Ten Trading Commandments
Respect the price action but never defer to it.
The action (or “eyes”) is a valuable tool when trading but if you defer to the flickering ticks, stocks would be “better” up and “worse” down—and that’s a losing proposition. This is a particularly pertinent point as headlines of new highs serve as sexy sirens for those on the sidelines.
Discipline trumps conviction.The action (or “eyes”) is a valuable tool when trading but if you defer to the flickering ticks, stocks would be “better” up and “worse” down—and that’s a losing proposition. This is a particularly pertinent point as headlines of new highs serve as sexy sirens for those on the sidelines.
No matter how strongly you feel on a given position, you must defer to the principles of discipline when trading. Always try to define your risk and, above all, never believe that you’re smarter than the market.
Opportunities are made up easier than losses.
It’s not necessary to play every move, it’s only necessary to have a high winning percentage on the trades you choose to make. Sometimes the ability not to trade is as important as trading ability.
Emotion is the enemy when trading.
Emotional decisions always have a way of coming back to haunt you. If you’re personally attached to a position, your decision making process will be flawed. It’s that simple.
Zig when others Zag.
Sell hope, buy despair and take the other side of emotional disconnects in the context of controlled risk. If you can’t find the sheep in the herd, chances are that you’re it.
Adapt your style to the market.
At various junctures, different investment approaches are warranted and applying the right methodology is half the battle. Identify your time horizon and employ a risk profile that allows the market to work for you.
Maximize your reward relative to your risk.
If you’re patient and pick your spots, edges will emerge that provide an advantageous risk/reward. Proactive patience is a virtue.
Perception is reality in the marketplace.
Identifying the prevalent psychology is a necessary process when trading. It’s not “what is,” it’s what’s perceived to be that dictates supply and demand.
When unsure, trade “in between.”
Your risk profile should always be an extension of your thought process. If you’re unsure, trade smaller–or paper trade–until your identify your comfort zone. Trading “feel” is cyclical and any professional worth his or her salt must endure slumps.
Don’t let your bad trades turn into investments.
Rationalization has no place in trading. If you put a position on for a catalyst and it passes, take the risk off—win or lose.
There are obviously many more rules but I’ve found these to be the common thread through the years. Each of you has a unique risk profile and time horizon, so some of these commandments may not apply. As always, I share these thoughts with the hopes that it adds value to your process. Find any style that works for you and always allow for a margin of error. No approach is failsafe.
For if there wasn’t risk in this profession, it would be called “winning,” not trading.
The Psychology Of Speculation –
The Disconcerting Effect Of Sudden Losses And Gains
Henry Howard Harper: ‘The Psychology of Speculation – The Human Element in Stock Market Transactions’
The Disconcerting Effect of Sudden Losses and Gains, page 17 – 19
There are but few things more unbalancing to the mind than the act of suddenly winning or losing large sums of money. A few years ago at Monte Carlo I was in company with a friend, a well known man of affairs who while there played at roulette nearly every day, merely as pastime. He was of mature age, naturally methodical, conservative, temperate and cool-headed. He made it an unalterable rule to limit his losses to $200 at any one sitting, and on losing his amount he always stopped playing. His bets were usually limited to two dollars on the numbers, and never doubled except for one turn of the wheel when his number won. He generally played three numbers at a time; never more than four. For ten consecutive sittings luck was against him and each time he had lost his stake of $200. I saw him get up and leave the room, apparently in a state of disgust. An hour or so later I discovered him at a roulette table in another room stacking his chips in piles on a dozen or more numbers. Now and again when he exceeded the limit the watchful croupier reduced his bets and pushed a few disks back to him. In addition to betting on the numbers he was staking a thousand franc note on one of the three columns, another thousand on the colors, and a like amount on the center dozen. In one run he lost seventeen consecutive bets on red, of a thousand franc each. His eyes were bloodshot, his fingers twitched, and plainly he was under the strain of great agitation. He continued to play for three hours or so, when all of a sudden he got up, stood for a moment looking dazedly about, then left the table. He afterwards told me that he lost twenty thousand dollars; and that he hadn’t the slightest recollection of anything that happened during the play, nor did he realize the amount he was betting. In this connection, it is a fact not generally known, that many rich men sing printed cards of instructions to the proprietor of a certain well known gambling club in the South, directing him to stop their play and refuse them further credit beyond a certain specified sum on any one day or evening of play, and refusing to become responsible beyond that amount. If men who trade in the stock market were to impose like restrictions upon their transactions the losses would in many cases be greatly minimized.
