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Success

My top 10 qualities for speculating successHere is my personal list 1- Adversity This is the biggest one. 1 & 2 are the biggest one. You know what we call those that have low adversity? Starts with an L. Ends with osers. You should not flinch when you get unlucky, when things are working against you. You should love this! Makes it harder! Great! You should welcome difficulties. Every year millions of clowns come and "give it a go". They are great for providing liquidity to markets, filling my orders. And every year millions of clowns do what good little quitters do and never come back. There should be a rage burning in you. You will not stop until you have reached your objective. NOTHING WILL STOP YOU. "Awww but life has been so hard to me and bla bla bla" ==> GET OUT THEN! There is no place for those here. You should be borderline masochist. Each time the market hits you you come back asking for more. Losses will not discourage you. You will NEVER EVER give up. You will NEVER EVER break and make a mistake because losses made you feel bad or wins got you excited. Nothing will stop you except total success. 2- Always want to compete / Will to win It is necessary to want to win. And think hard (not work hard) about how to stay at the top once you get there. Always maintain a competitive edge as Warren Buffet says. All you care about is total victory. Every day you obssess about markets, and think about what you need to be the best. This is true in everything, but especially here, it's a highly competitive game. You want to know everything about trading (unlike the pathetic clowns crypto hodlers that only care about "will price of my loterry ticket go up" they are really the ultimate example of what not to do). Gamers that become the best are seen as kids that play all day long non stop and rage at their teammates when they mess up, and rage when they lose. You have to rage when you mess up. Rage when you have a losing spree. "Trade like a robot beep beep no emotions" PUAHAHA what a joke are they serious? Rage when you don't succeed and do what it takes to be. Review your trades over and over obssessively. If you have to shoot yourself in the leg and lose 5% of your account to learn you lesson do it (not financial advice). Winning should matter more than life itself. Top athletes are taking plenty of drugs that will ruin their lives past 35 and they know it. They do everything to be the best, and accept the sacrifice of their older years. Luckilly with speculating you don't have to suicide :D You got to have a competitive mind. You got to absolutely want to win. You should feel good when you are having success and see the other suckers blow up and quit. Going on tradingview, myfxbook, checking the profiles of accounts that were active (and usually argued alot) a few years ago, and seing they have been offline for 12 months or more should put you in a state of euphoria. You should feel your heart starting to pump faster, and get a rush off seing other inferior traders fail miserably, while you are approaching the top of your game. 90% of traders will fail within two years, and within five years 99% will no longer be trading. You need a winning mindset. You are not here to "give it a go" (makes me vomit). You are not hoping to win. You are here to win. If you remove all the delusional unintelligent, gamblers, "I'll give it a go", and only keep the "I'm here to win", stats are waaaaaaaaaaaay better than 10% and 1%. 3- IQ: Systematic intelligence Some say it does not matter. Some clowns even say it is counter productive. I'm going to go to town on them. I'm going to write a lengthy paragraph on this "taboo" subject. How does the ability to process and understand more make you a worse speculator? They use really stupid flawed dishonest logic "oh well they overanalyse everything". Maybe flipping a coin is the best strategy? Just really sad excuses. People with higher IQ make more money... Income goes up in a straight line with IQ... Maybe speculating is the big exception? People with higher IQ are more disciplined... And discipline = much better results. I have a hard time imagining someone having great intuition and thinking the opposite of every one without being smart and without analysing/reading a lot. Makes 0 sense. Other studies tell a similar story. At the top there are professors, MD, research (or number 2 after geniusses), finance is around the top but not like "150" on average they are a little high but not crazy high. A few findings: We find that low-IQ investors are more likely to herd in their buy vs. sell decisions but IQ has little influence on sell vs. hold herding. High-IQ investors’ portfolio holdings outperform low-IQ investors’ portfolios. Low IQ investors portfolio are less diversified. www.erim.eur.nl ==> Low IQ investors refuse to take losses (baghodlers), herd into hype stocks (I extrapolate), go all in in a few investments. And obviously get not as good returns. People of low intelligence keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. It's the same in every discipline. The same patterns repeat over and over and they keep getting scammed over and over and never notice the pattern. Just like a pattern in an IQ test... It might not be the perfect intelligence test but it sure is the perfect "pattern recognition" test. Another quote from Warren Buffet: "Success in investing doesn't correlate with IQ once you're above the level of 125. