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Eleven Rules for Traders

  
  Education
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Trading in the markets is a process, and there is always room for self improvement. So as we start the new year, here are my 11 rules that help me navigate the markets. By no means is this list exhaustive or exclusive.

Rule #1
Be data centric in your approach. Take the time and make the effort to understand what works and what doesn’t. Trading decisions should be objective and based upon the data.

Rule #2
Be disciplined. The data should guide you in your decisions. This is the only way to navigate a potentially hostile and fearful environment.

Rule #3
Be flexible. At first glance this would seem to contradict Rule #2; however, I recognize that markets change and that trading strategies cannot account for every conceivable factor. Giving yourself some wiggle room or discretion is ok, but I would not stray too far from the data or your strategies.

Rule #4
Always question the prevailing dogma. The markets love dogma. “Prices are above the 50 day moving average”, “prices are breaking out”, and “don’t fight the Fed” are some of the most often heard sayings. But what do they really mean for prices? Make your own observations and define your own rules. See Rule #1.

Rule #5
Understand your market edge. My edge is my ability to use my computer to define the price action. I level the playing field by trading markets and not companies. (more…)

Top Ten Reasons Traders Lose Their Discipline

  
  Education
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rightway-wrongway
Losing discipline is not a trading problem; it is the common result of a number of trading-related problems. Here are the most common sources of loss of discipline, culled from my work with traders:

10) Environmental distractions and boredom cause a lack of focus;
9) Fatigue and mental overload create a loss of concentration;
8) Overconfidence follows a string of successes;
7) Unwillingness to accept losses, leading to alterations of trade plans after the trade has gone into the red;
6) Loss of confidence in one’s trading plan/strategy because it has not been adequately tested and battle-tested;
5) Personality traits that lead to impulsivity and low frustration tolerance in stressful situations;
4) Situational performance pressures, such as trading slumps and increased personal expenses, that change how traders trade (putting P/L ahead of making good trades);
3) Trading positions that are excessive for the account size, created exaggerated P/L swings and emotional reactions;
2) Not having a clearly defined trading plan/strategy in the first place;
1) Trading a time frame, style, or market that does not match your talents, skills, risk tolerance, and personality.

11 Trading Rules

  
  Education
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Rule #1
Be data centric in your approach. Take the time and make the effort to understand what works and what doesn’t. Trading decisions should be objective and based upon the data.

Rule #2
Be disciplined. The data should guide you in your decisions. This is the only way to navigate a potentially hostile and fearful environment.

Rule #3
Be flexible. At first glance this would seem to contradict Rule #2; however, I recognize that markets change and that trading strategies cannot account for every conceivable factor. Giving yourself some wiggle room or discretion is ok, but I would not stray too far from the data or your strategies.

Rule #4
Always question the prevailing dogma. The markets love dogma. “Prices are above the 50 day moving average”, “prices are breaking out”, and “don’t fight the Fed” are some of the most often heard sayings. But what do they really mean for prices? Make your own observations and define your own rules. See Rule #1.

Rule #5
Understand your market edge. My edge is my ability to use my computer to define the price action. I level the playing field by trading markets and not companies.

Rule #6
Money management. Money management. Money management. It is so important that it is worth saying three times. There are so few factors you can control in the markets, but this is one of them. Learn to exploit it.

Rule #7
Time frame. Know the time frame you are operating on. Don’t let a trade turn into an investment and don’t trade yourself out of an investment.

Rule #8
Confidence and conviction. Believe in your strategies and bet wisely but with conviction. There is nothing more frustrating than having a good strategy work as you expect, yet at the end of the day, you have very little winnings to show for your efforts.

Rule #9
Persistence. It takes persistence to operate in the markets. Success doesn’t come easy, and if it does, then I would be careful. Even the best strategies come with losses, and they always seem to come when you get the nerve to make the big bet. Stay with your plan. If you have done your home work, the winning trades will follow.

Rule #10
Passion. In the end, trading has to be about your bottom line, but you have to love what you do and no amount of money is worth it if you aren’t passionate about the process. No matter how much success you enjoy, in the markets you can never stop learning.

Rule #11
Take care of yourself. No amount of money is worth it if your health is failing or you have managed to alienate yourself from family and friends in the process.

