The Truth About Day Trading Stocks: A Cautionary Tale About Hard Challenges and What It Takes To Succeed (Wiley Trading)
—Stephen Ehrlich, CEO, Lightspeed Financial, LLC
"Having been a trader for over twenty years myself, I’ve read my share of books about the financial markets. Josh’s book is one of the few which doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that successful trading is both hard work and takes a long time to master. These lessons and guidance are drawn from real-life experiences, not hypotheticals,
The Truth About Day Trading Stocks: A Cautionary Tale About Hard Challenges and What It Takes To Succeed (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
Trend Trading for a Living: Learn the Skills and Gain the Confidence to Trade for a Living (Hardcover)
Trend Trading for a Living: Learn the Skills and Gain the Confidence to Trade for a Living
This step-by-step book offers a practical road map to get yourself familiarized with the stock market and into the driver's seat of your financial future. In five progressive parts, Trend Trading for a Living helps you:
Configure your platform: setup your home computer to trade online with the best brokers
Learn the basics: understand trend trading, select stocks to watch, and interpret market signs
Get in the game: select the most profitable bullish and bearish stocks and pick your entry and exit prices
Leverage your portfolio: learn how to trade with options to increase your financial rewards
Turn pro: with patience, determination, and a strategy grounded in fundamentals, you can “trade for a living”
Super Trader: Make Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets
Super Trader: Make Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets
How do you transform yourself from mild-mannered investor to Super Trader? Think clearly. Plan accordingly. Commit completely. In other words, become a trader. And no one is better suited to help you make the transformation than legendary trading educator and author Van K. Tharp.
Combining the sharp insight and technical brilliance that has drawn legions of investors to his books and seminars, Tharp provides a holistic approach for becoming a successful full-time trader. His system—a meld of investing psychology and sound trading practice—is the secret to achieving optimum conditions that produce results in both bull and bear markets.
Trading Systems: A New Approach to System Optimisation and Portfolio Construction (Paperback)
Trading Systems: A New Approach to System Optimisation and Portfolio Construction
Every day the sun rises on the horizon there are some traders who make a fortune. It seldom happens but it does happen, as the names of William Eckhardt, Ed Seykota, Jim Simons, and many others remind us. And you can be one of them.
'Trading Systems' is an insight into what a trader should know and do in order to achieve success on the markets. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to build a winning trading system.
Divided into three parts, this book highlights exactly how you can build that system.
Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude
From Publishers WeeklyTrading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude
Douglas, president of the seminar firm Trading Behavior Dynamics, focuses on the psychology of successful traders. Instead of offering specific strategies, he advises readers, "The first step on the road...is to understand and completely accept the psychological realities of trading." It may be too abstract for some, but given trading's risks, this book could assist experienced investors willing to engage in self-reflection. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Automated Trading versus Manual Trading
The Foreign currency Exchange (FOREX) market is the largest and most liquid financial market in the world. The average daily trade in the global FOREX markets exceeds US$1.9 trillion (Source: the Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity conducted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in April 2004, and published in March 2005). These huge funds are traded by governments, banks, and large institutions. For comparison, the biggest stock market on the Earth - NYSE Group (The New York Stock Exchange), has a daily trading volume of approximately $86.8 billion (Source: NYSE Group, Inc. 2006). FOREX has a 18.4% average growth rate per year since 1989. It offers trading 24 hours a day, five days a week, non-stop over Internet. This kind of massively liquid and long uninterrupted trading hours mean that under normal conditions there is no problem entering or exiting a trade.
But, in this huge market, as the story goes, at least 90% of new FOREX traders lose all their money within their first 3 months of trading. Why? Most losing traders who inquire about FOREX trading are quite intelligent, they just lack the right tools, the "Secret Weapons" to win. They are not beaten by other traders, they simply are beaten by themselves, by humans' weaknesses.
Talking about humans' weaknesses, let us list some as follows:
# 1. What is the first big weakness of human beings? if I say it should be "greed", is there anybody will disagree? Many times we have got 1% profit, but we feel it is not fat enough. We want more, 2% or 3% will be better. While the profit really goes to 3%, we will think how about 10%? Not enough forever. But the market is so volatile, especially in Forex market, we often encounter this depressive situation: profit turns into negative from positive. and this kind of depression happens again and again.
