Tag Archives for " technical analysis "

World Full of Opportunity and Abundance

(This post is a reprint of one that I did several years ago.)
 

The following 3 tips about trading were taken from a book I read many years ago.

1) It’s not about who’s right.

Winning traders are concerned about making money, not about being right every single time. We are a product of our upbringing and our environment.

When you were in school the focus was on getting good grades and you have to be correct on the answers on tests to get good grades. Right?

So if you wanted an “A” you usually had to get 90% of the answers correct.  So many traders are constantly thinking that if I’m not getting a very high percentage of these trades “correct” then I’m failing.

Well it doesn’t work that way in trading. The most important thing is that you have a plan and you stick to that plan. You are not going to be correct on every trade.

Depending upon your trading approach you may be correct on 60-70% of your trades and make money, or you may be correct on 40% and make money. An important key with both approaches is to keep your losses small.

2) Forget the past.

Stop worrying about the mistakes you’ve made. Always keep a journal and log you trades and the plan for each one. Log the result.

You should go back and analyze past trades to learn from them, but if you are following your plan, don’t beat yourself up for a loss or for several of them in a row.

Statistically I remember reading somewhere that it is totally possible to have 10 losing trades in a row, yet you are still putting on good trades.

“The recent past is no more important than any other historical time period; it only feels that way. The ability to avoid recency bias is an important component of successful trading.”

3) Avoid the future tense.

Stop trying to predict the future. Neither you nor anyone else knows for sure whether a given trade is going to make money.

Focus on your process, your discipline and the trading results will take care of themselves.

“Trading is filled with uncertainties. You do not know whether a trade is going to make you money. The best you can do is be confident that the rewards will outweigh the risks over the long run.”

 

No matter what approach you take in trading, you must take responsibility for your trades.  Learn from any mistakes and move on.  Remember it’s a world full of opportunity and abundance.

These 3 tips came from a book that may surprise you. “Way of the Turtle” by Curtis M. Faith.

Curtis was one of the original Turtles in a special trading group created by Richard Dennis and his partner William Eckhardt. The quotes used above were taken directly from the book.

It doesn’t matter whether you are trend trading commodities like the Turtles or trading a much shorter time frame, the emotional qualities needed to be successful trading, apply to all traders.

 

Outliers Make all the Difference

The word outliers became a popular word I believe, after Malcolm Gladwell wrote the NY Times best seller, “Outliers, the story of success” in 2008. 
 
In the book he talks about several successful people and came up with the 10,000 hour rule. His rule said that to achieve world-class success, one needs to practice your craft for 10,000 hours.  
 
The 10,000 hour rule is an interesting idea and one that could apply to trading. But what I want to focus on today is the concept that an outlier is a trade, a trading day, week or month that can make your year.

Outliers and Losses

So what this concept does is support the philosophy of cutting your losses short. In order for outliers to help your trading you will have many smaller trades, days or weeks that offset each other.
 
And therefore the larger more successful trades will power thru and make your P&L. But that won’t happen if you let losses get out of control and offset the big winning trades.
 
Marty Schwartz in his book “Pit Bull” talks about this concept. Marty started out trading options but then moved to trading futures. 
 
“For two hundred days a year, I’d end up with reasonably small losses netted out with similar-size gains. Lose $5,000 here, make $6,000 there, round after round, twenty, thirty, forty times a day.
 
But I’d win the other fifty trading days by clear unanimous decisions. Smack the bonds for $75,000, hit a stock for $100,000, nail a couple of options for $125,000, pound the S&P s for $150,000.
 
Over time it made me a big winner, to the tune of $5 million a year.” 
 
                                                   – Marty Schwartz from “Pit Bull”

Fifty Days

What I want you to focus on is not the 20-40 times a day he traded or that he could make $5 million a year.  Focus on the 200 days out of 250 he would basically break even.  

That left 50 days that would be his outlier days.  The days that made his month and year. So what do outliers have to do with trading? Everything.

 

 

Walmart dancing with the bear

Walmart…Dancing with the Bear

Walmart (WMT) stock peaked in January 2015 with a high of $90.97.  This was the peak of a 5 wave cycle that began 35 years earlier.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at all-time highs these days but Walmart, one of the Dow 30 stocks, is trading well off its all-time high at $68.87.  It hit a post-peak low of $56.30 in November 2015. Continue reading

Tesla Model 3

Is the Model 3 Pushing Tesla to 400 and Beyond?

Tesla (TSLA) has been acting like a rocket ship lately up about $88 a share (49%) in just the last 2 months.  It is rapidly gearing up for production of the Model 3 which will be its lowest priced model available.

In the video below I analyze the weekly and daily charts of TSLA to see where in the Elliott Wave cycle TSLA currently sits.  My assessment may or may not surprise you. Continue reading

Netflix

Netflix Survived a Mini Bear but…

In the attached video I look at the long-term weekly chart of Netflix (NFLX) and the daily chart from an Elliott Wave perspective. This is an update to a video I did 7 months ago.

Nothing goes up forever and yes even the most popular stocks go thru some severe bear markets.  NFLX lost 83% of its value from July 2011 to August 2012.  Enjoy the video. Continue reading

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