When new traders tell me about how they think that the market is a very risky place, I would almost always tell them this – Risk is the best gift ever; you should always Acknowledge, Accept and Embrace it.
With that, today I’m going to share with you an excerpt taken from the book “Inside the Mind of The Turtles” by Curtis Faith (click here for details).
1. Overcome Fear
Great traders know that fear can choke our decision process and cause us to avoid taking risks. Fear also can paralyze you when you need to act quickly and decisively to save yourself from danger – the deer-in-the-headlights syndrome. All great traders have mastered their fears and are able to act decisively when needed.
2. Remain Flexible
As a trader, you never know which stock or which market may make a move. This is the essence of uncertainty. You don’t’ know what is going to happen. When you don’t know what is going to happen, the best strategy is be ready for anything.
3. Take Reasoned Risks
Many beginners trade like they are sitting at a Las Vegas craps table. They put too much money at risk, and they trade based on hunches, rumours, or someone else’s advice. They take foolish risks. Great traders take reasoned risks. A reasoned risk is more like and educated guess than a roll of the dice. Great traders are not gamblers.
4. Prepare To Be Wrong
If you don’t know what the future will bring and you choose a trade that assumes a particular outcome, you are possible going to be wrong. Depending on the type of trade, in many cases it can even be more likely that you will lose money than that you will win money. What matters in the end it the total money won and lost, not whether you are right more often than wrong. Great traders are comfortable making decision when they know they could be wrong.
5. Actively Seek Reality
As a trader, nothing is more important than an acute picture of reality. Traders know that their decisions will result in losses. They also know that they need to know about these losses as soon as possible. A focus on what the market actually does, the market’s reality, keeps successful traders from burying their heads in the sand and pretending that the world is other than it actually is.
6. Respond Quickly to Changes
Just as important as actively seeking reality and facing that reality doing something when that reality is now what you wanted, when the uncertain future brings the unhoped-for. When the market moves to price levels that a trader has previously determined would be the place to get out of a trade – by selling what he bought previously, for example – a competent trader will respond quickly and get out, thereby reducing his exposure to continued uncertainty to zero.
7. Focus on Decisions, Not Outcomes
One of the reasons that great traders can so easily reverse course is that they have a more sophisticated view of the meaning of error for decisions made under uncertainty. They understand that the fact that things did not turn out they way they had hoped does not necessarily mean that taking the trade was a mistake. They know that many times good ideas don’t work out. The very presence of uncertainty ensures that you will be wrong some of the time. All great traders put trades on for a particular reason, and they take them off for a particular reason too. Grate traders focus on the reasons for the trades instead of the outcomes for a few given trades.
Note: The above lessons were taken directly from the book “Inside the Mind of The Turtles” and I have not in any way contributed to the content.
Conclusion
For those of you who are interested in the book, this is easily found on Amazon or many book stores. Curtis Faith is also the author of “Way of the Turtle: The Secret Methods that Turned Ordinary People into Legendary Traders” which is another good read.
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