The Universal Principles of Successful Trading

  
  Education
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A book review for Brent Penfold’s book ‘ The Universal Principles of Successful Trading: Essential Knowledge for All Traders in All Markets”

This book is excellent for traders that are ready for it. You need a foundation in trading to understand its importance and take the principles seriously. Once you are through the rainbow and butterfly phase of trading and realize that you will not be a millionaire in a year, this book will help you get focused and get serious about your trading and what really works.
Here are the six universal principles of successful traders:

1). Preparation

Author Brent Penfold is in the minority believing risk management is the #1 priority in trading. Brent believes that once you get your trading system and position size in place you must use the amount you will risk on each trade to determine your risk of ruin. The book shows exactly how to figure this out using Excel. His point is that if your risk of ruin is not zero then you will eventually blow out your account. Risking 1% to 2% of your capital in any one trade usually gives you a zero percent risk of ruin but it also depends on your systems win/loss ratio. But the point is to test any system with 30 trades first then determine your risk of ruin.

2). Enlightenment

Your most important goal is to lower your risk ruin to zero. In trading, the trader with the best ability to cut losses short wins. Simple trading strategies work the best based on traditional support and resistance while trading with the trend on either retracements of break outs. The 10% of winners in the market win by treading where others fear, buying on break outs when they first occur and going short when a new low is made, or buying into the abyss when a security finds support or resistance and reverses at the end of a monster trend. (more…)

10 Questions for Traders

  
  Education
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Traders must have rules and trading plans because in the heat of trading when emotions flare up that is when greed, fear, and ego can easily hijack the trader. Traders all have many different conflicting parts that can interfere with trading execution. The need to be right, the need to make money, the fear of loss, and the greed of making a lot of money can take over any trader that does not have a disciplined approach that is created before the day begins. Mechanical systems, trading rules, along with positions sizing and risk management factors can keep a trader safe from making huge mistakes.

Here are the top 10 Questions Traders must ask to protect them from themselves.

1. Where does the price of my trading vehicle have to go to prove I was wrong about my entry?

2. How much is the maximum I will lose on the trade if I am wrong?

3. What are my rules for entries?

4. How will I exit my winner to bank profits?

5. What is the current trend of the time frame I trade in?Where is my best entry point to trade in this direction? (more…)

4 Points to be Successful Traders

  
  Education
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1) Diversify: If you have a pattern you  trade successfully, you don’t have to grow your size. Instead, look to diversify  to a different pattern (different market, different time frame) not correlated  with the first. You’ll smooth out your returns, as one pattern makes money while  the other experiences drawdown. You’ll also achieve the portfolio manager’s goal  of superior return for less risk exposure.
2) Review Entries: Review your trades for the week and see how much heat  you took on your winners. This will give you an idea of how good your entries are.
3) Review Exits: Review your trades for the week and see if the market  went in your favor or against you after you exited. This will give you an idea  of how good your exits are.
4) Work Orders: Get into the habit of working orders to buy at bid, sell  at offer or to place orders between the bid and offer to avoid paying a price  that is out of line with “fair value”. For the frequent trader, the single tick saved by good execution adds up over time.
The successful traders I’ve worked with never stop working on themselves. This is equally true of successful athletes, musicians, and chess champions. Small, steady improvements can create massively greater performance over time.

15 Common Sense Rules For Traders

  
  Education
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1. No matter what you read about trading, until you use an approach and test it with your money on the line you will never learn how to trade. Paper Trading is NOT Trading!

2. If it were really possible to “Buy Low Sell High” or “Cut your Losses and Let your Winners Run”, then almost everyone would be making money rather than losing it.

3. Remember that there is ALWAYS someone on the other side of your trade who is using a trading technique exactly the opposite of yours who hopes to make money with his system.

4. If 90% of all traders lose money, they must be following generally accepted trading rules. The 10% who win do not!

5. You trade your beliefs and your beliefs about your system. If you have a problem with yourself, fix yourself first.

6. Impatience, Fear and Greed will make you poor. Any need to trade is rooted in greed and impatience.

7. If you really understand the markets then YOU KNOW that there is the same opportunity on every time frame, in every market, every single day.

8. Waiting for the perfect trade is “chickening out”, and caused by your lack of faith in yourself or your system.

9. Any hardwired, automated trading system sold that truly works 70 or 80 or 90 percent of the time in every market would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and would not be for sale at any price.

