rss

19 Great Quotes From – “Hedge Fund Market Wizards”

1. As long as no one cares about it, there is no trend. Would you be short Nasdaq in 1999? You can’t be short just because you think fundamentally something is overpriced.

2. All markets look liquid during the bubble (massive uptrend), but it’s the liquidity after the bubble ends that matters.

3. Markets tend to overdiscount the uncertainty related to identified risks. Conversely, markets tend to underdiscount risks that have not yet been expressly identified. Whenever the market is pointing at something and saying this is a risk to be concerned about, in my experience, most of the time, the risk ends up being not as bad as the market anticipated.

4. The low-quality names tend to outperform early in the cycle, and the high-quality names tend to outperform toward the end of the cycle.

5. Traders focus almost entirely on where to enter a trade. In reality, the entry size is often more important than the entry price because if the size is too large, a trader will be more likely to exit a good trade on a meaningless adverse price move. The larger the position, the greater the danger that trading decisions will be driven by fear rather than by judgment and experience.

6. Virtually all traders experience periods when they are out of sync with the markets. When you are in a losing streak, you can’t turn the situation around by trying harder. When trading is going badly, Clark’s advice is to get out of everything and take a holiday. Liquidating positions will allow you to regain objectivity.

7. Staring at the screen all day is counterproductive. He believes that watching every tick will lead to both selling good positions prematurely and overtrading. He advises traders to find something else (preferably productive) to occupy part of their time to avoid the pitfalls of watching the market too closely.

8. When markets are trending up strongly, and there is bad news, the bad news counts for nothing. But if there is a break that reminds people what it is like to lose money in equities, then suddenly the buying is not mindless anymore. People start looking at the fundamentals, and in this case I knew the fundamentals were very ugly indeed.

9. Buying low-beta stocks is a common mistake investors make. Why would you ever want to own boring stocks? If the market goes down 40 percent for macro reasons, they’ll go down 20 percent. Wouldn’t you just rather own cash? And if the market goes up 50 percent, the boring stocks will go up only 10 percent. You have negatively asymmetric returns.

10. If a stock is extremely oversold—say, the RSI is at a three-year low—it will get me to take a closer look at it.8 Normally, if a stock is that brutalized, it means that whatever is killing it is probably already in the price. RSI doesn’t work as an overbought indicator because stocks can remain overbought for a very long time. But a stock being extremely oversold is usually an acute phenomenon that lasts for only a few weeks. (more…)

THE 3 PHASES OF A TRADE

The ANTICIPATION Phase:  this is where all the left hand chart reading takes place in preparation for the right hand chart battle. It’s the PROCESS that precedes the ACTION to put on a trade. A technical trader anticipates that a past price pattern will repeat again, so he identifies the pattern, locates a current one and determines a suitable match is present.  Technical analysis is nothing more than finding previous price patterns matched with current market conditions.  Traders anticipate such repetitive behavior based on human nature and seek to take advantage of it.

The ACTION phase involves hitting the BUY key based on the previous ANTICIPATION process.  Since no one can tell the future or what the right hand side of the chart will reveal, the ACTION is based on the confidence that the trader will do what is right once a trade is put on, which is to exit gracefully at a pre-determined loss line or exit humbly at a pre-determined profit target , fully accepting either/or, or an OUTCOME between one or the other, depending on current market conditions.

The REINFORCEMENT phase occurs after the trade is closed.  Whether or not the trade is a win, lose, or draw, the self-talk immediately following trade closure is vitally important for the next trade, and even the next series of trades, as future trades can be negatively or positively affected by building pathways to future success.  These pathways are neurologically based and can make or break a successful trading career.  While it is important to ANTICIPATE right side chart OUTCOMES, what is more important is DEVELOPING right side brain reinforcement.

Appraising Your Trading Relationship To Pride

1.Does your self -esteem rise and fall with your latest trading ?

2.Have you ever taken a trade just to prove your ability as a trader ?

3.Do you brag about your winning trades to others ?

4.Do you try to hide your losing trades from others ?

5.Do you ever make up false stories about your trading to impress others ?

6.Do you worry about what other people think of you as a trader ?

7.Make an honest self-assessment of your trading.

8.Compliment yourself and give yourself credit when you do something right.

9.When you make a mistake or do something that doesn’t serve  your trading ,plan how you will correct this tomorrow or in the future.Say to Yourself ,”That’s not like me.I can do better.”

10.Notice your improvement and commit to doing better each day ,week ,month and Year.

How To Fail As A Trader In 10 Easy Steps

royal-fail

There is so much ink and pixels spilled on how to succeed in trading. So I thought, I would zag instead of zig and outline how to fail as a trader. Without further ado, the 10 vital steps you must take in order to fail in trading:

  1. Start out undercapitalized
  2. Ignore risk management
  3. Compare yourself to other traders, not yourself
  4. Look for the right system
  5. Don’t keep a journal
  6. Be secretive
  7. Be casual
  8. Fill your charts with as many indicators as possible
  9. Trade with your emotions
  10. Be inconsistent

10 Mistakes -Done By 95% Traders

  1. Not honoring your original stops. Big losses make winning systems losing ones.
  2. Quit trading it during drawdowns. All systems have losing streaks, the key is to manage risk and stick to it until the system has time to play out with profits as the market becomes conducive to your system’s method.
  3. Lack of discipline, drifting from taking defined entries and exit signals to  your own opinions is hazardous.
  4. Trading too big, no system can survive huge positions sizing that makes the first string of losses the last.
  5. Style drift is deadly, slowly changing your trading system during active trades is not good. Research has to happen after hours when the market is closed and backtested before changes are made.
  6. If you can’t mentally and emotionally deal with the equity curve of your trading style then you can’t trade it long term. You can’t quite during losing streaks or get too excited during winning streaks.
  7. You have to believe that your method will work over the long term, confidence comes from research, backtesting, and homework.
  8. Don’t trade someone else’s system, build your own. Custom to fit who you are by using the principles that you believe in and work.
  9. Trading too big during losing streaks ruins the potential of winning, don’t try to get back the blood the market took from you instead try to stop the bleeding by trading smaller and smaller until a new winning streak emerges.
  10. Straying from the trading plan and making one big, bold, can’t miss trade and blow up all your previous profits. Don’t let greed make you do something stupid, stick to the plan.

