10 Essential Trading Elements
1. You can't take more risk than you are comfortable with - emotion is the enemy of the trader. Most of us are slaves to our emotion, which is why most traders fail despite the apparent simplicity of trading. To be successful, you have to manage emotion, and the first step toward emotional mastery is to not take more risk than you are comfortable with. If you can't sleep at night over the potential of losing more than $500 on a stock trade, then you should not risk more than $500 on a stock trade. The less you care about the outcome of a trade, the smarter you will execute it.
2. Stops loss orders must be used - one big loss can wipe out the gains of five winning trades. Success requires that you don't take big losses, so utilize stop loss orders. Once you are entered in a trade, enter a stop loss order and stick to it. If your brokerage does not provide the ability to execute stop loss orders, then change brokers.
3. No one cares more about your money than you - only you really care whether you make money or not. Therefore, do not depend on others to make you money; you have to take control and know what is going on. You can use the skills of others to help you make decisions, but ultimately, your success in the market will come down to what you do.
4. Losers react, winners predict - the market does not care about what happened in the past. If you are using publicly available information to make trading decisions, then you are using old information. The stock market moves on what it expects to happen in the future, and not on what has already happened. Use what has happened in the past to provide clues to what may happen in the future, but don't make decisions on information that is widely known.
5. The stock market is not fair - Within every stock, there are a small group of investors who know more than the general public. They have an advantage, because they can better predict what a company will do in the future. To be successful, we have to figure out what the investors with better information are doing, and then do the same.
6. Information is biased - the financial industry wants you to buy stocks. The brokerages that finance the companies, the newsletters that get paid to advertise company stories, the promoters that get paid to promote stocks, the media that sell more advertising in an up market and of course, the companies themselves all benefit when stock prices go higher. The more buyers, the higher prices go. Trust no one when making investment decisions, because everyone can have a bias. Only the market can not lie (although it can seem pretty stupid sometimes), therefore, trust what the market tells you.
7. Hard work does not make money in the market - you need to work hard to learn how the stock market works. You need to work hard to learn how to manage your emotions. You need to work hard to learn discipline. However, the most money is made in a market that is trending, one where there are lots of opportunities and it seems easy to make money. When the market is not trending, it is harder to find opportunities. Working harder when the going gets tough will cause you to take marginal trades. Take the obvious trades, they are more likely to work.
8. Black boxes don't work - there are a lot of companies selling trading systems that magically spit out buy and sell recommendations. The stock market is like a flu virus; just when you think you have it figured out, it changes in to something else. Therefore, systems too must evolve with the market. A system that worked in the past may not work in the future. However, what seems to always work is understanding how humans and crowds behave. Learn that, and you can begin to pick stocks in any market condition. More importantly, learn the art of trading well, knowing that you can not always be right, that you have to limit losses and let profits run and that you have to understand what motivates people to buy and sell. Systems, indicators, and computer programs are simply tools to help you make better decisions.
9. The stock market is usually efficient - actually, stock, futures, currencies and any other market that has enough people trading them are usually efficient. That means, most of the time you can not beat the markets. To do better than the masses, you have to identify situations where market efficiency is breaking down. That occurs when the crowd is emotional or when small groups of investors are trading on private information. Usually, that is most easily found when stocks are trading abnormally in terms of price and volume. Focus your attention on abnormal behavior when looking for trading opportunities.
10. Discipline is essential - you have to manage risk effectively, you have to use stops loss orders, you have to always be looking for high probability trading opportunities, you have to avoid taking too much risk and you have to let winning positions run. The laws of trading are nothing if you don't have the discipline to follow them.
The very first sentence:
"Successful trading of the stock market requires a lot more than knowing what to buy or sell. "
In other words....
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU TRADE, IT'S HOW YOU TRADE IT!