# 2. Fear. All people have fear. In Forex trading, currency rate is easily jumping or dropping hundreds of pips. Few of people can make sure how the market will go. In Forex market, people all use leverage to trade, from 50:1 to 500:1, leverage will enlarge the profit or loss from 50 times to 500 times. Leverage is the wonderful feature of Forex, and it lead fear into people's heart too. If the market goes against people, big drawdown comes, their fear comes too. Is there anybody not scary to lose money? Under the pressure of fear, people easily and often make wrong decisions, stop loss too early, then regret soon.
# 3. Lack of confidence. Seems better than fear, huh? But it is still not a good thing. Many times human traders are so happy once they see a little bit profit in their accounts. They are worrying what if the profit turns into loss? People always take a tiny profit and run, then regret while they see the market goes further and further along the right track. If they were confident, they would have made ten times or even a hundred times of profit.
# 4. Hesitation. Not only newbies, but also old-hands easily hesitate to act in Forex market. You've probably heard the saying "past performance does not predict future performance". Even a very experienced trader who has made many successful trades in his/her history, while he or she is facing a new situation, needs thinking twice before making a so simple decision: Buy or Sell? For new traders or amateurs, they need longer time to think, and this kind of hesitation always leads them to confusion and missing the best and fleeting chance.
# 5. Weariness. How many people can keep working for 24 hours? No sleep, no rest? How about 48 hours, 72 hours, etc? Even an iron man can not use his eyes watching computer monitor, his brain thinking fast changing questions and his hands calculating complex formulas, day and night, 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, non stop. Especially, no mistakes allowed!
Nobody can!
None!
No doubt!
Don't mention the Super Man. He has weariness too.
# 6. Negligence. Have you ever got trouble just because of a small negligence? such as took a wrong bus, missed an exit on highway, dialed a wrong number, misunderstood boss' order, ignored a no-parking sign, omitted a whole page of questions in an examination, left resume at home while a vital interview, misspelled a keyword in a quote form for a VIP customer, etc. Hi, man, when was the last time you forgot your mama's birthday, or worse, the wife's, or the worst, girl friend's? Mama always forgive your negligence. Wife... well, it depends. Girl friend? Huh, wish you good luck.
But unfortunately, in Forex market, no one will forgive your negligence, even yourself. Any negligence must be punished! You could get a margin call, only pennies left in account, may just because a tiny negligence.
# 7. Lack of discipline. Humans always think that we are smarter than machines. Sure we are. Not only we are smarter, we have freedom too. But everything has its nature, character, and rules. Rule means discipline. If we just feel smart and free in Forex trading, making decisions based on our feelings or knowledge only, and ignore discipline, there will be endless disasters waiting us ahead. Forex trading is like fighting in war, soldiers can not survive in war without discipline, neither can traders in Forex market. While we have to stop loss we must cut off and run, in spite of how bloody and painful it is, when we must take profit we can not hate the profit is too small. Discipline is discipline, perhaps some smarties can win a while, but only those people can keep obeying discipline forever can win forever.
# 8. Inconsistency. Long term or short term? buy or sell? prosperity or depression? over bought or over sold? high or low? support level or resistance level? fundamental analysis or technical analysis? including automated trading or manual trading? etc. There are too many inconsistent news, facts, information and methods, strategies in Forex market, easily cause human traders make inconsistent judgments and decisions. And these inconsistencies will cause only one same result: failure!
To overcome these terrible weaknesses of humans, people have developed many methods. One of them is called "Automated Trading". Automated (or Automatic) Forex Trading means to trade Forex (Foreign Currencies) using some trading systems, programs, software or robots (on Metatrader MT4 platform it is called as Expert Advisors - EA), without needing a human to physically trade. An automated trading system is a group of specific rules and parameters, governing entry and exit points, having the ability to both generate signals and execute trades automatically. An EA is an automated trading "robot". Robots can beat human beings at chess games, EA robots can beat humans at FOREX trading also.
