therootofallgoodismoney.com


Thank you for accessing this Pitfall #3 page.

Patience is a Virtue

Its a fact. Prices fluctuate, sometimes wildly. In today's volatile market you can buy a stock one day and see it drop drastically in price the next day or be lucky enough to purchase your stock directly before the next big move up. How would you like to take all the luck out of the equation and replace it with solid science? My Subscription allows you to do just this!

Accurate Timing Is Everything

The degree to which you understand how important timing is when buying a stock directly determines how much money you take from (or lose to) the Stock Market. You can get rich (or go broke) on this one fact. Everyone knows the old adage, Buy low and sell high... but few can actually do this. How do you really know what is a low price relative to the current trading range or recent price trend?

My System's advanced internal logic is designed to analyze and gauge the price fluctuations with uncanny accuracy. This helps you pinpoint the low-risk, high-probability entry points you need to be profitable with short term trading. By simply following the buy/sell signals generated by my System, costly emotional trading decisions will become a thing of the past!

In trading, timing is everything. Winning traders are patient. They know how to control their impulses so as to act decisively at the opportune moment. Rather than acting on a whim, they carefully devise a detailed trading plan, in which precise entry and exit strategies are specified, and strictly follow it. Discipline is the key to successful trading. Although discipline can be learned, some people are more disciplined and self-controlled than others. It is useful to determine where you stand on this trait, and if you're impulsive, developing psychological strategies to compensate for it will allow you to trade profitably.

Research studies have demonstrated that some people have difficulty delaying gratification. In the jargon of behavioral economics, they "discount delayed rewards." That is, they would rather take a small profit now, instead of waiting for a larger profit later. Depending on your style of trading, discounting a delayed reward can be a problem. For a long-term investor, for example, it is necessary to buy-and-hold long enough for one's long term strategy to play out. There may be minor fluctuations during the waiting period, but seasoned investors have learned to wait it out. Most novice investors, in contrast, impulsively sell as the masses panic and buy the stock back at a top, which usually results in a losing trade. If you are a long-term investor, it is necessary to be able to control your impulse to take a profit and allow the price to rise over time. Even shorter-term traders, such as a swing trader, must fight the urge to sell early. Although trades are held for much shorter windows, a swing trader must know how to wait patiently for the optimal time to sell. Selling a winner too early is not going to allow one's account balance to increase exponentially at an ideal rate.

The scalper is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Most scalpers feel an overpowering need to take a quick profit as soon as they can get it. To some extent, it may be wise for a person who has trouble patiently waiting for the price of an investment instrument to increase to become a scalper. The conventional wisdom these days, however, is that decimalization has made scalping less viable. It is useful to take other steps to work around one's inclination to sell prematurely. For example, one can use the automatic settings on one's trading platform to specify an exit strategy. It has often been said that looking at one's screen during the trading day is like sitting in front of a slot machine and trying to resist gambling. It's hard. Just as the one armed bandit tempts recreational gamblers, charts and indicators on a computer screen tempt seasoned and novice traders alike to make hasty trading decisions. It may be useful to refrain from constantly looking at how a particular stock or commodity is doing while you're waiting for your trading plan to play out. If you have to walk away, while having the automatic settings on to manage risk, then by all means, turn off your screens or walk away.

It is also useful to objectify the trade. The more you can learn to view the trade objectively, as if you just don't care what happens, the more you'll be able to resist the temptation to close out a trade prematurely. A cold, rational approach to trading, along with a detailed trading plan, is the best defense against impulsive trading decisions.

Patience is a virtue when attempting to trade profitably. It is useful to remember that humans have a strong, natural tendency to avoid risk and loss at all costs. This tendency often protects us from harm, but there are times when it can compel us to act impulsively. We are naturally inclined to avoid losses at all costs, even if it means selling a potentially winning trade before it reaches fruition. Unless one can let winners increase in price sufficiently, profits won't balance out losses. The ability to control one's impulses and wait for larger, delayed rewards is vital for long-term survival. It's worth developing this ability.

Pitfall #4. The hope trap. This is one of those pitfalls that goes completely against human nature and it is the biggest account killer. What I am talking about is hanging onto a losing position in the desperate hope that it will turn around. A SIMPLE SOLUTION IS TO ALWAYS PLACE A STOP ON EVERY MARKET POSITION AND DO NOT CANCEL IT!

