How can we improve our trading skill ?

Discussion in 'Risk Management' started by Peter brandley, May 9, 2013.

  1. hello guys- we want to improve our trading skill . and we want to continue our trading . so you can share your some tips on this topic , how can we improve it ???
     
    murray t turtle likes this.
  2. My philosophy is to depend as little as possible on skill, hence I try to automate all my strategies. No matter how you do it, what's gonna kill you are your emotions. If you can get rid of them, half the job is done. Nassim Taleb put this very elegantly by drawing analogies to the philosophy of "stoicism" in his latest book "Antifragile".
     
  3. under the mentorship only and by taking asceticism and sacrifices.no other way.
     
  4. tiddlywinks

    tiddlywinks

    First, let me say to Relocate... You sound like you're a cog in some machine.
    Go to Greece and commit suicide in the street. You're welcome!

    Now, here's a short list that may be a bit more useful...

    Keep a journal. Not only the why and how of your trades, but also your emotions and personal thoughts during the trade. This could help you understand and improve the humanness factor, which as QuantWIz points out can be a detriment.

    Study crowd behavior and psychology. HFT and all the other automated machinations are created by people. The recipients of whatever those results are people. People as people still participate in the markets. And while computers don't tire or deviate, they certainly do get confused as shown by the Flash crash, Knight, and Twitter events. And it will be people who put corrective changes and make new rules to existing systems. Always remember, when you are buying "they" are the seller. When you are selling "they" are the buyer.

    Become an expert in the instruments you trade. Where would you like those hog carcasses delivered? I never saw a press release about a stock split effective today! Nobody told me that option expired on Friday!! That's just a 30000 foot view on what you should understand about what you trade.

    And if you want something really hard to do you can hone your trading skills by answering 1 question honestly for every trade you make... Why am I buying/selling NOW? To make a profit or to limit/prevent a loss are NOT acceptable answers to the question. Because I think it's going to go up/down is NOT an acceptable answer to the question.

    Trade On!
     
  5. OH SH1T!!!

    Where have you been all this time,Tiddlypiss,sorry,i mean Tiddlywinks??I`ve spent my entire time on ET for nothin`!
     
  6. Redneck

    Redneck

    OP

    Based on yer past posts, I somewhat suspect your motives…, nevertheless

    Several options available…., but as with most things – one gets out, only…, what one puts in


    Jourrnaling
    SIM trading
    Video recording each trading session


    Then, studying the collected data…, parsing out one’s deficiencies…., correcting them…, validating the corrections are appropriate and made permanent


    Of course this’ll take a complete commitment to the truth, and doing the work - (identifying one’s inadequacies…, admitting and taking ownership…., fixing)

    Many times; what we think we’re doing… and what we’re actually doing – not even close to being the same… (but when trading absolutely must be)

    Not to mention – it’s near impossible for many to admit they’re way less than perfect – infallible – don’t know crap (ego is such a bitch, as is ignorance & uncertainty)



    Final thought;

    Learning/ improving must be a career long commitment/ endeavor – period


    Cheerios
    RN
     
  7. Win more money than you lose :eek:
     
    murray t turtle likes this.
  8. bone

    bone

    Don't repeat mistakes.

    Don't assume that your personal discretion and your intellect is smarter than the price print you see on the screen.

    You don't have to out-think or outwhit markets to make a very good living at it.

    Usually the killer for most traders is the five inches between their ears and not the trading system they chose to use.

    Never underestimate the ability for a human being to sabotage and self-destruct. They get bored and act impulsively. They need that dopamine rush. Nothing good ever becomes of it. The richest traders I've ever personally met are really boring personality types typically speaking. And their approach to the markets is much more "streamlined" ( simplistic ) than many folks would realize. Not all, but many. Math and computers are great and some very successful traders use it, but my guess is that those types are not the vast majority yet. Just my guess.
     
    murray t turtle and jl1575 like this.
  9. Well i think that the only best way for us to make changes in our tarding is to create our own trading plan. We need to build a good and our trading plan to ensure we do not suffer any losses occurring over time. To be sure, do not ignore TP % SL when making trades.

    There are more ways like get into sort of trading contest- competing against other traders
     
  10. Everyone has their own answers to this question. I'm sure you're not looking for a definitive answer, but for all of us to share what works for us, right?
    As a directional trader, this is far easier of an answer than I made it out to be for my first 5 years as a trader. I now put a vast majority of my effort into studying only the key elements that are relevant to my system.
    I tend to think of the market less like a math problem and more like a foreign language. With language, being familiar is way more important than being smart. Lots of low I.Q. non-english speakers speak their native language better than I speak their native language. That's because they are more familiar, not because they are smarter. So if you want to get better in the market, treat it like a language. The guy who said keep a journal was not wrong. It's essential. Language is just pattern recognition. Very complex pattern recognition where every nuance has meaning. If you are learning french, it's easier to talk to someone in person because they use body language that you may already be familiar with. Speaking an unfamiliar language on the phone is a bit tougher until you get fluent. The market is the same way.
    The thing that helped me the most (and is helping me still) is to decide which factors are important to your method, then study the crap out of them. If you use trendlines, support/resistance lines or channel lines, copy paste a picture of as many different types of price-to-line relationships as possible and stare at them, record what happened next, get a feel for the pattern and what followed. This is the same technique chess-masters use. They often know 12+ moves in advance that the game is over, not because they're smart and can figure it out as it comes at them, but because they've seen that set-up hundreds of times. Trading should be easier than chess because there are likely only a dozen or so patterns that are actually relevant to each of our personal trading systems. How easy would it be to become an expert on recognizing the formation of so few things when chess-masters spend thousands of hours memorizing hundreds of piece combinations that are often hidden among other useless pieces? I guess the real question is do you want to be rich? Or is trading just a way to escape having to work more than 40hrs per week? Work is work. And the chess-master approach to developing my skill has paid off well for me.
     
    #10     May 15, 2013
    murray t turtle likes this.