What Does a Trader Do?

What does a trader do?

One thing that I couldn't accept as an attorney (for the five minutes I seriously considered that as a profession) was that I'd be confronted with the temptation to make money from projects and clients with whom I did not want to work. The wealth that is created from doing a law-job is wealth that comes from the support of, allegiance to, and active promotion of a client's business.

How is trading different?

A trader creates wealth from scratch. When you produce income from trading, you are creating wealth from the following ingredients:

Charts
Fundamental information
Price
YOUR MIND

Some would argue that trading is a zero-sum game, and what you win is someone else's loss. I think that's an immature description of trading. It's far more productive to view trading as the opportunity to use your mind, your talents, your discipline, and your friendships to create wealth.

When you produce income in this way, you're not extracting (consuming) a piece of someone else's pie. You're not feeding off the labor of others, or piggybacking on the business interests of some other party. Or earning wages from the support of a cause that you cannot support. Or befriending others for the purpose of winning their business rather than because you have shared goals. The cause is the support of you and your family. Of your ideals. The cause is the charities that you support, the friendships you can foster through trading, and the development and strengthening of your own talents.

In summary, a trader is self-sufficient. The practice of using ingredients like charts, fundamentals, price, a computer, and your mind to produce wealth enhances your ability in the long term to be completely independent.

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What is the Purpose of Trading?

What is the purpose of trading?

It seems clear, doesn't it? The purpose of trading is to make money. The trade is planned, entered, and exited with the goal of increasing the size of one's trading account. What other purpose would there be?

The dictionary says this about purpose:

"something set up as an object or end to be attained : intention b: resolution, determination"

What about:

The purpose of trading is to not lose money.
The purpose of trading is to practice discipline.
The purpose of trading is to use my talents.
The purpose of trading is to grow.

Or how about:

The purpose of trading is to express my true nature. I was meant to be a trader.

Maybe the purpose of trading is simply to trade. Because that is what you have been called to do, or what you are meant to do, or it's the highest expression of your nature as a producer rather than a consumer. When you trade successfully, you are disciplined, you are growing, you are using and developing your talents, you are making money, and you are creating wealth from scratch. But most of all, you are trading because it's the right thing to do for you.

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List of Things I Do When I Plan a Trade

1. My better trades come when I have found a place to quietly think about the trade idea, before I take the trade. I lay down for a few minutes and let my mind roam. This settles me down at an otherwise tense moment. It also allows me to clearly consider what I like or don't like about the trade.

2. It's important to me to ignore outside influences when I am planning a trade. I'd rather pay attention to my own reasons for the trade, instead of someone else's views of the currency pair that have nothing to do with the indicators and other things that I look at when wanting to buy or sell.

3. It's one thing to have a rule- or principle-based trading methodology. It's another thing to actually trade that system with a clear and rational mind.

4. Sometimes I realize that I have become very anxious about a trade idea, or a trade plan. These are good times to find a quiet place and get away from the computer, until I've sorted out the reason for the anxiety. I take plenty of trades when I'm anxious, of course, but I've at least thought about the reasons behind the anxiety first.

5. How many losses I've taken recently is the last thing on my mind.

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What to Do on Your Day Off

What do you do on your day off from trading? I don't mean Saturday. I'm talking about the day you take off from trading, on a weekday, to get away from the screens and the charts and the trading and the stress.

Taking a day off gives you a chance to step back and reclaim some of your personality. Here are two examples:

1. My friend Ariel took a couple days off from trading to go to an Expo, to meet with friends, to visit New York. He didn't even bring his computer. He was rewarded with a fresh perspective, good food, and he even say Erin Burnett at a restaurant in Manhattan. He didn't go to the Expo to learn new things about trading. He went to talk to his friend and recharge his batteries.

2. Another friend took a trip to the Red Sea (he lives in the Near East) to get away from trading during a time when he just did not feel like he was in sync with the market. He reclaimed his sense of place in the markets, felt that he got back his clarity of mind, and resumed making money when he returned.

It makes sense to give yourself a chance to think about something else besides trading. If you do it during the week, you prove that you are not owned by the markets, but that you own your own schedule, that you have the discipline to walk away every once in a while. Give it a try.