"Hope is not a strategy; it's a simple emotion," a retired army general remarked. He was talking about a war, but his comment reminded me of trading. I remembered trading situations when hope was the only strategy I had.

That could be said about almost any emotion and trading. Greed is not a strategy; it's a simple emotion. Fear is not a strategy; it's a simple emotion. Sometimes, unfortunately, fear, or greed, or hope, or determination does become a trader's basic strategy. Trading becomes dictated by emotion rather than a consistent strategy for entering and exiting the market. The general was right; simple emotions are not an effective strategy. A strategy built on emotions will be inconsistent at best and disastrous at worst.

An emotion is a response to a thought that expresses itself in the body. That is why we call them feelings. We feel the emotion in our bodies. An emotion responds to a thought, and soon, that emotion affects other thoughts as well as actions, which in turn express themselves in more feelings. We build a continuous cycle between thought, emotion, and action.

Most traders say they don't want to experience any emotion. They want to respond to signals and situations like a computer or a machine. But traders aren't isolated machines unconnected to a feeling body; they're humans. Mind and body interact; they correspond and interact. The Mind (soul) is the faculty that thinks, acts and judges. Seperate your body and mind (soul), your soul becomes a restless ghost wandering aimlessly and your body becomes a useless corpse.

If you want to respond as a computer, you can set up your trading to be completely computerized. You can even have the computer place the orders electronically. This takes you completely out of the loop. You can do it -- but you won't have human input on visual patterns or current events. Computers are simply a combination of on-off switches and don't begin to have the endless complexity of the human mind. If the human mind is hopelessly and emotionally conflicted, however, the computer is a good idea. If a person is emotionally entangled, he or she probably will not be able to leave the computer alone to run the program without his or her intervention and monitoring.

Pitfall 5. Leaving the barn door open. Don't let your profit evaporate. Once you are in a profit situation continue to move your protective stop to lock in a profit. STOPS ARE IMPORTANT TO BOTH PROTECT INVESTMENT CAPITAL AND LOCK IN PROFITS.

How to get out of a trade ? that is, the challenge of the exit strategy, a problem often neglected in trading literature.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EXIT

In many ways, a good exit is more critical and difficult to achieve than a good entry. Think about it: you are not subject to market risk while you're waiting for a good opportunity to enter a trade. If you miss one such opportunity, you can always wait for another to come along ? and a good, active trading model provides many such opportunities.

Once you have entered a trade, however, you are immediately exposed to market risk. Failing to exit at an appropriate moment can cost you dearly. You cannot simply wait for the next opportunity to come along to get out of a trade gone bad. Erring on the side of safety and exiting abruptly can also drain your account simply through attrition. The problem is one of many small losses due to the sacrifice of many potentially profitable trades, and of profitable trades being cut short before yielding their full profit potential. A good exit strategy must, above all, control losses strictly, but it must not sacrifice too many potentially profitable trades in the process and must allow profitable trades to fully mature.

How important is the exit strategy? If you can control your risk by quickly bailing from losing trades and without killing or cutting short too many winners, you may even be able to turn a losing system into a profitable one. A solid exit strategy can make a profitable system even more profitable while reducing equity volatility and drawdown. Most important, during those inevitable rocky periods, a good exit strategy that incorporates solid money management and capital preservation techniques can increase the probability that you will be around for the next profitable trade.

GOOD STRATEGY

There are two goals that a good exit strategy attempts to achieve. The first, and most important, is to strictly control losses. Your exit strategy must tell you how and when to get out of a trade gone wrong so that you can prevent a significant erosion of trading capital. This is known as money management and is frequently implemented using stop-loss orders.

The second goal of a good exit strategy is to ride a profitable trade to full maturity. Your exit strategy must not only tell you when to get out with a loss, but also when and where to get out with a profit. Generally, you do not want to exit a trade prematurely. If a trade is going your way, you want to ride it as long as you can, for as much profit as possible. This is especially important if your system does not allow multiple re-entries to get you back in on persistent, ongoing trends. If you can ride a strong trend to maturity, the substantial profits can more than make up for any small losses that may occur. The profit-taking exit is often implemented with trailing stops, profit targets and time- or volatility-triggered market orders.

A complete exit strategy makes coordinated use of a variety of exit types to achieve the goals of effective money management and profit taking.

