| Followers | 2 |
| Posts | 124 |
| Boards Moderated | 1 |
| Alias Born | 03/21/2011 |
Monday, December 10, 2012 9:30:57 AM
Four Things That Will Change Your Trading Career: Part One of Four
Here is the first rule, and the subject of this lesson. New traders are often so bad at managing trades, that their results would be incredibly improved by not managing at all. If you do not manage, it means you let your trade play out until it hits the target(s), or stops out. Nothing else. This is called 'all or nothing' trading.
There are various ways to manage trades. Management should be a detailed part of your trading plan. Many do not even consider 'all or nothing', an option. Many management systems can work beautifully. So what is the problem that makes it the case that traders are better off doing 'nothing'? The problem is that traders do not FOLLOW them. Due to the emotions of trading, traders find excuses to override them. Most new trader's goals are to lock in small profits to avoid losses at all costs, and they change their management in the middle of the trade. Do you do this? There is a 90% chance you do.
Here is how to find out. Go BACK in your records (do not do this going forward, it will not work) and take your last 20 trades and write down your entry, stop, target, and actual exit. Now go back to the chart, and see what would have happened if you did not manage the trade. Simply see if you hit the stop or the target first. Make a new column on your sheet and write this down. Then figure the profit for the 'new' column called 'all or nothing'. If the trade stopped, you lose your risk amount, whatever it is. If you hit a target, you may have a gain that is multiple times your loss (if you didn't have a target, figure what would have happened just holding to the end of the day). Compare which way you would have made more money, and be sitting down when you do this. Feel free to email your results to paul@pristine.com. By the way, if you feel like you really are 'getting' the concepts of trading, and you find you have good chart reading abilities and you have more winners that losers, but your account is not growing, you are going to be in this category.
This works, because many good plays get to very nice targets. However, if the trader is not in the trade, they never make the big money. Many traders get in the habit of taking normal losses (they have learned to follow stops) but they take small gains. It is hard to make money like this. Below is the five minute chart of ZQK, with an inset of the daily chart.
Read full article here http://bit.ly/TQQf4t
Here is the first rule, and the subject of this lesson. New traders are often so bad at managing trades, that their results would be incredibly improved by not managing at all. If you do not manage, it means you let your trade play out until it hits the target(s), or stops out. Nothing else. This is called 'all or nothing' trading.
There are various ways to manage trades. Management should be a detailed part of your trading plan. Many do not even consider 'all or nothing', an option. Many management systems can work beautifully. So what is the problem that makes it the case that traders are better off doing 'nothing'? The problem is that traders do not FOLLOW them. Due to the emotions of trading, traders find excuses to override them. Most new trader's goals are to lock in small profits to avoid losses at all costs, and they change their management in the middle of the trade. Do you do this? There is a 90% chance you do.
Here is how to find out. Go BACK in your records (do not do this going forward, it will not work) and take your last 20 trades and write down your entry, stop, target, and actual exit. Now go back to the chart, and see what would have happened if you did not manage the trade. Simply see if you hit the stop or the target first. Make a new column on your sheet and write this down. Then figure the profit for the 'new' column called 'all or nothing'. If the trade stopped, you lose your risk amount, whatever it is. If you hit a target, you may have a gain that is multiple times your loss (if you didn't have a target, figure what would have happened just holding to the end of the day). Compare which way you would have made more money, and be sitting down when you do this. Feel free to email your results to paul@pristine.com. By the way, if you feel like you really are 'getting' the concepts of trading, and you find you have good chart reading abilities and you have more winners that losers, but your account is not growing, you are going to be in this category.
This works, because many good plays get to very nice targets. However, if the trader is not in the trade, they never make the big money. Many traders get in the habit of taking normal losses (they have learned to follow stops) but they take small gains. It is hard to make money like this. Below is the five minute chart of ZQK, with an inset of the daily chart.
Read full article here http://bit.ly/TQQf4t
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
