Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience
Don’t spend all your time reading all the trading books you find. Practice is king when it comes to trading. Test different strategies and trading approaches until you find one to suit you.
It’s been a while since I last posted an excerpt or quoted from one of the trading books I own. Tonight’s small excerpt is from the book: ‘Wall Street. Its Mysteries Revealed: Its Secrets Exposed’ published in New York, 1921 by William C. Moore. The book contains short and to the point chapters like: ‘The crowd mind’, ‘How the public speculates’, ‘Mental suggestion’ and ‘Market advice’ to name but a few. I chose the one on ‘Greed’ as I consider it great advice and timeless wisdom. Enjoy.
Greed p. 123-124
An avaricious or keen desire for profits is one of the most prevalent causes of failure in speculation. This weakness is general among traders. They desire “just a little more ” profit. If the stock or commodity bought advances, then that’s proof to them that it will advance further and so they hang on. They usually overstay and thus miss their market. If they fail to obtain the top price and it reacts, then they assure or console themselves by the expression: “Oh, it will come back.” It may “come back” but often it does not, and instead, declines to below the purchase price and frequently results in a loss. The same observations apply to a short sale for a further anticipated decline. It is a good policy to be satisfied with a reasonable profit and be willing to leave some for the other fellow. The market is always there and other opportunities for making profits will present themselves while the greedy trader is waiting to get the last eighth.
Greed leads to disaster in another way. A speculator has started in to buy at the inception of a bull movement. He makes money. The more he makes, the more avaricious he becomes as the market moves forward. His confidence in himself increases until he develops a mental state known in the vernacular as “big head” or “swelled head”. He now has unbounded confidence in himself and “plays the limit”. Soon thereafter the market culminates at the top and the trend reverses, but Mr. Swelled Head is ignorant of this, so continues to buy on set-backs instead of selling on rallies. A drastic slump follows and Mr. B.H. goes to the scrap pile – BUSTED.
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. – Erich Fromm
Adam Grimes (Chief Investment Officer of Waverly Advisors) prefaces his 2012 book, The Art and Science of Technical Analysis: Market Structure, Price Action, and Trading Strategies, by stating: “This book…offers a comprehensive approach to the problems of technically motivated, directional trading. …Trading is hard. Markets are extremely competitive. They are usually very close to efficient and most observed price movements are random. It is therefore exceedingly difficult to derive a method that makes superior risk-adjusted returns, and it is even more difficult to successfully apply such a method in actual practice. Last, it is essential to have a verifiable edge in the markets–otherwise no consistent profits are possible. This approach sets this work apart from the majority of trading books published, which suggest that simple patterns and proper psychology can lead a trader to impressive profits. Perhaps this is possible, but I have never seen it work in actual practice. …The self-directed trader will find many sections specifically addressed to the struggles he or she faces, and to the errors he or she is likely to make along the way. …[Institutional] traders will also find new perspectives on risk management, position sizing, and pattern analysis that may be able to inform their work in different areas.” Using example charts for many assets from different times over different time frames and from different markets, he concludes that:
From Chapter 1, “The Trader’s Edge” (Page 7): “Every edge we have, as technical traders, comes from an imbalance of buying and selling pressure. …we do not trade patterns in the market–we trade the underlying imbalances that create those patterns.”
From Chapter 2, “The Market Cycle and the Four Trades” (Page 45): “When buying pressure seems to be strongest, the end of the uptrend is often near. When the sellers seem to be decisively winning the battle, the stage is set for a reversal into an uptrend. This is why it is so important for traders to learn to stand apart from the crowd, and the only way to do this is to understand the actions and emotions of that market crowd.”
From Chapter 3, “On Trends” (Page 95): “…many outstanding trades come in trending environments. Market structure in trends is often driven by a strong imbalance of buying and selling pressure, it is often easy to define risk points for trades, and some of the cleanest, easiest trades come from trends. However, markets do not always trend.” (more…)
In trading focus is crucial. You have to know who you are as a trader and exactly what your method and trading plan is, and you must follow it. In trading discipline makes money, focus makes money, monster stocks make money, while risk management allows you to keep the money that you have made. You could say you must be finicky to be a good trader.
Here are the areas to be finicky about:
Nice passage I just came across going through various trading books this weekend. The following quote is from Dean Lundell: “Sun Tzu’s Art Of War For Traders And Investors”. It is an important reminder to pay attention when to deploy capital, when to be aggressive and when it is best to do nothing. Enjoy.
Sun Tzu finishes this lesson by reminding us to act only when it is to our benefit. A kingdom once destroyed cannot be brought back, nor can the dead be restored to life. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.
It is often said that the business of a trader is to stay in business. If you are frivolous in your methods, your equity will soon be gone and you will be out of business. So act when you see an opportunity and be content to stand aside when you do not.
Some books are too clever by half. Anthony Trongone’s Trading in the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes: Balancing Probabilities for Successful Investing (W & A Publishing/Traders Press, 2010) is one of them. The idea—to encourage traders to adopt an analytical mindset and achieve emotional discipline by relying heavily on quotations from Sherlock Holmes novels and stories—sounded promising, even fun. And fun is a rare commodity in trading books. Although the book started off well, as it progressed Holmes became a less and less useful coach and analogies from detecting to trading became increasingly strained. It’s hard, for instance, to invoke Holmes in a discussion of order types.
But why waste a post emphasizing the negative when there are so many passages that will undoubtedly delight traders who are fans of Sherlock Holmes? Herewith a very limited sampling. (more…)
Know yourself– Understand what style fits your personality. Can you hold a position for a few days or only a few hours? Are you okay with larger draw downs or can you only take small ones? Are you more comfortable trading pullbacks or breakouts? Most importantly, don’t try to use a style that doesn’t “fit” your personality.
Educate yourself – But don’t over educate yourself or fall into the trap of reading to many biographical trading books. They may be entertaining, but you will learn little about the current state of trading. Stick to my ”Holy Trinity” of books “How To Make Money In Stocks” by O’Neil, “The Disciplined Trader” by Mark Douglas, and “The StockTwits Edge” by Howard Lindzon. The rest you can learn from online trading communities and blogs.
What is the most important part of your trading? The chart? Managing the risk? Finding the Holy Grail of trading that can’t lose? (I have bad news for you about the Holy Grail).
I am convinced how a trader emotionally reacts to the markets while trading will determine their success more than anything else.
Mark Douglas is a trader and author of Trading in the Zone and The Disciplined Trader two great trading books for traders at all levels that deal primarily with how to develop the correct mindset to be a successful trader.
My favorite Mark Douglas quotes.
Trader Psychology: (more…)
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
On a recent plane trip, yours truly polished off “How I Trade and Invest in Stocks and Bonds” by Richard D. Wyckoff.
Originally published in 1924, this short little book is a classic — well worth revisiting — and will later get a full review in its own right. (There is just something wonderful about old trading books.)
For now, though, the below passage is excellent — a classic demonstration of utilizing all the principles of the game.
Next in importance to knowing what to buy is the question as to when it should be done. (more…)
