Saturday, May 8, 2010

4 elements for Trading Success

I believe that a combination of the following four elements is the foundation on which we can build success in trading. It is necessary for traders to have all four elements working together.

These four elements are:

• A profitable trading system/method
• Adequate capitalization
• Money management strategy, and
• Discipline or a winning trading psychology.

A profitable trading system is your foundation. Emotionless trading is a long-term training process that is based on the feedback of the performance of your trading system. Another important thing to keep in mind is to only risk the amount of money you can afford
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To achieve your objectives, your plan must include:
  • Looking for ways to get consistently good results
  • Learning how to make money whether the market goes up or down
  • Trading part-time as a serious hobby before you quit your day job
  • Taking control of your financial future by growing your retirement funds effectively
  • Implementing a strategy that protects against downside risk
  • Never buying high and selling low again-----------------------

Six Rules
Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 01:33 PM
Six Rules
Michael Steinhardt is considered one of the most successful hedge fund managers. One dollar invested with Steinhardt Partners LP, his flagship hedge fund, at its launch in 1967 would have been worth $481 when Steinhardt retired in 1995.
I’ve been reading about Mr. Steinhardt and recently came across a speech in which he provided six rules in order to become a successful hedge fund manager. Since I think the same apply to all investors, not just those who run hedge funds, I decided to provide them for you as well. They include the following:
  1. Make all your mistakes early in life. He says the more tough lessons you learn early on, the fewer errors you make later. A common mistake of all young investors is to be too trusting with brokers, analysts, and newsletters who are trying to sell you bad stocks.
  2. Always make your living doing something you enjoy. This way, you devote your full intensity to it which is required for success over the long-term.
    (asr: very true, why IT (what you enjoy) gives fuel to putup with 70 hour weeks which is required for success these days .
     -- 11/10/2011: asr: on a youtube video I watched Steve Job confirmed the same thing as key to 'success')
  3. Be intellectually competitive. This involves doing constant research on subjects that make you money. The trick, he says, in plowing through such data is to be able to sense a major change coming in a situation before anyone else.
    (asr: I only noticed MRCI OCT, NOV OIL patterns today 9/24/10 , bit late after 2 weeks of loss trades, these charts show Bearish trend 8/15 onwards in 5 year trend. it seems OIL is following 5 year trend, make sense .
    AS this guy said I did not use my knowlege of this Seasonal chart before trading only doing after loss trades , I need to study these more at least have them handy UPLOAD to foresightis.com ...)
  4. Make good decisions even with incomplete information. In the real world, he argues, investors never have all the data they need before they put their money at risk. You will never have all the information you need. What matters is what you do with the information you have. Do your homework and focus on the facts that matter most in any investing situation.
  5. Always trust your intuition. For him, intuition is more than just a hunch. He says intuition resembles a hidden supercomputer in the mind that you’re not even aware is there. It can help you do the right thing at the right time if you give it a chance. In fact, over time your own trading experience will help develop your intuition so that major pitfalls can be avoided.
  6. Don’t make small investments. You only have so much time and energy so when you put your money in play. So, if you’re going to put money at risk, make sure the reward is high enough to justify it.
* This report was originally published by The Kirk Report on June 2, 2004.
http://www.investopedia.com/university/greatest/michaelsteinhardt.aspQuotes

"One dollar invested with me in 1967 would have been worth $481 on the day I closed the firm in 1995, versus $19 if it had been invested in a Standard & Poor's index fund."

"I always used fundamentals. But the fact is that often, the time frame of my investments was short-term."

"I do an enormous amount of trading, not necessarily just for profit, but also because it opens up other opportunities. I get a chance to smell a lot of things. Trading is a catalyst."

"Somehow, in a business [securities trading] so ephemeral, the notion of going home each day, for as many days as possible, having made a profit – that's what was so satisfying to me.
asr: wow look his time frame 30 min to 30 days , but still use fundamentals ... It seems Kirk is more like this GUY. I wanted to be like these 2 guys Kirk and Stiinhrdt ...( asr)
Most Famous For:Steinhardt Partners achieved a performance track record that still stands out on Wall Street: 24% compound average annual returns – more than double the S&P 500 – over a 28-year period. What's more amazing is that Steinhardt accomplished this record with stocks, bonds, long and short options, currencies and time horizons ranging from 30 minutes to 30 days. There were few investment instruments over which Michael Steinhardt did not wield some mastery.
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Education of a Trader
As I see it, all traders are ultimately self-taught. There are no required classes, readings, homework assignments or even a syllabus with recommendations. Tests are administered on a daily basis, frequently with multiple tests on the same day. Worst of all, everyone is graded on an unfavorable curve in which there are more Fs than As.
Against this backdrop, education counts, but skill and experience count even more. An insatiable curiosity helps, as does a willingness to explore unfamiliar territory. Great trades, insights and strategies present themselves in somewhat random fashion and, as Louis Pasteur observed, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
But what kind of preparation is ideal? Malcolm Gladwell asserts that 10,000 hours of experience is a prerequisite for greatness in almost any field. In a normal career, that level of commitment usually translates to five years, but on Wall Street, 10,000 hours of experience can be crammed into 3–4 years. Of course, all hours are not created equal. A trader’s capacity to distinguish between random events and meaningful patterns is important to establish a solid trajectory of growth and development.


