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What golf teaches us about trading- 14 Points

  
  Education
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1. Each golf shot/trade is a learning opportunity. 

2. In golf you play the ball where it lies.  You can hit a great shot and find it in a divot and you must play from there.  In trading you can make a good trade, find yourself underwater in losses, and must trade out of the position. 

3. Golf is an individual sport and trading is an individual occupation, which you must learn to accept.  

4. In golf/trading you must eliminate big numbers. 

5. Golf/trading are skills based sports.  How well you play/trade is determined by your skill level, which you only develop over time. 

6. You, and only you, are responsible for your mistakes. 

7. You will hit bad shots and make bad trades.  You must learn to forgive yourself. 

8. Golf is a game you will never and can never master.  There is a just a continual journey to improve.  Kinda sounds like trading to me. 

9. There are ebbs and flows to the game of golf, where you play well and poorly.  For most, the same is true of trading.  You will have stretches where you trade and see screens well and periods where you trade like a hacker. 

10. The best golfers grind. The best traders grind it out.

11. In golf you are challenged to contain your emotions.  In trading you must contain your emotions.  

12. In golf ever great player has a pre-shot routine.  Every great trader has a process to find excellent trade setups that are best for them. 

13. Golfers visualize success.  Traders should visualize pulling the trigger on good trades. 

14. Practice, practice, practice. Are you willing to put in the work to become great?  

23 Reasons 95% Traders Don’t Make Money

  
  Education
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  1. Lack of homework on what works.
  2. Inability to manage stress.
  3. Allowing big losses in your trading account,
  4. Quitting when they learn trading isn’t easy money.
  5. Inability to trade volatile markets.
  6. Inability to emotionally  manage equity curves.
  7. Trading without a positive expectancy model.
  8. Never committing to one trading strategy.
  9. Trading based on opinions.
  10. Not managing position sizing.
  11. Not managing the risk of ruin.
  12. Over thinking their trades.
  13. Reactive trading decisions based on internalizing emotions.
  14. Trading with leverage without understanding the risks.
  15. Over trading.
  16. Trading with an account too small.
  17. Trading without a plan.
  18. Trading without stop losses.
  19. Not understanding what it takes mentally to be a trader.
  20. Setting stops in obvious places.
  21. Having only small winners.
  22. Selling short what looks expensive.
  23. A lack of discipline.

Overconfidence & Greed

  
  Education
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What most traders often don’t realize until it is too late is how quickly one can lose a lot of money in a single trade often with disastrous consequences.  More often than not this painful experience comes from poor risk management following a period of successful trading. It is natural of course. We are pattern seeking mammals and when something starts working for us we get confident in our abilities and quickly forget we know very little what the market or a given stock may do at any given moment. In short: We easily become overconfident.

It is after a period of successful trading that traders tend to loosen up on good intentioned rules of discipline. They start thinking in term of dollar signs as opposed to the trade discipline. In short they think they can fly. “Look how much money I would have made if I had traded x % of my portfolio”. Stop yourself right there. While it is tempting to play mind games like this no good will come of it. Why? Because you just stepped overtly into the realm of one of the greatest sins of trading:

Once you get greedy you will start abandoning necessary discipline. Nobody, I repeat nobody, no matter how smart they think they are has a fail proof system or process or secret trading technique that guarantees 100% success. I surely don’t. Neither does Goldman Sachs or anybody else. While there may be some HFT firms out there that are trying to algo their way to a perfect system I have news for you: You are not an HFT or an algo. You are an individual trader and as good as you may be: You will have losing trades, things will go against you and oddly enough this will happen when you are at your most vulnerable: When you are overconfident, greedy and overexposed. Something curious tends to happen though when the losing trade occurs:

How To Make Your Own Luck in Trading

  
  Education
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The only place luck has in trading is that you will hopefully be on the right side of unexpected moves due to surprises. In trading you should trade in such a way that good luck will benefit you and bad luck will not destroy you. In my trading luck has little to do with my profits. I trade when the probabilities are on my side based on what the chart is saying about the current action of buyers and sellers in a stock. New traders hoping for luck belong in Las Vegas not the stock market. Trade the trends, play the odds, manage the risk, have faith in yourself that you have the discipline to trade your winning plan.

  1. I do not trade on luck I trade with probabilities being on my side.
  2. I manage my risk carefully so bad luck on one trade does not blow up my trading account.
  3. I trade in the direction of the markets current trend to enable me to stay on the right side of strong moves.
  4. I trade in the direction of the markets current trend so the odds are on my side of being right.
  5. I buy the strongest stocks  and sell short the weakest stocks.
  6. When I am wrong I do not hope for luck I just get out of a losing trade.
  7. When I buy options I buy the in the money options with the odds in my favor not the far out of the money ones that require some luck.
  8. I primarily buy options instead of selling them so I can get big moves for small fees instead of small fees for big risks.
  9. I only risk 1% of my capital per trade so I do not blow up my account with a string of bad trades.
  10. I trade with confidence in my myself and my method not hoping for luck.

