Random Gyaan

[amitrandive]

Dhoni on Kohli after Pak WC T20 match:

That is the essence of real cricket,keep rotating the strike if the pitch is difficult.
That way at-least you can get 6 runs per over,along with the occasional boundary.

The same applies to trading/investing!!!

Thanks for posting this:clapping::clapping::clapping:

 

[mindgames]

Doing what you like...

 

[mindgames]

Habits...

 

[mindgames]

What Crocodiles Can Teach You About Trading


Source: http://www.learntotradethemarket.co...-crocodiles-can-teach-you-about-forex-trading

Here in tropical Australia, the saltwater crocodile is a fearsome and intelligent predator known to wait patiently for days or weeks on end until unaware prey come to the water’s edge and become its next meal. Crocodiles are by many accounts the most successful animal that has ever lived; they’ve been around for about 200 million years and have out-lived the Dinosaurs, and they’ve evolved over time to become perhaps the most successful predator on Earth, next to humans. Crocodiles are opportunistic predators; they’ve been known to learn the behavior of their prey and lie in wait for long periods of time almost to the point of starving, and then when the time is right they snatch their prey with confidence and precision.

In fact, it is quite common for people to swim with these animals for days or even weeks without any sign of aggression, until one day somebody goes swimming, fishing or even walking, and they never return. This demonstrates real-world evidence that one of the oldest and most methodical predators on Earth is also one of the most patient and disciplined that has ever lived. Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory certainly favors this creature; they’ve been around since Dinosaur times because their method of hunting and adapting is so successful. The salt water crocodile is perhaps nature’s ultimate “sniper”… it only needs to eat once a week or so because it makes high quality kills rather than a high quantity of low-quality kills.

As traders, there’s a ton of things we can learn from the crocodile, let’s discover some of them…

Crocodiles are a trader’s best role model
The crocodile is actually our best role model as traders; their behavior is really the perfect metaphor for how a trader needs to behave. We are without doubt predators, not just trading predators, but as humans we are naturally built and function as hunters. As traders, we must copy the crocodiles’ methods of hunting; we must be disciplined, patient, adaptable and methodical in our approach. Crocs have also demonstrated an ability to learn quickly and avoid risky situations as we will discuss more about later, these are also things that we need to do as traders.

Think of the crocodile…he’s big, fat, long and needs A LOT of protein in his diet to survive, to swim and to hunt. Is his energy best spent going around all day eating little bait fish which are easy to catch? Imagine how much energy he would expend trying to catch a high quantity of low-quality prey like that all day. If you have ever seen these crocodiles like I have in person, you will understand what I am saying; crocs are designed and have evolved to be patient “sniper” hunters…many little meals do not interest them as much as a big juicy nourishing meal does.

By trading less… our aim is to make a nice large “meaty” size trade that sustains us until our next trade. Sure we may have a few losses along the way to our big prize, but the goal here remains clear; waiting on the sidelines (or the shores of the river like the crocodile) to pounce on our prey and cop a huge nourishing meal. We don’t want to be running all over the pond or river looking for any small piece of meat or fish that we can find…we are going to wait it out and score ourselves a nice big juicy profitable trade (or in the crocodiles case, probably a kangaroo, a dog, or maybe even a human).

There is an expression in the English language that most will have heard at some point in their lives: “All good things come to those who wait”. This phrase is merely discussing the merits of being patient, possibly frugal, disciplined and well planned, but its implications are profound and very true for both the crocodile and the trader.

It may shock some of you to know that nowadays I may trade only 3 times per week or even less some weeks. You’re probably thinking “That’s not enough trades to make money”, I don’t blame you for thinking that way and it’s easy to think that way with most mainstream Forex websites pumping day trading and high frequency trading. But, my own personal experience is that it’s much more lucrative to wait patiently for high-quality trade setups than it is to stay glued to your charts all day and night trying to trade everything you can find. The best trades are obvious, they almost “talk” to you and tell you to trade them, once you know what you’re looking for this will become apparent to you.

For definitions sake I would refer to myself as a swing trader and a trend follower. I attempt to capture the larger moves that occur over multiple trading sessions or possibly multiple days or weeks. In this way, I am very much analogous to a crocodile in my trading, in fact I might even buy a picture of a crocodile and hang it up in my trading office to remind me of how successful a predator the crocodile has been throughout history and most importantly, why it is so successful.

Crocs have a high strike-rate
It’s fairly safe to say that if a croc gets its jaws around its prey, the prey is not getting away.

