rss

JPMorgan Chase :Markets are overbought

“Although the SEC fraud case does not have direct implications outside Financials, the rise in uncertainty is negative for equities at a time when equity markets are overbought. Technicals have been pointing to overbought equity markets for some time now and Friday’s correction has the potential to drag the S&P 500 down toward 1175 in the near term. But our technical strategists see very little chance of the S&P 500 falling below 1150, i.e., the January high, over the coming weeks.”

Source: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (Public, NYSE:JPM)

Please note that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (Public, NYSE:JPM) has been dead right on their market calls, as the Pragmatic Capitalist points out in his website, “few of the big banks have traded the recovery as well as JP Morgan. They nailed the reflation trade and they have subsequently been dead right about the reflation trade transforming into the recovery trade. They’ve recommended that investors pile into the highest risk names in the market and its been a winning trade since.”

Trading Wisdom

THE 5 FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF TRADING:

 1. Anything can happen.
2. You don’t need to know what is going to happen next to make money.
3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of
variables that define an edge.
4. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing
happening over another.
5. Every moment in the market is unique.

THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF CONSISTENCY:

 
1. I objectively identify my edges.
2. I predefine the risk of every trade.
3. I completely accept the risk or I am willing to let go of the trade.
4. I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation.
5. I pay myself as the market makes money available to me.
6. I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors.
7. I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success
and, therefore, I never violate them.

A Few Things About Risk

People have an amazing ability to discount risks that threaten their livelihood. That’s dangerous because people who should be the most experienced experts in a field may be the least able to objectively assess their industry.

Risk has a lot to do with culture. Europeans and Canadians are generally wary of the stock market. For Americans, it’s a pastime. The French prefer raw milk. Americans are warned against it. Canadians are banned from it. Europeans are terrified of nuclear exposure. Americans couldn’t care less. Walk through an international airport and you’ll see one person wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of illness and another letting their kid crawl on the floor. Everyone wants to believe they’re thinking objectively, but most of the time you’re just reflecting the cultural norms of where you were born.

Success is an underrated risk. Jason Zweig once wrote: “Being right is the enemy of staying right — partly because it makes you overconfident, even more importantly because it leads you to forget the way the world works.”

Risk’s greatest fuels are debt, overconfidence, impatience, a lack of options, and government subsidies. 

Its greatest enemies are humility, room for error, and government subsidies.

Nothing in the world can give a damn less than risk. Risk doesn’t care about your political views or your morals. It doesn’t care what your view of the market is, or what you were taught in school. It’s an indiscriminate assassin and a master at humbling ideologies.

(more…)

Trading Wisdom

If we want to be successful as traders it is crucial that we have great filters. We must filter out all the noise that separates us from the actual price action. In the end it is just us versus the market. We need to seek  to learn how to trade from others and not look for trades. We have to play a lone hand because we have our own tolerance for pain, our own goals, and we should have our own trading plan with a robust methodology. Others do not know our time frame and we do not know theirs. Their position sizing may be ten times what ours is.

Before we trade we should have a watch list, a risk percent per trade, a methodology, and a trading plan. We should be running our trading like a business not a casino. Information and opinions can bias our trading. Be very careful about the information that you let into your mind. You should attempt to trade as close to your system and methodology as possible without allowing anyone’s opinions our thoughts to come between you and the charts. Actual price action is the king everyone’s opinions are just that, opinions. (more…)

Stock Trading Rules

istock Many of you have asked us  that you have  plan on or have written a book on the subject of trading. We haven’t yet, but plans are
 currently in the works for one. In organizing our notes recently, We have found a number of great trading rules that we have gathered
 along the way. Here are a few that we think are particularly helpful now:
 1. Be on the correct side of the supply and demand forces at work.
 2. Never upset the trading Gods by talking up your book. Hubris kills.
 3. Risk must be embraced, not feared.
 4. Reversals are always more lucrative than trends.
 5. Cycles tend to change before you can take advantage of them.
 6. Wishful thinking and emotional trading are a loser’s game.
 7. Never fall in love with a winning stock.

What As A Trader You can Control and What You Can not ?

We can control:
How much we risk per trade.
How big a position size we take.
What time frame we trade.
What market we trade.
Our style of trading.
Whether we stick with our trading plan or go off of it.
If we honor our stop losses and trailing stops.
How we react to a winning or losing trade.

