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Trading psychology

  
  Education
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The market is always right–except at significant tops and significant bottoms.

Keep and open and flexible mind. When in doubt, get out.

If you must have a guru, take him or her with many grains of salt

Do not add to losing positions.

Try every day to make yourself stronger, better and more integrated as a person.

Stay true to yourself. Lying to yourself and others, and trading on hope and prayer do not work

Most importantly, accept and recognize that you are not perfect. You are human and are going to make mistakes. Trading is the only profession where losing is actually winning. BUT— unless you accept mistakes as mistakes and learn from them, you will not progress and be upside down. Unless you are able to get your trading brain out of the cave you will not accumulate regret. It is only through the true acceptance of a mistake as a mistake that we accumulate regret. This is how we learn and grow as traders and human beings.

Will & Won't for Traders

  
  Education
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Will– Phrases include: “The market will..” and “I will make money”. Once again the market does not like to be told what to do. It is the bratty kid screaming at the tops of his lungs. The word “will” relaxes your mind, similar to “should”, people use it to be lazy instead of a black background in an otherwise light picture. You can do everything right and still lose money. That is why trading is so effective at diminishing confidence. In most every activity, if you do everything right you are going to get the desired result. Doing the “right” things is bare minimum. Of course, over time you will get paid for doing the right things but it is never when you think it should be and hardly how much you anticipated.

Won’t– Phrases include: “The market won’t…” or “I won’t make money”. Notice a theme here? You are part of the market, you are not the market. Not getting what you expect, even if it is positive, confuses the brain. If you expect to lose and don’t it is still a bad outcome. The market is a one way walkie talkie, you listen, it talks.

Five key for profitable trading

  
  Education
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There are five key things that make all the difference in profitable trading:

Focus on a system with bigger wins than losses, big wins makes robustness a much easier thing to find. A 1:3 risk/return ratio makes it much easier to be profitable even with more losses than wins.

Trade in the direction of the trend, in my experience buying dips in a bull market and selling into strength in a bear market is a much easier process than calling tops and catching falling knives.

Trade small versus your buying power, most systems fail because traders simple trade too big causing losses and being wrong to set them back far too much. Small losses are easy to come back from a string of big losses is fatal.

Trade price action not opinions. Be quick to cut losses and patient to ride winners. Getting stuck on what you think should happen could be fatal when the market disagrees with you.

Your goal as a trader is to find an edge over the 90% of traders that lose money, once you have that edge the more you trade the right signals the better chance you have of being profitable. Before you have an edge the volume of trades work against you as your luck runs out. 

Trading Lessons

  
  Education
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Trading lessonsThe market is always right–except at significant tops and significant bottoms.

Keep and open and flexible mind. When in doubt, get out.

If you must have a guru, take him or her with many grains of salt

Do not add to losing positions.

Try every day to make yourself stronger, better and more integrated as a person.

Stay true to yourself. Lying to yourself and others, and trading on hope and prayer do not work

Most importantly, accept and recognize that you are not perfect. You are human and are going to make mistakes. Trading is the only profession where losing is actually winning. BUT— unless you accept mistakes as mistakes and learn from them, you will not progress and be upside down. Unless you are able to get your trading brain out of the cave you will not accumulate regret. It is only through the true acceptance of a mistake as a mistake that we accumulate regret. This is how we learn and grow as traders and human beings.

Gann's trading rules

  
  Education
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  • Never risk more than 10% of your trading capital in a single trade.
  • Always use stop-loss orders.
  • Never overtrade.
  • Never let a profit run into a loss.
  • Don ‘t enter a trade if you are unsure of the trend. Never buck the trend.
  • When in doubt, get out, and don’t get in when in doubt.
  • Only trade active markets.
  • Distribute your risk equally among different markets.
  • Never limit your orders. Trade at the market.
  • Don’t close trades without a good reason.
  • Extra monies from successful trades should be placed in a separate account.
  • Never trade to scalp a profit.
  • Never average a loss.
  • Never get out of the market because you have lost patience or get in because you are anxious from waiting.
  • Avoid taking small profits and large losses.
  • Never cancel a stop loss after you have placed the trade.
  • Avoid getting in and out of the market too often.
  • Be willing to make money from both sides of the market.
  • Never buy or sell just because the price is low or high.
  • Pyramiding should be accomplished once it has crossed resistance levels and broken zones of distribution.
  • Pyramid issues that have a strong trend.
  • Never hedge a losing position.
  • Never change your position without a good reason.
  • Avoid trading after long periods of success or failure.
  • Don’t try to guess tops or bottoms.
  • Don’t follow a blind man’s advice.
  • Reduce trading after the first loss; never increase.
  • Avoid getting in wrong and out wrong; or getting in right and out wrong. This is making a double mistake.

