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Trading Discipline -Anirudh Sethi

  
Analysis, Education
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The foundation of all functional trading strategies is discipline. Without discipline, you’ll be harmed by the risks of active trading. These risks include fear, greed, and missed opportunity. Only by holding yourself accountable and remaining disciplined in this current time will you be ready to achieve your trading goals.

If you put you focus in your trading strategy before learning discipline, the process of your strategy won’t really matter. Discipline is what makes successful trading strategies possible. Discipline is why technical indicators, risk management techniques, and trading principles pay off finally at the end.

It is very easy for traders to feel overwhelmed. Once losses begin to compile, it can often be very tempting to take an early exit. Once gains accumulate, it can be very tempting to press your luck. Disciplined traders aren’t distracted by any particular price movement. They realized that their trading strategies produce net gains over-time when applied correctly.

As the foundation of trading, discipline is what is going to allow you to place your trading knowledge to good use.

 

3 Steps to Becoming a Trading Discipline Master:

Becoming a successful trader must require time and practice. However, there are still quite a lot of things you can do to enhance your level of discipline. When designing an efficient trading strategy, keep these subsequent things in mind:

  1. Have a transparent set of trading discipline rules to follow— If you don’t have guidelines how will you be ready to follow them? You can’t. So, set up some rules and begin to follow them.
  2. Start with something easy and grow your discipline — the efficient trading strategy for you is one you fully understand. Traders are likely to lose their sense of discipline when they are overwhelmed, nervous or confused. Once you begin small and start to possess success following your rules, you’ll gain confidence. Not sure where to start? Find the best trading strategies for your needs
  3. Make Your Goal Following Your Rules – Traders want to get money! However, we need our foundation first. If you can’t build a foundation then you’ll never ever make money trading. So, until you master following your rules, make it your goal to follow the principles, then from there when it’s established then you start to tweak elements of your strategy which will launch you into profitability. Here you’ll learn on the way to fade the momentum in Forex

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EXPLANATIONS OF COMMON TRADING PROBLEMS

  
Analysis, Education
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Why Traders Naturally Cannot Follow Their Trading Plan

  • The brain automatically engages “distinct mechanisms” to handle these two scenarios differently: (i) risky situation where the probabilities are known, and (ii) ambiguous situation with incomplete information where historical probabilities provide only a clue. For the latter, there will be a “uncertainty circuit” that will raise a red flag to say “more information needed”.
  • This results in traders trying to do exactly what they planned while their brain fights them to find more information or to scramble in the face of a clear, but maybe only subconsciously perceived, threat.
  • Just because you decided on taking a long or short trading position, your “brain on uncertainty” doesn’t change how it goes about making judgment calls in uncertain circumstances. The basic process steps through the context-belief-perception cycle because it can’t help it.
  • Uncertainty means — at least to part of your neural and white matter networks — that a black bear, ready to eat all your apples (and you with them) could be just around the corner. The more uncertainty, the more you can realize how much you are relying on contextual clues in order to make sense of the situation.

Put Trading First, Be There Day In and Day Out

  
Analysis, Education
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  • Consistency is your willingness to put trading first in your life so you’re online day in and day out, trading your system to maximize the odds that it will work for you when the market is moving.
  • When traders take a break for whatever reason — because they want to play, because they have experienced a series of losses, because of complications in their personal lives, or because the market is dead — they end up missing moves that could have resulted in hefty profits.
  • That doesn’t mean you always have to trade, but you should always be there to follow the markets.
  • It’s very easy once you’re self-employed and trading to excuse yourself for all kinds of reasons. This can prove to be a devastating mistake. You will find over time that those days you take off to play golf or go fishing or whatever will inevitably be the days when the two or three trades you’ve been waiting for are triggered. These trades would have made your month very profitable. Then you have to scramble for the rest of the month. When you trade this way, you tend to lose money. Inconsistency does not pay off.

Circuit breaker levels to watch in the S&P 500 later today

  
Analysis, US Market
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How low can you go?

SPX

US futures hit limit down very early in the trading day and with European equities pointing to a 8-9% drop across the board, it looks like US stocks will be headed for an extremely rough open later in the cash market (S&P ETF down by nearly 10% now).
Here are the key circuit breaker levels to watch today:
  • Level 1: 2,521.25 or down 7% from Friday close
  • Level 2: 2,358.59 or down 13% from Friday close
  • Level 3: 2,168.82 or down 20% from Friday close
If anything else, also keep an eye out on the key trendline support that stretches back all the way to 2009, currently near the 2,500 level. Clearly, this did not age very well:
SPX Trump

Order flow levels across major pairs.

  
Analysis, Forex
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Orders in the market seen across major pairs

  • Sell orders on NZDUSD on 0.6480/90 and 0.6360/70
  • Sell orders on AUDUSD at 0.6800/10 and 0.6910/20
  • Sell orders on EURJPY at 120.40/50, 118.70/80

and buy orders at 116.20/10

  • Sell orders on USDJPY at 108.70/80, 108.30/40

and buy orders at  106.00/90 and 105.00/90

Sell orders on GBPUSD at 1.2680/90 and 1.2530/40

and buy orders at 1.2000/90

  • Sell orders  on EURUSD at 1.1010/20

Nikkei 225 closes higher by 0.16% at 22,079.09

  
Analysis, Global Indices
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Tokyo’s main index barely hangs on to gains in mixed trading day

Nikkei 20-09

It has been a sluggish session overall for Asian equities in general as the risk mood stays more subdued after seeing US stocks give back gains in overnight trading. China did cut its one-year LPR by 5 bps but it hardly is breathing life into equities on the session.