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing." See? He never said "Oh ye sure buy total garbage when there is blood on the street and don't worry you can be mentally retarded and reach the top 5% investors". Bookworms are seen as smart and they don't make good traders. All those "expert bookworms" economists and other, aren't making billions, and this shows it takes more than being a nerd to make money. People that think this implies being dumb is a strength are honestly too stupid to trade. "High-IQ investors also exhibit superior market timing, stock-picking skill, and trade execution." papers.ssrn.com 16% of the population has an IQ above 115. 25% has an IQ above 110. That's a good start. IQ is not all it takes. But if you are under 110, sorry, you're going to have a really hard time. Why not try something else? In an academic environment, past the first few years, people with an IQ under 115 are considered stupid. You see very little of them. Finance is not a university, but it is a cognitive intensive activity. As IQ goes up you get diminishing returns, but the flipside is as you go down intellectual abilities become a exponentially growing handicap. And having some diploma is pretty useless. Being street smart, not gullible, is way more important... People (especially on the lower end of the scale) really hate this. It's a big taboo. They cannot stand being less intelligent. Always finding excuses and trying to comfort each other. But facts are facts. Nature is cruel. From some paper, IQ had a very high correlation with training success in the military and performance at highly complex jobs, but it was much lower for creativity and leader effectiveness. Abraham they say wasn't that bright (the US were pretty small back then thought). Athletes are not exactly famously smart. Probably all of the celebrities climate activists are pretty low too... "Useful idiots" (Lenin quote). Don't trust internet tests. The problem here is every one thinks they are borderline genius (I remember reading a study where only 2% of respondents claimed they were below average), and even if they find out the truth they'll be in denial. I guess we need them to lose & baghold and add to losers so we may get filled and win :) Someone has to take the opposite side of my trade. 4- Emotional stability Not caring what others think. Also having a big ego (but that doesn't get in the way). Includes being self aware (is this emotional intelligence?). I'll just quote Warren Buffet here: "You don't need a lot of brains in this business. I've always said if you've got an IQ of 160, give away 30 points to somebody else, because you don't need it in investments. What you need is emotional stability. You have to be able to think independently, and when you come to a conclusion you have to really not care what other people say. Just follow the facts and your reasoning. That's tough for a lot of people. But that part, I was just lucky with. I was born that way." One of Jesse Lauriston Livermore biggest loss was in cotton when he listened to someone giving him troll advice (guy was selling while advising to buy), he somehow got himself manipulated when he knew, and he said he knew, the facts were telling him otherwise. Lmao imagine changing your mind on something because some brainfart that thinks he knows something tells you he is 100% sure. LOL! Here ego CLEARLY protects you. I'm cracking up, I just think of absolutely moronic crypto investors when they try to convince common sense people, with their risible ridiculous logic. Most often than not they make zero sense, contradict themselves even, and don't even know it. Ignore the herd mocking you because they are too stupid to understand what you do. They're nothing more than cattle on route for the slaughterhouse where they will be turned into delicious steaks. 