Archives of “self confidence” tag

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New Formula For Day Traders

  
  Education
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Most people enter trading with the idea that they are going to make a lot of money. In other words, they have high expectations.  There is nothing inherently wrong with that idea. In fact, we need motivation, and making a lot of money can be a great a motivator. Unfortunately, many traders also have low self-confidence. And are not profitable or not trading at the level they desire or are capable of.

This is a fairly common condition that can be expressed in the simple equation:  High Expectations + Low Self-Confidence = Poor or Inconsistent Performance.

The new formula becomes: Focus on Process Goals + High Self-Confidence = Better and More Consistent Performance. (more…)

Why Do I Want To Trade?

  
  Education
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“I Want To Find Out Who I Really Am”

When you trade your monitor will do a funny thing. It will become a mirror. A special type of mirror. A mirror that reflects your self-confidence, your self-esteem, your self-worth. The numbers and lines you see on your screen are just that, numbers and lines. Market information. At your choosing, when you decide to become part of those numbers and lines (putting on/off the trade) a sort of test begins. A test about you.

If you see the test as threatening, you will feel threatened. If you see the test as war, you will be engaging in war. If you see the test as one more failure, you will fail. If you see the test as the need to prove yourself right, you will administered the pain of being wrong. If you see the test as certainty, you will be rudely introduced to uncertainty. If you see the test as a battle of wills, you will sacrifice your soul. If you see the test as fear or loss of money, you will be giving away your scared money.

If you see and believe the test to be an exchange of information, you now become the one to confirm or deny information. If you believe the test to be one of giving up what you want in order to get it, you will get it. Get it?

There is an irony in trading of both price and time. It is exactly what you have to give of yourself in order to trade it with understanding.

P.S. There are only two types of traders, “Long Lived” and “Short Lived.” Both know the markets well. The “Longed Lived” just choose know “Themselves” better.Anyone who contemplates trading should ask themselves one simple question…..”Why Do I Want To Trade?” There are many wrong answers to this question, and only one right one…..

To lose Money :Just follow 6 points

  
  Education
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LoseMoney4_Full

Here is some common advice that I see all the time, that if you follow it you will lose.
Don’t fall into the trap of accepting it or following it.
Here are 6 of my favorites:

1. Day trading is a low risk high reward way to trade
How many writers do you see talk about day trading and how successful they are at it?
Lots!
Now:
How many of them can show a real time track record of profits over the long term?
None.
This is simply the dumbest way to trade there is. (more…)

Principles of Peak Performance

  
  Education
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peak-performanceThe first principle of peak performance is to put fun and passion first. Get the performance pressures out of your head. Forget about statistics, percentage returns, win/loss ratios, etc. Floor-traders scratch dozens of trades during the course of a day, but all that matters is whether they’re up at the end of the month.

Don’t think about TRYING to win the game – that goes for any sport or performance-oriented discipline. Stay involved in the process, the technique, the moment, the proverbial here and now.! A trader must concentrate on the present price action of the market. A good analogy is a professional tennis player who focuses only on the point at hand. He’ll probably lose half the points he plays, but he doesn’t allow himself to worry about whether or not he’s down a set. He must have confidence that by concentrating on the techniques he’s worked on in practice, the strengths in his game will prevail and he will be able to outlast his opponent.

The second principle of peak performance is confidence. in yourself, your methodology, and your ability to succeed. Some people are naturally born confident. Other people are able to translate success from another area in their life. Perhaps they were good in sports, music, or academics growing up. There’s also the old-fashioned “hard work” way of getting confidence. Begin by researching and developing different systems or methodologies. Put in the hours of backtesting. Tweak and modify the systems so as to make them your own. Study the charts until you’ve memorized every significant swing high or low. Self-confidence comes from developing a methodology that YOU believe in. (more…)

Book Review : The Disciplined Trader by Mark Douglas

  
  Education
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 This is one heck of a slow read. Douglas dangles a carrot in front of you each chapter saying ” I will show you how to do this”; but never actually does! I thought there was quite a bit of carry over between this book and “Trading in the Zone”, so by one or the other but on the whole I would say Trading in the Zone would be the one to plump for as there are more trading references. In The Disciplined Trader Douglas does go off on a tangent for many pages and you wonder whether you are reading a book on amateur psychology.

The first 5 Chapters read well with some nice takeaways even in the Intro and Preface. Such as defining Self Confidence as “an absence of fear and self-trust”. I think we all know what he means ny that definition don’t we ?!

Chapters 6 thru to 14 were laboured in my view. Where the depth of Douglas’ attempt to describe the mental state of the trader really was a little abstract at times and to be honest lost me.

For me the best bit of the book was his penultimate chapter on the Steps for Success :

1)Stay focussed on what you need to learn

2)Deal with Losses

  • Predefine the loss at time of trade is vital
  • Execute them immediately on their occurence

3)Become an expect at just one market behaviour

4) Learn how to execute your trading system flawlessly

5) Learn to think in Probabilities

6) Learn to be Objective

  • You feel no Pressure to do anything
  • You have no feelings of fear
  • You have no sense of rejection
  • There is no right or wrong
  • You recognise what the market is telling you and you know what you have to do
  • You can observe the market from the perspective of not being in a position even when you are.
  • You are not focussed on money but the structure of the market

7) Learn to Monitor yourself

So if you can borrow this from a friend, download it as an e-book cheaply or get a 2nd hand one on ebay for the beginning third and last 2 chapters – it’s worth it.

Must Read…….!!

