Saturday, January 8, 2011

Best of Trade to Learn

Updates till January 8 below

Dear readers, I realized this morning that the next post was going to be the 100th post of this blog. (January 8 update : now approaching 600 posts!) I must admit that I never expected that I would write 100 posts in less than two months. In fact, my only aim, and it did seem challenging at that time, was to document my daily trades and whatever I had learned  from them. As you regular readers know, the blog has turned out to be much more than that. And you readers are a big reason for that. I never expected the blog to have such a large readership so soon, and there certainly are days when I am too tired or not in the mood to post, but its the thought that there might be people counting on me for a daily review or stock picks that makes me post everyday. So, thanks for your support and I hope together, we will continue to grow to be the best traders we can be!

It certainly has been one wild ride since I started this blog. When I started it in early January, I was coming from over 170% gains in 2009. So, my confidence levels were indeed high up. This continued for the first two weeks but the market has a way of showing you your place as soon as you start getting complacent. That's what happened to me. One small mistake and I was in a downward spiral.


I was in a slow, painful recover phase after that where I was very quick to collect both my profits and losses. I admit, my confidence was shattered. But out of nowhere, all that changed one day. And surprisingly, what got me my confidence back  was not making a few good trades or having one great  trade, but not trading at all!

I feel it imperative to state, please don't make life all about money and don't let your market results affect the rest of your day. Sometimes, we as traders, looking at our screens hours a day and keeping track of the P/L bottomline all the time, can lose sight of this simple fact.


Here are some other posts that I particularly like and hopefully you will like them too.



The blog has certainly helped me improve as a trader so far, and I hope you readers are benefiting a little too. Trading is unique in the sense that it offers new challenges everyday. Each and every tick is different. Each day is a whole new challenge. Each day presents us with endless opportunities. That's why it is imperative that we keep on learning.....always. Trade to learn, and maybe you can even learn to trade.

March Updates

The first link here is the most viewed post of this blog. The second deals with the importance of position sizing in trading. If you don't master the art of position sizing, sooner or later you will end up blowing up your trading account. And lastly, we have a post based on my personal experiences on the problems faced with and how you can succeed with small trading accounts.


Trading with small accounts

May Updates

One of the most important things I have learned in trading. You can't be a successful short term trader without following this.

Trade what you see, not what you think

June Updates


July Updates

A post on how I called the bottom in the market when most traders were predicting gloom and doom. Though the post goes into calling this particular bottom, the general guidelines for picking any bottom remain pretty much the same.

Calling the bottom

August Updates

With the consensus being that Netflix was grossly overvalued, I wrote a post on why I refuse to short a stock like Netflix.


September Updates 
 
One of the common questions new, and even experienced traders, struggle with is where exactly to place their stop loss. This question becomes even more critical in these times of automated trading where we find that it is common for our stops to be hit, only for the stock to turn and run without us. Here is a post on the art of setting stop loss points.

 
November Updates 
 
This was a post on a slow, choppy trading day when I had nothing better to do. The post was written partly in jest and I was quite surprised by the response it got. I guess a lot of traders, new and experienced, could relate to this post. It ended up being one of the top five read posts of the blog.


December Updates 
 
A post on how to make the best use of StockTwits.

A post on the importance of using multiple time frames in trading. Using multiple time frames for my trades has been one of the biggest improvements I have made in my trading in 2010. This post shows the importance of using multiple time frames for charting even for short term traders.

 
I ended the year with a post on advice for new traders. I had received many mails from new traders asking for advice, so I decided to do a full post about it.

January Updates 
 
Being fed up of all the yearly predictions being thrown out out there, I decided to write down a few predictions of my own. The beauty of these predictions is that they are valid for every year!

2 comments:

Bill said...

Yayyy my terrible Netflix top call at $145 made the "best of" list ;-). Lol i'm not bitter though it actually provided a great short opportunity for me, which i still have about half of my original position. I still see NFLX at $100 but im not going to pretend this time that i know for sure when.

You have some great posts and a lot of good advice and again, sound strategy.

I also loved "taking it to the next level : trading with small accounts".
Every new trader i give advice to has never thought about how a small account can easily be eroded by commission fee's esp. when short term trading, its almost more important than determining a good strategy. Almost. But anyone who has traded more than a few years will tell you that times will not always be good and those small percentages add up to huge losses.

positiontrader said...

On the contrary Bill, thanks for your analysis of Netflix in that post! I know a lot of the fundamental analysts agreed with your analysis.

Glad you liked the post on the effect of commissions. Lot of people forget that trading is not a zero sum game. An equal number of profits and losses will result in a negative number due to commissions and other fees. And the way most of the commissions are structured, its the small account trader who ends up paying for it the most.