- Never, NEVER cancel a stop loss. I know, I know, every time you have a stop loss in the market, the market moves just enough to stop you out, right? Well it might mean that you should evaluate where you place your stops (this is where good trading journals come in handy), but once you’ve done your analysis and placed the trade, you need to be committed to the trade and your plan. The only adjusting you should do is to lock in your profits.
. - Always have your broker or your trading desk number handy, even if you trade electronically. This is really important for the day trader who is trading leveraged markets. It is easy to get a little too comfortable when your trading platform and internet connection are running smoothly, but once you drop your guard that inevitable lost connection will happen…a lost minute, even seconds could be an expensive lesson!
. - Always check your open orders. This can be done a few different ways depending on your trading platform, but if your intention is to be flat in the market, always double check! (more…)
Archives of “tops and bottoms” tag
rssGood Traders & Bad Traders
Good Traders
- The good traders that I have met are generous with their time and knowledge.
- Good traders are flexible in their trades and opinions they follow where the market takes them.
- The majority of good traders have simple charts that focus on price action. They focus on the simplicity of what works.
- A good trader will admit a loss and share what happened.
- Good traders are first and foremost traders, any service or product they offer is secondary.
- Good traders are humble and respect the market and the reality of trading.
- Good traders at times will call real trades and post entries and exits.
- Good traders are on social media not for show but for teaching and friendships and having fun.
- Good traders go with the current market trend.
- Those who make a comfortable living trading are playful, joking and happy .
Bad Traders
- Many bad traders try to tear down others to make themselves feel superior. Good traders have no need to do this they have highly self esteems already. (more…)
Don't be afraid to be a sheep
- Follow the trends. This is probably some of the hardest advice for a trader to follow because the personality of the typical futures trader is not “one of the crowd.” Futures traders (and futures brokers) are highly individualistic; the markets seem to attract those who are. Very simply, it takes a special kind of person, not “one of the crowd,” to earn enough risk capital to get involved in the futures markets. So the typical trader and the typical broker must guard against their natural instincts to be highly individualistic, to buck the trend.
- Know why you are trading the commodity markets. To relieve boredom? To hit it big? When you can honestly answer this question, you may be on your way to successful futures trading.
- Use a trading system, any system, and stick to it.
- Apply money management techniques to your trading.
- Do not overtrade.
- Take a position only when you know where your profit goal is and where you are going to get out if the market goes against you.
- Trade with the trends, rather than trying to pick tops and bottoms.
- Don’t trade many markets with little capital.
- Don’t just trade the volatile contracts.
- Calculate the risk/reward ratio before putting a trade on, then guard against holding it too long.
- Establish your trading plans before the market opening to eliminate emotional reactions. Decide on entry points, exit points, and objectives. Subject your decisions to only minor changes during the session. Profits are for those who act, not react. Don’t change during the session unless you have a very good reason.
- Follow your plan. Once a position is established and stops are selected, do not get out unless the stop is reached or the fundamental reason for taking the position changes.
- Use technical signals (charts) to maintain discipline – the vast majority of traders are not emotionally equipped to stay disciplined without some technical tools.
Ideas that spread
Not all great investing/trading ideas are profitable. Ideas that spread are. If no one else sees what you see and acts, you can’t make money. Hoping that eventually the rest of the market will understand and embrace your thesis is a loser’s strategy or a privilege for someone with very deep pockets. Markets often know more than you as they constantly try to discount all the available public and private information. You might be convinced that your analysis is right and the market is wrong, but it could remain wrong longer than you could remain solvent. The question again is do you have deep enough pockets to ride the storm out and aren’t there more plausible alternatives for your capital at the time. Smart people like to scale in and out of positions, knowing that no one can consistently pick tops and bottoms.
Take for example Jim Rogers. He is a typical contrarian investor, who likes to buy low and sell high. But he is not buying anything that is low priced and neglected. He buys cheap things only when he sees a fundamental change on the horizon – a catalyst that will help other market participants to re-evaluate their thesis and act on their new observations.
Great Hunter, Lousy Trader
Making money in the market is an unnatural act. We humans are predators and hunters evolved to track game on the horizon of an African savanna. Modern humans are maybe 5 million years old, but civilization has been around for only 10,000 years. Our brains have not had time to make the adjustment. In the market, this means that if a stock has gone up, you believe it will continue. This is why market tops and bottoms see volume spikes. To make money, you have to go against these innate instincts. Some people are born with this ability, while others can only learn it through decades of training.
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?’
Free Technical Analysis Handbook
Today more and more investors are warming to the fact that psychology moves markets and therefore fundamental analysis, which fails to properly measure mass investor psychology, must be flawed.
