Monday 2 September 2013

Quote for the day

“I used to do a lot of philosophical speculation as a young man. I wasted a large part of my youth regurgitating certain ideas. Then I discovered that one can learn a great deal more through action than through contemplation. So I became an active thinker where my thinking played an important role in deciding what actions to take and my actions play an important role in improving my thinking. This two-way interaction between thinking and action became the hallmark of my philosophy and the hallmark of my life.” - George Soros

02-Sep-2013 CSE Trade Summary


Crossing - 02/09/2013 - Top 10 Contributors to Change ASPI

Following Stocks Reached New Low on 02/09/2013



Forecasting the Market

Amateurs attempt to make a forecast while professionals manage information to make decisions based on probabilities. Dr. Alexander Elder compares this to a Doctor that received a patient with a knife stabbed in his chest. The family will ask, "will he survive?" and "when can he go home?" But the Doctor is not forecasting, he must prevent the patient from dying, remove the knife, saturate the organs and carefully watch for an infection. He monitors the health trend of the patient and takes measures to prevent any complications. He is managing, not forecasting. 

To profit in trading you do not need to forecast the future, you need to derive from the market whether the bulls or bears are in control. You need to practice money management techniques for long term survival.

You trade against the sharpest mind in the ocean-like markets. Mental discipline is an undivided part of trading. Please remember the following points:

Understand you are in the market for the long term, that you want to be a trader in even 20 years from now.

Develop your trading strategy, either technical or fundamental analysis. If "x" happens then "y "is therefore likely to take place. You may need different tools for trading a bull or a bear market.

Develop a money management plan, with the first goal being long term survival. Secondary goal is steady money growth and third goal would be high profits. Successful traders do not concentrate on the profit itself but maintaining successful trades regardless of the earned amount.

Winners feel, think and act different than losers. Look inside yourself, eliminate the illusions and change the way you have been thinking and acting. Changing is hard but could pave the way to becoming a successful trader.
Source: http://www.tradingquarter.com

The Greatest Traders

What separates the 10% that make money from the 90% that don’t?
1. 10,000 hours.
In his recent book ‘Outliers’ Malcolm Gladwell describes the 10,000-Hour Rule, claiming that the key to success in any cognitively complex field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours equates to around 4hrs a day for 10 years. For some reason most people that ‘try their hand’ at trading view it as a get rich quick scheme. That in a very short space of time, they will be able to turn $500 into $1 million! It is precisely this mindset that has resulted in the current economic mess, a bunch of 20-somethings being handed the red phone for financial weapons of mass destruction. The greatest traders understand that trading much like being a doctor, engineer or any other focused and technical endeavor requires time to develop and hone the skill set. Now you wouldn’t see a doctor performing open heart surgery after 3 months on a surgery simulator. Why would trading as a technical undertaking require less time?

Trading success, comes from screen time and experience, you have to put the hours in!

2. Education, education, education.
The old cliché touted by politicians when they can’t think of anything clever to say to their audience. The importance of education to success in trading cannot be placed on a high enough pedestal. You have to learn to earn, the best traders work obsessively to refine their edge further to stay ahead of the curve.

3. Think for yourself.
“NO! NO! NO!”… “Bear Stearns is not in trouble”…”Don't move your money from Bear! That’s just silly! Don't be silly!”
A quote from well known stock guru Jim Cramer aired on CNBC days before Bear Stearns lost 90% of its value. Many followed this call and felt the obvious pain as a result. As the old saying goes, “too many cooks spoil the broth” it is very much the same in trading. Successful traders blinker themselves from the opinions of others; they focus on their own analysis of fundamental and technical information.

4. Adapt or Die.
Market conditions change and technology advances, thus the conditions for trading are always evolving, the rise in mechanical trading is testament to that. The very best traders through a process of education and adaptation are constantly staying ahead of the curve and creating ever new and ingenious methods to profit from the markets evolution.

5.Fail to plan, you plan to fail.
The best traders have a well documented plan; they know exactly what they are looking for and follow that plan to the letter. Their preparation for a trade starts long before the market open, it is this meticulous planning and importantly adherence to that plan that helps them avoid the biggest demons for any trader, over trading and revenge trading.

6.“Be like Machine”
As human beings emotions play a key role in our existence, for a trader emotions can be a source of great pain. Trading psychology and the management of your emotions in a trade play a key role in overall success. Fear and greed can cut your winners short and let your losers run. Dealing with emotions follows on from your plan; the more robust your plan the less likely you are to fall into the emotional minefield.

7.Know your tools
Every trader has a set of tools they use, DOM, Charts, News feeds etc. These tools are a traders bread and butter; they are the most vital part of a traders arsenal, without which it would be impossible to trade. The best traders have mastered their order entry methodology, they know all about the features they need from their charts. This mastery of their tools, allows the trader to get the very best out of the resources they have available to them and ensures perfect execution of their trading ideas.

