Tuesday 4 February 2014

The Anatomy of the Foolish Trader

1. Foolish traders confuse hindsight with trading, they think that because they reviewed price performance history and saw patterns or the final result that they could have easily traded it in real time. They do not understand the dynamics of real time trading with risk management, discipline, and a developed trading plan and probably never will.

2. Foolish traders believe that what they learned in college in their finance and economics text books will make them great traders because they are so smart. They confuse the realities of a dynamic real market with papers they wrote in college where they could just give the right answers and be right. The markets are a moving target and the right answer changes daily.

3. The ultimate in ignorance is thinking that at the beginning of our attempt at trading that we have all the answers, if we have never traded real money in a real account successfully for multiple years then we know nothing, it is time to be a student not an arrogant know it all.

4. The reality of trading a real six figure or multimillion dollar account has no relation to a foolish traders opinions and theories. 

 "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is." – Yogi Berra

5. Foolish traders make blanket statements like “Day trading doesn't work.” 

When they should be saying: “Day trading doesn't work, for me.” - Richard Weissman.

6. Foolish traders come into social media trying to be teachers when they should be students, they don’t even know, that they don’t know.

7. Foolish traders have a recency bias thinking that what works in the current market environment is what will always work.

8. Foolish traders develop too much confidence before they have really built competence and that never ends well.

9. The foolish traders are the most adamant about their opinions, they have made up their mind. This is the complete opposite of the successful traders who are always open to learning more and growing and have flexibility as their biggest strength in trading and in life.

10. Foolish traders have no need to interact with other traders, read books, or learn from more experienced traders because they already know everything.

Source: http://newtraderu.com/