Now, you ask, what does this have to do with stock and options trading? Just as in every day life and in the case of CFIT, stock and options traders must remain focused on the current trade or risk opening themselves up to any number of mistakes. These mistakes can include (but are in no way limited to)the following:
1) allowing impulsiveness to take over your trading rules, thus taking a trade that does not meet your criteria
2) not taking a trade signaled by your system because your focus is elsewhere (more…)
Archives of “trades” tag
rssEmotional
The amateur trader trades without knowing why, how, or when. She jumps into the market because it looks like it ought to got up, or sells because the market looks like it ought to go down. There is no plan, no set of rules, no understanding of stock market basics; just an emotionally driven response to price action. And the emotionally controlled professionals? They are standing with arms wide open and a smile from ear to ear ready to welcome the amateur into a place of grand opportunities only to be introduced to the slaughterhouse rules. Want to guess who the sheep is?
How do *your* coping efforts work for you?
How about after you have a few winning trades, days, or weeks in a row? Do you trade better or worse? Breaking down your performance as a function of recent performance will tell you a great deal about how effective you are in coping with risk and reward.
The other excellent indicator of whether your coping is working for you is your emotional experience during trading. If you find that anxiety, overconfidence, frustration, and stress are pushing you into poor decisions, you know that you’re not coping well with the uncertainties of markets.
Finally, it is helpful to identify the sequences of coping behaviors that you utilize when you’re making good decisions and the sequences when you’re trading poorly. Knowing how your individual coping responses come together to form coping strategies can help you cultivate your coping strengths.
Tracking how you deal with challenges when you are at your most effective enables you to create a mental model of that coping that you can call upon during periods of high stress. We cannot avoid the stresses of trading, but those do not have to generate distress and biased decisions.Take a look at how well you trade after a position has gone against you. Do you trade better after a drawdown or worse?
Characteristics Of A Losing Trader
1. Undiscplined
2. No money management
3. Unprepared
4. Overtrading habits
5. Easily tilted
6. Does not trade with probabilities
7. Trades emotionally without controlling: greed, hope, fear, and euphoria
8. Does not have a trading plan and strategy
Art of Trading-10 Rules
1. Always wait for the setup: No Setup-No Trade.
2. THE BEST trades work almost right away.
3. Never take a big loss. If it doesn’t ‘feel’ right. Remove it!
4. Always perfect your craft and sharpen your skills(good traders are constantly learning)
5. Be patient with winning trades: Impatient with trades that fight back.
6. DISCIPLINE is the key to winning at everything!
7. Never get emotionally attached to trades, trading, losses or profits.
8. Always trade with the size that makes you unemotional(emotional trading is the quickest way out of this game).
9. Keeps things simple and do not over-think or over-complicate your trading. LESS IS ALWAYS MORE.
10. Stay humble at all times.
FOUR STEPS TO TRADING PROGRESS
HEAR
To HEAR you have to listen and listen intentionally. You will not HEAR properly if you are focused on other things. This situation is especially true on a webinar or during the trading day when the markets are open. It is essential to set distractions aside and HEAR what is being stated.
RECEIVE
To RECEIVE something you have to HEAR it and come into agreement with it. To RECEIVE is to take it unto yourself and personally grab hold of what you have heard and make it your own.
BELIEVE
To be successful you have to believe that what you HEAR and RECEIVE can add value to your current situation. You have to BELIEVE that a specific strategy repeated and correctly executed, regards of any specific outcome, will provide successful results over time. You will act on what you believe In all areas of life. Please make sure you really do BELIEVE it and are not allowing any contradictory mindset to compete with your belief because it is possible to hold two opposing beliefs at once. This is being double minded and leads to instability. Being firm and unswayed in what you BELIEVE can lead to becoming a successful trader. (more…)
Trader's mindset?
How does someone know that they reached the trader’s mindset? Here are a few characteristics:
1. No anger whatsoever.
2. Confidence and being in control of the self
3. A sense of not forcing the markets
4. An absence of feeling victimized by the markets
5. Trading with money you can afford to risk
6. Trading using a chosen approach or system
7. Not influenced by others
8. Trading is enjoyable
9. Accepting both winning and losing trades equally
10. An open mind approach at all times
11. Equity curve grows as skills improve
12. Constantly learning on a daily basis
13. Consistently aligning trades with the market’s direction
14. Ability to focus on the present reality
15. Taking full responsibility for your actions
Developing the trader’s mindset takes time. It usually takes traders 2-5 years before they can read through the above list and honestly say that it describes themselves.