Crocs have a good strike-rate because they are patient and wait for the “easy” opportunities and then act with confidence and speed…they don’t hesitate. Whereas a Lion might have many failed hunting attempts trying to catch a Gazelle or some other quick animal, expending a lot of energy in the process, crocs tend to have less “losing trades” or failed hunting attempts…because they don’t waste time or energy…they wait and wait and control themselves with precision until their prey almost walks into their mouth…then they feed.

As traders, waiting and being patient can increase your strike rate. Controlling ourselves is really all we can do as traders…we cannot control our “prey” (the market)…we can only conserve our money and wait patiently until our trading edge presents itself. This is how you get a high strike rate as trader, not by trading a hundred times a week in some futile effort to “scalp” the markets.

Crocodiles are good at avoiding risky situations;they learn fast
Crocs “…learn quickly and adapt to changes in their situation. They particularly learn to avoid dangerous situations very quickly”, according to the article The Extraordinary Lives of Crocs. The article went on to discuss that this ability of crocs to learn quickly and avoid dangerous or risky situations is yet another reason they’ve outlasted the dinosaurs and are still thriving today. Avoiding risk is one way that a species can survive over time and “win” the evolution battle of the fittest. Similarly, not taking on more risk than is necessary as well as learning quickly are two very important keys to becoming a successful Forex trader.

I have said many times before that risk management is KEY to becoming a profitable trader. Some traders don’t learn quickly like crocs do, instead they repeat the same mistakes over and over until they blow out their trading account. Even though we are clearly far more intelligent than crocs, we have a lot more emotions too, and these emotions often cloud a trader’s “gut feel” and cause them to hesitate, second-guess themselves and over-analyze the market. A croc does not second-guess itself…it’s simply such a fine-tuned predator that being patient, disciplined and executing with confidence are in built habits.

As traders, we need to learn from our mistakes, and fast, because money is on the line. Our version of “avoiding risky situations” is not over-trading and not risking too much per trade.

Conserving energy for the next kill
The crocodile waits for the big meal because it makes more sense to wait and conserve energy by eating a large chunk of protein less often. The croc conserves energy and time by eating this way and it also is one of the main things that have ensured the survival of crocodiles over hundreds of millions of years during many periods when food was scarce.

If you think about not interfering with your trades as helping to make you money, it might make it easier to do. I actually imagine that I am making money by not trading and by simply doing nothing, because by not losing money from over-trading and over-involvement…technically you ARE making money. A crocodile would probably eat less food overall if it was constantly running around trying to find small prey, the crocodile intuitively knows that by being patient and disciplined it has a better chance at getting a higher-quality meal. The crocodile “knows” itself and its own limitations and uses its strengths to its advantage. Indeed, the fact that the crocodile has been around since dinosaurs walked the Earth is evolutionary proof that the concept of patience and discipline most certainly pays off.

The crocodile intuitively knows that it needs to conserve energy and wait for a big kill, this patience is actually a “skill” for the crocodile and it’s also a habit that has developed and reinforced in crocs over millions of years of providing them with large tasty meals. Longevity is critical to a trader; we need to conserve the money in our trading accounts so that when the “easy prey” or obvious trades come along we can get the most out of them. If we go around trading everything we see we will shrink our trading accounts and we won’t have enough money in our accounts to get the most out of the high-probability signals. Just as if a croc ran around all day trying to catch smaller prey it would not have the energy or positioning to grab the bigger and better prey.

Crocodiles are highly adaptable
Crocodiles learn quickly and adapt to changes in their situation. This is a large part of how and why they have survived for millions of years whilst many other animals have become extinct during that same time. According to the article I mentioned earlier’The Extraordinary Lives of Crocs’; “…crocodile researchers often have to change their capture techniques because it’s very hard to catch them [crocs] with the same trick twice.”

Many researches think that the adaptability of the crocodile, including its ability to “ignore” hunger for long periods while it waits patiently for the “perfect” feeding opportunity, is one of the main reasons they survived whatever killed off the dinosaurs. It’s clear that the crocodile’s ability to adapt to its environment and to changing situations is one of the reasons it has survived and thrived for millions of years.

As traders, we have to adapt to changing market conditions, and as we’ve already discussed we need to have ice cold discipline to only trade when our “prey” is ripe for the taking. One of the beautiful things about price action trading analysis is that it’s an inherently adaptable trading strategy. Whereas many trading systems are rigid and make you stick to a strict set of rules or conditions, price action analysis gives you more of a “framework” to work off of when analyzing the markets and this framework can be used to trade any market condition as well as adapt to changing market conditions.