Mark developed his own momentum stock trading method that takes away all the stress from trading but still maintains fantastic returns in the stock market. He personally ran a $5,000 up to six figures trading a few minutes every week.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content
More Resources
Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting
More Investing Information:
Related Articles
Useful Tips on Investing
Here are some useful tips on investing. When you make an investment, you are giving your money to a company or an enterprise, hoping that it will be successful and pay you back with even more money.
Creating a Financial Future - Putting Your Plan Into Action Part 1
This column has previously discussed "picturing the future that we desire", and outlining a plan to achieve it. We mentioned that the plan must include goal-setting, measurement, and implementation.
DXPortfolio: A Great Passive Investment of 25% to $40% per month
First, I need to explain about e-currencies or digital currencies. DXPortfolio are based and supported by the supply and demand of e-currency.
CYA
You all know what CYA stands for. Of course,Cover Your Assets.
What is an Investor Ready Business Plan
A Business Plan, as all good entrepreneurs starting out in life should know is the foundation, or rather a springboard, towards the establishment and growth of a new business. A business plan is an essential tool for companies raising capital - and your business plan needs to be Investor Ready.
Retirement is Never Urgent Until
If you're like many people, your retirement savings have not been growing consistently over the years. We're not referring to the wild fluctuations in the stock market, but rather the fluctuations in our short-term needs.
Chinas Great Missed Opportunity
While a U.S.
Wit and Wisdom on Money, Wall Street and Success - Part #2
Here are ten more WISDOM packed GEMS that ooffer very unqiue insights to the world of trading and investing.These quotes promote a philosophy which is readily understandable and sometimes hysterical.
Sitcom Investing
A fickle stock market encourages good-humored mockery.Recently, as I watched the premiere of a sitcom, an obvious omission breached television etiquette.
HYIPs Investments or Scams?
High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs) appear at first to be the secret to unlimited wealth and fortune, but as you can guess that quickly changes. However, I have found myself still using them in a very limited fashion as a generator for my digital currency exchange.
Annuity Investment Guide
While there is not a lack of information on annuities, there certainly is a lack of good information. In an age full of information, we are constantly bombarded with irrelevant data.
Why You Need To Buy and Sell Gold Coins (Part 6)
Pre-1933 Gold Outperforms Today's Gold Bullion..
How to Invest Overseas - Intelligently!
In recent months, many advisors have talked a lot about the wisdom of investing overseas, but most have failed to really address the way to do that. For new investors, investing in the U.
My Way Or The Highway: Give Your Financial Professionals A Good Talking To!
All this talk about Investing is encouraging lately. Over the last few years, more people have become interested in the duty to invest there money, then ever before.
Brain Snappers and Other Wall Street Nonsense
The last time you spoke with your broker did he use any of the following words? Diversification,Price-to-earnings ratios, discretionary trading,lifting a leg (he's talking to you not yourdog), leverage, divergence, fee-basedcompensation, escalator clause, tactical assetallocation and other mesmerizing words to placeyou in stupefying shock.Brokers do that to let you know that you don't know anything about the market and you mustallow them to make decisions for you.
Options Made Easy and Investor Education - Simple Enough for a 10 yr Old Kid
How many of you out there think that the market is performing well?How many think the market is performing poorly?And how many feel the markets performance is neutral?Actually none of these answers is correct. You see, learning and reading our options made easy articles, you will realize that the market does not perform, you do.
The Three Legged Stool
My paternal grandparents were born near Lake Como, Italy. My grandfather learned how to farm, and he did just that until he died chopping wood at age 88.
Basic Options Terms
Options are good investing and speculative instruments. But options terminology may confuse even experienced investors.
An Investment Real Estate Strategy Unknown To Most Is A Negative Amortization Loan
If you want to make the most of your personal or investment real estate, you should consider a negative amortization loan. Mortgage amortization is basically mortgage balance reduction.
Investing for Retirement - Not an All or Nothing Play
In 1519, Hernando Cortes, beached on the shores of unexplored Mexico, made a fateful decision: he would burn the ships he and his men arrived in and attempt to overthrow Montezuma and the mighty Aztec empire. The decision was risky.