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Loss Aversion

  
  Education
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There’s a short Danny Kahneman interview at the Daily Beast here.  He notes why your best friends may not be your best advisors:

 Friends are sometimes a big help when they share your feelings. In the context of decisions, the friends who will serve you best are those who understand your feelings but are not overly impressed by them. 

 That’s the Kahneman I love to read, profound and interesting. But then he follows with this sentence:

For example, one important source of bad decisions is loss aversion, by which we put far more weight on what we may lose than on what we may gain.  (more…)

A Trade or a Gamble?

  
  Education
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I love to trade a lot – which is of course a euphemistic way of saying I love to gamble. Although I have been to Vegas more than a dozen times I never laid down so much as a dollar bet in any casino. I have absolutely no interest in backjack, craps, slot machines or any other games of chance and I look down with disdain at the excited masses crowding the cavernous Vegas gambling halls. But deep down, if I am honest with myself, I have to admit that whenever I trade a lot I am just as much of a sucker as every hopeless loser that gives up his hard earned money to Steve Wynn or Sheldon Adelson

If you are constantly trading just for the sake of trading, just for the rush of being “in the game”, just for the momentarily thrill of being right you are gambling. You are trading without an edge, without any solid information and are therefore completely vulnerable to the random vagaries of price. (more…)

MURPHY’S LAWS FOR TRADERS

  
  Education
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1. It is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money 
2. Everyone has a trading strategy that won’t work 
3. For every expert who says prices are going up, there is one who says  they are going down 
4. If you can drink it, don’t trade it 
5. The market is not logical; it is psychological 
6. The successful speculator is one who dies before his time comes 
7. If you drop a dead cat far enough, it will bounce 
8. The market goes your way the day after your stop was hit 
ITS COROLLARY 
9. The big move begins the day after your option expires 
10. He who sells uncovered options goes broke 
11. If you feel like doubling up a profitable position, slam your dialing  finger in the drawer until the feeling goes away 
12. The perfect strategy works every time until you start using it 
13. If your strategy seems to be working well, you haven’t been using it  long enough 
14. The guy who owns the horse when it dies is the loser 
15. When it comes to luck or skill, you can’t beat luck  (more…)

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Jesse Livermore) : Edwin Lefevre 1923

  
  Education
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101% Must Read this article +Buy this Book too …A Bible for Every Trader !

The book starts with Livermore’s early trading career that was essentially scalping the markets for short trem profits using the tape and how he got to understand price movements before a bullish or bearish run. Livermore made $millions 3 times and lost it each time. He sadly ended up committing suicide in 1940 in the Sherry Netherland Hotel. He had amassed a $100m fortune by this time and no-one knew what happended to it. Maybe a trading disaster of some kind….who knows.

Some quotes and passasges I loved from the book

Grades of Suckers : The beginner knows nothing and everybody, including himself, knows it. But the next, or second, grade thinks he knows a great deal and makes others feel that way too. He is the experienced sucker, who has studied not the market itself but a few remarks about the market made by a still higher grade of suckers. The second-grade sucker knows how to keep from losing his money in some of the ways that get the raw beginner. It is this semisucker rather than the 100 per cent article who is the real all-the-year-round support of the commission houses. He lasts about three and a half years on an average, as compared with a single season of from three to thirty weeks, which is the usual Wall Street life of a first offender. It is naturally the semisucker who is always quoting the famous trading aphorisms and the various rules of the game. He knows all the don’ts that ever fell from the oracular lips of the old stagers excepting the principal one, which is: Don’t be a sucker!

This semisucker is the type that thinks he has cut his wisdom teeth because he loves to buy on declines. He waits for them. He measures his bargains by the number of points it has sold off from the top. In big bull markets the plain unadulterated sucker, utterly ignorant of rules and precedents, buys blindly because he hopes blindly. He makes most of the money until one of the healthy reactions takes it away from him at one fell swoop.

Sitting Tight : It was never my thinking that made me my big money; but my sitting. Sitting tight! Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon

Being Wrong : I was wrong; and the only thing to do when a man is wrong is to be right by ceasing to be wrong. get out of the trade.

Being Right : What is the use of being right unless you get the most use out of it ?! (maximising trades)

News : I work in harmony with the markets and take the path of least resistance every time. The trend is always established before the news is published. In Bull markets bear items are ignored and Bull items are exaggerated. (more…)

Five Rules of Wealthy Traders

  
  Education
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1.  Wealthy traders PLAN EVERY SINGLE TRADE. “In simple terms [wealthy traders] know exactly what they want to pay, how much money they anticipate making (or losing) and a very clear idea on the probability of the trade working out.”

2.  Wealthy traders STOPPED TRYING TO PICK TOPS AND BOTTOMS years ago.  “Simply put, 95% of the traders out there that make money are buying higher highs and selling lower lows. [Wealthy traders] do the exact opposite of nearly everyone out there because they found out long ago that picking tops and bottoms is a sucker’s bet.”

3.  Wealthy traders are PATIENT WITH WINNERS and RIDICULOUSLY IMPATIENT WITH LOSERS. “Most traders have a great deal of patience with their losers but get nervous about locking in gains and sell them to quickly – the exact opposite of what wealthy traders do.”

4.  Wealthy traders TRADE ONE MARKET. “Focus on trading one market exceptionally well rather than try to trade whatever’s hot – that’s how wealthy traders do it.”

5.  Wealthy traders gauge success on ANYTHING BUT MONEY. “The growing trading account simply becomes a nice result – a side benefit if you will – of making good decisions and reading the market well.”

One Liners

  
  Education
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“There are old traders, there are bold traders, but there are no old, bold traders.

“There are a million ways to make money in the market. The irony is that they are all very difficult to find.

“Most traders take a good system and destroy it by trying to make it into a perfect system.

“If you’re going to panic, panic early.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

“If you look around the table and don’t see a sucker, then you are the sucker.

“If you find yourself in the bottom of a deep hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

“The system wasn’t designed so that most people could beat it.

“At all levels of play the secret of success lies not so much in playing well as in not playing badly.

“The most dangerous thing in the world is to think you’ve got the time to play it safe.”

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