It's Up To You March 22, 2009

You, and you alone, should determine your own personal levels of risk — and stick to them.

From Janice Dorn, “The Trading Doctor”:

Beginning traders and investors are almost universally surprised to hear that trading and investing involves losses. Their view of the markets is skewed and distorted by the barrage of hype, commercials, advertisements and seminars offering instant riches. They see themselves quitting their day jobs and sitting in their pajamas watching red and green lights (or some virtual genie market guru looking over their shoulder) as they make buckets of money every day. After all, if Jane and Joe Q. Public (all happy and smiling with the new car and house and boat in the background of the TV commercial) can do it, so can you. Right? Highly unlikely. Wrong? Very probably.

What you are not told in these ads and seminars is that the combination of emotions and money management must be harmonious in order for you to be profitable on a consistent basis and that nothing good comes easy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that YOU have absolute control over how that works out, and the secret is in money management. Money management is about how and when you enter the markets and how much you risk at that moment in time. No matter what else is going on, you are in charge of this, the choice is yours and you take full and complete responsibility. It is your brain making that decision.

Trading is among the most challenging of any activities. It means swimming every day in water infested with money- hungry sharks, waiting to devour unprepared and unsuspecting victims. There are always (and I mean ALWAYS) going to be losses. New traders, and even those more seasoned, often fail to grasp this. Losses are personalized, and internalized, leading to a sense of failure, a decrease in self-esteem and an exacerbation of deep-seated shame and guilt. Inexperienced traders equate losses with being a bad person, a failure or just plain stupid.

Seasoned traders see losses as part of doing business, and view each trade as one in a series of probabilities. They set entries, exits and stops and adhere to them religiously. Inexperienced traders do not know how to manage money through managing risk. They do not understand that it is necessary to take calculated risks as part of doing business as a trader. There is always risk. Those who understand this, who embrace it and move with conviction in the face of it, are the ones who will succeed.

How does one do this? First of all, you determine your trading personality (your Money Brain) that then determines your risk tolerance. You decide the amount of money you are going to risk on any trade and the percentage of your capital you are risking. These are decisions you make, based on your analysis and your particular brain structure and function. You absolutely never ever allow the market to determine your risk.

Let me repeat that: YOU determine how much you will risk. You do not allow the markets to determine that for you. In approaching the markets, you realize that so many things are out of your control completely. The market doesn’t know you, your rules or anything about you and doesn’t care. Having grasped that concept, you do what you can to control what you can control…..YOUR OWN PERSONAL RISK. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to make your own rules and to keep them. If you break your rules you are, in essence, breaking a promise to yourself and being out of integrity with yourself. You are lying to yourself.

Trade Your Plan March 6, 2009

Dave Landry often uses the phrase, “Plan your trade and trade your plan.”

Deron Wagner has the same advice this morning in his reply to a subscriber email:

After yesterday’s close, we received an e-mail from a long-time subscriber, who asked us the following question, “When you see a position that is going against you and the market is dropping, and you are losing money on a trade, but your stop loss hasn’t been hit yet, how do you stay with the position? What is your secret? Do you pullback and look at the big picture or do you simple assume its all noise as long as it doesn’t hit that lower low? This is my biggest problem with tracking your trades and most of the time you are right in holding on.” … Because we thought our answer to his question may be beneficial to other traders as well, we wanted to share our reply to his e-mail, which was…

“The key point you stated is ‘but your stop loss hasn’t been hit yet.’ When we put on a trade, it’s like entering into a contract, so we try to stay the course and simply follow the plan. Over the years, we’ve found it’s best to stick with our original analysis because we usually plan a trade at night, or in the pre-market, without the stress of live trading. During the trading session, in the heat of the moment, there is so much pressure that we have to fight the voice in our heads telling us to sell the position when everything around is crumbling. It basically comes down to planning the trade and trading the plan…easier said than done, right? Sometimes, if you have a feeling things are going bad, and you’re an active trader, you can maybe sell 1/4 or 1/3 of the position to ease your mind. However, you must have the discipline to get back in once the coast is clear. Try to lay out a plan, write it on paper, and stick to it. The one thing every trader must accept, in order to be successful, is a loss. You must be fully prepared to lose what you’re risking. Once you accept losses as part of the trading game, the pressure to be right is not so intense. By the way, we at MTG are no different; we fight the same urges to sell that most traders do. It’s a constant battle, that’s for sure!”