Archives of “trailing stop” tag

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How to Trade Through the Pain

  
  Education
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10 painful aspects of trading and what to do about them.

  1. The pain of losing money. (Trade smaller so it is not as painful, it is just an outcome not an emotion).

  2. The pain of being wrong about a trade you were sure about. (You lost simply because the market didn’t match your trade, trend followers lose money in choppy markets, swing traders lose money in trending markets, it’s the market not you. As long as you followed your own plan.)
  3. The pain of a draw down in capital.
  4. Consecutive trading losses hurt. They make you doubt yourself, your method, and your system. (You need to remember your winning trades, your winning years, or your back-testing, or paper trading of the method. You have to keep the faith or get with a method you have faith in).
  5. The embarrassment of public losses. You told everyone who would listen about a great trade you were taking and you were wrong. Social media has given us all the ability to embarrass ourselves anytime we want. (Never be overconfident in any trade, but always be sure of your stop loss.)
  6. The pain of of admitting you were wrong. (Cut your loss and move on to the next trade, trade reality not your ego.)
  7. Losing paper profits, you are up 20% on a trade then a massive whip saw takes back those profits in one move. (Take your trailing stop and move on to the next trade, there is truly no reason to cry over spilled milk.)
  8. You are following a guru and come to realize he truly is a salesman not a trader. (You stop following gurus and look to learn how to trade for yourself using a method and a trading plan).
  9. You buy a super hot stock that you have researched for many weeks then it goes down due to a bear market. (Only trade stocks long in up-trending markets)

  10. You start trading a system that did amazing in back-testing and promptly lose 10% of your account. (You have to stick with it so it can win in the long term, you may need to make slight adjustments in position sizing or stops to account for volatility that you may have missed.)

4 Wisdom Thoughts for Traders

  
  Education
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Give up reliving your past trades.

Each trade is a new trade do not hold grudges against stocks and think they ‘owe’ you for past losses. Do not fall in love with a stock and hold it as it falls lower and lower.

Give up letting your trading define your self worth.

Do not let your trading define you. Diversify your life with friends, family, hobbies, and other interests. It is not healthy to become overly obsessed with the markets.

Give up on losing trades quickly when your stop is hit.

Your best trades will be the ones that are profitable from the start, if they immediately go against you be prepared to be stopped out. You can destroy your trading account when you start the “It will come back, I just have to wait” chant in the midst of a death spiral.

Give up on price targets let your winners run as far as they will go.

In the right market conditions trends can go on to unbelievable levels, the big wins during these trends can make your entire year profitable if losses are small on losing trades. If you set a predefined profit target you will miss the opportunity when the big move comes. Let a trailing stop take you out.

Using Hope & Fear Correctly in Trading

  
  Education
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In trading most new traders allow hope and fear to dictate their trading. They have a losing trade and instead of selling it and getting out they instead hope it will come back to even allowing the loss to grow. Another error  for new traders is that when they have a winning trade they fear that the profit will disappear so they sell for a small gain and miss the big trend in their favor. When hope and fear controls the trader they end up with big losses and small gains. A formula for ruin.

Instead the rich trader is fearful of losses getting bigger so they sell quickly when losing, risking a maximum of 1% of their capital on any one trade. Rich traders are able to think clearly and trade rationally knowing exactly what they are risking, when their stop is hit, they get out. This enables them to keep all their losses small.

When a trade is immediately a winner for a rich trader they hope it will run 100 points in their favor. Rich traders enable this to be possible with a trailing stop, they do not get out of a winning trade until a key price reversal has happened that tells them that the trend is actually reversing.

Rich traders are fearful of losses growing bigger and hope that their winners will continue on a monster trend. This mindset allows  them to be on the right side of trends and avoid any huge losses. This is why the best traders in the world are trend followers and win consistently. Do you want to join their club? Then do not let fear and hope dictate your trading decisions use them correctly.

Ten Questions to ask Yourself Before Every Trade

  
  Education
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If you are just randomly trading what you like with no real underlying system, method or planning then unfortunately your odds of success in the long term are slim. Trading a winning methodology is what creates an edge in trading.

Consistently trading a robust system or methodology enables you to trade in a way that historically wins, controls risk, and does not bring your ego and your emotions into your trading in a destructive way.