5- Discipline Straightforward... If you are not disciplined, you will NEVER be a successful speculator. Or investor. Maybe you can (barely) make it as a spread trader or arbitrage that I don't know. Just take the good setups avoid the bad ones. Get in when you should get out when you should don't get out when you shouldn't. Idk I am trying to find something to say about this... Removing a stop loss because "I really can't take a loss now" or moving to breakeven because "I want to feel relieved" or getting out early of a winner sending all the right signs or suddenly going 25 leverage in Apple puts after losing your money to make it back "it's within my personal risk tolerance" is plain retarded. That's it. Nothing more to it. Literally retarded. 6- Logical not "emotional" It's all about processing clean facts logically. Funny but a study found that traders with more prenatal T, by checking their fingers ratio (the higher the prenatal hormones the smaller the ratio - index is smaller - the lower the empathy the higher the systemizing abilities). content.time.com Empathizing & systemizing abilities are as far as I know exclusive, the more you have of 1 the less of the other. High systemizing abilities are required to make it. I will also add the E-S theory is a better predictor than gender of who chooses STEM subjects according to some psychologists. Obviously, they get alot of hate (from the idiotic "we're all perfectly equal" club). I mean... it's obviously true. Or let's say very very probably true. IQ tests are very much designed to test for intelligence & systemizing abilities rather than "all" intelligence, which is all we care about as speculators. Being able to work quickly with numbers is going to be more useful than being able to detect how someone feels. 7- High appetite for risk Don't pay too much attention to this, it will make more sense later. Speculating is literally about taking risks. If you don't want to take risks I don't even know why you are reading this. Maybe you'll win maybe you'll lose. You have to want to gamble that money on each bet and risk losing it, to sometimes get returns. And when a great opportunity presents itself, when the conditions are right, you should WANT to risk big. Within reason. When Stanley Druckenmiller told George Soros about a short opportunity and that he risked more than usual, Soros told him he was crazy and that was terrible risk management - because with such an opportunity he should have gone with way more size at least double what he did. They still only risked 2% there, but it was way more than usual. Lists of famous traders are full of examples of really big bets (400 leverage against the nzd...), sometimes they go wrong but sometimes they go right. Jesse Lauriston Livermore is known for making alot of really huge bets. He made - inflation adjusted - 1.5 billion USD when he shorted the US stock market in 1929. He kept having huge gains and huge losses even going into debt after going from nothing to big multi millionaire. He took it too far XD 8- Being risk averse, reasonable HAHA! It really is important to be reasonable, risk averse. You want to avoid losing everything. You want to avoid wasting your capital into garbage bets. You shouldn't be so risk averse than when an opportunity presents itself your just freeze and cry yourself to sleep. When the opportunity comes, hit the gaz, become a degen gambler - within reason. "Contradictions" like this is part of why over 95% don't make it. And here neo-cortex, basically consciousness, is going to make a huge difference. The more "advanced" a being is the more self aware and can learn to naturally have qualities that are or appear completely opposed. A smarter mind also is a more agile mind. A strict set of rules you follow like a machine can help... It's not the ultimate solution, the holy grail. It's a crappy suboptimal fix when all hope is lost. Machines themselves... They replace humans at hft frontrunning firms that buy orderflow from robinhood, they use algos for market making, they execute statistical arbitrage at quant funds. They're not speculating and they aren't going to anytime soon / ever. Oh good luck with EAs LOL. Big obvious frauds. 9- Patience There are several aspects to this First, 7 & 8 continuation, you have to avoid risking money on random movements, and wait for the right setup, no matter how long it takes, you might even completely miss out and not see another setup for a long while. Second, once you are in, let it run, don't be in a hurry to get out (WHY?). I don't even know why anyone would want to get out. It feels good to be in a winner. It's just dumb & cowardly. WEAK. Thirdly, it's going to take time to get good and grow an account. Deal with it. Or join the wallstreetbets autists and pray to get lucky, and inevitably end up blowing up and maybe you'll end up on CNBC making anchors laugh. 10- Being interested Obviously... Is it even worth adding to the list? Yes, because 10 is a nice number. Haven't seen many masters that were in "for the lulz and lamboz" and were bored to death by markets.