Programmers consider many components synthesize while they are developing an automated trading system or EA robot, including: Nature of Market, Math Modeling, Time Frame, Entry and Exit Signals, Stop Loss Trigger, and Profit Target, etc. After the system is created, they do back testing and forward testing rigorously both in demo and live accounts. A fully automatic trading system created like this way is able to analyze the market independently, work completely on its own and constantly generate signals, auto-execute in a trading platform. Alternatively, programmers can design the system as a kind of 'semi-automated' whereby users can be alerted when the Entry, Exit, Stop Loss or Take Profit trigger occurs. Alerts can be audible through computer, sent to E-mail address or even sent as a message to cell phone. Once the user confirms, the robot will obey the order to finish the trade.
There are many advantages in Automated Forex Trading, such as:
# 1. Automated trading is executed by computer. Today, computer science and information technology have been developed to a very high level. Computer can perform calculations thousands of times faster than humans, workout logical computations without error and store memory at incredible speeds with flawless accuracy.
# 2. Taking the emotion out of trading. Unlike humans, an automated trading system will never be misguided by greed, fear, hesitation, and inconsistency. It just trade mechanically (but fully programmable), unaffected by a trader's psychology. It performs based on the set criteria and disciplines. Obviously, this reduces the risk of panic trading.
# 3. Automated trading can take trades day and night, non-stop, no weariness and negligence. EA robots free their owners of the necessity of sticking in front of the computer at all times. Once an effective system is developed and optimized, it can be left to run full automatically and independently. A successful automated trading EA robot will allow its owner to focus on optimizing strategies and money management rules rather than having to constantly watch the market.
# 4. Computer can run multiple programs simultaneously, so we can use automatic trading EA robots to take multiple trades synchronously. That means we can include multiple conditional entries and exits, profit targets, protective stops, trailing stops, and more in our strategies, and have them all automated at the same time. This powerful function can help us to maximize our return of investment, and reduce risk.
# 5. For day traders or other short term trading fans, automated trading robots are very helpful tools to deal with high frequency of trades using tick data. Day trading keeps traders exposed in market very shortly, so sometimes it is safer than long term trading, but it is really difficult for a human to handle. However, for automated trading EA robots , it is just a piece of cake.
# 6. No matter long or short term trading, Forex market always is volatile and waves fast, only automated trading can afford faster identification of signals and reaction to them. No doubt, computers will typically beat human beings in the speed of identifying a trading signal and the entry and execution of the corresponding orders. No more missing a trading opportunity.
Automated trading is not perfect yet, and EA robots can not think instead of humans. If the programmer's skills are at a low level, or the strategy idea is untenable or nonlogical, the corresponding product will not succeed. However, the practical experience shows that a high quality automated trading system always guaranties some kind of financial success for its owner working on Forex market. The latest fact is: in the Automated Trading Championship 2007, a world competition, all participants use EA robots, the champion won 1204.75% profit, the runner-up won 450.42%, and the third place won 299.45%, just within 12 weeks.
Golden Rules of Trading
The rules we cover are:
o Have specific goals and objectives
o Be consistent and disciplined
o Let profits run
o Cut losses short
o Never add to a losing trade
o Don't take too much risk
o Only trade positive expectancy systems
o Minimize all trading business costs
o Be well educated
o Don't trade scared money
Each of the rules will now be discussed.
2 The Golden Rules of Trading
The following sections outline a set of rules that can significantly improve your chances of success if they are understood, practiced, and implemented consistently in your trading. These rules have been learned the hard way, by study, research, trial-and-error, and the inevitable mistakes that everyone makes when they start a trading business.
We hope that you can learn from the work we have done, and benefit from our experience. The rules will now be discussed.
2.1 Have specific goals and objectives
Few things are more important to your trading success than having set (i.e. written) goals and objective for what you are aiming to achieve. It is amazing to me how often we hit our targets, meet our objectives, and reach our goals only when we articulate them and write them down.
For any business to be successful it must have measurable objectives that are actually achievable. In trading (obviously) the primary objective is to make money, but it is important to have other objectives that are not purely cash-related. We must always remember that reward and risk go hand-in-hand in trading and that we cannot expect to achieve high returns without planning for high risk (i.e. draw-downs).
