- If you need to spend your money in a relatively short period of time it doesn’t belong in the stock market.
- If you want to earn higher returns you’re going to have to take more risk.
- If you want more stability you’re going to have to accept lower returns.
- The stock market goes up and down.
- If you want to hedge against stock market risk the easiest thing to do is hold more cash.
- Risk can change shape or form but it never really goes away.
- No Trader is right all the time.
- No Trading strategy can outperform at all times.
- Almost any Trader can outperform for a short period of time.
- Size is the enemy of outperformance.
- Brilliance doesn’t always translate into better Trading results.
- “I don’t know” is almost always the correct answer when someone asks you what’s going to happen in the markets.
- Watching your friends get rich makes it difficult to stick with a sound Trading plan.
- Day trading is hard.
- Outperforming the market is hard (but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible).
- There is no signal known to man that can consistently get you out right before the market falls and get you back in right before it rises again.
- Most backtests work better on a spreadsheet than in the real world because of competition, taxes, transaction costs and the fact that you can’t backtest your emotions.
- It’s almost impossible to tell if you’re being disciplined or irrational by holding on when your investment strategy is underperforming.
- Reasonable investment advice doesn’t really change all that much but most of the time people don’t want to hear reasonable investment advice.
- Successful Trading is more about behavior and temperament than IQ or education.
- Don’t be surprised when we have bear markets or recessions. Everything is cyclical.
- You are not George Soros or Jesse Livermore
- The market doesn’t care how you feel about a stock or what price you paid for it.
- The market doesn’t owe you high returns just because you need them.
- Predicting the future is hard.
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rssTrading Mathematics and Trend Following
Some quick points, to be making money, Profit Factor must be greater than 1.
- Profit Factor (PF)
- = Gross Gains / Gross Losses
- = (Average win * number of wins) / (Average loss * number of losses)
- = R * w / (1-w)
- where R = Average win / Average loss
- w = win rate, i.e. % number of winners compared to total number of trades
Re-arranging, we have
- w = PF / (PF + R)
- R = PF * (1 – w) / w
Sample numbers showing the minimum R required to break-even (i.e. PF = 1, assuming no transaction costs) for varying win rates.
- w = 90% >> R = 0.11
- w = 80% >> R = 0.25
- w = 70% >> R = 0.43
- w = 60% >> R = 0.67
- w = 50% >> R = 1
- w = 40% >> R = 1.5
- w = 30% >> R = 2.33
- w = 20% >> R = 4
- w = 10% >> R = 9