10. Asking “How small an account do I need to begin trading” is asking to be wiped out.

11. Having a series of winning trades early can be more hazardous to your account than a series of small losses.

12. Learn to trade before you trade. If you win or lose without understanding why, you will never develop a winning strategy.

13. Ninety five percent of everything you hear from everyone about the markets and the markets “reasons” for doing what it did or will do are lies. Neither you nor anyone can predict the future. You can only make educated guesses about potentialities.

14. Asking someone (such as using a service) for advice on where the market is going is a sign you should be on the sidelines until you understand the market better. If the upcoming market direction is not obvious to you, you should not be risking your money. You will lose often enough even when you are right.

15. There is NO GUARANTEED way of making money in the Markets or anywhere else. NONE, NADA, ZIP, ZERO! All you can do is increase your knowledge about yourself and how to estimate the probability of placing a winning trade. Then trade by taking controlled and measured risks.

5 Ideas for Traders

  
  Education
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1) You can’t take your trading to the next level if you don’t know the level you’re playing at. It’s not just P/L; it’s also knowing how you manage risk, how you take advantage of opportunities, how well you execute ideas, etc. Self-improvement starts with self observation;
2) Improving risk-adjusted returns is as important for a long-term career as improving absolute returns. If you take half the trades and make 90% of your previous income, you’ve meaningfully improved. If you take twice as many trades and make 110% of your prior income, you’ve moved backward;
3) Learning to diversify your trading (and income stream) can be as important as improving your core trading. Diversification can be by market, by strategy, by time frame, or by some combination of those;
4) Many times, the best improvements come from doing more of what you’re good at. It helps to make fewer mistakes, but doing less of what doesn’t work is not in itself going to make you a living. It’s crucial to know what you’re really good at;
5) Improving your preparation for trading can be as important as directly working on your trading results. So many outcome results follow from improvements in one’s process. 
Most of all, you elevate your trading by always working on your craft. A day without goals is a day without forward movement. And life is too precious to settle for standing still.

keep it simple -Don't miss to read…

  
  Education
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keepitsimple
If you have been reading this blog for a while you know that ANIRUDH SETHI REPORT promotes simplicity.  Am I alone in thinking this way?  I do not believe so!  I would hazard to guess that most all, if not all, professional traders believe that successful trading boils down to having and following a very simple set of rules. 
Here is a very short list of comments from very reliable sources—successful professional traders.
John F. Carter:  “It is important to remember that there is no need to spend wasted years looking for complicated setups or the next Holy Grail.  There are very simple setups out there to use.  Some of the best traders I know have been trading the same setup, on the same time frame, on the same market for 20 years.  They don’t care about anything else, and they don’t want to learn about anything else.  This works for them, and they are the masters of this setup.  They have nothing else coming in to interfere with their focus” (p. 31, Mastering the Trade: Proven Techniques for Profiting from Intraday and Swing Trading Setups).
Clifford Bennett:  “While there have been some spectacular front-cover traders, the ones who amass fortunes year after year tend to stay in the background. At the very least, they display a simple and down-to-earth approach to markets if they are ever interviewed” (p. 117, Warrior Trading: Inside the Mind of an Elite Currency Trader). (more…)

The Top Ten Similiarities of Winning Traders

  
  Education
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You can read trading, books until you are red-eyed, you can spend thousands of dollars on seminars, you can try to get successful traders to give you the secret sauce of trading or the Holy Grail. But, in the end it is simply you versus the markets. You have to pick your system, your risk tolerance, and take the heat in your own account, it will be your own money you lose.

No one can tell you the right system and method for you. If you can take draw downs in equity mixed with long term capital growth then trend following may be for you. If you love playing the hottest stocks in the market then CAN-SLIM or the Darvas System may be the right systems for you. If you just have little patience and love action then you can join the few who have mastered day trading. There really is no right system for everyone, it depends on what you can handle. However here is what all winning traders must have  to win in the markets regardless of time frame and system:

Trading System

  • They trade a robust system or method that wins more money over time than it loses.
  • Their system gives them a reward to risk ratio that is in their favor.
  • Their system or method is proven to work with a live trading record over many markets and trades or has  historical back testing. (more…)
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