موقع التقني

  It has become clear to me that clarity underlies my best trading. If I sit and sit and watch and watch and process and process what the market is doing, eventually it will become clear what is going on.  I can see that sellers are active and cannot push price lower; I can see that fresh market participants have entered the market at price levels making it unlikely we will return to those prices.  I can see a rotational trade between market sectors; I can see when volume and volatility are so low that sustained directional moves are unlikely. It isn't just patience; it's immersing myself in the market information I understand and letting the market tell its story.  It's the same thing I do as a psychologist.  When I first meet a person, I have no clue what they're going through, so I listen and listen and ask questions and eventually clarity hits.  Success as a psychologist requires comfort with that initial cluelessness.   For the curious, there...

  What we think about before we put on a trade helps determine our mindset during the life of the trade .  When I am trading well, my thinking before the trade focuses on two topics: 1)  What will tell me the trade is wrong?   - Knowing *exactly* what will tell me I'm wrong and where I would exit is essential to sound risk management of the position.  I am constantly updating my views on what would tell me I'm wrong.  For example, on Friday I put on a trade where I bought the ES futures early in the morning and the position quickly went in my favor.  I immediately told myself that, if I'm right, we should not see a reversal to the prior low.  We did indeed reverse and I got out with a small loss.  That experience helped me see that the market could not sustain buying and was one of the data points that got me into a nicely profitable short position a little later.  Because I am mentally rehearsing being wrong, I am accepting the possibil...

  Think about the important relationships in your life. What are the greatest challenges and problems you experience in your relationships?  What are your greatest weaknesses in your relationships? Those are what you will repeat in your relationships with markets, and those are what will undermine your success. What are your greatest relationship strengths and your most fulfilling relationship experiences? Those are what will show up in your relationships with markets, and those are what will underpin your success. Great things come from loving relationships; problems in relationships occur when we place our own egos and needs ahead of our love for our partners.   Ayn Rand pointed out that, before we can say "I love you", we have to be able to have an "I".  No relationship can provide self-esteem where it is lacking in ourselves. How would you trade if you had loving relationships with markets?   How would you trade if you expected relationships to pro...

  The heart of discretionary trading is pattern recognition.  Some traders track patterns in fundamental data; some follow price and volume behavior; some attempt to quantify patterns in sentiment and breadth data; some focus on patterns that follow events, such as earnings releases.  When we have experienced many examples of patterns, we internalize them and develop a "feel" for their occurrence.  It is that feel that we call intuition. In the Radical Renewal blog book , I raise the issue of how our egos impact our trading.  What is ego?  It is our self-talk .  Whenever we focus on hopes, fears, frustrations, and needs, we end up talking to our selves about ourselves.  Such self-talk can be useful in planning and thinking through issues.  We need our egos to navigate the world and accomplish things. The problem occurs when our self-talk becomes so loud that it drowns out our intuition, our feel for patterns .  There is no way we can be ...