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Lessons from an Experienced Trader #3Lesson 7 Trade Outcome is Random The outcome of any given trade is random, no matter how strong your edge is. It is impossible to predict whether a trade will result in a loss, decent profit, or a windfall profit. Contrary to what most Price Action traders and price analysts believe, you cannot and will never be able to predict the market. Most amateur traders fail to recognize this fact, or deny this reality altogether. They believe eventually, they will be able to avoid losing trades and pick winners. They do not understand the outcome of any given trade is random, and therefore impossible to know before hand. Consider weather prediction as an example. Meteorologists have highly sophisticated weather models and algorithms to predict weather behavior, just like traders and institutions in the market. Yet the weathermen cannot accurately predict what will occur. They can say "There is a 60% chance of rain today if you live in X." But they cannot say exactly when or where rain will fall. It is the same in the market. You may have a good idea of what may occur, and even be right! However, there is still a reasonable chance (usually around 40%) that you are wrong, and the exact opposite will occur. The market is always right. It does not matter what you think or believe should or will happen. All that matters is what is happening. Just because a trade looks good or an edge is strong, does not mean it will result in a profit. There is still an opposing probability that it will fail. The point is that you will never know beyond a reasonable doubt what the market will do next. You may have a hunch, or a strong edge, but that will only get you so far. Therefore the only thing to do is to always take your edge, because you never know if this will be the windfall profit you are looking for, a small profit, or a loss. And quite frankly, it does not matter! Lesson 8 Market Outcome Does Not Matter The outcome of any single trade does not matter. It is very common for traders to become attached to the outcome of this individual trade. This is what leads to emotions, anger and frustration with trading and the market. We get stuck in the mindset that we have to win X amount of profit like 2X risk on this trade, or have to make money every day to be a profitable trader. This is not the case at all. In fact you only have to win one 1 or 2 really good trades out of 10 to maintain a consistent performance. Any single trade is irrelevant to a trading system or strategy. It is the cumulative result over a series of trades that results in a profit. This is why it is so important to know and only trade your edge, otherwise you introduce randomness into your performance, and are unable to produce consistency. *If you find this analysis helpful please like! Feel free to comment or ask questions.
Education
by tradersmentality
Overcoming Emotions and Zen TradingOvercoming Emotions Most traders want to "overcome" their emotions. They view thoughts and emotions as the enemy which prevents them from succeeding in the market. This is a false perception. Yes emotions and thoughts can lead to actions in the market, but they are impossible to remove. So long as you are human you will have emotions and thoughts. There is an alternative to removing them, and that is to use them to your advantage in the market. By practicing mindfulness, which is awareness of thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, you can learn to recognize how these affect your trading performance. By recognizing and being aware of them, you have a chance to change the outcome. For instance if you consistently enter poor trades due to fear of missing out. When you become aware of this fear you can learn to stop yourself from entering and avoid the poor trades that hurt your performance. There is a direct correlation between how you feel about yourself or the market, and how you perform. If you are worried about money you will overly focus on risk or prices going against your position even if only slightly, and likely make a mistake by exiting too soon. Or you do not want to take the loss and will hold the trade too long, hoping the market will let you off the hook with a smaller loss. What is Zen Trading about? Zen trading is a mindset of flowing with the market without hesitation, being aware of and trading along side emotions, and making actions intuitively rather than forcefully. A Zen trader remains in a relaxed, effortless state of mind; without any internal struggle. He does not attach his self worth to his performance at any given time, and is unhindered by market outcomes. He acts on his edge when it is present without hesitating, and takes what the market gives him when it is time to do so. He trusts himself, his strategy, and the market to provide him with a consistent performance over time; whether or not he makes money on this trade, today, or this week. He is aware of the bigger picture; the Tao or life, and knows there is more to life than trading or money. Trading is not his life. It is simply something he does to earn a living, and he seeks to maintain a Zen spirit in his trading and actions in the market. *If you find this analysis helpful please like! Feel free to comment or ask questions.
COINBASE:BTCUSDEducation
by tradersmentality
Money Management & Psychology 101SELF DEVELOPMENT/METHODOLOGY/PSYCHOLOGY Money Management/Psychology Cycle of Market Emotions The Upturn • Optimism: The normal financial specialist enters the market feeling hopeful. They may likewise have elevated requirements for the profits in which they are involved. • Excitement: When the market goes up, the desires begin to end up noticeably a reality and the financial specialist encounters commitment. • Thrill: The market proceeds up and the financial specialist is excited. • Euphoria: As the market achieves its peak, the financial specialist is euphoric and very certain that the market will proceed up. The Downturn • Anxiety: The market starts to plunge, producing sentiments of nervousness (Point 5). • Denial—The market keeps on falling, and the financial specialist experiences dissent with so many considerations as "It's alright, I'm in it for the long run," and "This is only a transitory misfortune," (Point 6). • Desperation and Panic—As the market cycles bring down still, sentiments of urgency and anger follow (Points 7 and 8, separately). • Surrender—Panic, in the long run, offers an approach to surrender when the financial specialist supposes "How might I have been so off-base? I cannot deal with being in the market anymore. I can't take any more misfortunes," (Point 9). The Bottom and the Recovery • Depression: While the financial specialist flounders in wretchedness (point 10), the market winds up in a sorry situation and offers a route to another bull. • Hope: As the market keeps on reinforcing, the financial specialist is confident that the market will proceed up (Point 11). • Relief: Once the market affirms it is in an uptrend, the speculator feels alleviation, however, they are as yet not sufficiently sure to contribute (Point 12). • Optimism: The financial specialist holds up until the point that they feel idealistic once more (Point 1 or frequently significantly later) before re-entering the market. As we portrayed over, this typically does not occur until the point that they have officially missed a huge bit of the up move, and their opportunity to recover misfortunes with it. Position Structure There are several trading software’s, which empowers the individuals to either structure or drive their framework by an individual or by position. Before the data is set-up in the control tables, an individual should choose which technique to utilise. The framework forms the data contrastingly relying upon the person’s decision. When the software is driven by an individual, work codes are utilised to arrange work information into gatherings. These codes are utilised to connect individual information to work information. When the software is driven by position, despite everything, work codes are utilised to make general gatherings or occupation arrangements in the association, for example, EEO (measure up to business opportunity) and pay review information.