Ten questions to ask yourself before every trade:

  1. Does this trade fit my chosen trading style? Whether it is:  swing trading, momentum, break out, trend following, reversion to the mean, or day trading?
  2. How big of a position do I want to trade? How much capital am I going to risk? Am I limiting my risk to 1% or 2% of my trading capital?
  3. What is my risk of ruin based on my capital at risk?
  4. Why am I entering the trade here? What is the trigger to trade?
  5. How will I exit with a profit? A price target or trailing stop? (more…)

Day Trading Mistakes

  
  Education
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There are some major day trading mistakes that just about every new trader will make early on in their career.  The ones who survive are those who can recognize these mistakes and take corrective action.

The first mistake many day traders make is to skip the planning phase of the day or a trade.  Every day you sit down in front of your monitors you should have a general plan for the day.  You should understand the major trends and support/resistance of the major indices, and the stocks you plan on trading.  In addition to that, once you see your stock setting up for a trade you should have a plan that includes an entry, a target and a stop-loss before you even pull the trigger on the trade.

Another mistake that we often see in day trading is the inability to exit on a losing trade.  If you have issues with getting out of the market when your pre-planned loss has been hit on your own, try using stop-loss orders.  Never. Never ever ever move a stop loss order once it’s been placed.  This requires some discipline but it will save you tons of money in the long run.  You should never be hoping that your stock will turn around, and go where you expected.  You should be executing your plan to the letter.

On a similar note, you also never want to move your targets.  If you keep moving your target away from the stock’s current price, you’re never going to take your profits.  A typical day trading exit strategy is to take profits at predetermined levels as you proceed into green territory.  This means that before you’ve entered the trade you’ve chosen two or more targets.  You exit a portion of your trade at each target.  Now, if you think your stock is going to trend for the day, you can plan for that too.  This is called a trade-to-hold.  It doesn’t mean you move your target, but rather you try to stay in the trend by setting a trailing stop.  A trailing stop can either be automatically set at a certain percentage or point value behind the stock price, or you can mechanically keep moving your stop loss up to obvious points of resistance or support behind your trending stock. (more…)

Book Review :Elder, The New Sell & Sell Short

  
Analysis, Education
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Most traders have read Alexander Elder’s Trading for a Living, originally published in 1993. Elder has, of course, written other popular books such as Come into My Trading Room (2002) and Entries and Exits (2006). His latest work, The New Sell & Sell Short: How to Take Profits, Cut Losses, and Benefit from Price Declines (Wiley, 2011) is an expanded second edition of his 2008 book. It comes with a built-in study guide: three sets of questions and answers. Although it is a paperback, the charts and graphs are printed in color and the stock is of high quality.

The first part of the book covers Elder’s signature contributions to the trading literature: psychology, risk management, and record-keeping. It is brief because we’ve been there before, but Elder does describe some new ways to keep records—an ongoing project because he believes that “the single most important factor in your success or failure is the quality of your records.” (p. 341)

Part two tackles the all-important question of how to exit a (long) trade. Elder offers three alternative scenarios: sell at a target above the market, be prepared to sell below the market using a protective stop, and “sell before the stock hits either a target or a stop—because market conditions have changed and you no longer want to hold it.” (p. 59)

Elder then moves on to shorting stocks, futures, and forex; he also has a section on writing options. Finally, he points out some lessons of the 2007-2009 bear market. (more…)

Ed Seykota’s 6 Rules from the Whipsaw Song

  
  Education
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1. Do not be overly concerned about whipsaws a good trend pays for them all.

A whipsaw is when you enter a position but get stopped out quickly when the market reverses opposite to your position.  If you are a trend trader this may happen many times in a row in a range bound market.  This can be very frustrating to a trader and it may cause them to completely change their method.  The fact is that one really good trend will pay for all of these whipsaws as long as you keep your losses small, and if you change your system you lose the benefit of that big trend.

To avoid whipsaw losses, stop trading. -Ed Seykota

2. When you catch a Trend, ride it to the end.

Your system must be able to take a position in a trending market, but then also be able to ride that trend to the end.  Most new traders will jump out of trades before they are finished trending because they are scared the market has gone too far and will take back their paper profits.  Let a trailing stop take you out of a trade when the trend is over, and only exit once you are stopped out.

“The trend is your friend except at the end where it bends.” -Ed Seykota (more…)

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