Trading is not a ‘get rich quick’ enterprise. It’s about controlling drawdown and defending your capital at all costs. Your job as a trader is to ensure that you and your capital survive long enough to take those extraordinary opportunities that the market presents.
Losses can exceed deposits
So last week was the wild west. If you survived it, well done! Other people didn’t. And I mean that. There are some horror stories out there about traders who blew up in Steinhoff and EOH. Traders who have been trading for a long time and now owe their brokers more money than they have ...
Discretionary or system trading
Recently I had the opportunity to have another robust debate over a beer with ‘John who trades the ALSI’. I think I may have mentioned him before. In any case, as per usual the conversation was around trading and the different types of trading. And of course, which is better. I side with discretionary trading, ...
Managing your trading profits
So, there is something that I am struggling to reconcile in my own head. On one side, you need to continually push yourself to be and do better… on the other side you also need to know when you have done well and reward yourself. But how do you know when to do what? A ...
Update on trading goals
I’ve written about setting trading goals and how those goals need to be different from ‘normal’ every day life goals. I want to spend a little more time thinking about that concept. Trading successfully is not about making large amounts of money quickly, or only ever making big winners. It’s about consistently managing to eek ...
Avoid the regret of a bad decision
I think the worst feeling a person can feel is regret. I have many regrets in my life and honestly, I will do almost anything to avoid feeling regret again. This impacts my trading in ways I am only now beginning to understand. So, what am I doing and how should I be doing it ...
Platform does not make the trader
I’ve spent a lot of time writing about the psychology of trading in the last few posts. I assure you that I am not done, but I think it is time to write about something a little more practical. In this, I want to address a question that I regularly hear, in the hope that ...
Trading: focus required
Some time ago I started one of these blogs with a battle scene between a warrior and a dragon. Not only do I think that I should get back to that kind of creative writing, because hey… it’s fun, but I also want to rehash the point that I made. In the midst of battle ...
Emotional decision making
I have recently started working with a peak performance coach - a trading psychologist if you will - to improve my trading performance. It’s all a little experimental and scary, and to be honest, very uncomfortable at times. The premise from which we are working is that trading is at its core, just continuous decision ...
Trading is easy
Trading is actually the easiest thing in the world. Think about it… you sit at your computer, read a bunch of stuff and talk smack with your buddies all day. Then something happens and you press the button on your mouse a whole bunch of times. You do the lighting fast ‘double-mouse-click-to-keyboard-enter-enter’ combination a few ...