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When Things Go Wrong

So things sometimes don't go the way you wanted.

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The trade falls apart. The stop loss gets hit, but your dealer doesn't get you out of the trade. Or the spreads widen. Or you forget you have an order in the system and it triggers, and you're on vacation, and you're just having a great time until you are on the White Knuckler roller coaster ride and you think to yourself:

Holy crap! Did I have an open position on the GBP/JPY when I left the house?

What do to in times like that? What do you do?

Trading is much like holding a fire in your hand.

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At the same time, it's beautiful and mesmerizing (for some of you at least). It hurts, too. When you have a bad trade, you are holding fire in your hands, so to speak. What are you going to do with it? Take a picture of it? Hide from it? Close your hand on it? Blow on it? Pour gasoline on top of it?

We don't always react in the best of ways to the unexpected trade. Especially if the trade is a loser, or a mistake, we are likely to try to hide from it first. We flee from the scene of the crime.

If things don't go your way in trading, tackle the situation. Get on top of it. Figure something out, and do it with friends, and do it sooner rather than later. You'll be happy you put out the fire in your hand.

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Walking Away from an Ugly Trade

Over the next 12 months, it's possible that over a million US residential mortgage-holders are going to walk away from their homes. They're going to walk away from all the payments they have made, from the work they've put into making the house look nice, walk away from everything except (probably) their belongings inside. Why would they do that?

They'll do it because they owe more on the mortgage than the house is worth. They bought at the top of the market, they bought with mortgage rates that have climbed as their incomes have fallen, or simply because they have to move for work or other reasons, and can't sell the house.

Thinking about this today brought to mind bad trades. There is a temptation that I've had in my trading career to walk away from a bad trade. Just let it rip. Walk way from it, push it out of my view, put as much distance between me and the bad decision. I call this Possum trading, and you can read about it in my ebook The Woodchuck and the Possum by clicking here.

I think we are tempted to walk away from a bad trade for understandable reasons (like I've described above). Just because the reasons for walking away from a home underwater, I can see why a trader would prefer to close his eyes to the ugliness of a poor trading decision.

This type of behavior has deep, long term negative consequences. When faced with an ugly trade, it is much better to do any or all of the following:

1. Talk to a trading friend and frankly disclose the entire situation;
2. Calculate how close you are to a margin call;
3. As a person who trades for a living what they would do;
4. Immediately admit that you might need to take the loss, but don't necessarily immediately close the trade;
5. Following up on #4, don't panic;
6. Write down or record your thoughts on a regular (daily or hourly) basis about the experience;
7. Stay present in the situation and face it head-on.

The result may be that you close the trade and take a loss. But you do it with integrity, and you learn from the experience. But there is a chance that if you follow some of these steps, you get yourself out of a tight situation -- with help -- and you turn what could otherwise be an unecessary loss (due to panic) into a positive.

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The Beginning Trader

Most people who call themselves traders lose money, and you've heard that a thousand times. It's not even interesting to hear people talk about it anymore, although we could all use a dose of that reality more often. It's questionable whether most people who call themselves traders are actually really embarking on a new career as opposed to a hobby. That's a discussion for another time, perhaps.

Tonight, as I was on my flight to Arizona to do a seminar, I thought about some recent "new traders" that I have worked with and known. One is a PhD in organic chemistry. Another is an analyst/researcher at a Wall Street firm. Both are students of mine and I would consider them the best kind of friends in the world.

What impresses me about these "beginning traders" is that they have a fresh, inquisitorial perspective. They are flexible. They are open-minded. They are approaching trading as a new career, with vigor, energy, dedication, responsibility and also generosity (as they share with others that which they have learned). And another thing: neither of them is likely to lose their entire first account. Both of them have been making money, have taken money out of their accounts. Neither of them have had trading experience in the past.

So what makes the difference here? They are beginning traders but they're not psycho-risk-taking crazy gambling currency dudes. Instead, there is something about them that makes a difference.