“Crocodile trading” should become a habit for you
In the past, I have written about the value of patience and how it is the core attribute of some of the greatest traders that have ever lived. I have put forward the argument on many occasions that ‘less is more’ and I think in today’s market conditions that statement is even more relevant. Over the years I have written countless articles which discuss how to implement a patient trading approach. My favorites being, “Trading like a sniper and not a machine gunner” and “The minimalist guide to trading”. Hopefully many of you are really starting to connect the dots by now and have discovered first hand just how powerful these concepts are and what they can do for your overall trading performance and profitability.

It’s almost funny that it’s taken me until now to write an article on what traders can learn from crocodiles considering I live in Australia where crocs are world-famous and plentiful. Furthermore, almost every behavior of a crocodile directly parallels what it takes to be a successful trader, the similarities are almost uncanny. The crocodile is nature’s proof that “less is more” and that waiting patiently for the higher-quality opportunities is a recipe for success. This recipe has kept crocodiles thriving on the Earth for 200 million years, and it can and will help you thrive in the markets if you use it properly.

It’s critical for the crocodile to understand its prey and to know where to look for it and remain calm and patient until it arrives. As traders, we have to know what our trading edge looks like and where to look for it and then control ourselves enough to not over-trade before it arrives. If you want to learn more about this “crocodile trading approach” and fully understand your “prey” (price action strategies) then checkout my price action trading course. My trading course and other members’ content essentially models and teaches you how to “trade like a crocodile”; in a patient and methodical manner with a mastery of your “hunting” skill.

 

[mindgames]

Larry Williams, Long Term Secrets to Short Term Trading

Based on my research and experience, I have developed a powerful and profitable belief system: I believe the current trade I am in will be a loser... a big loser at that.

Every major loss I have had trading (and I've had more than my fair share) has come from believing my current trade would be a big winner, so I did not follow the rules of the game. Adopt my belief system, that this trade will most likely be a loser, and you sure as heck will protect yourself!.

Mike Reed

Never let a gain turn into a loss. This will mean getting out of most trades a little (or a lot) too soon. You just have to live with it. Swing for home runs (greed) will ruin your trading. There is no mechanical formula that I know of, (such as, “move your stop to break even after you get 3 ticks gain”) that will work. You have to develop a feel for how the market is acting at the moment, and use your feel to reduce your target or advance your hard stop. This comes with experience.

Larry Conners and Linda Rashcke, Street Smarts

The main goal of each trade is to minimize risk rather than maximize profit.

Remember that both in short-term trading and mechanical systems, the distribution of winners is skewed. Most of a month's profits might come from only two or three big trades. Much of the time the individual profits may seem small, but more importantly the losses should be small, too.

Be pleasantly surprised when a windfall occurs, but never be looking for "the big one". The market will decide how much profit to give you. Only you can decide how much to limit your loss.

Maybe there is no such thing as the perfect exit strategy, but you have to lock in profits when they're there, even if it means getting stopped out of a small reaction. People tend to focus on the one out of 20 times they really did leave money on the table and not look at all the other trades where getting out was the right thing to do.

All of the above taken from Lance Beggs' free ebook - The Importance of Exit Strategy.

 

[mindgames]

Lance Beggs:

Most traders simply operate on the assumption that an existing trend will continue in its current state, until a break of their objective trend definition – “the trend is your friend”.

While that's generally good advice, as the higher probability is most often for a continuation of the trend, I feel it's wise to also recognize the true nature of this friendship. If the trend is your friend then it's certainly not the nicest one you've got; more like one of those friends who will stab you in the back at the first opportunity if you don't take care.

 

[Trader987]

Never let a gain turn into a loss. This will mean getting out of most trades a little (or a lot) too soon. You just have to live with it. Swing for home runs (greed) will ruin your trading.

Dear Mindgames,

I think "Never let a gain turn into a loss AND Let your profitable trades run" are contradictory statements. Because when we say "never let a gain turns into loss", we book our profit early and "Let your profitable trades run" can not be true". And when we say "let your profitable trades run" we try to capture big moves else loss so "Never let a gain turn into loss" can not be true.

Please express your views.

