Trade Like a Lion (not like a Hamster) (October 18, 2011)
Here are some comments of mine from today’s trading forum. You may find them useful.To everyone: What I have been telling you for as long as I remember–and that is actually years–is that the market doesn’t just go up in a trend…or down in a trend. It spends much of the time consolidating the prior move. The most common trend is no trend.
Year after year, I make the bulk of my gains during specific periods of time. I do not skim money from the market on a regular basis. It is not my paycheck. It is not my ATM. I directly and indirectly compete with everyone else in the market. So do you. I want to make money when I trade.
I want to avoid losing money when I trade. If I want action, I’ll go do something else. (Just had a very nice workout, as a matter of fact). If I want to make money, I will look to the market and see if there is money to be made. If there is not, then I won’t try to make something happen.
Honestly, I think a lot of you are just floundering around. Just flip flopping in search of the next trade. Now, that’s fine. Yet again, I will say what has been said countless times by yours truly: If you are making money in your current trading style, then nothing else needs to be done. Just keep what you are doing.
It’s the anti-insanity trade: If you keep doing the same thing again and again and getting great results…then just keep doing that.
But if you are doing the same thing again and again and losing money, then…what the heck are you doing?
Over the past 15 minutes, AAPL has moved from $417.68 to $420. Big whoop. Could I have made that trade? Sure — nice candlestick reversal from outside the lower Bollinger Band on increasing volume. Easy. But do I want to make that trade? Nope. Not my kind of trade. Is it your kind of trade? Might be. Great! Go make that trade.
I’d rather wait for something more substantial, so I can make more substantial gains. I view it as the same trade each of us makes without thinking about it: Exchange of your time for money.
If you spend your time eeking out teeny weeny gains over an entire day, then that’s the value you are placing on your time. (I’m not criticizing here. I am just stating an irrefutable and undeniable fact). But the problem with eeking out teeny weeny gains over an entire day is that you don’t profit on every trade. So the loss that you take unwinds the profit that you make. At the end of the day, you realize that you’ve worked the entire day for 3 bucks.
Again, not criticism…just fact.
Lions do not forage for food all day. They don’t graze. They kill. And the cool thing is that they are pretty well rested when they pounce on the hapless prey. Why? Because they have been lazing around in the shade all day, just sleeping an contemplating the nature of global warming and wondering if it’s gonna get even hotter in Africa over the next decade. They are inherently lazy. But when they see something to kill, they go kill it. Then they eat it. Then they go back under the tree and take another nap.
Nice to be a lion. Not so nice to be a the weakest gazelle, zebra, buffalo, (or a representative of PETA who happened to disturb the lion’s nap in order to reason with him and suggest eating grass and bushes).
I am a lion.
I like being a lion. I spend the bulk of my time and effort trying to train and develop lions. It’s what I do…it is what I am proud and honored to do.
I want you to be lions. All ofyou!
Dan
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