Psychology
Have you gone through this:
Sweaty palms. Obsessed with watching your charts. Breaking your trading rules. Dizziness. Fear. Greed. Loss of concentration. Heart beating fast. Headaches. Loss of confidence.
When you trade, you trade objectively, taking in mind the market consensus from news, fundamental analysis or technical analysis: As a trader, you shouldn't be concerned about market downturns or booms. When you trade, you trade objectively, taking in mind the market consensus from news, fundamental analysis or technical analysis and simply trading that view. You have the choice of trading each style specifically or trading a combination of each technique, taking in the news as well as the fundamental information.
Your overall trading psychology consists of your holistic attitude - the way with which you approach & view trading the markets: Your psychology when trading is definitely an important part of successful trading. Your psychology consists of your attitude - the way with which you approach and view trading. Most of my recent trading rants are about psychology. To trade successfully, you must respect the markets for what they are and understand its relationship with you. (Read "The Market is Against Me)
Just be yourself when you trade the markets... it will eventually lead you to success: Imagine, you are in the school yard again - set to impress that girl or guy you liked. You go up to them, pretending to be something you're not. You may fool them the first or second time. But in the long term, can you keep up the act? Can you keep living being someone you're not? It's the same in the stock markets. Each one of us has different financial situations and goals. You cannot take the same level of risks that I take, and I wouldn't take the same risks you would take. If you cannot be true to yourself in the markets you will find it harder to find your niche.
Is the Stock Markets Ever Against you? No, the market is never against you. Trade the markets, you trade against yourself. As a trader, do you ever get the feeling that the market is ever against you? When I trade the stock markets often, sometimes I start to personify the markets. This happens when I’ve had either a string of losses or a string or profitable trades. When almost all of my trades have been profitable - one after another you begin to feel confident. The market is your best buddy. The market is on your side. You are very confident... and are prone to mistakes. Then your string of trading losses are piling up. The market has become your worst enemy. The market is against you.
The truth and nothing but the truth about trading the share markets or any other markets for that matter: I was talking to a colleague earlier today about share trading. We discussed why prices go up and down, how traders make and lose money on the markets - especially how I’ve made money and lost money in the markets as well as share trading as gambling. Share trading is another opportunity out of so many out there to make money. To experienced traders, the money is there for the taking. For brokers, dealers and market makers it is a growth industry worth investing in, with market makers like CMC Markets and IG Markets expanding rapidly worldwide and banks like Macquarie starting to deal products like CFDs and rumours that ComSec may join in. But in our discussion we came to one interesting conclusion. That conclusion was that trading shares isn’t really productive. Trading shares doesn’t create anything useful: it is simply a transfer of ownership and funds from one party to another.
The market is always right. If you are a practicing professional trader that phrase has probably been run past you a few times already. But we always need a reminder. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, its part of being human. Trying to take revenge on the market for blowing a large chunk of your trading float is normal. In the course of your share trading you may have held on too long to a stock or too short. The thing is we can never pick out the tops and bottoms. We are only there for the ride. We hitch a ride on the trendline and get off once the trend has finished.
It's so easy to fall victim to information overload. It's happening to me at the moment. So many emails, broker recommendations, news, sales emails from those tipster firms like Fat Prophets, Australian Stock Report, intelligent investor... ARGH! get them off my back PLEASE!
ARGH! Information overload! Next I get my daily report from the Australasian Investment Review... and then a few hours later I get their weekly report. Then I also want to catch up on my reading of new trading books that I've bought as well as review those of old... So much information - so little time.
I attended a seminar last week that was trying to sell me a product called "HomeTrader" - I will blog about that company later - but for now the topic is about trading being a mind game. Trading shares, forex or any other equity involves what I call the "Trading Mind Game". As human beings we are influenced by our environment.
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Top 50 Public Companies Listed on the Australian Stockmarket as at 18/07/2008
- BHP Billiton
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)
- Rio Tinto
- National Australia Bank (NAB)
- Telstra (TLS)
- News Corporation or NewsCorp (NWS)
- Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC)
- Woodside Petroleum Limited (WPL)
- ANZ
- Woolworths Limited (WOW)
- Westfield Group (WDC)
- Westfarmers Limited (WES)
- Fortescue Metals (FMG)
- CSL
- QBE Insurance
- St. George Bank Limited (SGB
- Newcrest Mining Limited (NCM
- Origin Energy Limited (ORG)
- Maquarie Group (MQG)
- AMP Limited (AMP)
- Leighton Holdings (LEI)
- Suncorp-Metway Limited (SUN)
- Brambles Limited (BXB)
- Santos Limited (STO)
- Coal & Allied (CNA)
- Incitec Pivot (IPL)
- Foster’s Group Limited (FGL)
- Orica Limited (ORI)
- BlueScope (BSL)
- AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Limited (AXA)
- Woodside Petroleum Limited (WPL)
- Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAG)
- Stockland (SGP)
- Lihir Gold Limited (LGL)
- Qantas Airways Limited (QAN)
- Oxiana Limited (OXR)
- Sims Group Limited (SGM)
- AGL Energy Limited (AGK)
- OneSteel Limited (OST)
- Transurban Group (TCL)
- Oil Search Limited (OSH)
- Coca-Cola Amatil Limited (CCL)
- Crown (CWN)
- Alumina (AWC)
- ASX (Australian Securities Exchange)
- Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG)
- Telecom Corporation of New Zealand (TEL)
- Computershare Limited (CPU)
- Aneka Tambang (Persero) TBK (ATM)
- Tabcorp Holdings (TAH)
