Luke's List of Trading Proclamations, Ponderings and Pontifications

[Lucas Scott]

Feel free to expound, pontificate, ponder and proclaim your views on trading philosophies in this thread!

[Lucas Scott]

"I've learned my lesson, always/never....."

This is a common phrase heard from traders. For example: one trader will say "I've learned my lesson, always use stops" after taking a huge loss on a stock. Another trader will say "I've learned my lesson, never use stops" after getting whipsawed out of a position and missing a big gain. Sometimes it's the same trader making these proclamations just weeks or months apart. The thing is, absolutes don't work in trading. You can't always/never anything. If there were absolutes, it would be really easy to win at trading. And that is my pontification on "always/never"!

[AussieTrader]

'Hey, someone smited me'

Various Anon 

Nice thread Lucas, I like the I've learned my lesson one.

[Lucas Scott]

"XYZ isn't moving fast enough for me so I'm selling it to put my money into a better mover"

So sometimes a trader is holding a stock that looked good when (s)he bought it and still looks good, but (s)he decides to sell it to "put the money to work in a faster mover." Doesn't it so often happen that when you're in this situation, the stock you sold takes off a few days later while the "big runner" you moved your money to goes into a stall? It's the sin of hubris. How arrogant it is to believe a stock should move upward quickly just because one bought it 5 minutes ago.   

[supergeek]

Positively Perfect Place for Postings

[Lucas Scott]

Daytrading

Dick: Hey honey, I made 2% on XYZ today! You and the kids can eat tonight!
Jane: Wonderful! How much did the stock go up?
Dick: 80%. But I caught 2% of the move. Yeeeehaw!!!

[supergeek]

Hey Luc, maybe I'm arrogant but i don't think every stock should plummet when i buy it and skyrocket when i sell it. Why does God hate me?

[Lucas Scott]

Don't you hate it when you look at your streamer and your biggest gainer on the day is the one stock you shorted?

[akclide]

Short goes a long way faster and a long goes short way slower.Isn't that something

[Lucas Scott]

A new pontification:

When I buy a stock that I find through a 3rd party source, like someone posting about it at 3SoF or on a message board, and the stock tanks hard, I find myself contemplating WHAT IF I hadn't been at that exact place at that exact time to see the message, or WHAT IF that person had never posted a message in that place where I read it, or WHAT IF that person had never even been born? Then in all likelihood I would not have bought the stock and would not have lost any money. It boggles the mind.

This applies to making money off a 3rd party tip as well, but you all know it's the losses that stick in your head.

[Lucas Scott]

I became active in the stock market 3 years ago today. Sometimes I think to myself, what if I had spent all the time I've expended looking at charts, doing due diligence, conversing on message boards like here at 3SoF... what if I had just put the money in an index fund and took all that time and energy and had instead applied it to trying to get laid. Or, of a less prurient nature, concentrating on career growth, or bodybuilding, or pursuing an advanced degree, or fill in the blank. Would my life be better or worse? Just something I've pondered from time to time. Anyone else?

[akclide]

Past weekend I back tested a strategy that I had come up with few years back.The results were phenomenal.needless to say I did not follow it and I am a looser for that same time period.
Moral of the story is very simple.It is not the market and the mms and the people who short the stocks and the list goes on and on,It is us who do not have the discipline to stick to our guns .

[supergeek]

Amen, Testify brothers. I am my own worst enemy.

[Terliso]

Amen, Testify brothers. I am my own worst enemy.

Absolutely.... even though how good your money management, you diversified your money...
You will be out from the market world if your Emotion is reckless ----> your emotion is the worse enemy of trading the market