FORMING AN EXIT STRATEGY

A variety of exit types are available when forming an exit strategy. We use only three kinds in a simple, fixed manner without looking at them that closely. We usually employed a fixed money management exit using a stop order. If a trade moved against us by more than a specified amount, we would be stopped out of our position with a limited loss. Often, we had a profit target exit implemented using a limit order, so that as soon as the market moved a specified amount in our favor, the limit would be hit. And we use a time-based exit; regardless of profitability, if a trade lasted more than a specified number of bars/days, we closed it out with an at-the-market order.

There are a number of other exit types, among them trailing exits, critical-threshold exits, and volatility- and signal-based exits. A trailing exit, usually implemented with a stop order, may be employed when the market is moving in your favor. It is a stop that you move up (or down) along with the market to lock in some of your paper profits, should the market change direction. If the market turns against you, your trailing stop will be hit and your trade closed out with part of your profit intact.

Your exit strategy must not only tell you when to get out with a loss, but also when and where to get out with a profit (targets). Generally, you do not want to exit a trade prematurely. If a trade is going your way, you want to ride it as long as you can, for as much profit as possible.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's amazing. Even when traders know about these pitfalls, they still fall prey to them. You see, we are genetically programmed for success and human nature is simply much stronger than any acquired knowledge. There are two paths to learning the market discipline necessary to consistently follow sound trading practices. One, you spend several years making all the trading mistakes above while you try to develop your own good trading habits. Two, you find a Coach. That's what I did after I couldn't do it alone. It is by far the easier and better path to follow and a lot less expensive.

The business of trading forces you to face the psychological baggage that you carry. It also makes you deal with new issues that develop from losses in the markets. Hard-earned money and dreams lost can leave deep psychological wounds. The prevention of such wounds, and the way you handle them when they do happen, will determine whether you will survive as a professional trader.

If you want to become a profitable entrepreneur, you must prepare yourself by getting some education and a business plan. This is a time-consuming and costly process. Look at doctors, lawyers, and storefront business owners. For each career, money is required to provide for years of education, and then additional capital is needed to maintain the business and a comfortable lifestyle through the start-up phase of the venture.

The same requirements apply to trading. To become a trader, it is important to realize and prepare for the fact that most traders are not profitable in their first year. Early planning for the equipment and trading capital is important for eventual success. Most traders enter the trading business undercapitalized, undereducated, and underprepared for contingencies. This lack of preparation creates an emotional war zone from the very beginning of the venture.

It is a sad fact that the great majority of people who buy and sell stocks lose money. One of the biggest reasons for this is that people simply buy at the wrong time. My subscription is designed to help prevent you making the two most common mistakes in Trading, buying prematurely while the stock continues to drop in price, and buying too late, essentially at the top of the price cycle. You could read hundreds of technical analysis books, attend dozens of seminars, or spend thousands on other expensive systems and probably never attain the level of accuracy you will get when you start using my subscription!

I am willing to teach you through my Daily Active Model Position Trades which includes, current position (Long/Short) and model position size (units) for the trade. In addition, there are free and e-bay auctioned e-books, Answers to Questions, regularly scheduled conferences, ad-hoc client visits and news group discussions.

Now with Active Model Positions, I am in control and ALWAYS know:

- When my investments are on the move - long and short

- the right size to put on any one trade (Key point most often missed!)

- How to lock-in my gains

- How to prevent those crippling losses

Active Model Positions is the ONLY service that offers this remarkable and revolutionary approach to trading a wide range of markets. I am convinced that this is the only way to trade - one that will outlast all market fads. Come experience the joy of trading again and see how you can start turning that red ink back into green in just minutes a day.

Every day, I use my revolutionary computer programs to sift through 8,000 stocks, 131 futures, 72 forex pairs and 100s of indices, searching for opportunities that will make you wealthy. It's an enormous task: the variables are staggering, and the numbers are constantly moving. It's like trying to hit a moving target traveling at 500 miles per hour. This sophisticated operation takes over 8 hours of computer and manual processing time to complete.

Make no mistake about it; my computers go through a time-consuming, computational ordeal every day. For even the most advanced investor or sophisticated technical analyst, recreating this data would be impossible. But incredibly, I have done it.

You may not even need me after a year or you could continue to use my trades and commentaries, if it is still available, as a reference. You will love me for it. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. Teach a man to trade, you enable him to conquer this world, i.e., the financial world.





© 2004 therootofallgoodismoney.com    |    www.therootofallgoodismoney.com    |    All rights reserved.