reason so many of them are destined to fail. It’s really dumb when you think about it, because reward/risk is the easiest way to get a definable edge on the market house.
The reward/risk equation builds a safety net around your open positions. It’s designed to tell you how much can be won, or lost, on each trade you take. The secondary purpose is to remove emotion so you can focus squarely on the cold, hard numbers.
Let’s look at 15 ways that reward/risk will improve your trading performance.
1. Every setup carries a directional probability that reflects a specific pattern. Always execute positions in the highest-odds direction. Exit your trades when a price fails to respond according to your expectations.
2. Every setup has a price level that violates the pattern. Only take trades where price needs to move a short distance to hit this “risk target.” Look the other way and find the “reward target” at the next support or resistance level. Trade positions with the highest reward target to risk target ratios. (more…)
Perfectionism
Trading is not about perfection. It is about probability and progress. All charts, analyses (fundamental and technical) and trading plans are built on probabilities.
Why then, do so many traders strive for perfection? Why do so many traders miss trades, waiting for exactly the right entry and then beat up on themselves when it doesn’t come and the position runs away while they sit there scratching their heads and condemning themselves?
Why are so many traders trying to turn a game of probability into one of 100% certainty?
The answer lies in one of the cardinal sins of trading which is PERFECTIONISM.
Perfectionism can be a great help to people in many professions, but can be fatal to a trader. Perfectionists, always trying to find the Holy Grail of trading go from one service to another, from one system to another, looking for a way that they can be right all the time. YES! Now, I found it. It’s this trading room, or this service, or this indicator! Wait… something is wrong here. Not all of these trades are working and I have draw downs! How can it be that this particular method failed and I actually had to take a loss? Must be something wrong. I will try harder and look for an even better system, a more expensive service, a new and improved guru, some absolutely no-fail software so that I can have ONLY WINNING TRADES. (more…)
12 Cognitive Biases that Prevent you From Being Rational
Confirmation Bias – The tendency for people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or ideas. Investors and economists often fail to fully appreciate other views due to a narrow minded view of the world often resulting from what they think they already know.
Ingroup bias – the tendency to favor one’s own group. In investing and economics we see this in ideologies and particular strategies. Austrians favor those who believe their own thinking. Chartists dislike value investors. Often times, the strongest economists and investors are the ones who are able to move beyond this ingroup bias and explore the potential that other groups have something positive to contribute.
Gambler’s Fallacy – When an individual erroneously believes that the onset of a certain random event is less likely to happen following an event or a series of events. We see this in trading all the time. This is the belief that just because something has occurred in the past that it is more likely to occur in the future. The “trend is your friend” and that sort of thing….
Post-Purchase Rationalization – When one rationalizes past purchases after the fact in an attempt to justify past actions. Investors often learn about how a bad trade turns into an investment when they rationalize their past purchases. If you’ve been in the business for a while you know how destructive this can be. (more…)
The 5 Fundamental Truths Of Trading
| If you hold these core trading beliefs you will tend to do well in trading: I. “Anything can happen” – the market can go up, down or sideways from any point and negate my edge; II. “You Don`t need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money” III. “To win in the markets you need an edge” – an edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another IV. “There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any set of variables that define an edge” V. “Every moment in the market is unique” – so the last trade is independent from the next |
4 Market Principals
There are four basic principles of price behavior which have held up over time. Confidence that a type of price action is a true principle is what allows a trader to develop a systematic approach. The following four principles can be modeled and quantified and hold true for all time frames, all markets. The majority of patterns or systems that have a demonstrable edge are based on one of these four enduring principles of price behavior. Charles Dow was one of the first to touch on them in his writings.
Principle One: A Trend Has a Higher Probability of Continuation than Reversal
Principle Two: Momentum Precedes Price
Principle Three: Trends End in a Climax
Principle Four: The Market Alternates between Range Expansion and Range Contraction!
Be Imperfect
As 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.
Overtrading: A Common Mistake
Over trading is one of the biggest causes why traders never make it in the financial markets. With a click of a button, a trader can place a trade anytime he wants. It takes tremendous discipline to hold yourself back from over trading. There are many reasons why one may choose to over trade.
1. Traders without a plan
Traders without a plan are my favorite type of traders because they will always lose. Without a plan, how would one know when to take a trade and when not to? Having a trading plan is a necessity. I can not trade if I do not have a plan for the day. I feel lost without one.
2. Revenge trading
Many new traders become tilted after a loss or a string of losses. This causes them to revenge trade just to break even. This often leads to reckless trading forcing a trade when opportunity is low.
3. Chasing the markets
Alot of new traders feel more pain when they have missed a move than an actual loss. This is why new traders love to chase the markets. If price has moved away from your projected entry point, let it go. There are plenty of more opportunities. Chasing is one of the worst habits a trader can have. Not only does it offer you low rewards, it also gives you a horrible entry and alters your stop loss placement. Always think about the risk before the profits.
When you have a plan to follow, it is easy to filter out bad trades from good one. This keeps you discipline and selective in your trades. I personally do not like trading more than 5 round trips a day. Patience is a virtue. There are always good high probability trading opportunities everyday. Just sit tight and don’t jump the gun.
One way to control a loss is by reducing your size. The problem with gamblers is that they will often double up their stake so they can get even quicker. This usually leads to a greater loss and devastation. Having the strength to grind your way back from a loss is important in trading. Whenever I am having a losing streak, I will trade small and gradually recover. This also gives me the confidence I need after a string of losses.