Who can blame them? After all, fundamental analysis — based on past company earnings, rating agency projections and the like — proved to be of little value during the bust.
There is a better way.
Many investors who monitor investor sentiment readings, study Elliott wave patterns and employ other powerful technical indicators were — at very least — able to position themselves to survive the recent decline. Still others were able to turn crisis into opportunity and profit from the volatility. (more…)
Lessons Learned
“So far in 2009, what are the the most important thing I had learned about investing, trading, and/or the markets?”
Success takes longer than expected
- That you must learn to trade and trust yourself and not to become so dependent on the opinions of others, which ultimately keeps you from becoming the best you can be
- Keep it simple
- The very best profit opportunities occur in the midst of extreme emotional sentiment
- Always think opportunistic verses too bullish or bearish
- Persistence and dedication to a daily routine is key
- Developing an edge is the first step for trading successfully. Without that, disciplined trading will only make sure you gradually losing money
- The market is one unforgiving bitch!
- It is challenging to find non-correlated markets
- You have to respect the market even if you think it is under some kind of manipulation
- Keep your eyes open and powder dry
- If you fall in love with a stock keep 100 shares and let the rest go
- I’ve learned to be patient in waiting for my patterns to appear
- The value of ETFs
- The importance of finding special situations that will be profitable no matter what the market does
- Stay away from light volume when the only thing trading is the black boxes
- The importance of focusing only on one technical setup in order to improve one’s skill set
- I now think that buy and hold is a serious mistake
- Think big and think long term
- Don’t try to predict the markets
- Don’t be afraid in bear markets, just another opportunity
- The odds are stacked against the retail investor
- There’s no such thing as a sure thing
- The harder I work at it the more likely I am to succeed
- Conserving one’s capital is vital
- I know the rules – I just need to notch-up my discipline
- Smaller entry positions can be helpful
- Opportunities are everywhere
- The market is primarily psychologically driven
- Trade with the trend instead of trying to pick tops and bottoms
- Know where and when to get out before you get in
- As Johny Cash put it “You got to walk that lonesome valley, you got walk it by yourself. Nobody else can walk it for you. You got to walk it by yourself.”
- The difficulty of avoiding over-optimization/curve fitting
- Overtrading can be, and often is, a recipe for disaster
- To breathe before executing a trade
- Trading is not a profession for pessimists
- Never feel confident even when winning. Humility is a good thing
- You need to be quick and brutal with the trading decisions
- It is okay to sit out a potential move – risk management over reward chasing
- Don’t bet the farm in either direction
- There is no consistent logic to trading the market
- Some trades need to be taken when they appear, not just when you are ready
- There’s no rule that quality stocks must go up
- Don’t chase any overbought stocks
- When a sector (like financials) look so hopeless as it did in March there is potential to make a lot of money if things turn around even just a little
- Hope is a four-letter word and has no place in a trading strategy
- Patience. It is ok to sit out once in awhile
- Wait until you have an proven strategy supported by data before trading for keeps
Anything can happen. Trading is all about probabilities
Technically Yours-ANIRUDH SETHI ,BARODA ,INDIA
4 Trading Mistakes
Don’t over-leverage yourself or have all of your money tied into one position. Keeping cash on hand is okay as a trader. These days brokers are offering extremely competitive margin requirements for day trading futures, but low margins can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing..
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Trading Book Review Of the Week: The Three Skills of Top Trading
This book is written about how three mutually reinforcing skills make a complete trader.
1). Pattern Recognition and Discretionary Trading.
Using the Wyckoff method you will see chart representations of how hot growth stocks are accumulated in bases for long periods of time. They eventually have pull backs then break out to new highs and trend. You will also see how they eventually have exhaustion tops on high volume that fail to rally and they begin to break down in distribution with lower lows and lower highs. The author encourages discretionary trading through experience by being able to identify market action through the models from past stocks. This work ties in nicely with the school of thought from legendary traders William J. O’Neil, Jesse Livermore, and Nicolas Darvas.
2). Behavioral finance and systems building.
The book teaches that readers must be flexible in their trading. We are merely a ship on a sea of market participant opinions. Follow the prevailing sentiment during the middle of the the trend, and go contrary to it at the extreme tops and bottoms. Hope, fear, and greed are the dangers and the movers of the market that cause support and resistance, trends, and chart patterns. The action of the stock market is nothing more than a manifestation of mass crowd psychology in action. The Pruden model shows a chart of how accumulation, mark-up, distribution, and markdown works in the market tied to price, volume, sentiment, and time. It truly explains how the price pattern and charts in growth stocks generally play out historically. (more…)