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Focus

The goal of a successful professional in any field is to reach his personal best. You need to concentrate on trading right. Each trade has to be handled like a surgical procedure – seriously, soberly, without sloppiness or shortcuts. This is a stock trading risk management plan. A loser cannot cut his losses quickly. When a trade starts going sour, he hopes and hangs on, and his loses pile up. And as soon as he gets out of a trade, the market comes roaring back.

  • Trends reverse when they do because most losers are alike. They act on their gut feeling instead of using their heads. The emotions of people are similar, regardless of their cultural background or educational levels.
     
  • Emotional traders go into risky gambles to avoid taking certain losses. It is human nature to take profits quickly and postpone taking losses. Emotional trading destroys those who lose. Good money management and timing techniques will keep you out of the hole. Losing traders look for a “sure thing”, hang on to hope, and irrationally avoid accepting small losses.

Open Mind

Nothing is infallible in the stock market — no theory, no measure of the market be it technical, fundamental, or cyclical. The basic tenet of any investment or trading methodology worth its salt should be that it’s not infallible.

Those that demand the least from a method will gain the most from it. Those who demand the most from a method will be the ones most frustrated by it.

The only way to gain control is to give up control. The only way to gain control is to give up the idea of trying to have control.

The market is more art than science: The good and bad part of any genuine approach to the market is that it requires interpretation, which is what makes markets and opportunity, but is bad because it’s frustrating.

The study of the market is part theoretical and part philosophical. That’s what makes it so intriguing. The market is a mystery. Despite all the artificial intelligence and computer power available, no one has solved the mystery. There’s no sure thing in the markets.

This is no-man’s-land. Every technical benchmark and data point seem but an island in the market’s stream of confusion.

As a trading bro said to me over the weekend, “If you have an opinion in this market, you’re wrong.”

Keep an open mind.

Four Basic Points on Technical Analysis

The true trader, the consistent winner, is not concerned with any price or where prices started from.  He or she is concerned with what it takes for people to believe strong enough, and with enough commitment, that they will place their capital at risk.”  So, with that in mind, the four basics:

1.  A price chart is simply “a pictorial representation of the sum total of all the market’s belief structures.”  No matter what we believe the chart does not lie.

2.  “Because every potential trader in every market is seeing it differently, every printed price will mean something different to everyone.” Our entry may be someone else’s opportunity to exit and vice versa.  We should always remember this the next time we believe we have a sure thing.

3.  Prices eventually have to stop their forward progress, in either direction.  “When every potential trader has executed for an entry, in any time frame, the market is vulnerable. When no one is doing anything, and what’s been done is done, prices must stop.” 

4.  No matter what indicator we use “every technical indicator designed is based solely on combining or dividing prices in some way.”  Volume and open interest, however, “chronicles the true state of what is happening inside the minds of the market participants.” 

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