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Wisdom Thoughts for Traders

If your not sure and don’t have an edge, cash IS a strategy.

If you are on a cold streak, reduce size by 70% and tighten stops for a week.

Stocks aren’t people, they cant be trusted, an algorithm doesn’t care that you think you know the story or the chart.

Don’t be “all in” in any name, you will blow up your account.

It’s totally cool to change your mind right after a trade, the market changes by the minute, so should you.

Pick one strategy and stick to it. This may take time if you are a beginner.

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, so take losses but keep them very small.

I haven’t taken someone else s idea in a long time, you have just as good a chance of being right or wrong as some other putz.

Don’t have 15 technical indicators on your screen, that’s and EKG not a chart. Less is more.

Don’t trade pissed off, it will crush your P&L

Guess who wins when you “revenge” trade?

Take partial profits on the way up and raise your stops.

When you have three losing trades in a row, take a walk around the block. You may get an epiphany, at the very least it’s therapeutic.

Realize early that the market will always be smarter than you.

10 Trading Mistakes

10 Trading Mistakes1. Refusing to define a loss.

2. Not liquidating a losing trade, even after you have acknowledged the trade’s potential is greatly diminished.

3. Getting locked into a specific opinion or belief about market direction. From a psychological perspective this is equivalent to trying to control the market with your expectation of what it will do: “I’m right, the market is wrong.”

4. Focusing on price and the monetary value of a trade, instead of the potential for the market to move based on its behavior and structure.

5. Revenge-trading as if you were trying get back at the market for what it took away from you.

6. Not reversing your position even when you clearly sense a change in market direction.

7. Not following the rules of the trading system.

8. Planning for a move or feeling one building, but then finding yourself immobilized to hit the bid or offer, and therefore denying yourself the opportunity to profit.

9. Not acting on your instincts or intuition.

10. Establishing a consistent pattern of trading success over a period of time, and then giving your winnings back to the market in one or two trades and starting the cycle over again.

TRADING ERRORS

1.  Refusing to define a loss.

2.  Not getting rid of a losing trade when it is obviously a loser.

3.  Getting locked into a bullheaded opinion about market direction.

4.  Focusing on monetary value of trade instead of market structure.

5.  Revenge trading to recoup a loss.

6.  Not reversing a position when the market is clearly changing direction.

7.  Not following the rules of your strategy.

8.  Planning for a trade and then not taking it.

9.  Not acting on your intuition.

10.  Giving back recent gains due to overtrading or inconsistency.

We can learn a lot from the market, and from ourselves, if we would only listen.

Deadly Emotions

REVENGE, we all know it and have done it. It happens when you are tricked by the market and decide to take another trade before looking at the big picture, then BAM you are on the wrong side of the trade again. Pissed off and refusing to move while your money is going further down the drain. Scared to let go for fear that you are going to get tricked again.

PANIC, that is when you lack the confidence to enter or ride a profitable trade. This happens when you have taken some hits and now you lack the confidence to trade profitably.

IMPATIENCE, this happens when you can’t wait for a proper trade set-up and jump on a price hiccup/retracement, often finding yourself on the wrong side of the trade.

ANGER, you know that feeling that comes over you when you have taken a hit or two and you want to kill your computer.

SELF PITY, when you come to the market hoping for crumbs and get none, and can’t see why THEY won’t let you have just a little bit.

DEPRESSION, something perhaps outside of the market has you at an extreme low point.

INDIFFERENCE, it happens when you have gotten hit so many times that you just don’t care any more because no matter what you can win any way.

All of these emotions work hard against you clouding your clarity and give other traders the advantage over you.

If you are experiencing any of these emotions when you enter your platform; abandon your trading until you have yourself under control and have the clarity of mind to trade. Not doing so greatly increases your chances of handing your money over to a trader who is more emotionally fit and controlled than you are.

We are all human and it happens to us all, but what weighs heavy in your mind will often weigh heavily in your pocket.

Come to your trading platform, well rested, focused and ready to trade. You may take an occasional hit so what it is a LESSON. We all get them and if we learn the lesson that the loss has taught us; it will make us much better traders.