 

[mindgames]

Dear Mindgames,

I think "Never let a gain turn into a loss AND Let your profitable trades run" are contradictory statements. Because when we say "never let a gain turns into loss", we book our profit early and "Let your profitable trades run" can not be true". And when we say "let your profitable trades run" we try to capture big moves else loss so "Never let a gain turn into loss" can not be true.

Please express your views.

Dear Trader987,

Probably what he means to say is that you don't let a profitable position turn into a loss.

eg. Entry @ 300, Initial SL 295, Stock reaches 310. Don't let it come back and take off your stop at 295.

This is something I generally try to do as it psychologically takes a toll on me when good profits turn into losses due to my carelessness.

Anyway, different people have different styles - overall philosophy remaining the same: Small profits, Small losses, Big profits but no Big losses.

 

[mindgames]

The Importance of Exit Strategy, Lance Beggs

Exit beliefs

1. Fixed rules do not work
2. You will never master your exit strategy
3. The real damage is psychological, not financial
4. Your exit strategy must be designed to match your trading psychology
5. A good defence is better than a good offence
6. Different exit styles produce better results in different market conditions
7. Stop placement involves a trade-off between winning percentage and ratio of average win to average loss
8. Initial stop loss placement should be at a point that says your analysis or timing was wrong
9. When the edge is gone, get out

 

[mindgames]

Source: http://www.eminiplayer.com/2009/06/learning-to-become-successful-trader.html

Hi Michael,

I've been reading your blog for quite a while now but haven't commented yet. However, I feel I need to comment now.

If you don't mind I'm going to be very straight forward, and blunt even, but I hope you'll take it from a spirit of sincerity and genuine desire to help. It's going to be a long comment, so I'm going to break it up into 2 or 3 comments.

Here's the situation as I see it: For the last few months, and possibly much longer, you've just been spinning your wheels while thinking that you are getting somewhere. The reason for this is that you are going about learning how to trade in the wrong way, in my opinion. I say this because I've been trading much less than you, a little over 2 years now, and yet because of the way I went about learning and what I focused on, last year I netted $150k while nearly quintupling my account, without a single losing month, and while only risking a very small portion of my account on any single trade. Now there could be many reasons for the difference in performance, but I think one of the main reasons has to do with what you are focusing on and how you are going about the learning process.

To try to put it as succinctly as possible, in my view traders that are focusing all their attention on "set-ups" and finding out which combinations of indicators work are never going to become profitable. They are trying to follow the advice of trading books that say trading is simple and psychology is everything. So they search for set-ups that 'work', and that can take the guess work out of trading. They want to be "disciplined" and have simple rules that guide all their actions. But there's a few problems with this. Namely, while psychology is HUGE, it's not everything. And while trading is all about simple principles, actually having an edge is NOT simple. It's a myth that you can have a couple simple price or indicator set-ups and make money consistently if only you are disciplined. That's a load of crap. It keeps the dream alive for wannabe traders who never realize what it's truly about. Well let me tell you what it's truly about...

Trading is about being okay with ambiguity. It's about tolerating confusion. It's about sitting with discomfort and being at peace with it. It's about not having an exact script of when to trade or not to trade, or what's really a high odds trade, and being okay with that. It's about exceptions to the rules. It's about contradiction. It's about uncertainty.

And yet traders left and right want to make it simple. They want to reduce it to a few simple set-ups to trade with discipline. And yet the market is not simple. The market is all about uncertainty, and complexity, and ambiguity. Simple set-ups could never capture that, and they can never give you a true lasting edge.

So what's the solution? Is the problem in the simple set-ups themselves? No, it's in how they're being used. The bottom line is, every trader needs to learn to READ the markets. This means that simple rules will not do. There has to be a synthesis of different elements (whether they be price action, indicators, inter-market themes or whatever), and real-time interpretation must take place. It has to be all about CONTEXT. Once you can read the markets, and don't fool yourself it is a very complex process, then you can choose to employ "simple" set-ups to enter and exit. But the real work will be in interpreting the market to see when you should use which kind of set-up. Seeing a hammer or whatever near a support means nothing unless you've identified the broader picture and gotten a sense of the kind of tactics you should be using, and what the odds are for different scenarios unfolding.

Now I know you, and most traders do this to a certain extent, but your main focus is on the set-ups. It's not on reading the market from minute to minute, hour to hour, figuring out the odds of it doing this or doing that, adapting dynamically, and thinking of trade ideas from all your observation as the day unfolds. Rather, it's waiting for some simple set-up to pop up and then taking it.