15 Truths About Trading

1) 45-55% (Average winning % of any given trader)
2) Traders do not mind losing money, they mind losing money doing stupid things
3) You can lose money on a Great trade
4) Focus on the Trade, Not the Money
5) Trading is a game of Probabilities, not Perfection
6) Trade to make money, not to be right
7) 8) The market does not know how much you are up or down, so don’t trade that way (Think: “If I had no trade on right now, what would I do”)
9) Learn to endure the pain of your gains
10) There is no ideal trader personality type
11) Fear and Fear drive the markets, not fear and greed
12) Keep it simple: Up-Down-Sideways
13) Make sure the size of your bet matches the level conviction you have in it (No Edge, No Trade; Small Edge, Small Trade; Big Edge, Big Trade)
14) Making money is easy, keeping it is hard
15) H + W + P = E(Hoping + Wishing + Praying = Exit the Trade!)

DON’T TRADE EVERY DAY

Do not trade every day of every year. Trade only when the market is clearly bullish or bearish. Trade in the direction of the general market. If it’s rising you should be long, if it’s falling you should be short.

Jesse Livermore

This is a corollary of trade only when you have an edge. Don’t take part in the market unless you have an edge. And for most trading strategies, the edge comes from market trends.

In a bull trend, the market tends to rise. A trading edge is possible if you look to buy.

In a bear trend, the market tends to fall. If you are looking to sell, you might gain a trading edge.

When the market has no clear tendencies, it’s much harder to gain an edge. If that’s the case, be sure not to overtrade.

Remember that you are a trader, not a worker. A worker shows up for work every day. A trader shows up only when there’s money to be made.

The 14 Trading Lessons From “What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars”

  1. The potential of initial and temporary success only exists in trading. You can’t just call yourself a brain surgeon and get lucky while messing around in someone’s head. And just stepping on stage and trying to give a violin concert if you have never touched a violin before won’t end too well either.
  2. Right, wrong, win and lose are inappropriate terms for describing the participation in the markets. In 20/20 hindsight, decisions might be good or bad but not right or wrong. With regards to the markets, only expressed opinions can be right or wrong. Market positions are either profitable or unprofitable.Image result for What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars
  3. There are as many ways to make money in the markets as there are participants.  But there are only very few ways to lose.
  4. A light-bulb manufacturer understands that 2 out of 10 bulbs will not work; a fruit seller knows that some apples will be foul. Those losses are expected. In trading, we don’t expect to lose when we enter a trade. Unexpected losses are hard to deal with.  Acknowledging that losses are part of the game and accepting the losses are two very different things.
  5. In trading, losses are treated as mistakes and from early on, we have been taught that mistakes are bad and have to be avoided.
  6. If you know exactly how much you are going to win, but don’t know how much you can lose, you are denying losses.
  7. Trading is an activity without a beginning and an end. In an activity without an end, you can always make decisions and change your decisions based on the current situation. A football game, a roulette spin or blackjack have defined beginnings and endings; after the game is over, you can’t change anything. You have to accept the outcome. It’s not open for interpretation; you (your team) have lost or won. In trading, the “game” (activity) never ends and your trade (potentially) never ends. Because your trade doesn’t end, your loss is never final and it could always turn around.
  8. Rules are hard and fast. Tools have some flexibility. Fools neither have rules nor tools.
  9. A scenario might have been an acceptable trade based on someone else’s rules. Profitable opportunities will occur that you won’t participate in. Your rules will only enable you to engage in some of the millions of opportunities.
  10. You can’t calculate the probability of having a winner. You can only calculate how much you are going to lose. All you can do is manage your losses and not predict your profits.
  11. People usually pick the exit point as a function of their entry point and it’s usually some arbitrary Dollar amount.
  12. People rationalize a trade idea by expressing the trade in terms of the money odd’s fallacy – “it’s a three to one reward-risk ratio! I’ll risk $500 to make $1500”. The reward-risk ratio gives no information about the likelihood of winning a trade.
  13. People who ask, “Why is the market up or down?” don’t want to know why.  They only want to hear the reasons that justify their losing position.
  14. The last moment of objectivity for the roulette player is the moment before he places his bet and the wheels starts spinning. After that, he can’t do anything anymore to lose more money. For the market participant, the last moment of objectivity is the moment before he places his trade. But after that, he can still do a lot to lose more money. That’s why all your decisions and plans have to be made pre-trade.

Trading Commandments

tadingcommandments

Respect the price action but never defer to it.
The action (or “eyes”) is a valuable tool when trading but if you defer to the flickering ticks, stocks would be “better” up and “worse” down-and that’s a losing proposition. This is a particularly pertinent point as headlines of new highs serve as sexy sirens for those on the sidelines. (more…)

10 Things I Learned from Steve Jobs about Trading and Life

Less is more, simple is good.

That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.

Your first loss is your best loss

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

When studying the market and speculating about the future, the past is all we have.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

No one gets paid for originality – you get paid for making money. You should be happy to take other people’s good ideas and run with them, as long as you understand exactly why you are in the trade and take full responsibility of the results. If you don’t know why you are in a trade, you won’t know when to exit. (more…)