DO NOT TRADE YOUR EMOTIONS!!!!!—-

Never Revenge On The Market

revenge-oneThere is a direct correlation between your ability to let the market tell you what it is likely to do next and the degree to which you have released yourself from the negative effects of any beliefs about losing, being wrong, and revenge on the markets. Not being aware of this relationship, most traders will continue to observe the market from a contaminated perspective

Trading Experiences

A major key to success as a Trader and Investor lies in your mind.  Actually, it lies in your ability to use your mind optimally and creatively.

Please remember – there is NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.  You don’t need to change YOU.  What you most likely need to change is the “software” that you are running in your mind.  When we are born we do not get a user’s manual on how best to use our mental abilities.  So we learn by soaking up what we see and hear around us as we grow up.  And often times what we learn is not conducive to being a successful trader and investor.

One of the key mental approaches is to “Welcome Every Experience.”  Welcome every experience that comes to you.  It may be an expectation, or it may be a surprise.  It may be ‘good’, or it may be ‘bad’ based on your first assessment of it.  It may involve someone getting hurt, someone getting promoted, a tragedy, a triumph, a windfall, a bankruptcy, an ‘aha’ moment….anything.  The most useful way to approach experiences we receive (which are mostly experiences we can’t control as they are outside of us) is to welcome them and learn from them.  Realize that they are exactly what we need in that moment, at that point in our lives.  And since we don’t have a time machine, once something has happened, there’s no changing it. (more…)

Be sad and cry

sad

Crying will improve your trading.
Crying releases certain hormones that have the affect of “calming the mind” thus you
will have a clear mind for trading.

read this link someone else posted….
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/i…09091936AAANd8x
Not to be confused with depression!!
Emotions and trading:
HAPPY … bad (careless trades)
ANGRY … very bad (revenge trading)
DEPRESSION… very bad (thoughts of getting rope from closet)
SAD …. very good (calm and clear mind)
 

Never Revenge On The Market

revengeThere is a direct correlation between your ability to let the market tell you what it is likely to do next and the degree to which you have released yourself from the negative effects of any beliefs about losing, being wrong, and revenge on the markets. Not being aware of this relationship, most traders will continue to observe the market from a contaminated perspective

3 Characteristics of Great Traders

 Adapt or Die

Market conditions change and technology advances, thus the conditions for trading are always evolving, the rise in mechanical trading is testament to that. The very best traders through a process of education and adaptation are constantly staying ahead of the curve and creating ever new and ingenious methods to profit from the markets evolution.

 Fail to plan, you plan to fail.

The best traders have a well documented plan; they know exactly what they are looking for and follow that plan to the letter. Their preparation for a trade starts long before the market open, it is this meticulous planning and importantly adherence to that plan that helps them avoid the biggest demons for any trader, over trading and revenge trading.

 “Be like Machine”

As human beings emotions pay a key role in our existence, for a trader emotions can be a source of great pain. Trading psychology and the management of your emotions in a trade play a key role in overall success. Fear and greed can cut your winners short and let your losers run. Dealing with emotions follows on from your plan; the more robust your plan the less likely you are to fall into the emotional mine field.

4 More Rules to Trade

 

1. Average Winners Not Losers.  It is not “don’t frown, average down”; it is applying the discipline to cut losers short and adding to winners that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.  If you have a winning stock then add to it.  If you have a losing stock then get rid of it. 

2.  Never Let a Winner Turn Into A Loser.  Greed is the cause of this mistake.  Let the market tell you when to exit a trade, not whether you have a profit or not.  “If your trade is acting well, as defined by key indicators, and the market activity is supporting your position, stay in.  If not, its go time!” Do not let a good profit vanish into thin air because you want more than the market is willing to give.

3. Never Mix Disciplines.  If you day trade then day trade and do not let a day trade turn into a swing trade.  If you swing trade do not let your swing trade turn into an investment. Follow the rules based on the discipline of your time frame.

4.  Never Try To Trade Back A loser.  In other words, each trade is a new one and should not be used to win back money lost in the last trade.  Always trade in the present not in the past where too many emotional and psychology factors can affect the current trade.  Revenge does not pay in or out of the market. 

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