The Zurich Axioms
Forecasts Predictions And Prophets
Here’s what Max Gunther, author of ‘The Zurich Axioms’ has to say:
The Zurich Axioms: ‘On Forecasts’, page 62:
Human behavior cannot be predicted. Distrust anyone who claims to know the future, however dimly.
‘Speculative Strategy’:
The Fourth Axiom tells you not to build your speculative program on a basis of forecasts, because it won’t work. Disregard all prognostications. In the world of money, which is a world shaped by human behavior, nobody has the foggiest notion of what will happen in the future. Mark that word. Nobody.
Of course, we all wonder what will happen, and we all worry about it. But to seek escape from that worry by leaning on predictions is a formula for poverty. The successful speculator bases no moves on what supposedly will happen but reacts instead to what does happen.
Design your speculative program on the basis of quick reactions to events that you can actually see developing in the present. Naturally, in selecting an investment and committing money to it, you harbor the hope that its future will be bright. The hope is presumably based on careful study and hard thinking. Your act of committing dollars to the venture is itself a prediction of sorts. You are saying, “I have reason to hope this will succeed.” But don’t let that harden into an oracular pronouncement: “It is bound to succeed because interest rates will come down.” Never, never lose sight of the possibility that you have made a bad bet.
If the speculation does succeed and you find yourself climbing toward a planned ending position, fine, stay with it. If it turns sour despite what all the prophets have promised, remember the Third Axiom. Get out.
Divine Intervention?
From “The New Market Wizards” by Jack Schwager, in an interview with Mark Ritchie:
How do you decide when a position is too large?
I have a rule that whenever I’m still thinking about my position when I lay my head on my pillow at night, I begin liquidation the next morning. I’m hesitant to say this because it could be misconstrued: You know that I’m a praying person. If I find myself praying about a position at any time, I liquidate it immediately. That’s a sure sign of disaster. God is not a market manipulator. I knew a trader once who thought he was. He went broke – the trader, I mean.
10 Trading Mistakes
2. Having the approach to trading as a “learn as you trade” – Big mistake. “Learn as you trade” = losing money. Losing money can lead to emotional and financial stress and may even create enough fear in you making it hard to trade. Make sure you come prepared to the battlefield. Be a strategist. Sun Tzu said, “The battle is won before it is fought.” Think about it.
3. Trading as a hobby – Take a look at your hobbies. Do they make money? Hobbies in general are entertainment that cost money. Do not approach trading as a hobby. Treat it like a business. Develop a business plan, have goals, and understand what you want out of trading.
4. Thinking that you know it all – The moment one thinks he knows it all is the moment he has become a fool. Its impossible to know everything about the markets. This is a lifetime learning process. Find your niche…. find your speciality and be an expert in it. In other words, find your edge. One thing I learned in trading is that niche = money.
5. Trading without a plan – One of the worst things you can do as a trader is to trade without a plan. Trading without a plan is like driving in a new area without a map or a navigation system. You are lost.
6. Not following your trading plan – Okay so now you have a trading plan. Why don’t you just follow it? A common mistake among traders is not following a developed trading plan. This leads to impulse trading or emotional trading.
7. Wanting to be right – Are you trying to be right? Or are you trying to make money? This is a hard one… I personally have to battle myself to avoid this bad habit. Our egos interupt with our trading and we tend to want to prove something to ourself or someone else. The markets do not care what you think. You are in it to make money.
8. Money Management – Strict money management is a necessity. Set your risk parameters for all your trading setups. A common rule is to risk no more than 2% on one trade. I prefer 1%. Being long 10 different stocks at 2% risk per trade is not a good idea. In fact you are risking 20%. Know your size and do not double up your position after a series of losses. Be a grinder and not a cowboy.
9. Have realistic goals – Too many traders come into this arena without unrealistic goals. Focus on crafting your trading. When you know how to trade the money will flow naturally.