TVC:DJIEducation
by MrRenev
4
How to be a Successful Forex Trader Segement 8Trading before News News is a fact of Forex trading and while their are several ways to trade the Actual release and it's aftermath, today I want to focus on trading before the News. Understand that the decision to enter the market before News is a conscious one and you don't have to do it. Prime examples are days where interest rates, for a currency you contemplating trading, or Non-Farm payroll are being released. if you intend on trading before news, you must determine whether you are going to stay in the trade during the release or get out. Personally, I usually do not trade on UK interest rate days because the market, at some point, tends to go flat ahead of the release. I certainly do not want to be in the market at the time of the release. The reason is simple, I have no control!! My methodology is based upon high probability trades with tight stops (20-30 pips). Having a position on at the time of the release gives up both my probabilities and my stops. there are 3 possible outcomes: 1) if the release comes out against me, I'm toast, I will take a hit 3 to 5 times what I plan on (as most of you know slippage will cause the stop to be disregarded and or executed at the extreme of the move). 2) it comes out as expected, the trade may be okay but the market may whipsaw and with an expected widening spread, might get taken out anyway. 3) if the news comes out in my favor, I may still get taken out by either a quick whipsaw or widening spread or a combination thereof. How can we make an informed decision on whether to trade or not to trade. In the last segment I talked about documenting and reviewing your trades. I use my documented trades to make my decision. This week, the UK had News releases on Tuesday, Wednesday and Today. On prior occasions, my trades set-ups were not effected by UK employment and retail sales (Tuesday and today's releases) so I opted to trade on those 2 days. yesterday (Wednesday) UK CPI was being released and historically my trades set-ups did not work, so I did not trade yesterday. (which was a good decision). The last thing you want to do is be in a trade ahead of news and "Hope" that the news bails you out. Far too often I have been bit by that bug. Please don't find yourself in that position. Just wait their are plenty of opportunities. In the next segment I will discuss how many trades do you need. I hope you enjoy this post and find it helpful. I would appreciate if you "like" it and follow me :) Stay Green my Friends :) Allen
Education
by AGold54
2
How to be a Successful Forex Trader Segement 7Trade Review and Documenting Most successful traders review and document their trades, unfortunately, alot of new traders do not. "what's done is done, can't change it...." while that is true, you can, and imho must , learn from them. Each afternoon, whether I take a trade or not, I review the market and my potential set-ups, executions, and trade completions. I firmly believe reviewing your trades can help determine what went right, what went wrong and how to improve. Moreover, I track 2 valuable pieces of information, for me at least, which is DD (drawdown) and PP (Pip potential). If you follow my trades, you will know that I trade the same set-ups, over and over again...almost boring. You will have also noticed that I use a set pip stop loss and profit target. I can do this because I have documented, literally, thousands of my trades and I have determined statistically, where a trade reaches the point of no return. Understand that I risk 2% of my account on each trade. which means that the tighter my stop loss, the bigger my return will be. And as weird as it may sound, the occasional loss, using a tighter stop, does not matter as it easily covered by the successful trades. The screenshot above is how I documented Monday's trade in GBPCHF. It was Type 1 trade that was triggered on the breakout. I used a 25 pip stoploss and risked 2% of my account. Once the trade was up +25, I closed 1/2 my position and moved my stop to flat (I actually got +27.4). By doing that, I banked a 1% gain for the day, with no further risk. The trade continued to go my way but found support, retraced slightly, and I closed the remaining 1/2 for +54.8 pips. Very conservative trade management for sure but I ended up banking 3% on this trade. I will take that any day of the week :) I print the screenshot as well as save it under both trade type and in an all screenshot folder. I review the past week on Saturdays and a full month upon the month's conclusion. I also periodically review them to look for any trends or things that I may have missed. Moreover I track trades in an excel spreedsheet, that I will attempt to attach a screenshot of. This allows me to compile and easily access my data. I hope you enjoy this post and find it helpful. I would appreciate if you"like" it and follow me :) Stay Green my Friends :) Allen
Education
by AGold54
16
