- Buying a weak stock is like betting on a slow horse. It is retarded.
- Stocks are only cheap if they are going higher after you buy them.
- Never trust a person more than the market. People lie, the market does not.
- Controlling losers is a must; let your winners run out of control.
- Simplicity in trading demonstrates wisdom. Complexity is the sign of inexperience.
- Have loyalty to your family, your dog, your team. Have no loyalty to your stocks.
- Emotional traders want to give the disciplined their money.
- Trends have counter trends to shake the weak hands out of the market.
- The market is usually efficient and can not be beat. Exploit inefficiencies.
- To beat the market, you must have an edge. (more…)
Archives of “stocks” tag
rssThe Wisdom of Jesse Livermore
Here are seven lessons from Jesse Livermore who is considered by many as one of the greatest traders who ever lived.
Lesson Number One: Cut your losses quickly.
As soon as a trade is contemplated, a trader must know at what point in time he’ll be proven wrong and exit a position. Risk management should dictate the size of the trade and how much you can lose. Deciding where to exit when a position is going against you is not a winning strategy.
Lesson Number Two: Confirm your judgment before trading a larger than average position.
Livermore was famous for throwing out a small position and waiting for his thesis to be confirmed by it going in his favor. Once the stock was traveling in the direction he desired, Livermore would maximize his trading size for out sized wins.
There are many ways to add to a winning position — pyramiding up at key pivot points, building a position as the trade goes in your favor, being 100% in no more than 5% above the initial entry — but the take home is to buy in the direction of your winning trade – never when it goes against you. Never add to a losing position.
Lesson Number Three: Watch leading stocks for the best action.
Livermore knew that trending issues were where the big money would be made, and to fight this reality was a loser’s game. Shorting monster stocks is a very dangerous undertaking when they are under accumulation by large funds. (more…)
Wisdom Thoughts for Traders
If your not sure and don’t have an edge, cash IS a strategy.
If you are on a cold streak, reduce size by 70% and tighten stops for a week.
Stocks aren’t people, they cant be trusted, an algorithm doesn’t care that you think you know the story or the chart.
Don’t be “all in” in any name, you will blow up your account.
It’s totally cool to change your mind right after a trade, the market changes by the minute, so should you.
Pick one strategy and stick to it. This may take time if you are a beginner.
You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, so take losses but keep them very small.
I haven’t taken someone else s idea in a long time, you have just as good a chance of being right or wrong as some other putz.
Don’t have 15 technical indicators on your screen, that’s and EKG not a chart. Less is more.
Don’t trade pissed off, it will crush your P&L
Guess who wins when you “revenge” trade?
Take partial profits on the way up and raise your stops.
When you have three losing trades in a row, take a walk around the block. You may get an epiphany, at the very least it’s therapeutic.
Realize early that the market will always be smarter than you.
Trading psychology
Stop trying to outsmart the market. NO ONE knows exactly where it will go. - The more decisions you make, the more likely you are to be wrong.
- The more decisions you are used to making, the more pressure you’ll put on yourself to make even more decisions.
- No one can be that right.
- Good decisions come from experience.
- Experience comes from bad decisions.
Trading Rules to become Great Trader
Time for another list of Trading Rules . Make it a habit to reread these trading rules every now and then.
1. Buying a weak stock is like betting on a slow horse. It is retarded.
2. Stocks are only cheap if they are going higher after you buy them.
3. Never trust a person more than the market. People lie, the market does not.
4. Controlling losers is a must; let your winners run out of control.
5. Simplicity in trading demonstrates wisdom. Complexity is the sign of inexperience.
6. Have loyalty to your family, your dog, your team. Have no loyalty to your stocks.
7. Emotional traders want to give the disciplined their money.
8. Trends have counter trends to shake the weak hands out of the market. (more…)
BP= Bankrupt Petroleum?
Above is the Monthly chart of 
It was a bad day for most stocks , but it was a bloodbath for embattled oil giant BP.
Shares of BP dived 16 percent , driving the stock price to below $30 per share, the worst drop on record for the company. The British energy giant closed at $29.20 per share. More ominously, investors and traders rushed to dump their BP: Trading of the stock occurred at four times normal volume today.
As a result, the asset-rich company is now trading for less than its book value, which is essentially all the assets it has — oil fields, oil rigs and so forth — minus intangible assets and liabilities.
In English, this means that investors and traders think that the company is now actually worth less than all the hard assets it owns. That’s a confidence trade.
Today, BP is worth $91.4 billion. In mid-April, the company was worth $180 billion.
BP will be forced into a pre-packaged bankruptcy hit the markets like a torpedo into a well head.
What is interesting is that companies are usually very quick to respond to market rumors. So far BP has been silent and has yet to issue any statements regarding the speculation of a bankruptcy filing.