Right now I can only account for their success (and they are at the beginning, I know) by saying that they are getting the best out of being beginners. This fresh, new, open minded stance they are taking is what creates the very success they are having.

I have a lot more to say about this, and I'd like to hear what you have to say too.

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Risking So Much

What is a person attempting to achieve when he risk so much that he gets a margin call?

It happens to hedge funds, major investment banks, prop traders, CEOs, even Governors (in a more personal, but still very similar, way).

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Respect Your Trading, Respect Yourself

A good friend tonight said, to paraphrase:
"Your trading is an extension of yourself."

If you don't respect your trading, you don't respect yourself. If you play around with lot sizes like you were at a carnival, or if you move between systems like some kind of "trading strategy floozy" then you are just hurting yourself, and the important thing is to get some help for you, for your mind, your heart, your soul, before you look for help with your trading account.

Dave and did a radio show from the New York Trader's Expo, and we talked for an hour about the fact that if we don't get our lives in order, profitable trading might as well be impossible.

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Risk

It is all that matters. Period.

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Charlie Munger Said

I was reading some quotes from Charlie Munger tonight. This one struck me.

He said that the ordinary investor "underestimates the number of possible outcomes for unwanted events. Includes underestimating the probability and severity of rare or extreme events."

Here’s what he just said: he said that we tend to ignore that we could blow up our account trading the Non Farm Payroll account. We just simply don’t ever get a grasp on how dangerous and risky trading can be even after a bad trade! We think about how much money we are going to make and we don’t think about what could happen if it all goes wrong. This is what got Long Term Capital Management into trouble in the late 1990s, and it was run by Nobel Prize winners. This is what got Bear, Stearns into trouble in 2007 in the subprime market. And Merrill Lynch. And Morgan Stanley. And UBS. And the list goes on.

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Not Acting Until Crisis

It's normal for humans to do nothing about a problem until it becomes a crisis. But why is that?

Why is it that a trader will compound a losing position with massive trades, but only after he has nearly exhausted his financial resources, will he actually admit that he should have simply dumped the trade when it was not working out early on? Why does a Wall Street investment firm turn a blind eye to risk problems, and only face up to the true nature of the problem when they have to write off zillions of dollars in bad credit/mortgage/SIV investments?

Humans want to give their genius ideas a chance to succeed. We naturally want to believe that if we let it go a bit longer, that things can turn around. We also naturally believe that if we cut off everything the moment something goes wrong, that we're quitters. Giving up fast is not something that gains us a lot of respect, but it's exactly what can make a so-so trader into a great one: the ability to give up when it's necessary. And give up fast.

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Spaghetti Sauce and Trading

I think Malcolm Gladwell shares some insights here about spaghetti sauce that are applicable to trading. Here's the video:

Now, having watched the video, here are some questions:

1. Do you believe that there is ONE best way to trade, and if you could just find it, you would be successful?

2. What kind of experimentation and testing do you do?

3. Why is it that a trading system that can work for you can't work for someone else?

4. What if there is no trading system that can, over time, beat the S&P 500 index? What consequences would there be for your own trading -- does that mean that YOU can't individually use a trading system and beat the S&P? How would you find and build and trade such a system?

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Gaining Even When Losing

A quote from David Sklanksy's The Theory of Poker:
Any time you make a bet with the worst of it, where the odds are in your favor, you have earned something on that bet, whether you actually win or lose the bet. By the same token, when you make a bet with the worst of it, where the odds are not in your favor, you have lost something, whether you actually win or lose the bet.

Today I took a sell trade on the EUR/JPY from the 5 minute chart, before the actual signal arrived; I had to endure the trade all morning long while it just plodded along against me, but not quite hitting my stop. Whether this trade wins or loses, according to the above quote, I've lost something. I lost a little bit of discipline by getting in too early when I knew I should wait a bit longer.

UPDATE: Yes, I could have gotten out of the early-entry trade right away, but it did give the signal not long after, so I would have been in the trade anyway.

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Good Testing Leads to Good Trading

My friend from Europe just finished several weeks of testing, followed by several weeks of demo trading. This friend only traded his demo account during the hours that he would be awake, and for many weeks he traded the practice account with one set strategy across 5-10 currency pairs. He sent me his trade ideas every day, with a chart attached so that I could look over his plans.

