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Mastering the Trade, quotes by John F. Carter

masteringthetradeThe quotes below are provided by John F. Carter, master day trader; pulled directly from his new book Mastering the Trade.

I had just completed this book today evening and this is 2nd time read this book.

This may be the best quote of all:
“The financial markets are naturally set up to take advantage of and prey upon human nature. As a result, markets initiate major intraday and swing moves with as few traders participating as possible. A trader who does not understand how this works is destined to lose money”

“The financial markets are truly the most democratic places on earth. It doesn’t matter if a trader is male or female, white or black, American or Iraqi, Republican or Democrat. It’s all based on skill.”

“A trader, once in a position, can deceive himself or herself into believing anything that helps reinforce the notion that he or she is right”

“…professional traders understand this all too well, and they set up their trade parameters to take advantage of these situations, specifically preying on the traders who haven’t figured out why they lose”

“…markets don’t move because they want to. They move because they have to.”

“After all, the money doesn’t just disappear. It simply flows into another account – an account that utilizes setups that specifically take advantage of human nature.” (more…)

My Time at Lehman

I started at Lehman Brothers on June 1st, 2007 as a first year analyst. It was my first job out of college. Dick Fuld, the CEO at the time, publicly discussed “the road to two-hundred,” in which he would not retire until the stock reached $200 per share, almost three times the price when I arrived. Everyone at the firm believed this as though it were a fact – that there was something special about Lehman Brothers stock – it always went up.

I joined Lehman for a few reasons. The first was personal. My mother worked on Wall Street and passed away when I was a teenager. I felt, somewhat misguidedly, as though following in her footsteps would bring me closer to her. The other reasons were simpler. I had been interested in the stock market as a kid (though I went to work trading bonds and credit derivatives), I wanted to make good money, and I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be a bit of fun. (more…)

Wall Street Its Mysteries Revealed Its Secrets Exposed By William C Moore 1921 – Greed

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

Free Books :Related to Market

Most of these books are courtesy of Gutenberg.org and have to be downloaded.
free_books_online
Hidden Treasures, or Why Some Succeed While Others Fail by Harry Lewis
“Successfull Stock Speculation” Butler
“The Tipster” Edwin Lefevre
“Reminiscences” Le Fevre
The Market-Place by Harold Ferderic
Twenty Eight Years in Wall Street by Henry Clews
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

Trading Wisdom from -REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR.

Of course there is always a reason for fluctuations, but the tape does not concern itself with the why and wherefore.
My plan of trading was sound enough and won oftener than it lost. If I had stuck to it I’d have been right perhaps as often as seven out of ten times.
What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game.
But there is the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily or sufficient knowledge to make his. play an intelligent play.
The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall
Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.
It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all his mistakes. They say there are two sides to everything. But there is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side. It took me longer to get that general principle fixed firmly in my mind than it did most of the more technical phases of the game of stock speculation.
My losses have taught me that I must not begin to advance until I am sure I shall not have to retreat. But if I cannot advance I do not move at all. I do not mean by this that a man should not limit his losses when he is wrong. He should. But that should not breed indecision.
I was still ignoring general principles; and as long as I did that I could not spot the exact trouble with my game.
I can’t tell you how it came to take me so many years to learn that instead of placing piking bets on what the next few quotations were going to be, my game was to anticipate what was going to happen in a big way.
Their specialty was trimming suckers who wanted to get rich quick.
I had to make a stake, but I also had to live while I was doing it.
I was twenty when I made my first ten thousand, and I lost that. But I knew how and why, because I traded out of season all the time; because when I couldn’t play according to my system, which was based on study and experience, I went in and gambled. I hoped to win, instead of knowing that I ought to win on form.
And when you know what not to do in order not to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win. Did you get that? You begin to learn!
No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit.
The average chart reader, however, is apt to become obsessed with the notion that the dips and peaks and primary and secondary movements are all there is to stock speculation. If he pushes his confidence to its logical limit he is bound to go broke.
The game of beating the market exclusively interested me from ten to three every day, and after three, the game of living my life.
I couldn’t afford anything that kept me from feeling physically and mentally fit.
I was acquiring the confidence that comes to a man from a professionally dispassionate attitude toward his own method of providing bread and butter for himself.
It taught me, little by little, the essential difference between betting on fluctuations and anticipating inevitable advances and declines, between gambling and speculating.
He knows all the don’ts that ever fell from the oracular lips of the old stagers excepting the principal one, which is: Don’t be a sucker!
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
That is why so many men in Wall Street, who are not at all in the sucker class, not even in the third grade, nevertheless lose money. The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.
Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations.
Without faith in his own judgment no man can go very far in this game.
It was that I gained confidence in myself and I was able finally to shake off the old method of trading. 