Your objectives and goals will be very specific to you, but they must have the following characteristics to be useful:
o Be measurable (in completion and timeframe)
o Be achievable
o Be worthwhile
o Be positive
As an example, here are some of our current objectives (this is only a partial list):
o Develop 2 new positive-expectancy trading systems each year
o Make fewer errors implementing our trading systems each year
o Achieve a return to maximum draw-down ratio of 1.5:1
o Take 2 weeks vacation each year
Note that only one of them is about making money, and that has a measurable objective that is relative to draw-down, not absolute (i.e. make 100% per year). If you know what you are trying to achieve, and when you are trying to achieve it, the whole business will be focused on meeting
your objectives and help guide you to only pay attention to things you really want to achieve with your limited time and resources. This will also give you a way to measure the success and progress of your trading. Generally traders with well-defined objectives will be much more successful than those that do not have pre-defined goals.
2.2 Be consistent and disciplined
In order to realize the full potential of your trading systems it is critical that you take every trading entry, adjust every stop, and close out every trade as and when your system says you should do. This takes extreme confidence in your trading systems, good robust reliable technology, and the mental discipline to stick to your trading plan whatever happens (assuming it is complete).
An underlying assumption about being consistent and disciplined is that you have a pre-defined plan for every situation you may face in your trading, so that you know how you are defining what being consistent is. Your plan needs to include at least the following items:
o All your trading rules for entering, adding to, and exiting positions
o What you will do if your trading computer, internet connection, broker, power, telephone
etc. fails
o What you will do if you are unable to trade
o What you will do if you lose X% of your account
o What you will do if all the markets are closed and you can't exit your positions
Unless you write the answers down to all these issues, you cannot be consistent and disciplined in your approach to trading and if you lose money you will not know whether it is because you didn't follow your plan, because your plan is incomplete, because your systems do not work, or simply because you are going through a losing period.
2.3 Let profits run
This simple rule is the key to being a successful trader. It is three simple words that are very hard to actually implement. When we get a profitable trade our natural fear of losing the unrealized cash kicks in and we truly want to close it out now and take the money. Most trading consists of long periods of small winners and losers followed by a few huge winners that make the difference between overall profitability and simply breaking even or losing due to trading costs(commissions, spread, and slippage).
It is our ability to let the huge winners become just that - huge - that determines how we will perform overall during the year. The key to letting winners run is to have trailing stops that are outside the daily noise of the market so that they are not tight enough to get stopped out during 'normal' trading. This means being prepared to give up a significant portion of a winning trade's open profit and is the thing that makes this so hard to implement. In fact, we should be adding to a winner and widening stops rather than working out how tight our stops can be to capture maximum profit. The trade has already shown you that it intends to be a winner, and the chances are it is a low-risk idea to add to the position now rather than 'strangle it' with stops that are too tight.
It is very important that your position management rules allow for large winning trades, and that the rules are pre-defined and understood before you place the trade. This will allow you (if you have confidence in your method and discipline) to stick to your rules when you do get the big
winner.
2.4 Cut losses short
This is the sister rule to the previous one, and is usually just as difficult to implement (although it
is very easy to define). In the same way that profitability comes from a few large winning trades, capital preservation comes from avoiding the few large losers that the market will toss your way each year. Setting a maximum loss point before you enter the trade so you know before-hand approximately how much you are risking on this particular position is relatively straightforward. You simply need to have a exit price that says to you 'this trade is a loser and I will exit before it gets any bigger'. Due to gaps at the open, or limit moves in futures we can never be 100%
certain that we can get out with our maximum loss, but simply having the rules, and always sticking to it will save us from the nasty trades that just keep on going and going against our position until we have lost more than many winning trades can make back.
If you have a losing position that is at you maximum loss point, just get out. Do not hope that it will turn around. Given that trades are either winners or losers, and this one is shouting 'Loser' at you, the chances that it will turn around and become a large winner is tiny. Why risk any more money on this losing trade, when you could simply close it out (accept the loss) and move on. This will leave you in a much better place financially and mentally, than holding the position and hoping it will go back your way. Even if it did do this, the mental energy and negative feelings from holding the losing position are not worth it. Always stick to your rules and exit a position if it hits your stop point.
2.5 Never add to a losing trade
One of the few trade management rules that we can state we never break is 'Never add to a losing trade'. Trades are split into winners and losers, and if a trade is a loser, the chances of it turning right around and becoming a winner are too small to risk more money on. If indeed it is a winner disguised as a loser, why not wait until it shows it's true colors (and becomes a winner)before you add to it.