Education
by SMPTrader
Trading Psychology Introduction to Trader Psychology There is evidence of technical analysis dating back to the 17th century. The candlestick charts most of use everyday to trade were created in the 18th century by a Japanese rice trader. By this point one would think technical analysis should result in more profitable traders and lead atleast a quarter of price technicians to a profit. However, this is not the case and in fact the opposite is true as most traders fail, even after years of studying price action. With this said, it is obvious learning how to read a price chart alone is not what leads to consistent profits. So what is it that seperates the very few succesful traders from the so many failures? Is it their strategy, their money managament skills, IQ, were they born with a different skill set than most, do they work harder than most, or are they just plain lucky? All of these sound plausible, but are they really the driving factor behind consistent profits? The short answer is no, none of the above. Perhaps we have been looking for the answer in the wrong place all along. In fact, most traders never even consider the possibility that it is their attitude or mental habits which prevent their success. What truely seperates the winners from the losers has nothing to do with external factors, but rather what goes on internally while observing and engaging the market, in other words; a traders mentality. "If the next bar is a bull follow through bar, the bulls have a 60% chance of making a profit. If the next bar is a bear bar that means....." Absolutely nothing! Unless you can structure a trade plan, and abide your plan as the market unfolds, without questioning yourself or your plan, and execute it flawlessly. Most beginning traders believe if they study harder and learn more setups, they will eventually become profitable. This is the fallacy of price action analysis. In fact, most economists and price analysts do not make good traders. Why? Because they form rigid rules and ideas as to what prices should or will do, and in turn fail to recognize and accept the "now opporutinty" the market is offering to traders who are open to all possibilities, including a lower probability event. Even more debilitating is the false belief that they can pick out winning trades, and avoid the losers, which leads to cherry picking through a traders edge. If the market spends most of its time with a probability between 40-60%, why is it so hard to generate a consistent profit? Understanding prices and their tendencies is only half the battle of becoming a Professional Trader. The other half and harder to develop, is the traders mindset. What makes a good trader is not only his knack for reading prices. It is the ability to flow with the market as it is unfolding, and the art of doing the right thing at the right time; without questioning himself. If the market is only offering X amount of profit, he takes it. If the market is unfolding in a way that he did not expect, he exits. He is willing to take a loss, and more importantly does not care what happens to "himself" in the market. He does not take it personally, and carries on throughout the day executing trade after trade. Continued...
Education
by tradersmentality
The dangers in listening to the newsI'm sharing a chart to give my sentiments about listening to the news. New traders especially tend to listen to the news and website opinions about where markets are heading. I show a bit on how I approached a particular situation on the US30. A lot of news is late and people who create news items or blogs have their own biases, based on the information they have. The news can be dangerous to trading as it can cause a trader to become apprehensive, doubtful and stay out of trade setups that may be quite sound for entry. News can be depressing and cause a trader anxiety. Some very important earthshaking news may be useful e.g. some major monetary policy change in Europe or America. But on the whole, listening to or reading news is fraught with problems. I've found that I make better decisions when I approach the markets with a kind of fearlessness described by Mark Douglas . The fearless state of mind is not 'recklessness'. It is about calmly making decisions and accepting risks in a reasonable way, based on a tested strategy. None of the above or the video is advice to traders.
FX:US30Education
by Captain_Walker
"One of those days"-- the art of "Locked out"Recently I participate in an analyst competition, and I got eliminated in the trading sections. Having an established trading system and strong mindset doesn't mean I make profit in every single trading days, as everyone would agree. That's why we need a daily risk ceiling, if hit, we don't trade anymore,which is called being "locked out". usually 6% (2% per trade basis) Being locked out is just one of those days, I would like to make so much profit every single trading day, so all I did in trading was finding opportunities that matches my trades before being locked out. While,in terms of frequency , basically 2 out of 5 trading days will be locked out as inside bars are not a strategy with high winning percentage. "One of those days" is what I will talk to myself to stay calm, but when a short-term intraday competition happen to be one of those days, that's when people will challenge your strategy or even trading ability, and that's pretty much offending to me, but the world will always focus on the result. Keep fighting and keep trading, do the proper risk management, and not being influenced by one of those days.
FX_IDC:XAUUSDEducation
by Trader_Joe_Lee
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