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Trading and Behavior

Gandhi said a person cannot be different from himself in different areas of his life. He meant a person really cannot be someone at work and a entirely different person at home, with his friends, etc. The personality is a whole –- you can’t have a mask for different occasions. What you do in private life echoes in your business life, and vice-versa. What you do in the different areas of your life (private, professional, friendship, religion, spirituality, fun) echoes in every other part.

If you are a fighter in your work, one cannot expect you to be a daisy flower at home -– you will treat your family with the same authority and discipline. If you are kind, you will be kind whether at home or at office. One cannot really perform different roles separately. The person is an unity.

That means if you are lazy, undisciplined, late, in your behavior, it will reflect in your trading. Have you ever thought your trading problems may not be trading related? If you find yourself… (more…)

12 Great Chess Quotes For Traders

Some great chess quotes from Garry Kasparov that can apply to chess, trading, or life.chess-trading

  1. You must know what questions to ask and ask them frequently. Questions are what matters. Questions, and discovering the right ones, are the key to staying on course.
  2. The top achievers believe in themselves and their plans, and they work constantly to ensure those plans are worthy of their belief.
  3. Personal style is not generic software that you can download. You must instead recognize what works best for you and then, through trial and error, develop your own method- your own map.
  4. We must also avoid being distracted from our strategic path by the competition.
  5. Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.
  6. You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win.  You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.
  7. Chess is everything: art, science, and sport. (more…)

Philosophical speculation

I used to do a lot of philosophical speculation as a young man. I wasted a large part of my youth regurgitating certain ideas. Then I discovered that one can learn a great deal more through action than through contemplation. So I became an active thinker where my thinking played an important role in deciding what actions to take and my actions play an important role in improving my thinking. This two-way interaction between thinking and action became the hallmark of my philosophy and the hallmark of my life. – George Soros

speculation

Examine Your Beliefs

There is lot of talk of trading psychology , but what exactly are the 3 or 5 things you can do to improve your psychology.
If you want to increase your muscles you go and lift weight
If you want to improve your stamina, you go and run daily
If you want to reduce weight you eat less and exercise more
What exactly do you need to do to improve your psychology.
First starting point if you want to improve your psychology is by examining your beliefs
You can only trade what you believe in.
Your beliefs drive your behavior. (more…)

50 Rules for Traders ,Yes Don't Worry about New High in Sensex ,Nifty

I’m sure most everybody knows these truisms in their hearts, but this list is nicely edited and makes a good read.

  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. (more…)

Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“‘What of Art?’ she asked. 
‘It is a malady.’ 
‘Love?’ 
‘An illusion.’ 
‘Religion?’ 
‘The fashionable substitute for Belief.’ 
‘You are a sceptic.’ 
‘Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.’ 
‘What are you?’ 
‘To define is to limit.’”

The High Priests of Finance

Finance even has its own high priests in the form of the analysts and fund managers who promise their clients heavenly rewards if only they listen to their advice. They preach regular sermons in the form of brokers’ notes and quarterly reports, and they house themselves in vast cathedral-like buildings that dominate the skyline. Each day also has its canonical hours as traders pray for profitable opportunities at the European, American and Asian market openings. Finance has its annual calendar, too, marked with festivals known as results seasons in which the lucky participants receive their temporal (rather than spiritual) dividends.

And like any self-respecting religion, finance has its doctrinal schisms as well. Active fund managers are a bit like the medieval Catholic church, offering eternal salvation to those willing to pay the appropriate sum, which are known in modern parlance as performance fees rather than indulgences. The active-investment sect has its elaborate rituals and language, with a liturgy (“information ratios” and “alpha generation”) as baffling to the layman as the Latin mass was to the medieval peasant. Clients are supposed to listen to their presentations in a reverential hush, trusting that all the mumbo-jumbo will deliver superior results. The passive fund managers, or index-trackers, are akin to early Lutherans. Investors have no need for priestly intermediaries between them and the market, say the index-trackers. All they require is the full text of those companies that are included in the benchmark. (more…)

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