If you do this you will notice that nearly always the trade ends up hitting your stop loss and does not look back. Sometimes the trade turns around before it hits your stop and becomes a winner and you can count yourself very fortunate. Sometimes the trade hits your stop loss and then
turns around and becomes a winner and you can count yourself unlucky. Whatever the result, it is never worth adding to a loser, hoping that it will become a winner. The odds of success are just too low to risk more capital in addition to the initial risk.
2.6 Don't take too much risk
One of the most devastating mistakes any trader can make is risking too much of their capital on a single trade. One thing is certain in trading and that is if you lose all your capital you are out of the game. Why risk so much you could be prevented from continuing? There is a saying in
poker than going all-in (risking all your chips) works every time but once. This is true of trading.
If you risk all your account on every trade it only takes one loser to wipe you out (and no trading method is 100% accurate), so you will be out of the game at some point - it is only a question of time.
In general, we only risk 1-3% of the available capital allocated to a system on any individual trade. This is calculated using the size and, the difference between our entry price and our maximum stop price, and the amount of capital allocated to the system. With the win probability
and ratio of size of winning trades to losing trades we are almost certain never to lose all of our trading capital. In fact, the chance of us hitting our maximum drawdown for the year is tiny.
All trades should be of a size that almost seems insignificant. If you are worried about the size of a trade then it is too big and you should reduce the size immediately. Remember that longevity is the key to making money by trading - slowly over a long time with minimal risk, is always preferable to rapidly with too much risk.
2.7 Only trade positive expectancy systems
If you have a positive expectancy trading system, the only factors that determine how much money you will make per year are the number of trades the system generates, how much capital you allocate to the system, and how accurately you implement the trading signals. If you do not know whether your trading system is positive expectancy then why are you trading it? Expectancy is calculated using the profit or loss on each trade (net of trading implementation
costs) divided by the initial risk (using your stop loss) and then taking the average of this number of a series of trades. Systems that have positive expectancy will make money on average and those with negative expectancy will lose money.
Successful traders only trade systems where the odds of success are in their favor (i.e. the system is positive expectancy) so they know that making money is the result of accurately implementing the system and not just pure luck.
2.8 Minimize all trading business costs
Some trading systems have only marginal profitability, and trading implementation costs (commission, spread, and slippage) can be the difference between profitability and making a loss. With the easy availability of modern electronic brokers, and fully-automated trade processing and
execution, it is definitely worthwhile looking for a very low cost way to implement your trading system. High commission, wide spreads, and large amount of slippage can be reduced considerably simply by carefully choosing a broker. This can be the difference between a system
(especially a high frequency one) being useable or not. Paying too much for trade implementation is an avoidable way to lose money.
2.9 Be educated
In order to compete at the highest level in the trading business and be one of the few truly successful participants you must be well-educated about what you are doing. This does not mean having a degree from a well-respected university - the market doesn't care where you were educated.
Being well-educated means that you have thoroughly researched and tested your trading ideas and know why your trading system worked in the past and is continuing to work now. It means understanding all the technology and applications that your system needs to perform accurately.
It means understanding your goal and objectives and how trading will achieve these. It means understanding yourself and how your personality affects your results. It means understanding the markets and instruments you trade.
In order to succeed you really need to become an expert in your own trading business to understand how it all fits together, when it is broken, and how it can be improved. As with all worthwhile endeavors, this takes commitment, hard work, dedication, and more hard work.
2.10 Don't trade scared money
Lastly, no one ever made any money trading when they had to do it to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. Having a requirement to make X dollars per month or you will be financially in trouble is the best way I know to completely mess up all trading discipline, rules, objectives, and
leads quickly to disaster.
Trading is about taking a reasonable risk in order to achieve a good reward. The markets and how and when they give up their profits is not under your control. Do not trade if you need the money to pay bills. Do not trade if your business and personal expenses are not covered by
another income stream or cash reserve. This will only lead to additional unmanageable stress and be very detrimental to your trading performance.
3 Summary
In this article we have covered the rules that we believe should never be broken in trading. If you work on never breaking them, your trading should improve dramatically. Read More Adverti News...
