Reflections on 2009 and a plan for 2010
After a well earned break following a busy year, we are now back to business in 2010. As the year ahead begins to unfold I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the events of 2009 and how this may help us with our trading plan this year. The first few months of […]
The knowledge gap
We firstly need to understand what knowledge actually is. Many spruikers spruik that all you need is knowledge and they have the knowledge that you need to get ahead. Well I have some bad news for you, knowledge alone will not do the trick for you. There are thousands of well educated derelict people around […]
There is more to it than just money
Maybe you can now understand that there is more to investing than just making money. It is an ongoing journey and transition process of acquiring new skills and improving them. Sure, you could say that the same applies to golf, gardening or stamp collection but few other environments provide the magnified pressure cauldron such as […]
The trading philosophy
Not everyone knows that a universal philosophy actually exists in the business of trading. Importantly, in order to be successful in the long run, this needs to be clearly understood and firmly burnt into the trader’s psyche. Anybody can place a few profitable trades—randomness will take of that. But to maintain that run of success […]
What is a trade?
The act of completing a trade, in essence, is very simple. A trade is simply executing a buy order, holding the ‘open’ position for a period of time and then executing a sell order. Selling short would be the opposite. The physical act of a trade is very simple. The two transactions (buying and selling) […]
The largest loss trade
As traders and investors, forgetting the past is not always a good thing. In order to learn and grow as successful investors we must learn from past mistakes and put rigour and rules in place to overcome the variables at play in the market – variables over which we have no control. The “largest loss […]
Another beautiful paradox
Focus on, enjoy and love the execution process and outcomes will be positive; focus on the outcomes and the opposite will happen; they will be negative over a large sample of trades. This is yet another trading paradox, the degree to which you focus on outcomes will be the degree to which you will be […]
The inner game of the trading process
For more than 10 years I have had thousands of ‘wannabe’ traders come along to listen to trading methodology demonstrations, with the great majority saying: “Just give me a trading system that is good enough for me to make money—I have no problem with the psychological side of things.” Wrong, wrong, wrong! The psychology, that […]
How do you currently think?
One of the major challenges that unsuccessful traders need to overcome is to recognise or admit that they are making trading errors. Even though their trading results will always be a stark reminder that they are not making money in an environment that is an endless stream of opportunities to enrich ourselves. (Trading in the […]
Discipline in trading
Following on from the interview with Kel Butcher the week before last and last week’s topic on applying knowledge, I would like to discuss the importance of the role that discipline plays in trading. Discipline is a critical technique that we use in life to build and ingrain habits. We require discipline to engender change […]