I have no other information than what is being reported on the wire services. If BP is to make a statement dispelling the speculation they had better do it soon.
No yelling
Be very aware of your own emotions. Irrational behavior is every trader’s downfall. If you are yelling at your computer screen, imploring your stocks to move in your direction, you have to ask yourself, “Is this rational?” Ease in. Ease out. Keep your stops. No yelling.
Opinion no value at all
The market does not care about your opinion and what you think it ought to do. The market cannot be tamed, placed in a box, or coerced into your way of thinking. The market does not care about your technical analysis based on past history not does it care about your projections for the future. The market does not care about this edge or that one. The market does not care about what I think, about what the most popular flavor of the month guru thinks, or what the latest ANALyst on Blue Channel thinks. The market does not care about your dreams, goals, and aspirations no matter how well grounded and planned. The market does not care about the latest economic news. The market only cares about the present. Remember this the next time you get into a trade believing, hoping, and praying that it HAS TO WORK. The market does not care if it hurts you, so if you choose to believe, instead of see, what is right there in front of you, then that which you fear the most will come to be. I am not alone when I say this.
“Professional traders make good risk/reward trades and are not concerned with the outcome. Nor are they under the delusion that they really know where a stock or the market is headed. Those who will be pushing paper around at some dead end job in the near future are new traders who trade seeking to fulfill some narcissist need to be correct. Or smarter than the market. Or your trading neighbor. Or a friend. Get over yourself. You have no idea where the market or stocks are really going in six months. All there is are favorable risk/reward trades to make with the outcome uncertain and controlling your risk paramount.”
“This is one of the paradoxes of trading and investing: you need distinct views to put your money at risk, and you need to persist with these views in order to ride winners. At the same time, you can’t become married to these views; you need to quickly revise and even abandon your outlooks in order to limit losses. We can trade and invest for ego needs, and we can trade and invest to make money: over the long haul, we can’t do both. It takes a strong ego to formulate and act upon one’s ideas; an even stronger one to step back from those ideas in the face of non-confirmation.”
“Most people, let’s face it, must be right. They live to have other people know they’re right. They don’t even want success. They don’t even want to win. They don’t want money. They just want to be right. The winners, on the other hand, just want to win.”
“Life happens when you’re making other plans. This is true and no matter how much we visualize future success, set goals and create plans for achieving them, there will be things that happen over the course of the coming year beyond your control that will impede, slow, stop or even reverse your progress. This is to be expected and, if at all possible, planned for. Frequently the difference between success and failure is being able to accept those challenges head on as they occur and keep working toward your goals even when you experience complete failure and hardship. Anyone who has achieved anything worthwhile has failed in doing so, if not many times. But, that’s part of how we grow and get better.”
“The less I cared about whether or not I was wrong, the clearer things became, making it much easier to move in and out of positions, cutting my losses shot to make myself mentally available to take the next opportunity.”
If you enter a trade and the stock doesn’t go the way you predicted, go ahead and take that loss immediately. Don’t sit their like a twit and try to justify a bad trade as you lose more money, dump it. Move on. Forget the need to be right.”
“In reality, the market puts us in a contest with ourselves. Until we let go of the false ideas of what makes the market tick and simply respond as the market unfolds, we will continue to be punished.”
The degree by which you think you know, assume you know, or in any way need to know what is going to happen next, is equal to the degree to which you will fail as a trader.
Are Great Traders Born or Bred?
| Harvard Business School Mark Sellers, founder of Chicago-based hedge fund Sellers Capital, argues that great traders are born and not bred. He believes that there are seven “structural assets” that cannot be taught, adding, ” They have to do with psychology. You can’t do much about that.”The traits: 1) The ability to buy when others are panicking, and vice versa 2) An obsession with the trading game 3) A willingness to learn from past mistakes 4) An inherent sense of risk based on common sense 5) A confidence in your convictions and a willingness to stick with them 6) An ability to have “both sides of your brain working” (i.e. to go beyond the math) 7) The ability to live through volatility without changing your investment thought process I think that some of the concepts discussed here are spot on (and I spend a great deal of time hammering home the importance of #7) , but I disagree with the overall idea that great traders are born, not made. I believe success in trading is not about a specific style, but rather about understanding your personality traits and then developing a trading style (and which product – i.e. stocks, commodities, fx) that fits you best. |
Market Wisdom From Bernard Baruch
You don’t read a lot about Bernard Baruch anymore, but his teachings about the market are useful today as they always have been. There are several good books about him including his own “Baruch: My Own Story” which I recommend highly especially for those of you looking for a book to take with you on your vacations.
Baruch started out as most traders do – i.e. losing lots of money because he lacked the knowledge, experience, & discipline. “You have to lose money in order to better yourself.” (more…)