1. Plan your trades. Trade your plan.
2. Keep records of your trading results.
3. Keep a positive attitude, no matter how much you lose.
4. Don’t take the market home.
5. Continually set higher trading goals.
6. Successful traders buy into bad news and sell into good news.
7. Successful traders are not afraid to buy high and sell low.
8. Successful traders have a well-scheduled planned time for studying the markets.
9. Successful traders isolate themselves from the opinions of others.
10. Continually strive for patience, perseverance, determination, and rational action.
11. Limit your losses – use stops!
12. Never cancel a stop loss order after you have placed it!
13. Place the stop at the time you make your trade.
14. Never get into the market because you are anxious because of waiting.
15. Avoid getting in or out of the market too often.
16. Losses make the trader studious – not profits. Take advantage of every loss to improve your knowledge of market action.
17. The most difficult task in speculation is not prediction but self-control. Successful trading is difficult and frustrating. You are the most important element in the equation for success.
18. Always discipline yourself by following a pre-determined set of rules.
19. Remember that a bear market will give back in one month what a bull market has taken three months to build.
20. Don’t ever allow a big winning trade to turn into a loser. Stop yourself out if the market moves against you 20% from your peak profit point.
21. You must have a program, you must know your program, and you must follow your program.
22. Expect and accept losses gracefully. Those who brood over losses always miss the next opportunity, which more than likely will be profitable.
23. Split your profits right down the middle and never risk more than 50% of them again in the market.
24. The key to successful trading is knowing yourself and your stress point.
25. The difference between winners and losers isn’t so much native ability as it is discipline exercised in avoiding mistakes.
26. In trading as in fencing there are the quick and the dead.
27. Speech may be silver but silence is golden. Traders with the golden touch do not talk about their success.
28. Dream big dreams and think tall. Very few people set goals too high. A man becomes what he thinks about all day long.
29. Accept failure as a step towards victory.
30. Have you taken a loss? Forget it quickly. Have you taken a profit? Forget it even quicker! Don’t let ego and greed inhibit clear thinking and hard work. (more…)
Archives of “profits” tag
rssInvesting vs Gambling
“Investors are the big gamblers. They make a bet, stay with it, and if it goes the wrong way, they lose it all.”
Jesse Livermore
Not having an exit strategy before initiating a trading position is worse than gambling, where you realize that the chance to lose is too big, therefore you risk only money you can afford to lose. Not having a stop loss means that you are most likely risking more than you could afford to lose. As they say amateurs go out of business because of taking big losses. Professionals go out of business by taking small profits. Cut your losses short when your stop level is hit. Even more, make sure to put your stop loss order immediately after you initiate a trade. Put your stop loss at a place where the trend you are following will be over. Let your profits run by gradually lifting you profit protection stop order. In order to maximize your profits you have to be willing to give some of them back.
I” don’t believe anyone ever gets wiped out in the market because of bad luck; there is always some other reason for it. Either you were off when you did the trade, or you didn’t have the experience. There is always a mistake involved.”
During and After the Trade
1. What’s your game plan if it goes against you and threatens your survival?
2. Will you be able to get out? Did you take that into account in your workout?
3. More typically, what will you do if it goes way against you and then meanders back to give you a breakeven? Or if it immediately goes for you or aginst you?
4. Would you be willing to take a ½% profit if you get it in the first 10 minutes?
5. Did you test whether taking small opportunistic profits turns a winning system into a bad one?
6. How will unexpected cardinal events affect you like the “regrettably,” or the pre-annnouncement of something you expected for the next open? And what happens if you’re trading an individual stock and the market goes up or down a few percent during the day, or what’s the impact of a related move in oil or interest rates?
7. Are you sure that you have to monitor the trade during the day? If you’re using stops, then you probably don’t have to but then your position size would have to be reduced so much that your chances of a reasonable profit taking account of vig are close to zero. If you’re using 10% of your capital on a trade, they you’ll have to monitor it for survival. But, but, but. Are you sure you won’t be called away by phone calls, or the others?
8. Are you at equilibrium in your personal life? You’re not as talented as Tiger Woods, and you probably won’t be able to handle distressed calls for money or leaks on the home front. Are you sure that if you’re losing you won’t get hit on the head with a 7-iron, or berated until you have to give up at the worst possible time?
9. After the trade did you learn anything from the trade?
10. Are you organized sufficiently to have a record of all your trades for your accounting and learning?
11. Should you modify your existing systems based on it?
12. How does recency and frequency and value affect your future?
13. Did you fit your after activities to your mojo?
14. If you made a good profit, did you take some capital out of the fray for a rainy day?
15. Have you learned to say “fair” whenevever anyone asks you how you’re doing and are you sure that you don’t spend a fortune after a good trade, and dissipate your profits with non-economic activities?
16. Is there a better use for your time than monitoring the ticks or the market every minute of the day if you do, and if you don’t, do those who do so and have much faster and better equipment than you have an insurmountable advantage against you?
Ego
Separate your ego from your trading. The market does not care what college you went to or how many kids you have to feed. Take profits when you have them and NEVER think you are smarter than the market. As they say, “humble yourself or you will be humbled.”
Overconfidence in Trading
Overconfidence bias is an magnified belief in your competence as a trader. Any trader who finds themselves thinking that they know the business inside-out and that they have nothing more to learn and that profits are theirs for the taking, may well suffer from an overconfidence bias.
