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Trading Wisdom from Richard D. Wyckoff

  
  Education
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“You can learn from this how to develop independent judgment, so that you need never ask anyone’s opinion or listen to anyone’s tips, or take anyone’s advice.  You can so train your judgment that you will know just what to do and when to do it.  When you are in doubt you will do nothing.” –Richard D. Wyckoff

Wyckoff was talking here about trading.  He was talking on the subject of studying the markets to determine how they operate.  You will find developing your own trading strategy/method can be the most rewarding and challenging experience of your lifetime.  You need to be comfortable with the risk, before you are comfortable with the reward.  There is an age old saying, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, then stay out of the kitchen.’

As traders, we are exposed on a daily basis to the trading concepts of risk and reward.  Personally, my own reward to risk tolerance took some time for me to feel comfortable with it.  How much do you want to risk on each trade, and how much are you looking to make at a minimum?

Are you at its minimum profit objective going to make more money than you risk?  So if you would take two trades, and one would win and the other would hit your stop loss, would you turn a small profit on your trading?  Obviously, the goal of every trader should be the three general trading rules. (more…)

The Top Ten Similiarities of Winning Traders

  
  Education
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You can read trading, books until you are red-eyed, you can spend thousands of dollars on seminars, you can try to get successful traders to give you the secret sauce of trading or the Holy Grail. But, in the end it is simply you versus the markets. You have to pick your system, your risk tolerance, and take the heat in your own account, it will be your own money you lose.

No one can tell you the right system and method for you. If you can take draw downs in equity mixed with long term capital growth then trend following may be for you. If you love playing the hottest stocks in the market then CAN-SLIM or the Darvas System may be the right systems for you. If you just have little patience and love action then you can join the few who have mastered day trading. There really is no right system for everyone, it depends on what you can handle. However here is what all winning traders must have  to win in the markets regardless of time frame and system:

Trading System

  • They trade a robust system or method that wins more money over time than it loses.
  • Their system gives them a reward to risk ratio that is in their favor.
  • Their system or method is proven to work with a live trading record over many markets and trades or has  historical back testing. (more…)

Top Ten Reasons Traders Lose Their Discipline

  
  Education
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Losing discipline is not a trading problem; it is the common result of a number of trading-related problems. Here are the most common sources of loss of discipline, culled from my work with traders:

10) Environmental distractions and boredom cause a lack of focus;

9) Fatigue and mental overload create a loss of concentration;

8) Overconfidence follows a string of successes;

7) Unwillingness to accept losses, leading to alterations of trade plans after the trade has gone into the red;

6) Loss of confidence in one’s trading plan/strategy because it has not been adequately tested and battle-tested;

5) Personality traits that lead to impulsivity and low frustration tolerance in stressful situations;

4) Situational performance pressures, such as trading slumps and increased personal expenses, that change how traders trade (putting P/L ahead of making good trades);

3) Trading positions that are excessive for the account size, created exaggerated P/L swings and emotional reactions;

2) Not having a clearly defined trading plan/strategy in the first place;

1) Trading a time frame, style, or market that does not match your talents, skills, risk tolerance, and personality.

7 Ways to Become an Unsuccessful Trader

  
  Education
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If you’d prefer to become an unsuccessful trader, you can start by making the following common trading mistakes.

-The first big mistake is the flawed logic of extrapolation. Many traders and investors assume that a trend will remain in force until an “event” comes along to change it. But market trends are not like billiard balls on a pool table. This false assumption will put you on the wrong side of the market more times than not, especially at major turning points.

-The second big mistake is to suppose that news events drive market trends. In fact, the opposite is true: economic, political and social events lag market trends.

-One common mistake is to buy puts or calls that are way “out of the money,” with no other transactions to compliment them. Unless your timing is absolutely perfect — and who has perfect timing? — your chance of success is low. It’s like buying a lottery ticket.

-Another common mistake is to buy options with too little time left to expiration. With less than one month to expiration, the time decay begins to accelerate and the chances of success diminish.

-In the middle of a corrective pattern, it’s common to run out of patience while waiting for confirmation of a trend change. You have to give corrective patterns time to unfold before you jump in. This requires discipline, and a solid understanding of the many ways corrective patterns can unfold.

-Too many traders think Elliott wave is a trading system that tells you exactly where to enter and exit a particular market. That’s the biggest misconception. The reality is that it’s an analytical and forecasting tool, which helps you develop and use your own trading system, based on your own personal risk tolerance.

-Traders tend to over-rely on momentum indicators such as RSI, Stochastics and MACD to precisely spot turning points. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, markets can stay overbought or oversold a lot longer than either you or I can remain solvent.

Why Traders Lose Their Discipline

  
  Education
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  • Environmental distractions and boredom cause a lack of focus – All of us have limits to our attention span and these are easily taxed during quiet times in the market;
  • Fatigue and mental overload create a loss of concentration – The demands of watching the screen hour after hour make it difficult to be sharp, creating fatigue effects that are well-known to pilots, car drivers, and soldiers;
  • Overconfidence follows a string of successes – It is common for traders to attribute success to skill and failure to situational, external factors.  As a result, a string of even random wins can lead traders to become overconfident and veer from trading plans–especially by trading too frequently and/or trading excessive size;
  • Unwillingness to accept losses – This leads traders to alter their trade plans after trades have gone into the red, turning what were meant to be short-term trades into longer-term holds and transforming trades with small size into large trades by adding to losers; (more…)

Dealing with Trading Fear

  
  Education
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 fear-tradingBe In Tune With the Markets

Trade the markets as they are and not as you want them to be.

If we are not in tune with the markets and don’t listen to them, we are going to be in a losing game.

After all, hope is a lousy hedge.

 Be In a Supportive Environment

It is important to listen to the people that we respect and are successful.

 There are traders whose spouse and/or friends have little or no risk tolerance. As a result, these traders allow the fear of their spouse and/or friends to become the boundaries of their success.

Anirudh Sethi's Lessons From 2008 : Part – I

  
  Education
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 aslessons2008

Last week …Many Traders had asked me :Dear Anirudh Sethi… “What would you say is the most important thing you’ve learned about investing and/or trading in 2008?”
Here are some of the replies ….I had given (more…)

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