| How do you build confidence? There are many ways but only one process: multiple small successes. I am very much an advocate for boring trading. What I mean by that is I trade the same edge over and over again without variation. By trading the same edge over and over again I know when to get in and when to get out. I know what to look for when a trade is working and I can safely add to my position. On the other hand, I know what to look for when the trade is not working and I can exit with a small loss. By following the rules EVERY TIME you can succeed, not in making money every time (impossible!), but by following the same plan every time. These small successes give you the confidence to trust yourself each and every time your edge presents itself. This is true in any new venture, whether it be golf, bowling, drawing, flying, etc. Each small success gives birth to greater confidence which in turn brings further successes. You can then replace a vicious circle of failure with a confident circle of success. It is so EASY to want the lottery ticket or the home run every time at bat but HARD to accept when the numbers do not add up or when all the preparation leads to nothing more than the hard earned single. |
Archives of “successes” tag
rssJust Be Yourself
Success in all aspects of life seem to follow those who do not try to act like someone else, but rather have a foundation of knowing who they are and act in that manner.
Many traders seem to want to act like other traders who have recently had a string of successes instead of being committed to their own strategy and trading style.
To be the best we can and have consistent success in trading takes a devotion and passion to learning our strengths and weaknesses and applying our skills to match up with these understandings.
Whether you are a risk taker or very conservative, both styles can reap profits as long as the trading matches with that personality. Just be yourself and let the results take occur.
Remember These 13 Points
- Predictions do not work as tomorrow is uncertain. We will only boast about things we have predicted right and talk nothing about the other half we got wrong.
- Skills can bring us moderate success. However, luck is needed to be a big success. (credit to Jon)
- We tend to credit our successes to good skills and blame our failures on poor luck.
- Some of us rely on luck (most unknowingly) by investing for high returns (and losses). A few of us will make big money but most of us will end up much poorer.
- Some of us deliberately limit the luck factor by choosing investment products with capital guarantee and guaranteed returns. None of us will make big money but none of us will be very much poorer.
- We need to know how much we can afford to lose (financially and emotionally) before deciding to be No. 4 or No. 5, or somewhere in between.
- We have many biases. The degree of success in investing or trading depends on how much we can keep our biases in check. No, we cannot remove our biases totally.
- Confirmation bias – we see what we want to see. We seek out evidence to validate our investment decision and ignore those that suggest otherwise.
- Availability bias – we are influenced by the things we observe. If people we knew made a lot of money through property investment, we will think that properties are the best investments in the world and develop a preference for it.
- Loss aversion bias – we want to be compensated for high returns before we decide to take the risk to invest. We often wait for markets move and show high returns before we want to invest. We are not interested if markets are not moving.
- Hindsight bias – we tend to say “I knew it” after an event has happened.
- Survivor-ship bias – we only get to hear stories of successes but many stories of failures were untold. See No 2 and No 3.
- Most us do not know what we want in life. We think we will be happier with more money.
Thought from Peter Brandt
“The irony is that in real time, I never fully feel like I am trading successfully because I am always aiming for performance that is higher than I am attaining. I am generally my own worst critic and constantly set the bar higher than my last jump. The result is that it is difficult for me to crow about the “successes” of my trading career.
But, to the degree I have been consistently successful through the years, I believe it is due to three factors. First, I am obsessed with risk management. I spend more time and mental energy focusing on risk control protocols than on anything else. Managing losses and losing periods is my number one priority. If I can just tread water during the inevitable tough periods, sooner or later I will find myself caught in a favorable tide.
Second, my trading approach is overly simple by design. The result is that I know with as much certainty as is possible with a discretionary approach when there is a trade entry in my program. It does not mean that the trade will be profitable – only that the trade is there.
Third, I have tried to engage market speculation systematically, breaking down the process of trading into every conceivable component. What flows from this is an understanding of what components of trading are controllable and measurable and what components are uncontrollable. By the way, whether the next trade or series of trades will be profitable is not a controllable factor. Once a trader learns this — it is then possible to remove ego from the equation.” – Peter Brandt
Questions after the hit
When you take a hit, you have got to think your way through it logically.
Questions to ask yourself when you have taken a hit.
What is the lesson here???
What did I learn????
How can I avoid this next time????
What is my strategy the next time I encounter this situation????
Did I remember to pat myself on the back for the good trades this month?????
Did I remind myself that I have had many more successes this month??????
Did I remind myself that this is just an opportunity to do it better next time?????
Did I use proper discipline????????
Did I wait for a proper trade set-up??????
Did I follow my trading rules????????
How long am I going to wallow here???????
Did I remind myself that the market is very generous and will always give me plenty of opportunities for profit???????