Trading ‘Tilt’

  
  Education
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A few of the many lessons to be learned from this story:

The market is always right–except at significant tops and significant bottoms.

Keep and open and flexible mind. When in doubt, get out.

If you must have a guru, take him or her with many grains of salt

Do not add to losing positions.

Try every day to make yourself stronger, better and more integrated as a person.

Stay true to yourself. Lying to yourself and others, and trading on hope and prayer do not work

Most importantly, accept and recognize that you are not perfect. You are human and are going to make mistakes. Trading is the only profession where losing is actually winning. BUT— unless you accept mistakes as mistakes and learn from them, you will not progress and be upside down. Unless you are able to get your trading brain out of the cave you will not accumulate regret. It is only through the true acceptance of a mistake as a mistake that we accumulate regret. This is how we learn and grow as traders and human beings.

10 Trading Thoughts

  
  Education
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1. You only have three choices when you are in a bad position, and it is not hard to figure out what to do:
(1) Get out
(2) Double up, or
(3) Spread it off.

I have always found getting out to be the best of all three choices.

  1. No opinion on the market or you are doubtful about market direction? Then stay out. Remember, when in doubt, stay out.
  2. Don’t ever let anyone know how big your wallet is, and don’t ever let anyone know how small it is either.
  3. If you snooze, you lose. Know your markets, when they trade, and what reports will affect the market price.
  4. The markets will always let you in on the losers; the market’s job is to keep you out of winners. Dump the dogs and ride the winning tide.
  5. Stops are not for sissies.
  6. Plan your trade, then trade your plan. He who fails to plan, plans to fail.
  7. Buy the rumor and sell the fact. Watch for volatility in these situations; it usually marks tops or bottoms in the markets.
  8. Buy low, sell high. Or buy it when nobody wants it, and sell it when everybody has to have it!
  9. It’s okay to lose your shirt, just don’t lose your pants; that is where your wallet is.

One last thought to leave with you. It applies not only to every-day life but to trading the markets as well:
Success is measured not so much by the wealth or position you have gained, but rather by the obstacles you have overcome to succeed!

You might be a bad trader if……….

  
  Education
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There are young people in the market that are really bad traders and there is also old traders that are very good, but there are no old bad traders in the market because they went broke and gave up a long time ago.

You might be a bad trader if……….

…your primary method is to try to call tops and pick bottoms.

“Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can’t be done except by liars.”  -Bernard Baruch

 You might be a bad trader if……….

…instead of benefiting from the 200 point run in Apple this year you actually lost money by fighting the trend.

“Cardinal Rule #1 is to sell short only during what you believe is a developing bear market, not a bull market.” -William O’Neil (more…)

Surfing and Trading

  
  Education
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– After a lull (chop, quiet market) a new set of waves (setups, breakouts) will appear. Often, the first wave is not the best wave. Don’t get too excited because you see an OK wave (false breakout) after you haven’t seen any good ones at all. Often there is a better one behind it (look for confirmation).

– If you catch a wave ride it as long as you can, until you see yourself heading into shore, rocks, or other people (end of trend).

– Get into position and be ready to go for a wave so you’re ready to take a good setup once it appears. (focus, attention)

– Once you see a wave you want, commit to it to getting on it. Paddle as fast as you can to get enough speed to go with the wave. (have a plan, preparation, confidence with entry, execute with precision)

– Don’t try to catch the wave too early, make sure it has built up enough energy to carry you along (overly eager entries, wait for confirmation)

– Don’t catch the wave too late or else you’ll catch it on the top of the wave and it will throw you down into the seabed (buying tops or selling bottoms)

– Don’t try to surf every wave (over trading), just the ones that look easy to catch and worth the energy required to catch and ride it (capital preservation, high probability trades)

Any other surfers out there have some surfing/trading parallels? – If there’s no waves (setups) be patient and enjoy the water and sun. A setup will come. If not, then it wasn’t meant to be (sit on hands day) or not a good spot (market). Come back tomorrow or find another spot. Don’t try to make something of nothing.

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