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Psychology & Risk Management For Traders

PSYCHOLOGY

  1. I keep Blue Channels turned off while trading.
  2. I do not care about others opinions I care only about price and chart action.
  3. I do not try to predict, instead I trade in accordance with the chart.
  4. I am not trying to prove I am right I am trying to make money.
  5. I am not trading for ego gratification I am trading for money.
  6. I am not trying to be the genius who calls a top I am the trend follower who follows a trend all the way up until it ends.
  7. I admit freely to my losing trades along with my winning trades.
  8. I do not get emotionally attached to each price movement through out the day.
  9. I have faith in my rules, methodology and system.
  10. I understand it that it is the market conditions and not me that creates profits.

RISK MANAGEMENT

  1. I never add to a losing positions.
  2. I carefully control position sizing to limit risk based on volatility.
  3. I attempt to never lose  more than 1% of my capital on any one trade.
  4. I trade smaller when volatility is high.
  5. I sell positions with volatility stops when daily ranges double in the wrong direction.
  6. I have stale stops and sale positions that do not trend in four days after entry.
  7. I quickly sell losing trades when my stop is hit.
  8. I sell stocks when they close in the bottom of the days range.
  9. I never expose more than 6% of my capital to possible loss at any one time.
  10. Risk is priority #1, profits are #2.

Ed Seykota-Quotes Collection

RELAX-READEd Seykota’s Trading Style

  • My style is basically trend following, with some special pattern recognition and money management
    algorithms.
  • In order of importance to me are: (1) the long-term trend, (2) the current chart pattern, and (3) picking a good spot to buy or sell. Those are the three primary components of my trading. Way down in very distant fourth place are my fundamental ideas and, quite likely, on balance, they have cost me money.
  • I consider trend following to be a subset of charting. Charting is a little like surfing. You don’t have to know a
    lot about the physics of tides, resonance, and fluid dynamics in order to catch a good wave. You just have to be able to sense when it’s happening and then have the drive to act at the right time.
  • Common patterns transcend individual market behavior (my note: i.e. price patterns are similar across different markets).

Overall Rules

  • Trade with the long-term trend.
  • Cut your losses.
  • Let your profits ride.
  • Bet as much as you can handle and no more.

Buying on Breakouts

  • If I were buying, my point would be above the market. I try to identify a point at which I expect the market momentum to be strong in the direction of the trade, so as to reduce my probable risk.
  • I don’t try to pick a bottom or top.
  • If I am bullish, I neither buy on a reaction, nor wait for strength; I am already in. I turn bullish at the instant
    my buy stop is hit, and stay bullish until my sell stop is hit. Being bullish and not being long is illogical. (more…)

The Legendary Turtle Traders

Have you ever heard of the legendary Turtle traders? Millionaire trader Richard Dennis set off to find out if traders were just born to trade, or if they could be trained to be successful in the markets from scratch. The answer? If they could follow rules they could be successful.

“I always say that you could publish my trading rules in the newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline. Almost anybody can make up a list of rules that are 80% as good as what we taught our people. What they couldn’t do is give them the confidence to stick to those rules even when things are going bad.” –Richard Dennis: Founder of the ‘Turtle Traders’ quoted from the book Market Wizards:

The Turtle system proved that the traders that followed the rules went on to be millionaires and to manage money professionally.

Markets – What to buy or sell

  • The Turtles traded all major futures contracts, metals, currencies, and commodities.
  • The turtles traded multiple markets to diversify risk.

Position Sizing – How much to buy or sell

  • Turtle position sizing was based on a markets volatility using the 20 day exponential moving average of the true range.
  • The Turtles were taught to trade in increments of 1% of total account equity,

Entries – When to buy or sell (more…)

Trading Psychology Lesson-Naked Truth

A good analyst is someone who can figure out that markets are going from Point A to Point B;

A good trader is someone who can navigate the path from Point A to Point B;

A good investor is someone who can weather the path from Point A to Point B;

Good analysts often are not good traders.

Good traders often are not good investors.

Good investors often are not good traders.

Good traders and investors often need to hire good analysts.

So much of success boils down to knowing who you are and accepting that.

Perseverance is one of the Best Traits to Have When Trend Following

It is never easy…and those that promise you that are not telling you the truth.

