Hope is a four letter word.An appropriate acronmym for HOPE Could be ;
Having
Our
Prayers
Expected.
False hope is great source of misery and no just in the trading arena.Prayers are always good by keeping in mind that some of Gods greatest gifts are her unanswered prayers.
Hoping is a sign that the trder has no control over his position.Traders should never be hoping and always trying to control the amount of risk at stake at all times.Always trading-never hoping should be a traders’s motto.
It’s been said too many times to count – that you must trade according to your personality. In the movies they might call it “being true to yourself” or something cheesy, but it’s a necessity in this job.
Recently I was asked which chart patterns I prefer to trade, continuation chart patterns or reversal chart patterns. My answer was that while I will actually trade either, I suppose the continuation and breakout type of patterns are the ones I trade more often than reversals or buying on support levels.
I don’t think one setup is superior to the other, they both have their pros and cons, and you have to go with what fits your style best.
Buying on support is an anticipatory play, which may take a few extra days to get moving. It can give you a lower cost basis than another trading strategy, but will require greater patience on your part while you wait for the stock to find traction.
Buying a stock which is breaking out puts you (by definition) in a stock that’s already on the move. This is a confirmation play. You get instant feedback on how your trade is developing and how much momentum the stock has.
The setups you select for your trades need to incorporate your personality tendencies on managing those trades once you are in them. For me, I tend to be a bit impatient and I want to know as soon as possible whether or not I’m right or wrong on a trade. Other traders don’t live in the left lane, and they’re willing to give a stock some time to get moving one way or another. They place their protective stop and turn their attention to something else in the meantime while waiting for their trade to make a move. Personally, I prefer to have my money at risk for the shortest timeframe possible. I really prefer the times when the market conditions are producing breakout plays and continuation patterns like the bull flag or ascending triangle patterns.
So, when you’re doing your homework and looking for quality setups to trade, be sure to consider the ones which fit your personality and your style of trading. Those will be the trades which you ultimately will manage the best.
We urge you to use this checklist for your own trading and investing preparation. We truly feel that these traits are very important for you to understand. These trader traits coupled with the proper psychology can make a huge positive difference in your overall trading performance.
• The ability to act on your decisions.
• The ability to accept responsibility for your actions.
• You must have emotional detachment from the markets.
• The ability to accept risk and take losses (you’ll never be right 100% of the time). (more…)
CORPORATE LESSON 1
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, ‘I’ll give you $800 dollars to drop that towel.”
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob. After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she get to the bathroom, her husband asks, “Who was that?”
“It was Bob the next door neighbor” she replies.
“Great!” the husband says. “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”
Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to the credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.
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CORPORATE LESSON 2
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish.”
“Me first! Me first!” says the admin. clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.” Poof! She’s gone.
“Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.” Poof! He’s gone.
“OK, you’re up,” the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”
Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say. (more…)
1) Markets fall faster than they rise — and options traders know this. Otherwise, arbitraging this difference would be a meal for a lifetime.
2) Market participants perhaps anticipate that the realized volatility during a bear market is greater than a bull market. However, the problem with this analysis is one might expect to see an upward sloping volatility yield curve in out-of-the-money puts (during bull markets), and yet that does not usually occur based on my tests. Conversely, right now have a downward sloping yield curve in out of the money calls — which confirms the hypothesis that market participants anticipate slower price rises in the future. [Note to quants: I am not confusing delta, gamma and vega. I’m using options to predict terminal price at expiration.]
3) For most humans, fear of loss is a stronger emotion/motivator than the pleasure of gain (greed). This is well documented in the psychology and behavioral finance literature. Hence, ceterus paribus, capital market participants (who have a net long position) will, as a group, pull their rip cord faster — to flee from risk — than they will embrace the possibility of profit.
1) Understand the true realities of the markets. 2) Be responsible for your own trading destiny. 3) Trade only with proven methods. 4) Trade in correct proportion to your capital. 5) Manage risk. 6) Stay long-term oriented. 7) Keep trading in correct perspective and as part of a balanced life. The common theme is self-control. As I’ve often said, if you can master yourself, you can master the markets
Tip #1. Knowing what kind of trading actions to take.
This is important because it’s under your control. This includes identifying good trading opportunities and good entry price. Many people just like to be trigger happy and open any trades they want to. Trading is about getting quality trades and not quantity trades, more trading actions will cause more mistakes. Often people are very impatient and like to chase after the price and got in at a bad entry point. Remember that opportunities to trade will always arise, so wait for it and don’t risk unnecessarily.
Tip #2. Knowing what is going on in your mind, feelings and body.
Being aware of what the mind is telling you and how we are feeling is important in developing mental strength. When you know how you feel and how you think, it’s easier to keep things in control. For example, if your mind is telling you that today the market is not moving much in any direction, then you don’t sit in front of your computer to wait for an opportunity already! If you continue to find reason to trade, you’ll find yourself ended up in an unnecessary trade.
Tip #3. Commit to high value actions regardless of how you feel.
This means you have to be willing to accept unwanted thoughts and feelings because trading well is more important than feeling good. While it’s not easy to maintain positive trading actions when you are feeling down, take a break from it and come back when you are refreshed.
1. As long as no one cares about it, there is no trend. Would you be short Nasdaq in 1999? You can’t be short just because you think fundamentally something is overpriced.
2. All markets look liquid during the bubble (massive uptrend), but it’s the liquidity after the bubble ends that matters.
3. Markets tend to overdiscount the uncertainty related to identified risks. Conversely, markets tend to underdiscount risks that have not yet been expressly identified. Whenever the market is pointing at something and saying this is a risk to be concerned about, in my experience, most of the time, the risk ends up being not as bad as the market anticipated.
4. The low-quality names tend to outperform early in the cycle, and the high-quality names tend to outperform toward the end of the cycle.
5. Traders focus almost entirely on where to enter a trade. In reality, the entry size is often more important than the entry price because if the size is too large, a trader will be more likely to exit a good trade on a meaningless adverse price move. The larger the position, the greater the danger that trading decisions will be driven by fear rather than by judgment and experience.
6. Virtually all traders experience periods when they are out of sync with the markets. When you are in a losing streak, you can’t turn the situation around by trying harder. When trading is going badly, Clark’s advice is to get out of everything and take a holiday. Liquidating positions will allow you to regain objectivity.
7. Staring at the screen all day is counterproductive. He believes that watching every tick will lead to both selling good positions prematurely and overtrading. He advises traders to find something else (preferably productive) to occupy part of their time to avoid the pitfalls of watching the market too closely.
8. When markets are trending up strongly, and there is bad news, the bad news counts for nothing. But if there is a break that reminds people what it is like to lose money in equities, then suddenly the buying is not mindless anymore. People start looking at the fundamentals, and in this case I knew the fundamentals were very ugly indeed.
9. Buying low-beta stocks is a common mistake investors make. Why would you ever want to own boring stocks? If the market goes down 40 percent for macro reasons, they’ll go down 20 percent. Wouldn’t you just rather own cash? And if the market goes up 50 percent, the boring stocks will go up only 10 percent. You have negatively asymmetric returns.
10. If a stock is extremely oversold—say, the RSI is at a three-year low—it will get me to take a closer look at it.8 Normally, if a stock is that brutalized, it means that whatever is killing it is probably already in the price. RSI doesn’t work as an overbought indicator because stocks can remain overbought for a very long time. But a stock being extremely oversold is usually an acute phenomenon that lasts for only a few weeks. (more…)