How to be a Successful Forex Trader Segement 6Measuring Success and Goals As a Professional trader, you have 1 goal...Make money!! That said, traders like to measure their success differently. Some use pips, some use wins v. losses, personally I use daily return. Understand my focus is on generating income and my mantra is "keep stacking positive days" Imho, using pips to measure success can be misleading, I know of traders that will brag about making 300 pips, when they traded 10 micro lots for a 30 pip move. Obviously, the same could have been accomplished by trading 1 mini lot for the same 30 pips. Don't get me wrong, breaking your position down has a strategic purpose, if you have multiple profit targets or another reason to do so just understand that it was a 30 pip move and not a 300 pip move. Win/Loss Ratio can also be deceiving. if you have an inverted (negative) Risk Reward Ratio (RRR) then win/loss ratio means nothing. You most often see this with advertisement's for EA's where the claim is 95% win rate, or something along those lines, and then you look at the trading history to find out the profit target are small 2-5 pips and the stops huge 75-100 pips. Again, don't get me wrong win/loss ratio is important as long as the RRR is not wildly inverted...(Scalpers for instance will often have a negative RRR but usually not more then 1-3). Which brings me to daily % return, which, imho, is the best way to measure success. it is the the great equalizer. For example, if I told you Trader A makes, on average $500 a day, while Trader B makes $200, you might say that Trader A is a better Trader. However, if I then told you that Trader A has a $100K account while Trader B only has a 10K, that clearly changes things because now you realize that Trader A although making more money is only generating .5% per day while Trader B is generating 2%. Big difference. Moving forward, Trader B's account will increase to the point where he will surpass Trader A's account. Hence why, imho, measuring success in daily, or weekly, % return is the best way. All this leads me to Goals. I am often asked "what should my goals be" and this is the most loaded trading question there is. I say that because it does not matter what I can do, or what any other trader can do, it only matter what YOU can do at Your Current Skill Level . Psychology in trading is so important and permeates all aspects of it. Knowing what other traders can generate can be disheartening, even if, you are a good trader! I feel the best goals a trader can have are 1) a daily/weekly % return that their current skill level permits and 2) constantly working to improve. It is number 2 that is most important. Their are so many ways to improve one's trading. More precise entries, better exits, smaller stops, larger profit targets, better trade selection, better money management, and the list goes on and on. Reviewing and documenting your trades is so important in this process (and will be the topic of my next educational post). Today, for instance, I did not have a valid set-up, so I did not trade! Understand I get up at 1;15 am est., everyday and start analyzing the market. I am up and I am ready to trade, however, their are times when it is better not to. As you know yesterday, we hit on 2 Solid trades, their is no reason to give any money back on a bad trade. I'm greedy that way...lol I hope this post is informative and helps. If it does, I would appreciate if you "like" it and follow me :) Stay Green my Friends:) Allen
Education
by AGold54
23
Dax daily: 30 Jul 2019 Exactly as we predicted yesterday, the statistics proved their strengths yet again. We couldn't be happier as these historical calculations have huge success! Dax broke through Friday's high, which had a probability of 87% and therefore we've labelled the analysis with a bullish bias. After the high was broken, sellers corrected the price action just to hand over the momentum for another daily uptrend. The price then closed midway its intraday range. Important zones Resistance: 12 480 Support: 12 368 Statistics for today Detailed statistics in the Statistical Application Macroeconomic releases NIL Today's session hypothesis Dax opened with a small ascending gap which is already closed at the time we write this. The session today seems to be a slow one, the price is in the consolidation area. From our point of view, today's chances are equal for long & short. Nevertheless, sellers rejected the first resistance at 12 464 yesterday so we rather incline to favour shorting. Buyers could appear around 12 368 right after the retest of yesterday's low and sellers could be sound at the known resistance of 12 480.
EUREX:FDAX1!
by FTMO
Dax daily: 25 Jul 2019 Yesterday we had a clear bullish bias as the statistics suggested the retest of previous day high and the gap closure. Both of these statistics were successfully fulfilled and those who took advantage of this might have scored nice profits. The beginning of yesterday's session started with a slight downward move caused by French and German PMI reports, before the price reversed to the upside as expected. Important zones Resistance: 12 576, 12 645 Support: 12 437, 12 470 Statistics for today Detailed statistics in the Statistical Application The statistical probability of closing the gap is 70% Macroeconomic releases 13:45 CEST - ECB Main Refinancing Rate 14:30 CEST - ECB Press conference Today's session hypothesis Today's open started with a small ascending gap sized 17 points. Once again, this one has a good statistical probability of being closed. We've had two uptrending days in a row and the momentum is weakening. The price is currently at 12 576, which is a resistance level. It will be interesting to see the initial move out of here. Should Dax head even higher, then the next resistance area of our focus is 12 645. On the other hand, if bulls stay calm, we anticipate the slow down in yesterday's range. However, needless to say it's a super Thursday for ECB. The interest rate is expected unchanged and Mario Draghi needs to address some measures with regards to economic stagnation.
EUREX:FDAX1!
by FTMO