8.Know Thyself
Behind all the egos and excess, the best traders know their limitations; they focus on what can go wrong in a trade, and expend a lot of energy in limiting and controlling their risk before thinking about profits. They have a heightened sense of self-awareness and focus on incremental self improvement.

9.Profit & Loss
The best traders focus on the trade itself rather than the P&L; they view each trade as a technical exercise and focus on getting the most out of the market in accordance with their plan. They do not think in terms of the grocery payment, the electric bill and the desire to make X amount to cover a mortgage payment. Focusing on the money behind a trade can cloud technical objectivity.

In Conclusion
The greatest traders work hard to get ahead and even harder to stay ahead. Through increased and niche knowledge they constantly adapt with the market and remain profitable in every environment. Drive, tenacity and the will to succeed is the greatest edge of every successful trader.

By Aamar Shehzad
http://www.ino.com

Stock Market Operators: Do they exist? How do they manipulate?

By Benjamin Lee

I believe that most of us have heard of stock market operators. They are known by many different names and they are constantly the blame for our financial losses. In some parts of the world, they are known as sharks, syndicates, big bosses, speculators, liars, cheaters or stock market manipulators. Some of us cheer their existence and their operations while some cursed them as if they are the culprits to our financial ruins. Are they our friends or foes? As the famous saying goes, know thy foes and you will have the upper hand in battle. In this post, I will challenge and dare you to swim with the sharks and eat from the crumbs of their feeds and not to be their feed. Here I would like to bring out some of my personal thoughts on this question that most newbie has.

Ok, here is the short answer. Yes, you are right. They existed and their operations are hidden from most people especially the newbie in these financial markets. I believe if we know them and how they operate, we could actually move along with them. In fact, the whole purpose of technical analysis is to determine the balance of demand and supply and the stock market operators are some of the powerful and rich individuals or groups with much buying and selling power. If we are able to track their movement, we will be able to profit from their operations. However, if we are ignorant of their existence, we could be their next meal.

Basic facts of stock market operators are listed below for your reference.

* They work individually or in a group.

* They rely on the market trends to help them in their mission.

* The general publics are their big customers.

* They together work with the public listed company owners or insiders.

* They have a main mission objective to accomplish.

* The bulk of their operation revolved around the accumulation and the distribution of stocks from / to the general publics.

* They are rich and powerful figures but they are also humans that have emotions like all of us.

* They have extensive credit facilities and lower transaction costs than the retail investors.

* They do make mistakes like any one of us. Their mistake costs millions in dollars.

* Market news, stock market analyst, corporate announcements, word of mouth advertising, price bidding and order queues are some of their tricks and tools that they used to achieve their main objective.

* They don’t try to pick the bottom or the top like most retail investors do. Again, some of them try to do this and it costs them much sorrow and dismay.

* They do attempt to manipulate the chart to trick the chartist whether you like it or not.

*They are both the buyer and seller in the queue order at any given time.

*They are not doing charity work. They existed to make your money.

It is important to understand them well as they are big volume buyers and sellers. They can tilt the balance of demand and supply. Understanding the above traits of stock market operators will help to clear some of the myths that we have of them. Remember, they are humans like us. Some of the above points deserved to be elaborated further to bring out the secrets of trading methodologies that we will employ in our technical analysis.

Primary market trends are very important to their success and failures. If they judge wrongly on this, they could go bust easily as the power of leveraging will work against them. Remember this, they cannot fight against the trends and they don't have the strength to do so. Don't ever think that they can swim against the tides.

If their mission objective is to acquire stocks, they might push down the prices to cause temporary market panics to squeeze out the stocks out from the speculators and investors and this is especially true in certain countries where short-selling is not allowed. The success of this technique will depends on what sort of people that are holding the stocks. This will get rid of the intraday and short term traders. However, they will try to maintain the prices around a certain range as to keep the sellers motivated. Usually the public listed company owners and insider will work in tandem to collect the shares from the general public. After they exhausted the fearful speculators and investors, they will then turn their eyes to the stronger speculators and investors by pushing up the prices higher to catch their interests.

If their mission is to distribute stocks, they will push up the stock prices to catch the attention of speculators and investors. They will work with market analyst to create beautiful pictures of the company prospects. They will work with the public listed company owners and insiders to create scarcity of stocks. At this moment of time, they will also announce all the good news while pushing up the stock prices. They will queue up as buyers and sellers in the order queue. They will buy their own stocks to create volume to entice the crowd to follow. As they bid up and down the prices, stocks were distributed without the awareness of the general public.
Source:http://tradeorinvest.com/