 We can not control:

Whip saws when the trend reverses on us.
Gaps in opening prices both up and down.
Headline risk.
Natural disasters.
Whether a trend continues or reverses the moment we open a position.
Whether any individual trade wins or loses.
How many winning or losing trades we have in a row.
 The battle for your long term trading success is won or loss in your head. The decision to whether keep going after losing money or to quit is made at the point of maximum frustration with the markets. To keep going you have to keep positive, and keep trading. Knowing the difference between you making a mistake or the market simple not matching your style will go a long way in keeping down your stress and negative self talk.

Overconfidence

The perfectionist may never be really convinced that a certain market setup is right to enter into a position and the overconfident trader may neglect certain signals that the setup is not worth trading on.

A trader may become overconfident after a few successful trades. It’s very hard to fight the ‘I am the market God’-emotion. Making a number of consecutive successful trades is not necessarily a sign you have figured out how the markets work, the same way a losing streak is not a sign you’re a bad trader.

After a huge success it’s tempting to trade a larger size or accept more risk. The general idea is that simply because of the huge profit in the previous trade, more size and/or risk is acceptable in the next. But when you think about it, a realized profit is part of your account now, it’s no different than money made on earlier trades, it is money you worked hard for. There can be good reasons to increase trading size or risk, but that should be part of a plan, not just an impulsive decision based on a feeling of being ‘invulnerable’.

Ask yourself, which feeling is worse: losing yesterday’s profit, or losing the profit made 10 days ago? If that feels different, the first one being less worse, then it may be wise to stop trading for a few days after a good trade. During those days, the profit will slowly change from being ‘an extra’ to being ‘part of your trading account’. In other words, you get used to it and handle it with more care.

Overconfidence can also come from a (strong) conviction that the market has to go a certain direction based on a personal opinion about the economy, politics, the FED, interest rate, unemployment numbers etc etc. This kind of confidence has been discussed before. The remedy is simple: don’t trade the news.

Trading Slogans

Statistic makes the money.
I just control the risk.
————————————
I control my risk.
The market controls my win.
I just go with the market.
——————————
THINK – Control your risk !!!
—————————–
MAKE MONEY
1. Setups
2. Statistic
3. Risk managment
4. Disciplin
5. Setup Training
6. Learn Rulebook, every day
WORK HARD !!! DAY for DAY !!!
———————————-
LAZY TRADERS LOSE !!!
THEY JUST LOSE !!!
I HATE LAZY PEOPLE !!!
I AM A WORKAHOLIC AND I LOVE IT !!!
BECAUSE ITS ME WHO MAKES MILLIONS, EASY !!!
———————————-
SETUP TRAINING,
makes my money !!!
Do it every day !!!
——————————— (more…)

The World’s Worst Teacher

The market often rewards bad behavior. You exit a stock because your stop is hit. You are okay with this because you followed your plan. The market then immediately reverses. You begin to think, “If only I stayed with the position.” The next time the market goes against you, you decide you are not going to get tricked again. This time though, the market does not reverse and what started out as a small manageable loss is now huge.

The market will give you loss after loss forcing you to abandon a methodology right before it takes off without you. On the flip side, the market will lull you into a false sense of confidence. You trade larger and larger, taking on excessive risk. You print money until your risks become so excessive that one or two bad trades wipe you out.

Learn from the market, but realize that sometimes it can be a lousy instructor.

Market Promises

This is not going to endure me to my fellow traders but I think it is important that we all are reminded what the market promises us.I am not talking from my gold and diamond encrusted throne. I am not exactly killing it. I am not perfect; I do not make money every trade or every day. This is a reminder to me, more than a reminder to you.

Market Promises:

It promises a playing field, not the game.
It promises to reward risk, not proportionately.
It promises opportunity, it does not promise profits.
It promises a lesson, not learning.
It promises that the quality of indicators and analysis is proportionate to quantity of participants, not quality.

Once again I am not without my struggles; this market is not easy for me or anyone I talk to regularly. I have had to make changes that I did not want to make. I thought once 2008 happened it would always be like that. It has been a rude awakening. Is there something I missed? Let me know.

Go to top