He sent an email at the end of every week with a summary of his results. He stayed in touch often and he asked for help and he made his own suggestions about how he thought that I could improve my own trading systems. I feel like he is a partner, and a friend. The most important thing that I have noticed about M.D., this friend, is that he was very disciplined in his approach; he followed a plan and even when he had a losing week, he did not change everything all at once in a mass of frustration.

Last week was his first week live. Here's his email to me, that he sent today:

Dear Rob, Last week was my first real money forex trading week. 5 winner 1 looser biggest winner +122 biggest looser -90 one trade not make (+171, i write a separate mail about it) overall: +257 one trade with 2minilots, 5 with one minilot one open trade stop @ +62

M.D. earned the right to these results because he followed a set plan to test before he traded.

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Most People Won't Do the Work

I received an email from a frustrated student today. Let's call him Mortimer. That's not his name, but I like the name so that's what we're going with.

Mortimer wrote me to say that:

I created a personal web blog at [then he tells me his blog address which he is keeping private] to track my progress. Only you, my wife and Fred [a mutual friend] know it exists. As you can see I stalled out.
His frustration comes from having "stalled out." After a month of posting, and planning, and trading, he feels that he has backtracked, or not made enough forward progress, or that he was doing just fine and things kind of fell apart. He was looking at about 10+ currency pairs, but he's now looking at just 5. He is following the same system every day. he is consistently applying the same rules to the charts. He is doing his best to practice trade in a trade simulator (although this has not appealed to him as much).

My advice to Mortimer is this: you are doing what it takes to become successful. I would strongly encourage/beg you to not give up on the simulated testing. But other than that, you are putting an amazing amount of work into your goal of trading for a living. Most people don't want to do this kind of work. Let's reflect on a quote from Michael Covel's new book "The Complete Turtle Trader":

To cultivate that extra drive [exhibited by successful traders], however, requires deliberate practice. Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger has lived it; he has said, "In my whole life, I have known no wise people over a broad subject matter area that didn't read all the time -- none, zero." Most people do not want the real work that comes with real success.
That quote sums up much of what I feel about unsuccessful traders. It's not about your math skills. It's not about having some innate gift for trading. It's about work and practice.

Mortimer, you're on the right track. Keep yourself on it.

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The "Perfect" Trade Doesn't Exist

Alan Farley writes in his book The Master Swing Trader:

The perfect opportunity rarely exists. Learn to trade in shades of gray ... get off the sidelines and act when enough ducks sit in a row.

Perfect patterns carry the greatest risk for failure ... look closely for failure when perfection appears.

It's counterintuitive. But it's true that the most beautiful divergence trade, or the "perfect" moving average crossover, can sometimes just flame out in a brilliant display of the power of the market to destroy your hopes. I sometimes step back when something looks "too good to be true," and ask myself, "am I getting wildly excited about this trade?" The ones that I think can't fail are generally the ones that once again prove that the charts are just a picture. Sometimes a pretty picture can be deceiving.

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The Blow-Up Artist

John Cassidy wrote a brilliant piece about Victor Niederhoffer for the New Yorker last week. I quote:
Even by Niederhoffer’s generous standards, going short a billion dollars of stock futures was a large bet, but it worked out well. Not long after the markets reopened on Monday, the bond yield climbed to five per cent, and stocks and stock futures tumbled. On Wednesday, the morning of my visit, shortly after the opening bell sounded on Wall Street, Niederhoffer repurchased the futures he had sold, making more than five million dollars.

Mr. Niederhoffer is, arguably, one of the best traders of all time. He has an intuitive sense of the markets combined with an amazing ability to process quantitative information as well. Everything I've ever read about him and from him has impressed me that he has a unique ability to combine these skills; the processing of math combined with a feeling about what the market is about to do.

The problem is that Mr. Niederhoffer has a tendency to blow up his hedge funds.