Now is it easier emotionally to have clear set-ups to wait for and trade in this simple manner? Absolutely. But who said 'easy' would make you money. If I've learned anything, it's that the market rewards what is hard to do. It's hard to have ambiguity surrounding your market reads. It's hard being uncertain. It's hard dealing with competing and sometimes conflicting signs. And yet, this is what it's all about. You have to stop trying to avoid this by needing things to be clear cut. And is it hard to be disciplined when there's so much uncertainty about what is the right trade to make? Of course. But instead of trying to avoid the uncertainty by looking for simple set-ups, or some straight-forward method, train your mind to be able to deal with the uncertainty.

As for the learning process of how you go about doing this, it's all about being constantly engaged with the markets, trying to figure things out and learn from experience. For me, for instance, what I did was each and every day take notes in a journal all about market action and what I think it means, and how I should trade, and what is working and what's not. I didn't write a journal describing the trades I took, or what my emotions were during the day. It was all about market action. And it was all my perception and interpretation. Day after day, week after week, making mistakes, wrong calls, being clueless as to what was going on, not knowing how I should trade, not knowing if my views made sense or not, and yet I continued taking notes and learning. Then I would view charts and combinations of historical intraday charts, and I'd note certain behavior. For example, I'd study trend day after trend day and try to notice what they had in common and how I could have picked up on it in real time. Then I'd study range days. Then I'd study a price chart of the ES versus the Advance decline line and see what the relationship was across many different days. Then I'd do the same with the ES and TICK chart. And on and on. Over time, this gave me a feel for the markets, and a certain understanding of how certain days differ and many subtle signs and tells for each type of environment and context.

As for set-ups, I didn't use any predefined ones. I just formed trading ideas and then tried to get in at good trade locations. Even this, which is the art of execution, is quite complicated and not straight forward. I started realizing that in some environments it's best to wait for pullbacks, in others I need to get in at market or I'll be left in the dust. In some markets I can buy low and sell high, in other markets the opposite is in order. And so on.

I became consistently profitable in a timeframe of a few months by doing this. But of course before that I had read 30 or 40 books and so I had all the technical background. I had also worked a lot on my psychology and personal issues. But all of this was in conjunction with a method of learning and trading the markets that was mostly in opposition to what the general wisdom says about simple set-ups and exact rules.

Now of course you might say that everyone has their own style, some discretionary and some not. Absolutely. But even the purely mechanical traders are very adept at reading markets, and are aware of all of the complexity and ambiguity inherent in it. Their system might end up being simple, but it will come about through a very deep and complex understanding of markets. And usually this system will take the market environment (i.e. context) into account. It wont just be simple mindless set-ups.

In the end, all of what I am saying is meaningless unless you come to a personal realization. Take a look at your trading career thus far. Do you truly believe that if you just learn to focus and take all of your set-ups then your equity curve will reverse and you'll be a consistently profitable trader? Why would the world's top institutions spend millions and billions on R&D when a few simple set-ups could make them all of the money. This doesn't mean that to make money you need extremely complex mathematical models. Far from it. What it does mean is that you need extremely complex mental maps that take time and experience to develop, and that will never develop if you spend the whole trading day simply waiting for set-ups to materialize. That just won't cut it.

Right now your learning curve is stagnant because you're not truly studying the markets. Your day is wasted in waiting mode. It's not in observing and absorbing mode. Also, because you fear loss, you aren't willing to experiment. This means that you aren't making mistakes and failing regularly, which is what you need to do to learn quickly.

So to conclude, based on all of the above, my advice to you would be to stop trading and make a mental shift. Realize what you need to do to become successful, and it's definitely not staying on this endlessly unfruitful path being supported by the hope of future profits. You're just running in your place unless you change your focus and your learning method. And if you thought the journey was tough so far, you haven't seen anything yet. Get ready for uncertainty and ambiguity like you've never seen it before. But this shouldn't be scary. It should be exciting, because this is what trading is all about. This is why it's called an ART. And it truly becomes one when you change your focus and your learning process. Then everything, including success, becomes possible. And until then, it'll be a distant dream that keeps appearing to be so close and yet stays so far away.

So you need to re-align with a new thought system and then get on the simulator and trade. Take losses. Make mistakes. Be clueless. Don't be afraid of it. It's okay, that's the only way you'll progress. And trust me, progress you will.

Best of luck to you, and I wish you much success.

Ziad