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5 Signs You’ve Matured as a Trader

  
  Education
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1) Are Self Reliant: When you stop asking other people: “What do you think of the market?” While I respect the opinions of my colleagues, I DO NOT rely on them. I prefer to do my own homework, research and analysis. I LET THE MARKET tell me if I’m right or wrong.

The ultimate goal for traders is to make confident decisions on your own and trade with complete independence. You should not have to rely on the opinions of others because you should have conviction in your OWN ideas.

2) Stop Celebrating Winners: When you stop feeling the need to pound your chest every time you make 30 cents on a stock. (It is the flip side  of not getting depressed over every loss). Recognize what you did correctly and move on to the next trade.

Same thing goes for the stock market. Don’t act like you’ve never had success trading before.

3) Let the Trades Come to You:  When you stop feeling the need to trade every day and you get over the “fear of missing out.” This is the downfall of most traders.

It took me a while to shift my focus from worrying about “missing out” to playing great defense. Once I did this, I noticed an increase in my confidence level as a trader. Keep in mind, there will ALWAYS be opportunities and it’s okay if you miss a few. (more…)

Three Important Lessons For Traders

  
  Education
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1.No one Knows with 100% certainty whether the trade will be profitable or not 

2.No one knows how much money will be made or lost on a trade

3.If the Trader does not control the profit outcome and does not know with 100% which trades will work ,then a the trader should spend 100% percent of his time concentrating on the only element of the trade he can control-the  risk of the trade.

boywave

“My biggest losses have always followed my largest profits.”

  
  Education
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Confidence and mindset is obviously a very important aspect of trading. During a winning streak, many traders become too confident, believe that they suddenly can’t fail anymore and that they have a gut feeling for what is going to happen. Subsequently, traders tend to violate their trading rules in such periods, enter trades prematurely and even increase their risk significantly, which eventually results in large losses because every winning streak has to end eventually.

Mark Cuban Calls the Stock Market a “Platform for Hackers”

  
Analysis, Education
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The following article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal is a great follow up to my post from yesterday, Computers on Wall Street are Buying and Selling to Themselves!.  Mark Cuban, who wrote software himself, may have a bit more knowledge on the matter than some D.C. prostitute regulator, so I am sure they have contacted him to get his thoughts on the matter.  As I have said for years now, when the public loses all faith in their “leaders”(corporate and political), they lose faith in the system itself.  No economy can ever dynamically grow and increase standards of living absent a belief in the rule of law.  This is precisely why the U.S. will never be a strong, vibrant and upstanding society again until we take out our own trash, rather than pointing fingers abroad and blasting drones at civilians from 10,000 feet.

Key quotes from Mark Cuban on the computer dominated stock market:

I came to realize that the stock market no longer knew what business it was in. I wrote a blog that basically said that the markets for equities of all kinds had evolved to a platform for hackers.

As far as narrowing spreads, that’s absolutely true, but in absolute terms what does it translate into? For the individual investor it might save them a quarter a month. So what? Relative to the risk that’s the worst tradeoff in the history of tradeoffs (more…)

Fixed Mind Set Traders

  
  Education
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The following is for those traders who, with a fixed mind-set, think…

…success is something over there

…trading is about being right, not about making money

…trading is too challenging

…the stock market is fixed with too many obstacles

…trading is about finding the effortless holy grail

…losses are to be avoided at all costs

…others’ success is threatening

Accept These 7 Things -If U Are A Trader

  
  Education
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If you truly are serious about being a trader then there are seven things that you will have to accept.

  1. You will have to accept that over the long term at best only 60% of your trades will be winners. It will be much less with some strategies.

  2. Accept that the key to being a successful trader is having big wins and small losses, not big bets paying off. Big bets can lead quickly to you being out of the game after a string of losses.

  3. Accept that the best traders are also the best risk managers, even the best traders do not have crystal balls so they ALWAYS manage their capital at risk on EVERY trade.

  4. If you want to be a better trader then you need to accept that trading smaller and risking less is a key to your success. Risking 1% to 2% of your capital on any single trade is the first step to winning at trading. Use stops and position sizing to limit your losses and get out when your losses grow to these levels.