Dangers of Overconfidence
Overconfident traders tend to get themselves into trouble by trading too frequently or by placing tremendously large trades with the plan of making a killing. It’s not inevitable, but an overconfident investor invites misfortune.
Are You Overconfident?
If you want to identify whether you have a tendency to be overconfident, ask yourself, “Have I ever delayed or reversed a decision because I couldn’t accept that I was wrong?” Likewise, you could ask yourself, “Have I ever placed more on a trade than what I know is really sensible?”
Overcoming Overconfidence
One way to overcome an overconfidence bias is to stick to a strict set of risk management rules. These rules should limit the number of markets you invest in, the number of Contracts for difference you trade at one time, how much you are willing to risk on any one trade and how much of your account are you willing to lose before you take a break from trading and re-evaluate your trading strategy.
Learn from Losses
As a trader you have to learn how to take losses. Period. Don’t be a crybaby. Learn how to take losses.
Learning how to take losses is one of the most important lessons you must learn if you want to survive as a trader. Nobody is 100% right all the time. Losses are inevitable. Even Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods lose sometimes and they’re considered the best in their field.
There will be trading streaks where you’ll have a number of successful consecutive trades, but that will eventually come to an end you will take a loss.
As that point it’s very important not to lose your head, you must remain in control of yourself. Don’t have a cow man.
Take a break. Calm down and relax. Take a chill pill dude.
Until you’ve regained a clear mind and an ability to think logically again, stay out of the market.
Don’t whine about your loss and never carry a prejudice against a loss.
The key to manage losses is to cut them quickly before a small loss becomes a large one.
I repeat. The key to manage losses is to cut them quickly before a small loss becomes a large one.
Never ever think that you will never lose. That’s just ludicrous. Losses are just like profits, it’s all part of the trader’s universe.
Losses are unavoidable. Get over the loss and move on to the next trade.
Anything Can Happen
The point is that from our own individual perspective as observers of the market, anything can happen, and it takes only one trader to do it. This is the hard, cold reality of trading that only the very best traders have embraced and accepted with no internal conflict. How do I know this? Because only the best traders consistently pre-define their risks before entering a trade. Only the best traders cut their losses without reservation or hesitation when the market tells them the trade isn’t working. And only the best traders have an organized, systematic, money-management regimen for taking profits when the market goes in the direction of their trade.
Not predefining your risk, not cutting your losses, or not systematically taking profits are three of the most common—and usually the most costly—trading errors you can make. Only the best traders have eliminated these errors from their trading. At some point in their careers, they learned to believe without a shred of doubt that anything can happen, and to always account for what they don’t know, for the unexpected.
The point is that from our own individual perspective as observers of the market, anything can happen, and it takes only one trader to do it. This is the hard, cold reality of trading that only the very best traders have embraced and accepted with no internal conflict. How do I know this? Because only the best traders consistently pre-define their risks before entering a trade. Only the best traders cut their losses without reservation or hesitation when the market tells them the trade isn’t working. And only the best traders have an organized, systematic, money-management regimen for taking profits when the market goes in the direction of their trade.Trading Wisdom
Often I think we overcomplicate trading. All this talk of risk management, money management, entries, exits etc ad nauseum can leave us not being able to see the wood for the trees.
It’s obvious that you need to cut your losses. If you let them run or get out of control your aren’t going to be in the business for long.
But there is another very good and often forgotten reason why you should not let your losses run that William O’Neill highlights:
O’Neill “letting your losses run is the most serious mistake made by almost all investors” simply because “if you don’t sell to cut your losses when you get into trouble, you can easily lose the confidence you’ll need to make buy and sell decisions in the future.”
But if you learn to do this then you stand some chance of doing this:
“Take your losses quickly and your profits slowly” because “your objective is not just to be right but to make big money when you are right.”
The first quote is another great one to heed. If we do and combine it with the second well…… we might just be able to make the big money once in a while.
The Four Principles of Trading
The price has the final say. You may have an opinion on the market, but it is dangerous to marry it to your positions, as famous trader Richard Dennis explained, “You don’t get any profits from fundamental analysis; you get profit from buying and selling. So why stick with the appearance when you can go right to the reality of price and analyze it better?”
Follow instead of forecast. Legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones once declared that he would never hire fundamental traders who frequently tried to outwit the market and got burned, because by the time the fundamentals become clear, the trend is over. You can never know if the next trade wins or not, so simply follow your rules and see.
Preserve your capital. Since the market is impossible to forecast, all great traders agree that you must limit your losses before it gets out of hand, since they have seen a lot of intelligent traders got bruised in a market crash simply because they held on to the losers or even averaged down on the way as the price became “fundamentally” attractive.
Let your winners ride. The other side of the coin is not to cut the profit too soon before it can grow large. Jesse Livermore explained, “I’ve known many men who… began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit. And … they made no real money out of it.” Why? They sold too soon.
The Daffodil Principle
Trading success takes discipline, passion and continuous learning just to name a few.
One additional area that seems to be evident in all traders that keep enhancing their skills and their profits is the ability to ask good questions of themselves and then to apply the answers immediately.
To reach new goals takes new steps that must start now and are not delayed until tomorrow.