Five Qualities For Successful Trader

  
  Education
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  1. Capacity for Prudent Risk-taking.The young successful trader is not afraid to go after markets aggressively when the opportunity presents itself.
  2. Capacity for Rule Governance. The young successful trader has the self-control to follow rules in the heat of battle, such as rules of position sizing and risk management.
  3. Capacity for Sustained Effort.The trader uses productive time to do research, preparation, work on himself, outside of market hours.
  4. Capacity for Emotional Resilience. All young traders will lose money early in their development and experience multiple frustrations. The successful ones will not lose self-confidence and motivation in the face of loss and frustrations.
  5. Capacity for Sound reasoning. The successful young trader exhibits an ability to synthesize data and generate market and trading scenarios.

Emerging markets at risk from a gigantic bubble

  
Analysis, Economy, Education
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From :FT

By orchestrating a massive appreciation of the yen in the mid 1980s, the US condemned Japan to decades of stagnation and ended the challenge to its own economic hegemony. Effectively, Japan was forced to commit financial hara-kiri.

This theory, once confined to Japan’s nationalistic fringe, is now being used by the Chinese authorities to justify their resistance to a substantial revaluation of the renminbi. By so doing they are misdiagnosing Japan’s woes and misperceiving the true threat to their own economy. The threat to China does not lie in an appreciating currency, but elsewhere.

Here’s what happened in the case of Japan. In the Plaza Accord of 1985 the G7 attempted to address global imbalances – worrying then, but small beer by today’s standards – by “encouraging” significant changes in currency parities. They got what they wanted. The yen took off and never looked back.

Japanese policymakers accepted the loss of competitiveness not because they were submissive, but because they were brimming with self-confidence. They believed their economy would survive any downturn with little damage, and they were right: the recession of 1986 was short and shallow.

Furthermore they saw a strong yen as a useful weapon in a world in which Japan’s trading partners were imposing quotas on its most successful companies. Again they were right. The all-powerful yen allowed Japanese auto makers to build up manufacturing capacity inside key Western markets.

They also believed it was high time to shift the Japanese economy from exports to consumption, and that a stronger yen would raise the purchasing power of households. Here, though, they were wrong.

The spending spree of the late 1980s – when Japanese salarymen sprinkled gold-flakes on their noodles and secretaries stayed in the same upmarket Hawaiian resorts as American chief executives – is now a distant memory. (more…)

Trading: Doing the Homework

  
  Education
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HOMEWORKMany new traders fail in the stock market simply because they rush in without putting in the proper time and discipline in doing their homework. Trading is a professional endeavor much like any other career, you will only get out of it what you put into it. There is no easy money, you will have to earn it by out witting, out playing, and out smarting the majority of other market participants.

You need to learn ten things to be a successful trader:

  1. How to manager your risk per trade.
  2. What systems and methods really make money over the long term.
  3. What system fits your personality and beliefs about the market.
  4. How much heat you can you handle. How big can you trade with out emotions taking over?
  5. You must learn how the market actually works, trends, flows, and functions.
  6. Learn to focus only on what makes money in the market, everything else is noise.
  7. Discover who the greatest traders of all time were and study how they operated.
  8. Find out what the best books on trading are and read them.
  9. Study the charts of the stocks you are trading to understand how it works with trends, support, resistance, and moving averages.
  10. Practice paper trading, simulated accounts, and trading small positions of real money until you have mastered your trading plan. (more…)

3 Types of Confidence

  
  Education
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I see three types of confidence among traders:

First, is what I call ‘false confidence’ That’s the person who talks big and poses like a big shot. This type of person often takes big risks in an effort to either impress others or to assuage their own discomfort, and the results can be terrible.

Next, there is temporary confidence, which is conditional on recent performance. This is the person whose self-esteem is tied to their account equity or P&L. When on a good run, they feel confident and take larger risks (often the prelude to giving it all back). And when performance is lousy they start grasping at anything, maybe exiting winners prematurely or taking on excessive risk to get their money back.

Finally, we have true confidence. This is confidence that does not depend on recent results. It is based on a deep sense of inner trust. This is the person who has a history of doing the right thing, regardless of the outcome. Doing the right thing in the sense that they act in their own best interest and trust and understand that doing such over time has a positive impact on results. The trust runs deep enough to provide resilience in the face of disappointment. This is true self-confidence, the kind you want in trading and in life.

Almost everyone says that discipline is a requirement to succeed in trading. But most people never talk about what really underlies that type of discipline. The answer……true self-confidence.

‘Alexander Elder Quotes’

  
  Education
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Trading is not all about just stock picking, it is not just about a winning system. Yes, first you have to understand how to trade and put the odds in your favor of winning, but that is not enough. You must also add in risk management so when you lose ten times in a row your trading career and account does not end there. You also must have  faith in your system and method to be able to keep trading it even when you are losing, and you will have losing months, maybe even a losing year, can you keep going to be around for the big wins?

One dimensional traders just pick stocks, if they are right they win for a while, but eventually they do not stop out when they are wrong and they blow up their account. They also eventually get emotionally frustrated from wild equity swings  and they eventually quit and blame the market.

Two dimensional traders have a good system and cut their losses but have trouble with self confidence and belief in their system. They tend to blame themselves when their accounts draw down 10% to 20% and have trouble understanding that it is just part of the game. The market environment is determining wins and losses not the trader, they don’t  understand this. All they can do is take their entries and exits as they come and let the market do what it does. They have not separated themselves from their trading.

The three dimensional trader takes entries and exits based on his methodology that he believes in, he manages risk per trade carefully and never loses more than 1% t0 2% of his capital on any one trade. The 3D trader’s self worth and confidence is not tied up in any one trade, or monthly performance he understands this is a long term process with ups and downs. Wins and losses do not change his mindset. It is just a business, stocks are just inventory, the market gives and the market takes away, and he just takes what it is giving.

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