Perseverance is one of the Best Traits to Have When Trend Following!
Trend following is a marathon. There will always be those that say it is over!

It takes losses in the stock market to make future great traders and learning from mistakes is one of the best teachers.

Have a trading plan….and more importantly…Make sure you follow your own rules!

The Mind of a Trend Following Winner

All types of traders have different emotional responses to winning trades as well as losing trades. The mindset of a winning trend follower is much different than most. There is no excitement on a winning trade nor emotional distress on a losing trade. The reason there is no excitement on a winning trade is due to the humbleness of the winning trend follower. He or she did nothing different. They were consistent in their plan and the market moved. The reason is very simple why these small group of winning trend followers succeed. The winning trend follower has an exact plan and knows that he is playing the odds. He or she keeps their losses small…or try to do so…however there will always be gaps or limit moves against them. There is only 4 possibilities when we trade:

big losses
big wins
small losses
small wins… (more…)

How to Develop Yourself as a Trader -Anirudh Sethi

There is a well-known axiom in business: “Neglect to plan and you intend to fall flat.” It might sound chatty, yet the individuals who are not kidding about being fruitful, including traders, ought to take after these eight words as though they were composed of stone. Ask any trader who profits on a reliable premise and they will let you know, “You have two options: you can either efficiently take after a composed arrangement, or come up short.” Mastering the specialty of Forex trading is not as basic as it appears. Each and every day the number of retail traders in the internet trading group is expanding at an exponential rate because of its outrageous level of benefit potential. The master traders at Saxo have secured their money related opportunity in life just by trading the live resources in the market. Be that as it may, keeping in mind the end goal to profit in the internet trading world, you have to know how to deal with your Forex trading account available. Not at all like the expert traders, the tenderfoot traders in the monetary business bounce into the web based trading world without thinking about the market subtle elements and in this way they lose an immense measure of money. In this article, we will examine how to wind up noticeably an expert trader in the Forex trading world. On the off chance that you have a composed trading or venture design, congrats! You are in the minority. While it is still no undeniable certainty of achievement, you have disposed of one noteworthy barricade. On the off chance that your arrangement utilizes imperfect procedures or needs planning, your prosperity won’t come promptly, however at any rate you are in a position to diagram and adjust your course. By archiving the procedure, you realize what works and how to abstain from rehashing expensive slip-ups.

Acknowledging Direct Resources for Profit

In order to develop yourself as an expert Forex trader, you have to consider trading as your business. On the off chance that you take a gander at the expert traders in the money market then you will see that each and every one of them is trading the live resources in their Forex trading account with an extraordinary level. Much the same as the expert specialist the master in the monetary business likewise has a strong trading plan to trade the live resources in the market. A large portion of the fledgling traders in the budgetary market consider trading as a get rich speedy plan and at last, loses money in the internet trading world. So on the off chance that you genuinely need to wind up plainly an expert trader at that point ensure that you build up a trader’s attitude and consider trading as your business. Trading is a business, so you need to regard it in that capacity on the off chance that you need to succeed. Perusing a few books, purchasing an outlining program, opening an investment fund and beginning to trade is not a strategy for success – it is a formula for calamity. Once a trader knows where the market can possibly respite or invert, they should then figure out which one it will be and act as needs are. An arrangement ought to be composed of stone while you are trading, yet subject to re-assessment once the market has shut. It changes with economic situations and modifies as the trader’s aptitude level moves forward. Every trader ought to compose their own arrangement, considering individual trading styles and objectives. Utilizing another person’s arrangement does not mirror your trading qualities. Such a large amount of the reason numerous traders fall flat is that they never seek after trading the correct route, as an execution teach. They don’t have an organized procedure of learning. They don’t have the instruments to legitimately replay, audit, and right there trading. They don’t have guides to good example great trading rehearses. They don’t learn methodologies with genuine edges and rather trade arbitrary examples on outlines or features existing apart from everything else. They don’t have enough funding to survive their expectations to absorb information. They don’t discover the trading markets and styles that best fit their specific qualities.

(more…)

10 One Liners For Traders

• Technical analysis is a windsock, not a crystal ball. It is a skill that improves with experience and study. Always be a student, there is always someone smarter than you!