Do I have more money now than I did at the beginning of the month???? (more…)
The Wisdom of the Legendary Paul Tudor Jones
At 56, Paul Tudor Jonesis a self made billionaire with a net worth of 3.3 billion and is ranked as the 336th richest person in the world, he knows exactly how to trade the biggest money for the biggest returns. One of Jones’ earliest and major successes was anticipating and trading through Black Monday in 1987, tripling his money during the event due to large short positions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 508 points to 1738.74 (-22.61%) on that day. While the majority of others lost more than they ever had in their lifetime, Jone’s was on the other side of their trade making a fortune. That is the sign of a truly great trader making money at the tipping points that most others miss. Paul Tudor Jones has returned double digit annual returns to his investors for decades. He is one of the greatest traders to have ever lived, we need to sit up and listen closely to his advice, it is priceless.
Risk Management
“Don’t focus on making money; focus on protecting what you have.”
“Where you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always, first and foremost protecting your butt.”
“At the end of the day, the most important thing is how good are you at risk control.”
Trader Psychology
“Every day I assume every position I have is wrong.”
“Losers average losers.”
“Trading is very competitive and you have to be able to handle getting your butt kicked.”
Method
“I believe the very best money is made at the market turns. Everyone says you get killed trying to pick tops and bottoms and you make all your money by playing the trend in the middle. Well for twelve years I have been missing the meat in the middle but I have made a lot of money at tops and bottoms.”
“The secret to being successful from a trading perspective is to have an indefatigable and an undying and unquenchable thirst for information and knowledge.”
“The concept of paying one-hundred-and-something times earnings for any company for me is just anathema. Having said that, at the end of the day, your job is to buy what goes up and to sell what goes down so really who gives a damn about PE’s?”
“The whole world is simply nothing more than a flow chart for capital.”
That cotton trade was almost the deal breaker for me. It was at that point that I said, ‘Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?’
Are You Happy?
Take this test to find out how happy you are. Using a scale of 0
(no relevance) to 4 (very relevant), rank each question as to how relevant it is to your trading life.
I often break my trading rules.
Each day, I do not look forward to trading.
Tension or stress hurts my trading performance.
I fear losses and lust after profits.
I do not appreciate my trading successes as much as I should.
It bothers me when my unrealistic trading expectations are unmet.
I trade for the wrong reasons which creates an emotional rollercoaster.
Trading has taken over my life.
Total your scores. The closer to 32 your score, the more unhappy you are as a trader.
3 Invaluable Quotes from Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
“A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game. That is why I don’t believe in tips. If I buy stocks on Smith’s tip, I must sell those same stocks on Smith’s tip.”
“The recognition of our own mistakes should not benefit us any more than the study of our successes. But there is a natural tendency in all men to avoid punishment. When you associate certain mistakes with a licking, you do not hanker for a second dose, and, of course, all stock-market mistakes wound you in two tender spots – your pocketbook and your vanity.”
…“One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent.”
Warp Speed or Turtle Speed?
A lot of statistics are published about the number of traders that are ’successful’ even though we don’t always receive their definition of successful.
Whether it is 70% or 95% of new traders that are said to lose all of their capital in the first 30-60 days, the real question is WHY??
In almost every case that I hear about when a person states that they quit trading because they lost all of their money in the first 30-60 days so they got discouraged and said that trading was not for them, these individuals attempted to move too fast when they started. They had acquired very little, if any, type of training and then jumped into a live account without any direction or plan.
Anyone who steps into the trading world (or any endeavor) without training to acquire the skills needed to approach the new program is setting themselves up for a very challenging situation and generally more failures than successes.
You can approach a new situation in life at warp speed and take the consequences or at the speed of a turtle and build your skills and experience so as to eventually acquire warp speed movement, but with turtle-like results, which is what the turtle always experienced when he raced the rabbit….. Success!!
Quetions after the Loss
When you take a hit, you have got to think your way through it logically.
Questions to ask yourself when you have taken a hit.
What is the lesson here???
What did I learn????
How can I avoid this next time????
What is my strategy the next time I encounter this situation????
Did I remember to pat myself on the back for the good trades this month?????
Did I remind myself that I have had many more successes this month??????
Did I remind myself that this is just an opportunity to do it better next time?????
Did I use proper discipline????????
Did I wait for a proper trade set-up??????
Did I follow my trading rules????????
How long am I going to wallow here???????
Did I remind myself that the market is very generous and will always give me plenty of opportunities for profit???????
Do I have more money now than I did at the beginning of the month????
If YES, you are ok.
You are out to win the war, though you may lose a few battles.
If the answer is NO and you are consistently taking hits,
then STOP and RETHINK your strategy, There is something WRONG!
No one can tell you how to trade; all they can do is share their experience and you will have to tweak it to fit your trading style. Thinking through your losses logically will give you the best advantage over reacting emotionally .