The Hang Seng index is flat while the Shanghai Composite is up by just 0.2% as investors appear to be more cautious still to wrap up the week. US futures are pretty much flat so that tells us that equities are still sidelined to begin European trading.
USD/JPY sits lower at 107.87 though as the yen keeps pace after gains from yesterday amid weaker Treasury yields to start the morning.

Global currency trading volumes surge to highest-ever level

  
Analysis, Forex
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Trading hits $6.6 billion per day

Trading hits $6.6 billion per day
Trading in the foreign exchange market has hit $6.6 trillion per day, according to the latest survey from the Bank of International Settlements.
The BIS today reported today that volume in the survey month of April rose 29% compared to 2016. The comprehensive survey is conducted every three years.
Aside from the jump, what stands out was the rise in swaps trading — which is now nearly half the market.
Other key details:
  • 88% of all trades include USD
  • London accounts for 43% of all activity
  • US trading is 17%
  • EM currencies are now 25% of turnover
  • Trading involving the euro hit 32%
  • Trading involving the yen at 17%
  • Yuan trading is 4%
  • Spot FX trading rose 20% to $2 trillion
The changes in volumes of the major currencies was muted compared to 2016 aside from a small drop in the yen but that may have been due to lower volatility in the survey month.

There are only 3 types of traders.

  
Analysis, Education
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There are only three types of traders, they are defined by how well they execute their trading plan (rules applied to strategy).

A trader that performs worst than their trading plan.  These traders often have a weak understanding and belief in their trading plan.  How they feel is more or as important as making money.  They fail to see past the current trade.

A trader that performs the same as their trading plan.  These traders have a strong understanding and belief in their trading plan.  They get a majority of their satisfaction from making money.  They can see past the current trading day.

Those that perform better than their trading plan.  These traders have spent time in the previous two groups so they not only understand and believe their trading plan, they have 100’s or thousands of experiences that “prove” it to them.  The only satisfaction is following their plan and knowing that the money will follow. They can see past the current trading year.  They find areas and times to be aggressive and times to hold back.

The purpose of trading is to at least perform as well as your trading plan.  Any trader will tell you that he has spent time in all three and is always susceptible to be in any of the categories.  Each category is filled with important lessons, the lesson is often that I do not want to end up back there.

Those that under perform their trading plan are usually not honest with themselves about their level of belief in said trading plan.

10 Trading Wisdom points

  
Analysis, Education
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(1) Any strategy you build will be determined by your beliefs about the market and the objectives you’re trying to achieve. Therefore, your beliefs and objectives are the starting point of the system design and build process and it’s from these you will determine your Key Idea.

(2) Therefore, your Key Idea is your working hypothesis or your explanation of what the foundations of your system are and how it will work.

(3) One of the most famous Key Idea’s was declared by the Turtle Traders, specifically Richard Dennis. Being trend traders they acknowledged that every trend, without fail, was preceded by a breakout.

(4) From that start point they used a standard channel breakout to enter and they also had what they called a ‘fail safe’ breakout entry which absolutely guaranteed they’d capture every new trend.

(5) The Key Idea of Warren Buffett is that you should buy a great company at a cheap price. From this Key Idea he built specific rules and guidelines about how to actually go about doing that.

(6) The Beliefs of many of the worlds great traders can be found in various texts, such as the Market Wizards series by Jack Schwager. Examples: – Markets only trends 30% of the time – The big money is made in the big trends – Buying value is a safe strategy – Stops get hunted

(7) Your objectives are also very important in the design process. In many instances I often hear, “I want to make as much money as possible”. Well, we all do, but that’s a very one dimensional view of the world and of the process of designing a trading system.

(8) Indeed, there is much research to suggest extremely successful traders view profits as a by-product and not the main goal. Many successful traders are passionate about the markets and it’s that passion, not the want of profits, that enable them to succeed.

(9) Taking a more holistic view, objectives encompass many other dimensions, such as your personal risk tolerance and your lifestyle factors. If you’re a family man & has system that requires you to sit in front of a screen for 15-hours a day, it’s probably not a realistic goal.

(10) So your objectives must be broader than just profitability. They must be aligned with your Beliefs. They must be aligned with realistic expectations and they must be aligned with your lifestyle.

THE SUCCESSFUL TRADER … ACCORDING TO MARK DOUGLAS

  
Analysis, Education
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douglasquote

There is a reason why so few traders succeed.  It is not for lack of study or effort or passion.  It is not for lack of education or a Bloomberg platform subscription.  It is not because only a select few have access to technical “secrets” (a.k.a. indicators).  No.  So few succeed at trading for the same reason that so few succeed at living an abundant life.

The unsuccessful refuse to think differently when faced with difficulties believing that luck has passed them by.  They do not succeed because the want of instant gratification and its fleeting rewards has replaced the need for sustainable, hard fought, earned rewards indicative of a mindset prepared to tackle failure as nothing but a mathematical equation: here is the problem now let’s find the solution.

The mediocre search for easy answers to difficult problems believing that the right answers to their questions are found somewhere “out there”.   The successful make difficult decisions where there are no easy answers, questioning whether their perception of what is out there is a distorted reflection of what is inside of them.

The best traders, according to Mark Douglas, think differently than others because they know that what is most important is “how they think about what they do and how they’re thinking when they do it.”

 
 

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