• “Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.”

• Let volatility work in your favor, not against you.

• Watch what our “Politicos” do, not say.

• Markets tend to regress to the mean over time.

• Emotions can be the enemy of the trader and investor, as fear and greed play an important part of one’s decision making process.

• Portfolios heavy with underperforming stocks rarely outperform the stock market!

• Even the best looking chart can fall apart for no apparent reason. Thus, never fall in love with a position but instead remain vigilant in managing risk and expectations. Use volume as a confirming guidepost.

• When trading, if a stock doesn’t perform as expected within a short time period, either close it out or tighten your stop-loss point.

• As long as a stock is acting right and the market is “in-gear,” don’t be in a hurry to take a profit on the whole position, scale out instead.

4 Type of Market Cycles

1)  Bottoming process – At market lows, we tend to see an elevation of volume and volatility and a high level of market correlation, as stocks are dumped across the board.  Selling pressure far exceeds buying pressure and sentiment becomes quite bearish.  At important market bottoms, we see price lows that are not confirmed by market breadth, as strong stocks begin to diverge from the pack and attract buying interest.  At those bottoms, we also find a rise in buying pressure and a reduction of selling pressure, as fresh market lows fail to attract new selling interest.  

2)  Market rise – With the drying up of selling, low prices attract buying from longer timeframe participants as well as shorter-term opportunistic ones.  The market rises on strong buying pressure and low selling pressure, and the rise generates sufficient thrust to generate a good degree of upside momentum.  Volatility and correlation remain relatively high during the initial lift off from the lows and breadth is strong.  Dips are bought and the rise is sustained.

3)  Topping process – The market hits a momentum peak, often identifiable by a peak in the number of shares registering fresh highs.  Selling from this peak generally exceeds the level of selling seen during the market rise, but ultimately attracts buyers.  Weak stocks begin to diverge from the pack and fresh price highs typically occur with breadth divergences and lower levels of correlation.  New buying lacks the thrust of the earlier move from the lows and volatility wanes.  By the time we hit a price peak for the cycle, divergences are clear, volatility is low, both buying pressure and selling pressure are low, and sentiment remains bullish.  

4)  Market decline – Fresh selling creates a pickup in correlation and volatility, as short-term support levels are violated and selling pressure exceeds buying pressure.  Breadth turns negative and the bulk of stocks now move lower.

Technical Analysis -A Small Note

Most traders in the markets use charts and technical analysis to establish and exit their positions. Academicians and skeptics point to the random nature of many technical patterns. Here’s a typical chart generated by random numbers. If you don’t tell a trader it’s randomly generated, they’ll come up with all sorts of predictions and patterns that the chart generates. And if you dare to suggest that what they’re doing is mumbo jumbo, they take great offense and beat you on the head with examples of great traders who follow charts, and examples of others who consistently make a fortune by using charts.

There’s a trader from Harvard who uses charts and has made 20 billion who says “using a chart is like a Dr. taking your temperature before a diagnosis.” Another one says that if charts are so useless how come everyone including you looks at it before making a trade. One of the most respected and successful traders, a friend, puts the debate in focus: “There are lots of great tools in technical analysis (some of them in his book like trader’s positions, and breakouts, open interest and spreads). They’re very useful as part of a bigger trading process. There are good saws and hammers but it takes a good carpenter to make them work.”

There’s a guy in Japan who calls himself the Japanese Victor Niederhoffer who has turned $ 10,000 into 5 million by using charts. I hope to meet him in Japan when I visit there for a talk arranged by one who believes in charts, an estimable fellow who combines charts with anthropology, life extension and sports, and perhaps I will become the American Matsohita-Masamichi.

Options values are determined by using random numbers with the same standard deviation and distribution of prices as would be generated with the random number generators I just mentioned. Every trader on the floor uses such generators to predict the price that an option should trade at, and they do very well with this model– until something like the 1987 crash occurs and they go broke.

A famous former academic big options trader and head of the exchange said that almost all the scientific options traders he knew found that when you apply the random walk model to options, it turns out that puts are priced much too highly. He said that he’s watched every last one of them go broke. The problem here is that extreme events tend to occur much more frequently than the random walk model would predict.

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