rss

Great -Mark Douglas Trading Quotes

In trading your mind may be the ultimate technical indicator that determines whether you persevere and win in the markets or get broken in half by fear, greed, ego, stress, and uncertainty. No matter whether you are a an investor, retail trader, prop trader, or professional money manger your success will still be determined on the management of your mind. Never underestimate the importance of keeping a cool head in rough times.

Here are ten of the best quotes from Mark Douglas, an author who verbalizes the real nature of trading as well as I have ever seen it captured. If you can absorb these teachings it will help you get through that rough period when you have 10 losing trades in a row or experience a 10% draw down in your trading capital. If you are not matching risk correctly you may have to come back from a complete wipe out of your account like many other have had to do. But do not give up, you can do this if you really want to.

“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…)