10. Not analyzing yourself and your trades – This a poker habit I have. I tend to analyze every losing and winning hand to learn from it. Traders need to do the same and analyze every trade. Think about it after the trading hours and focus on what you can do to improve. Trading is a constant journey of soul searching as well. Understand yourself and you will significantly improve your trading.
The Probabilities Win Every Time
Columnist David Brooks wrote an interesting article in the New York Times on how to effectively use probabilities:
In 2006, Philip E. Tetlock published a landmark book called “Expert Political Judgment.” While his findings obviously don’t apply to me, Tetlock demonstrated that pundits and experts are terrible at making predictions.
But Tetlock is also interested in how people can get better at making forecasts. His subsequent work helped prompt people at one of the government’s most creative agencies, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, to hold a forecasting tournament to see if competition could spur better predictions.
In the fall of 2011, the agency asked a series of short-term questions about foreign affairs, such as whether certain countries will leave the euro, whether North Korea will re-enter arms talks, or whether Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev would switch jobs. They hired a consulting firm to run an experimental control group against which the competitors could be benchmarked.
Five teams entered the tournament, from places like M.I.T., Michigan and Maryland. Tetlock and his wife, the decision scientist Barbara Mellers, helped form a Penn/Berkeley team, which bested the competition and surpassed the benchmarks by 60 percent in Year 1.
How did they make such accurate predictions? In the first place, they identified better forecasters. It turns out you can give people tests that usefully measure how open-minded they are.
For example, if you spent $1.10 on a baseball glove and a ball, and the glove cost $1 more than the ball, how much did the ball cost? Most people want to say that the glove cost $1 and the ball 10 cents. But some people doubt their original answer and realize the ball actually costs 5 cents.
Tetlock and company gathered 3,000 participants. Some got put into teams with training, some got put into teams without. Some worked alone. Some worked in prediction markets. Some did probabilistic thinking and some did more narrative thinking. The teams with training that engaged in probabilistic thinking performed best. The training involved learning some of the lessons included in Daniel Kahneman’s great work, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” For example, they were taught to alternate between taking the inside view and the outside view.
Suppose you’re asked to predict whether the government of Egypt will fall. You can try to learn everything you can about Egypt. That’s the inside view. Or you can ask about the category. Of all Middle Eastern authoritarian governments, what percentage fall in a given year? That outside view is essential.
Most important, participants were taught to turn hunches into probabilities. Then they had online discussions with members of their team adjusting the probabilities, as often as every day. People in the discussions wanted to avoid the embarrassment of being proved wrong.
In these discussions, hedgehogs disappeared and foxes prospered. That is, having grand theories about, say, the nature of modern China was not useful. Being able to look at a narrow question from many vantage points and quickly readjust the probabilities was tremendously useful. The Penn/Berkeley team also came up with an algorithm to weigh the best performers. Let’s say the top three forecasters all believe that the chances that Italy will stay in the euro zone are 0.7 (with 1 being a certainty it will and 0 being a certainty it won’t). If those three forecasters arrive at their judgments using different information and analysis, then the algorithm synthesizes their combined judgment into a 0.9. It makes the collective judgment more extreme.
This algorithm has been extremely good at predicting results. Tetlock has tried to use his own intuition to beat the algorithm but hasn’t succeeded.
In the second year of the tournament, Tetlock and collaborators skimmed off the top 2 percent of forecasters across experimental conditions, identifying 60 top performers and randomly assigning them into five teams of 12 each. These “super forecasters” also delivered a far-above-average performance in Year 2. Apparently, forecasting skill cannot only be taught, it can be replicated.
Tetlock is now recruiting for Year 3. (You can match wits against the world by visiting www.goodjudgmentproject.com.) He believes that this kind of process may help depolarize politics. If you take Republicans and Democrats and ask them to make a series of narrow predictions, they’ll have to put aside their grand notions and think clearly about the imminently falsifiable.
If I were President Obama or John Kerry, I’d want the Penn/Berkeley predictions on my desk. The intelligence communities may hate it. High-status old vets have nothing to gain and much to lose by having their analysis measured against a bunch of outsiders. But this sort of work could probably help policy makers better anticipate what’s around the corner. It might induce them to think more probabilistically. It might make them better foxes.