Weekly Motivation

The market can only do three things: go up, down, or sideways, but your psychology has a million ways that it can go. - Victoria Pearson

Indecisive traders will always produce inconsistent behaviour, and consequently inconsistent profits. - John Hayden

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. - Jim Ryun

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. - Vernon Sanders Law

Weekly Motivation

"Certain key beliefs, which have nothing to do with the market,will still undermine your success in the markets. Those are yourbeliefs about yourself."
--Dr Tharp

Weekly Motivation

Preserve, continue and move on

Weekly Motivation - Why I won last time?

Why I won last time?

- I as able to identify the trend
- I follow the trend
- I have practised my setups well
- I know the power of trade.
- I read the chart everyday
- I do predict the marketI follow my trade management rules strictly

How to Deal with Missed Opportunities in Strong Market

How do I deal with missed opportunity in s strong trend market?
How do I make sure that I will get back to the trend?
How do I deal with being stopped out from a trend that continues to become stronger?

1. I need to come out the re-entry signal fast and get ready to enter with my trade management rules using stop orders.

2. Make sure that I am prepared my setups:
i. Ascending Trangle Breakout
ii. Descending Trangle Breakout
iii. Trend-confirming Buy or Sell Breakout
iv. Higher Fractal buy or Lower Fractal sell
v. Oops! Buy or Sell Breaout
vi. ID-NR4 with Trend-confirming Buy or Sell Breaout

3. Psychology:
i. Remember that the price is not too high to buy or too low to sell.
ii. Just follow your trading plan and trade management rules.
iii. Do not predict what the market will do.
iv. It may take few trades (losses or small winners) to ride on the strong trend.
v. It is hard to re-enter but it takes a few trades to get a big winner or homerun.
vi. Stay relaxed. Place a trade and set a stop. If you get stopped out, who really cares? You are doing your job. You are actively protecting your capital. Professional traders actively take small losses. Amateurs resort to hope and sometimes prayer to save their trade. In life, hope is a powerful and positive thing. In executing a trade, hope is a virus that can infect and destroy.

4. Something about a strong trend:
i. The initial start of a trend is choppy and subject to re-tracement. This will make some to believe the trend has reversed.
ii. The trend will get stronger make some to believe the price is either to higher to buy or too low to sell.
iii. As the crowd rush in to participate, the trend may just reverse or go side-way.

Weekly Motivation - Continuously Improving Your Results

by Phillip Wengier, Saratoga Online Founder

As traders we are constantly told that we need to have a trading plan to guide our actions in the face of unpredictability and uncertainty in the markets. The plan should contain our objectives, a methodology or "our edge", and our strategies and tactics relating to entries, exits, risk etc.

Experienced traders are all familiar with trading plans. However, the tricky and sometimes touchy issue is how we are performing compared to our plan, and whether or not we are improving our performance over time.

As professional traders (or investors), we should be constantly concerned about the answer to this question because reviews of actual results vs our trading plan can identify areas that can be improved. Actively participating in the process of continuous improvement should be a primary element of our trading and investing discipline.

Have you ever found yourself happy to review your performance after a period of success? We sometimes shy away from the same review when the results are not so good – it's painful. As professionals, involvement in the process of continuous improvement should be a habit regardless of the investing outcome, an activity or discipline that is undertaken regularly as a standard part of our routine.

What is the continuous improvement process?
Step 1 PLAN – Prepare a plan for each of your investments with sufficient documentation to allow effective review in the future.

Step 2 DO – Implement your investment plan in the market.

Step 3 REVIEW – Check the outcome of your investment against the objective you set yourself in your original plan. Review your actions compared to your plan to see where the improvement opportunity lies. The objective is to identify the single most important factor you can change in order to do better.

Step 4 IMPROVE – Implement the single factor you have identified by putting the new practice into action.

Then simply repeat this process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . forever!

Change is never easy. However, if we don't make continuous improvement a central part of our investing arsenal, we will ultimately fail. It's that important.

Weekly Motivation - More Thoughts

Most professional traders would be able to teach you to trade their system in about 2 hours. Why then do so few go on to achieve profitable results, even after being taught by some of the best minds of the trading world? It's because the majority of people are not instinctively set up to trade. There are very few naturals in the trading world. Successful traders have had to learn how to trade and how to handle the inevitable losses that will ensue.

Ed Seykota’s achievements rank him as one of the best traders of all time. In times of trading pressure, I find it useful to remember some of Seykota’s wise thoughts;
“There old traders and there are bold traders, but there are very few old, bold traders”.

When asked for some of the main contributors towards his success, he states:
“I handle losing streaks by trimming down my activity. Trying to trade during a losing streak is emotionally devastating. Trying to play “catch up” is lethal. Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money”.

There are two main traits that Seykota looks for to identify the winning trader personality:
He/she loves to trade;
and He/she loves to win

Those who want to win and lack skill can find someone with skill to help them, but they must have the desire in the first place.

95% of traders never seek to improve their overall mindset, and as a result inadvertently deprive themselves of extraordinary profits. These profits are achievable only to the 5% of traders who are prepared to get out of their comfort zone and work on their own innate deficiencies and acknowledge their personal strengths. Your level of financial success will rarely exceed your level of self-development. The good news is that it is your choice to be in the 5%.