Spread BettingIt’s been a few months since I last traded and the reasons are many. The reason I still haven’t traded is one of time and confidence. On the time front I have a heavy workload and a fantastic newborn son to play with. Both of these are keeping me for giving a 100% to my market analysis but I’m not complaining. This time away has taught me more about relaxing, patience timing and the markets ability to surprise. It’s been time well spent.
The reasons for not trading over the past few months are mostly connected to me blowing my account, adding to losses and breaking every rule there ever was. It has been a humbling, frightening and nervous period which I will explore at length in a series of articles I want to write on the reality of trading. The series will be entitled “The psychological anatomy of a losing trade” and hopefully I will get some time to sit down over the Christmas period and document the six months that the saga went on for. With the series I want to try and get away from the typical analysis and have a more thorough look at the emotional implications of how emotion can override logical reasoning.
My account is now a shadow of its former self but instead of trying to get it back I will be concentrating of gaining 2 points per trade. Improve my trading and establish key rules and behaviours that over time will become second nature thus removing the emotional ties. This is of course very logical and seems to be the way to go but needs a lot of time. I’m just interested in becoming a good trader and gaining discipline, insight and collected logic to allow me to eventually make money from the markets but I realise this is a long term project.
To anyone else who lost out in the greatest rally in 70 years hopefully you haven’t given up and hopefully we can better ourselves and gain a greater personal insight.
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Hello mate – figured I would check in, been a busy week on the market and I am knackered – in recent times, I have upgraded to the world of currencies and oil, basically it’s like the normal market on steroids… But as for the FTSE I went short some more at 5250 – my sentiment is this a W shaped recession and a similar shaped market movement. If you take a look at the 1929 model – you will see market fell about 50% and rallied back a huge amount of that before plummeting back down again – you’re right this has been the rally of the century, and not surprising given the amount of free cash sloshing about in the world today…. but my instinct is telling me that there will be some nervous people out there not wanting to get caught out like they did before. All that needs to happen is a trigger.
The fact is – in terms of fundamentals, nothing has changed has it? We are still massively overleveraged and the world’s governments are basically planning on inflating their way out of debt (bad news for equities) – if you want an idea of what our market will do in the next few years, I suggest studying the Nikkei.
Still, glad to see you are prospering nonetheless and look forward to reading your stuff – and at the end of the day, you can always say that you were the guy that shorted the biggest market rally in recent history and lived to tell the tale!
Jez
p.s. I dunno if you ever heard the story about the hedge fund guy who started shorting the Nasdaq in late ’99 and early ’00 – valuations are crazy he said, P/Es of 100+ are unsustainable… and yet the market just kept on climbing. Apparently the story goes he
finally gave up as the market broke 5000, shut up shop and took the hit…… a month later the market started to collapse. Oh and by the way, that market fell from 5000 to near 3000 and then bounced up to 4000 and then slid slowly but surely down to 1500ish… markets never fall or rise in a straight line.
Hey Jezza,
Cheers for the tips. I’m still staying out and watching in awe as markets move higher. I totally agree with you and think next year will offer some interesting trading opportunities. Best of luck in the currencies and oil markets its not something I would be tackle at the moment. I think I will be discounting this year and hoping for a better one next year.
I’m struggling to understand this market too
Hello mate – figured I would check in, been a busy week on the market and I am knackered – in recent times, I have upgraded to the world of currencies and oil, basically it’s like the normal market on steroids… But as for the FTSE I went short some more at 5250 – my sentiment is this a W shaped recession and a similar shaped market movement. If you take a look at the 1929 model – you will see market fell about 50% and rallied back a huge amount of that before plummeting back down again – you’re right this has been the rally of the century, and not surprising given the amount of free cash sloshing about in the world today…. but my instinct is telling me that there will be some nervous people out there not wanting to get caught out like they did before. All that needs to happen is a trigger.
The fact is – in terms of fundamentals, nothing has changed has it? We are still massively overleveraged and the world’s governments are basically planning on inflating their way out of debt (bad news for equities) – if you want an idea of what our market will do in the next few years, I suggest studying the Nikkei.
Still, glad to see you are prospering nonetheless and look forward to reading your stuff – and at the end of the day, you can always say that you were the guy that shorted the biggest market rally in recent history and lived to tell the tale!
Jez
p.s. I dunno if you ever heard the story about the hedge fund guy who started shorting the Nasdaq in late ’99 and early ’00 – valuations are crazy he said, P/Es of 100+ are unsustainable… and yet the market just kept on climbing. Apparently the story goes he
finally gave up as the market broke 5000, shut up shop and took the hit…… a month later the market started to collapse. Oh and by the way, that market fell from 5000 to near 3000 and then bounced up to 4000 and then slid slowly but surely down to 1500ish… markets never fall or rise in a straight line.