Monday 30 January 2012

THE SNOW FIGHT METAPHOR "Traders Psych Post 30jan2012" (2)




There are many factors to being a successful trader. Many of them are all about how you go about trading. Which makes them some of the easiest yet hardest traits in yourself to catch and change. If you follow these suggestions or vows you can be on the right track of making a lot of money.

Almost everybody irrespective of their religion or faith start their day with some kind of a prayer. I have written a small prayer, before you start your trading, its basically affirmations, repeat them several times a day if you can and see the difference for yourself. Best times are first thing in the morning, second best is just before you retire for the day and third best is just after lunch. Here we go...

I am trading a tested system with crystal clear calls on market direction, position entry, stop placement, trade management, and strong psychological reasoning and support.

I realize that I create my own luck and fortune by study of the markets, focus on doing the correct thing in the market, and keeping my mind clear of illusions and "trading noise" created by the excess information in the markets and in the news.

Trading (put your market here, for me its Nifty) is fearless, killer, high-speed fun. It is not a place for me to be "conservative," passive, or "low key." I totally love trading (put your market here, for me its Nifty). I love the excitement of being in this business.

I only trade (put your market here, for me its Nifty) when I feel positive and idealistic. I believe I have already won the game before I begin. If I have any negative thoughts about trading now, I will not trade today because I will most likely lose money. There is nothing wrong with taking a vacation from trading if I'm not controlled and feeling well.

I totally agree that consistency is more important than being "right." Having the desire to be "right" is for beginners and making money is what the real professionals do, I am striving to be a professional every day by focusing on what is tested to really work - a method that produces steady profits while protecting me if I am wrong.

I keep exact track of all my trades, including profits and losses, I also keep a journal of my thoughts, such as why I did a particular trade and what happened during the trade both in the markets and in my head. In this way I track my skill development as a trader, as well as my mental development.

I trade for a living as a professional in business. As a business, I use a portion of my profits to further educate myself, take vacations and buy gifts for my loved ones who support my trading work, and I contribute to charitable causes.

I always take my family out for a long weekend on every last Thursday of the month till late Sunday night (Just after expiry).


THE SNOW FIGHT METAPHOR


Right now, I am reading a book called - Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom. by VAN K. THARP. In Chapter 6, Understanding Expectancy and Other Keys to Trading Success, the author has used a beautiful metaphor, by the name of THE SNOW FIGHT METAPHOR. Its basically about position sizing or money management. I liked it a lot, hence I am pasting it varbatim :

To illustrate the importance of all six variables, let me guide you through a metaphor that might give you a different perspective from one of just thinking about money and systems. Imagine that you are hiding behind a large wall of snow. Someone is throwing snowballs at your wall, and your objective is to keep your wall as large as possible for maximum protection.

Thus, the metaphor immediately indicates that the size of the wall is a very significant variable. If the wall is too small, you couldn’t avoid getting hit. But if the wall is massive, then you are probably not going to get hit. Variable 6, the size of your initial equity, is a little like the size of the wall. In fact, you might consider your starting capital to be a wall of money that protects you. The more money you have, assuming the other variables stay the same, the more protection you will have.

Now imagine that the person throwing snowballs at you has two different kinds of snowballs-white snowballs and black snowballs. White snowballs are a little like winning trades. They simply stick to the wall of snow and increase its size. Now imagine the impact of having a lot of white snowballs thrown at you. They would simply build up the wall. It would get bigger and bigger and you would have more protection.

Imagine that black snowballs dissolve snow and make a hole in the wall equivalent to their size. You might think of black snowballs as being “antisnow.” Thus, if a lot of black snowballs were thrown at the wall, it would soon disappear or at least have a lot of holes in it. Black snowballs are a lot like losing trades-they chip away at your wall of security.

Variable 1, how often you are right, is a little like focusing on the percentage of white snowballs. You would naturally want all the snowballs coming to your wall to be white and add to your wall. It’s probably easy for you to see how the people who don’t focus on the big picture might devote all their attention to making as many snowballs as possible be white.

But let’s consider the relative size of the two kinds of snowballs. How big are the white and black snowballs relative to each other? For example, imagine that the white snowballs are the size of golf balls, while the black snowballs are like 6-foot-diameter
boulders. If that were the case, it would probably only take one black snowball to break down the wall-even if white snowballs were being thrown at the wall all day. On the other hand, if the white snowball was the size of a 6-foot boulder, then one snowball each day would probably build up the wall enough to protect you from a continual bombardment of black snowballs the size of golf balls. The relative size of the two kinds of snowballs is equivalent to variable 2 in our model-the relative size of profits and losses. hope that by visualizing the snow fight metaphor you can understand the importance of variable 2. (ie. position sizing)


Trapped traders


Forex King
I like this group heading and I pray we will discuss psychology of trading, I have been hearing about Trapped traders and how effective trapped traders is. please if you have any Ideal or article about it post it here. thx


Seshareddy Veluri
my personal feel to control all types of psychology
we should open our trade details before success / failure of trade ( self arrest ) with full reasons / explanation slowly we should move our thoughts to wards saying that we are doing with system + own rules for accepting systematic gains / loss. this will give perfect faith gains only. this gains will give more satisfaction than what we earned.

if we tell only gain trades that is not right means still feeling more fear on trades.

we should discuss about loss trade also why and how we have to find



Mahesh Pillai
Nice Work Jameelbhai. Keep it up. It sure shows your passion for the field of Trading and Anaysis. I wish you great success in all your endeavours!

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