13 -Trading Rules :Just Follow Them If U Can

  
  Education
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Trading rule No 1. Never chase. Forget about the  Rupee loss for a moment as the real damage comes from the distraction it creates.

Trading rule No 2. Wait for the break. Most traders buy inside the range, get impatient and as a result they sell on first sign of strength which ends up being the breakout.

Trading rule No 3. Don’t ride the ticks and Dollar profits. It creates emotional turmoil and is draining. Prevention is best cure. Takes the fun out of the game.

Trading rule No 4. Price action trumps everything. Management lie or mislead but price action (money flow) never lies.

Trading rule No 5. Sell the news or a least sell partials. Markets discount everything and over the long run you will be better off.

Trading rule No 6. Always stay in control. Do NOT put yourself in news related coin toss trades, where the risk cannot be managed.

Trading rule No 7. Mind your own business, avoid conflict. If you take offence because someone has disagreed with your trade, then you are such a precious little petal.

Trading rule No 8. Do NOT set targets as all this creates is a premature EXIT. Run a trailer and let that take you out. (more…)

Top Selling Stock Market Movies

  
Education, Life
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If you are looking for some recreational movies relating to the stock market and Wall Street, which you can watch on DVD or Blu-ray, you should check out the following;

Wall Street

Boiler Room

Wolves of Wall Street

Rogue Trader

Barbarians at the Gate

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Other People’s Money

Wall Street Cowboy starring Roy Rogers

Madoff and the Scamming of America

Weaknesses and Strengths of Traders

  
  Education
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Ambitious

Makes and follows long term business plan

•Unambitious

Will ignore long term business plan

•Calm

Will handle times of market volatility and make smart decisions

•Worrying

Will panic when markets are volatile and make stupid decisions (more…)

Hope & Fear in Trading

  
  Education
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In trading most new traders allow hope and fear to dictate their trading. They have a losing trade and instead of selling it and getting out they instead hope it will come back to even allowing the loss to grow. Another error  for new traders is that when they have a winning trade they fear that the profit will disappear so they sell for a small gain and miss the big trend in their favor. When hope and fear controls the trader they end up with big losses and small gains. A formula for ruin.

Instead the rich trader is fearful of losses getting bigger so they sell quickly when losing, risking a maximum of 1% of their capital on any one trade. Rich traders are able to think clearly and trade rationally knowing exactly what they are risking, when their stop is hit, they get out. This enables them to keep all their losses small.

When a trade is immediately a winner for a rich trader they hope it will run 100 points in their favor. Rich traders enable this to be possible with a trailing stop, they do not get out of a winning trade until a key price reversal has happened that tells them that the trend is actually reversing.

Rich traders are fearful of losses growing bigger and hope that their winners will continue on a monster trend. This mindset allows  them to be on the right side of trends and avoid any huge losses. This is why the best traders in the world are trend followers and win consistently. Do you want to join their club? Then do not let fear and hope dictate your trading decisions use them correctly.

8 Stock Market Sayings That Should Be Questioned

  
  Education
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8) There is a lot of cash on the sidelines.

There is always a lot of cash on the sidelines and that never changes. The buyer of a stock, thus taking cash off the sidelines, gives it to the seller who puts it back on the sidelines.

7) There are more buyers than sellers (or vice versa).

Maybe technically there are more bodies buying or selling than the other side but the number of shares traded has to be exactly the same as for every share bought is a share sold. It’s the aggressiveness of one side or the other that matters.

6) Stocks are attractive because they aren’t quite as overpriced as bonds.

If bonds are artificially priced, shouldn’t stocks be? Overpriced though can of course remain overpriced.

5) The higher stocks go the more attractive and less risky they are.

For long term investors, the more one pays in price today with respect to valuation, the less return they should expect in the future.

4) Stocks aren’t expensive because they are still cheaper than the valuations seen in March 2000.

Really?

3) There is no alternative.

In bull markets there is always no alternative to common stocks. In bear markets, there are always alternatives.

2) We’re going to get a rotation into stocks and out of bonds.

For every portfolio rotating out of bonds has to see someone rotating in and that buyer of stock has someone rotating out. Again, it’s the aggressiveness of the moves that matter.

1) The selloff in stocks was profit taking.

Does anyone refer to a rally as profit seeking?

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