It's one thing to be a great trader. It's another thing to be a great money manager. He says of his own trading, and of managing money in general:

“The idea that you can make a lot of wealth in a steady, unspectacular fashion, with no great gyrations, is a canard ... If you are going to try and make forty or fifty per cent a year, tremendous variations are inevitable.”

Read the entire article here. And please don't risk very much on each trade that you take. Please.

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This is How We Test

James Brown, a friend and student, did a round of backtesting today and I just couldn't resist sharing it with you.

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James says:

Here is some of the back testing I did last night on the surprise trade as per our discussion yesterday. Interesting how something with a terrible win/loss ratio still makes good profit over time.

It's not just about the win percentage! James did a round of testing on a system that I teach. He wrote down some rules, he followed those rules, and tracked his results. He has more testing to do, but this is a wonderful start; most people never test 1 trade, but James is on his way to becoming a great tester.

Click here to see Mr. Brown's spreadsheet.

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Pip Value Spreadsheet

Click here for a link to a simple pip value spreadsheet that helps you calculate the value per pip to be traded if you are only risking 1% of your account per trade. For many of you, you already do this math in your head. The spreadsheet might make it a bit easier.

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Bending the Trading Rules

A smart and inquisitive student wrote me today to ask why I sometimes seem to bend my own rules for indicator-based, discretionary trade setups. In response I wrote:

I think it's important to make sure you understand, not just hear me, when I say that the rules are guidelines. The charts are just 2D representations of a bunch of 1s and 0s flying around through internet lines -- millions of trades all combining to make the current price, every second of the day.

With all these bits and bytes flying around, we try to draw something on the charts to represent the world of currency trading. We call this drawing a "chart". And then we dream up systems to show us when to trade. And then, we start getting stuck on what the drawing says, rather than what our instinct is telling us based on past patterns.

When you study and follow one system, over and over again, for thousands of trades, you start to see something that isn't quite perfect from an aesthetic perspective. But it makes sense to you because it "looks good enough," or the market is going through a rough approximation of a pattern that you look for.

When I bend the rules on my charts in the rules or updates, it's because I am seeing something that is not fully or adequately represented by the 2D drawings of the 1s and 0s -- the charts -- that I can still "see". It comes with experience. It's bending the rules, of course, but a person earns the right to bend the rules when he or she is following something for years.

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What To Do In Times Like These

Currencies all over the world have been more volatile this week than in any week in the last year, or two years, or three years. A 900 pip daily candle this week was a good sign that people were just simply freaking out.

If you stop and think for a moment, and I know you're the "stop and think" sort of person, you'll remember that right now the interest rate picture around the world looks like this:

Bank of Canada 4.50%
Bank of England 5.75%
European Central Bank 4%
Federal Reserve 5.25%
Swiss National Bank 2.5%
Reserve Bank of Australia 6.5%
Reserve Bank of New Zealand 8.25%

Now compare ANY of those numbers to:

Bank of Japan 0.5%

What's happening right now is that people are selling off high interest currencies and buying the world's lowest interest rate currency. Panic can only take this down so far; that's why this morning we saw the GBP/JPY rise 800 pips off its lows in just a matter of 6 hours. That's why we saw the EUR/JPY jump up 300 pips this morning in 3 hours.

At times like this there are pie in the sky traders who start believing that we'll see this sort of activity forever now, and a month from now they'll still be taking trades and hoping for 900 pip moves. Please keep in mind that this sort of movement is unusual, it won't last forever, and you shouldn't be altering your rules now to try to get rich quick.

In the near term, can expect more volatile movement up and down. We can expect a lot of uncertainty. We can also expect that we'll see disruption not just in the currency markets, but in all markets. So what do we do?

First of all, we never risk more than a small fraction of our account on a single trade. If you risk 1% or less per trade, and you stay true to your stops, none of this stuff matters. If, on the other hand, you start risking a lot, thinking that you are going to make a fortune in the short term, you are going to go broke. You will be, in other words, gambling.

Second, we're going to keep trading our system. Our rules don't change. Maybe the volatility increases. But soon enough people will get in touch with their senses, things will calm down, and we'll still be trading our rules, still be risking 1% or less per trade, and still happy.

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