  5. You must accept that you will have 10 trading losses in a row a few times each year. The question is what your account will look like when they happen.

  6. You have to accept that you will be wrong, a lot.  The sooner you accept you are wrong and change your mind the better off you will be.

  7. If you really want to be a trader then you are going to have to accept the fact that trading is not easy money. It is a profession like any other and requires much work and effort and even years to become proficient. Expect to work for free and pay tuition to the markets through losses until you learn to trade consistently and profitably.

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1+11 Reasons Why Traders Fail

  
  Education
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  1. They have inadequate capitalization.
  2. They are using someone else’s system.
  3. They lack knowledge of the system’s performance.
  4. They are unable to sit through flat periods or drawdowns.
  5. They are unable to handle stress.
  6. They lack commitment.
  7. They experience drawdowns that are greater than their hypothetical testing.
  8. They override the system’s signals.
  9. Their ego prevails.
  10. Their system is overoptimized; they make additional rules to take out losing trades.
  11. They lack parameters for spike performance in markets.
  12. They lack diversification between systems and/or markets.

5 Qualities-Successful Traders are having

  
  Education
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1) Capacity for Prudent Risk-Taking – Successful young traders are neither impulsive nor risk-averse. They are not afraid to go after markets aggressively when they perceive opportunity;
2) Capacity for Rule Governance – Successful young traders have the self-control needed to follow rules in the heat of battle, including rules of position sizing and risk management;
3) Capacity for Sustained Effort – Successful young traders can be identified by the productive time they spend on trading–research, preparation, work on themselves–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 be quick to lose self-confidence and motivation in the face of loss and frustration;
5) Capacity for Sound Reasoning – Successful young traders exhibit an ability to make sense of markets by synthesizing data and generating market and trading views. They display patience in collecting information and do not jump to conclusions based on superficial reasoning or limited data.

Warren Buffetts Next Door

  
  Education
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The book The Warren Buffetts Next Door: The World’s Greatest Investors You’ve Never Heard Of and What You Can Learn From Them by Matthew Schifrin is an interesting compilation of true stories about ‘average Joes’ who have made huge amounts of money in the stock market. Some use technical analysis, some use fundamental analysis, and some use gut feelings.

This book gives hope to every investor and trader. Each chapter covers a different person, describing what their occupation is, how old they are, their investment strategy, what broker they use, and what their favorite web sites and chat rooms are. Also, their best and worst picks, along with the long term track record. My favorite one is the Stock Angler in Chapter 9. The guy has a full time job, trades during the hour or two before he leaves for work, and has been able to achieve a 33% average annualized return since January 2003.

Every trader that is profiled provides an example of on of their successful trades, and shows how the decision was made to make the trade. I really like the last chapter which lists all the major investment websites which he calls Investor Incubators. You should read The Warren Buffetts Next Door for proof that you don’t have to be Warren Buffett, George Soros, T. Boone Pickens, or Carl Icahn to be a successful stock trader.

Trading & Marriage

  
  Education
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  1. There are people that are fun to date but are not marriage material. There are stocks that have great momentum that you can trade, and others with growth and earnings that you can invest in over the long term.
  2. When dating, you have to have a ‘deal breaker’ reason to end the relationship. When buying a stock, you always need a ‘stop loss’ price level that tells you the trade is just not working and you should exit.
  3. You have to find the right person for you. Someone might be a great person, but not be the right person for you. Some stocks could be too volatile or too slow moving for you to trade. You have to find one that works for you.
  4. When you marry the wrong person, the longer you wait to divorce them, the more expensive the divorce will be. The longer you let a losing trade run, the larger your loss will become.
  5. The biggest predictor of future behavior is past behavior for both people, and stocks. The definition of insanity is expecting different results from either, despite past behavior.
  6. You should devote time and attention to your spouse, because that is the key to a successful marriage. In trading, you need to devote yourself to your trading plan and risk management in order to be successful.
  7. Successful stock traders do not marry their stocks, they only date them for as long as they are profitable.
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