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This is another Brain reference
How to develop a futures trading system ebook 10 tips from the website with the book;


  1. Do not feel compelled to always have a trade on or to trade everyday. Capital preservation is the key to successful trading and sometimes that just means waiting when the odds are not in your favour. Throughout all my years of investing I've found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was made in the waiting." Jesse Livermore
  2. Develop your own proven trading system - accept that losing trades will be part of that system.
  3. Do not let fear and greed influence your trading decisions.
  • Trading is a business, be strategic and logical.
  • Learn something new everyday that will help to maintain or increase your edge.
  • Keep a trading journal and review why your actual trades vary from your trading plan.
  • Do not fight the market, it's easier to run with the wind than against it.
  • Always trade with a stop loss and never move that stop further away or remove it completely. Do not allow a day trade to become a long term investment.
  • Become an expert, know your market inside out. Be it options, futures or an individual stock - you should strive to become the World authority in it!
  • The market will rarely do what it 'should' be doing. Instead focus on what it is doing.
  • Friday, May 7, 2010

    VP review


    2007-12-06
    Ok not too sure where to start on this one but will give you my experience.

    Initially purchased VP software in 2004 after asking a lot of questions and doing as much research as I could based on the information I gather. The sales tactics utilised at the time by the company where typical of most hard sell tactics you would find at an estate agents or a car sales yard.

    Initially I was very sceptical but took the plunge and paid for 69 mkts at around $8,000.

    I then proceeded to spend a lot of time forward testing various strategies includingthe "when the blue crosses the black line" (my results indicated breakeven after about six months)

    After about 12 months I concluded the following

    1. VP is no good for daytrading, I know lot's of people are trying to use it for FX daytrading I believe that in the long run their systems will fail. Using indicators based on EOD data is not a clever way to trade IMHO. This is no fault of the software only the people using the software for something that it wasn't designed for.

    2. As VP uses EOD data for it's calculations of it's indicators then it's follows that your style of trading is going to be swing and or position trading. If you don't want to do this then don't buy the software.

    3. It would then follow that you need good money management rules and the discipline to follow those rules. This is where nearly all people fail because they have neither, once again this is not a problem with the software.

    4. As we are looking at daily data then it also follows that signals are going to be less frequent therefore it makes sense to follow more than one market, it also makes sense to diversify the market selection so you aren't putting all of your eggs into one basket. Here is an example market portfolio

    10 yr T Note
    Soybean Complex (Soybean/Soymeal/Oil)
    Corn
    Lean Hog
    Live Cattle
    GBP FX
    AUD FX
    S&P Emini
    Light Crude or Emini Light Crude
    Sugar No.11
    Cotton
    Orange Juice
    Gold

    Armed with the above I then spent a good 18 months (in my spare time) working on various systems, backtesting and forward testing them before I settled on one that I am confident works across all VP markets.
    (asr: this 18 months back testing is just to test various VP systems of he coded , NON-VP systems are not in this test , this is what this guy mean )

    5. So now we have a piece of software that utilises EOD to give us signals , we have a target set of markets, we have a money management plan (and hopefully the discipline to follow it) all we need now is some money to trade, and here is the crux of the matter. I believe that in order to trade a diversified set of markets using an EOD system you need as a minimum $100,000. I am sure that plenty will disagree with me but the simple fact is that you need this account size to be able to trade a diversified range of markets while still maintaining good money mgmt. Also consider that if a VP package costs $3k to $18k then that also needs to factored in as a cost of trading, this cost of trading should not in turn wipe out a large % of your account. A good example of this a guy I know who wanted to spend $3k on VP forex mkts but he only had a $3k account to trade. Sorry but no software is going to make you profitable on such a small capital base.

    My system that utilises some of the VP indicators (not the neural index) has returned 160% on a $100k account risking a max of $3,000 a trade (3% starting account size). Strike rate is about 50% with a R:R of between 2.5 to 3:1. 90 trades to date over a 9 month timeframe

    I have tried to replicate the VP indicators I use and to date have had no success. I have come to admit that there is value to be had. I have started looking at individual stocks and was considering adding some to my portfolio as the system I use appears to work well on stocks.

    In my view the Software can be used to make good returns but it takes more than just waiting for a blue line to cross a black, you need all of the above points, be prepared to to a lot work and research and above all strong money management and the discipline to stick your rules. People are labelling it a "scam" because they have no knowledge of what the markets are about and they are blinded by what they want to believe rather than what is.

    The software is pricey and somewhat expensive for what it is and requires a lot of work , it is not a standalone trading system but a tool.

    My rating of 3 is given based the fact that the software is good but it is expensive and is not for a new trader with no experience of the markets.

    Good Luck

    Monday, May 3, 2010

    Inversion Reversion: A Spread Trade in Crude Oil (WTIC vs. Brent)


    the balck bkg image is (DEC10 - JUN 10 ) CL spread as of 5/3/2010 , notice it shows wide range of $1 with in a day. so when JUN is high BUY of this spread is good idea , as JUN will drop while DEC10 maintain same level or little drop, giving the Net of spread close to $1
    b) this way we can avoid having options , the Far LONG contract act as option if JUN goes high from our ENTRY position .


    Current pricing of crude oil (a/o 2/11/09)

    Historical Chart of the spread between WTI and COIL

    As we can see, the spread percentage is currently around -15 to -20% and market instability and noise has significantly distorted the historical spread. This spread is tradeable on both directions. Anticipating a market dislocation tells us to short WTI and buy COIL. If we want to trade with a reversionary interest (the current situation) then we would long WTI and short COIL. In the latter case, we expect the -20% market discount of WTIC compared to Brent crude to normalize to the historical norm of +7% premium.

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    Since then, the inverted WTI prices have rebounded completely to a premium versus the Brent counterpart! Here is a chart showing the evolving mean reversion:

    wti-coil-03-06-09-2-66p

    As you can see in the trade summary the capture of the 5-day reversion yielded a net +$1,360. Today, the reversion continued through to a premium on WTI:COIL. Here is the reading on Crude prices for the front three months on Friday, March 06, 2009:

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