Wall Street Its Mysteries Revealed Its Secrets Exposed By William C Moore 1921 – Greed

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. (more…)

On Trading Psychology

From “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre, the 1923 classic pseudo-autobiography of legendary trader Jesse Livermore:

… I didn’t always win. My plan of trading was sound enough and won oftener than it lost. If I had stuck to it I’d have been right perhaps as often as seven out of ten times. In fact, I always made money when I was sure I was right before I began. What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game — that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my play. There is a time for all things, but I didn’t know it. And that is precisely what beats so many men in Wall Street who are very far from being in the main sucker class. There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily — or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

Sometimes the best play is to not play at all. When playing the market, you have to let the opportunities come to you, and take advantage of them when the odds are in your favor. If you don’t, you’ll get very frustrated — and you’ll lose money.

Morgan Stanley probed by Federal authorities

May 12 (Reuters) – U.S. federal investigators are probing whether Morgan Stanley (MS.N) misled investors about mortgage derivative products it helped create and sometimes bet against, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley arranged and marketed to investors pools of bond-related investments called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and its trading desk at times placed bets that their value would fall, the Journal said, citing traders.

Federal investigators are examining whether Morgan Stanley made proper representations about its roles in the mortgage derivative deals, the newspaper said.

Two particular deals — named after U.S. Presidents James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson — were scanned by the investigators, the paper said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley helped design the deals and bet against them, but did not market them to clients, according to the paper.

Traders called them the “Dead Presidents” deals, the Journal said. The firm made money on those deals, but any profit was far overshadowed by the $9 billion the firm lost on bullish mortgage bets in 2007, the paper said

citing a person familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley helped design the deals and bet against them, but did not market them to clients, according to the paper.

Traders called them the “Dead Presidents” deals, the Journal said. The firm made money on those deals, but any profit was far overshadowed by the $9 billion the firm lost on bullish mortgage bets in 2007, the paper said.

“We have not been contacted by the Justice Department about the transactions being raised by The Wall Street Journal and we have no knowledge of a Justice Department investigation into these transactions,” Morgan Stanley spokesman Mark Lake told Reuters by telephone.

Spokespeople for the Manhattan Attorney’s office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) declined to comment to the Journal.

Updated at 11:17/12th May/Baroda/India

Knight's Trading loss

Going around Wall Street last week….

Knight lost $440mil in ~45 minutes
That works out to ~$9.8mil a minute
Just for an idea of the speed at which they lost the money… they were losing money FASTER than the entire S&P was making it! (and we’re just talking Revs here not net income!)
The 500 names in the S&P made $5.06T in the trailing 12 months
Here is the math…
 S&P trailing 12 Revs  $5,062,957,971,936
 per day                  $13,871,117,731
 per hour                    $577,963,239
 per min                       $9,632,721
 Knight loss                 $440,000,000
 per minute                    $9,777,778

10 Quotes of Jesse Livermore

When seasoned traders get together, we have a sort of “secret handshake” that the uninitiated may not notice.  We ask each other if they’ve read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.  The insiders reply by telling you the number of times they’ve read the book.  Novices ask for the author’s name.

Recently, I’ve been rereading Jon Markman’s wonderful annotated version of this Jesse Livermore classic.  This special edition even has a forward written by Paul Tudor Jones.  As I revisited Mr. Livermore’s wisdom, I realized that so much of the trading baton that I’ve endeavored to pass on to my readers is directly or indirectly the result of the special batons he passed on to me.  In considering this, I feel it’s only appropriate to salute the man.  Afterall, I have patterned myself after him and my favorite quotes come from this truly extraordinary trader.  As Dr. George Lane, the creator of the stochastic oscillator, once told me over dinner, “Gatis, you can never get enough of that good stuff.” 

My trading approach is organized into 10 stages that I call Tensile Trading.  For this week’s blog, I’ve chosen a few of my favorite Jesse Livermore quotes for each of these 10 stages.
1. Money Management:
    * “I trade on my own information and follow my own methods.”
    * “The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on Wall Street, even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.”

2. Business of Investing:
    * “I believe that anyone who is intelligent, conscientious, and willing to put in the necessary time can be successful on Wall Street.  As long as they realize the market is a business like any other business, they have a good chance to prosper.”
3. The Investor Self:
    * “My satisfaction always came from beating the market, solving the puzzle.  The money was the reward, but it was not the main reason I loved the market.  The stock market is the greatest, most complex puzzle ever invented – and it pays the biggest jackpot…it was never the money that drove me.  It was the game, solving the puzzle, beating the market that had confused and confounded the greatest minds in history.  For me, that passion, the juice, the exhilaration was in beating the game, a game that was a living dynamic riddle…” (more…)