Patience
1) If you insist on trading during unstable or volatile markets, keep your positions small.
2) If you go into cash, don’t get upset on days when we rally, it’s simply part of the game.
3) Don’t buy or sell stocks because someone else is doing it. Have your OWN plan, find a philosophy that works for YOU, and don’t blindly follow anyone!
4) Wait for the wind to be at your back. Right now, it’s swirling. No sense in forcing trades to make a few pennies when there are dollars to be made in better environments.
5) Let the market correct, let the dust settle, don’t be in such a rush to trade. I see too many people trying to bottom-fish this market and I feel like screaming: “You don’t have to trade!”
I am not saying all this to be an ass. I simply want traders to learn from my mistakes. I have lost too much money in the past by forcing trades in unfavorable environments. You are better off protecting your capital and more importantly, protecting your confidence. Wait for proper bases to form, wait for some institutional accumulation, and wait for sentiment to be “less bullish.” In other words, wait for a healthier environment…it might not be that far away. The key right now is discipline and patience.
Trade Like Michael Jordan
How does basketball exactly relate to golf and perhaps trading successfully? Well, you’re going to soon find out!
In this article, Michael provides 10 rules for maximizing competitiveness and if you’ve been trading for any period of time, you’ll instantly recognize their value to trading successfully. In fact, here’s my personal take on how Jordan’s rules directly relate to making us all better traders:
Focus on the little things. It is true, if you focus on the little things (finding and exploiting attractive entry points, proper position sizing, sticking to stop loss levels, unbiased chart analysis, etc.) they’ll all add up to contribute to your big picture success and bottom line. When the pressure is on and tension and stress is high, traders must rely on the basic skills they’ve developed through constant practice to make the tough trades. That practice and constant dedication to improve oneself will make a world of difference when opportunities are the most plentiful.
Have total confidence in what you can do. As Michael says “If you have 100 percent confidence that you can pull off a shot, most of the time you will.” I couldn’t agree more. While we all make trades based on imperfect information and conflicting data, at all times we must be 100% confident in the trades we make. There’s a good reason why so many traders say you must always “trade to win” instead of “trading not to lose.” There’s a huge difference. In addition, the only way to have confidence you really need in the trades you make is to actually do the work the leads up to making those trades in the first place.
Don’t think about the prize; think about the work. Novice traders focus on how much money they stand to gain or lose from trading while great traders focus simply on the process of trading well and to their best of their ability. That’s a key difference. Sometimes a good trader will be very unhappy even if they make money in a particular trade because they didn’t trade it well or the trade violated their strategy and they got away with it whereas a novice trader will simply focus on the profits or losses no matter how and why they earned them. Money, and the rewards the flow from successful trading, are a low priority to the successful trader – instead trading well and trading even better the next time are the two top priorities. (more…)
Fragile Traders vs. Anti-Fragile Traders
Reading Nassim Taleb’s newest book Anti-Fragile really got me thinking about how traders are broken.
Traders can become fragile and be broken in several ways:
- They can quit because they believe that trading successfully is impossible.
- They can lose half their account or all of their account and just give up.
- They can become emotionally traumatized by one huge loss or a string of losses and just not be able to trade any more due to the pain going forward.
- A trader can lose faith in them self as a trader.
- A trader can lose faith in their system.
- A trader can trade too big and blow up their account, they want to trade, they believe they can make it back but have no money.
A trader can become anti-fragile they can benefit from adversity at times by:
- Having 100% confidence that they will be in the 10% percentile of consistently winning trades, it is just a matter of time.
- They do not give up after losing the majority of their very first account they just accept it as paying tuition and start again this time with faith they will win.
- The anti-fragile trader trades small, their emotions do not bleed into their trades, each trade is just 1 of the next 100. They risk 1% of capital per trade.
- The successful trader identifies themselves as a successful trader, losing trades do not change who they are.
- The trader believes that time is on their side and draw downs are just temporary, short term losses do not change the trader’s belief in long term success.
- Successful traders know that their trading account is their life blood, guarding it against big losses is their #1 priority.
Fragile traders are inevitably broken, anti-fragile traders are not only not broken but benefit from circumstances by learning, growing, and becoming more resolved to win. Adversity makes them stronger.