How I Exit My Trades

This article is Part 2 of my learning experiences while trading.

I once mentioned the phrase "It's not how you start, it's how you finish." Likewise, it's not how you enter a trade, it's how you EXIT that determines a winning or losing trade.

That reason alone is proof enough that your exits are way more important than your entries.

When it is time to exit, most people hesitate because they are gripped by 2 key emotions - Greed & Fear.

Of the two, Greed is the easier emotion to manage IF you know how to do it. Not knowing how can just as easily result in a significant psychological bashing of the mind like Fear can render. In this part, I'll give you a tip to manage your Greed.

This method which i personally use is for swing trading and to some extent day trading (depending on the chart's time frame you're using). Because this method is really much like a trailing stop method, take note to use it ONLY when your trade is in PROFIT. Never use this for scalping!

I've learned from one of my trading teachers that the first and most important focus you must achieve after you have entered a trade is to aim for the BREAK EVEN point. That means your stock must come to a point where it has moved in your favour and is in profit enough to cover commissions, or if you trade forex, the currency pair must move in your favour till it has covered the initial bid/ask spread loss.

Do not even think of profits if your stock hasn't broke even. For without a break even, there is no profit. And if you haven't broke even? You're still holding a loss. Logical? Absolutely ;)

Many people start to dream of the profits they can make the moment they enter a trade and when they don't, their psychology takes a beating. Learn to condition your mind and keep your emotions intact. Throughout a trade process, your thoughts, your mind, your actions and psychology must all come into convergence. What this effectively means is your whole must be in unity. This ensures you are mindful enough to react to the market in a correct fashion when it calls for it.

Trading is a step by step process. According to my teacher Conrad, in order to finish first, you must first finish. And how you cross the finishing line is a step by step process. Therefore, don't start thinking about the end when you only just begun, think about the next step and thereafter the next and so on and so forth. Before you know it, the finishing line would just be in front of you to reach out and grab!

Thus, don't think profit when your trade is obviously still in a loss! Think break even first, and once you've achieved break even, then you start thinking about profits, and after you have moved into profitable territory, THEN we move on to protecting profits.

Ok! We're done with the 'short' intro.. Now moving on to the method. After doing my research and analyzing my charts, I determine a good point of entry (remember lesson 1 - Buying the dip in an uptrend and selling the rally on the downtrend). I'm happy, everything on my chart shows no reason why I should not enter. I take my entry.

For example, I BUY a LONG EUR/USD position at 1.3445 with 1 contract and place my stop loss 30 pips BELOW my entry price. I purposely do not set a profit target here. The bid/ask (selling/buying) spread was at 1.3443/1.3445. Therefore after entry, my immediate paper loss is 2 pips, because the selling price is at 1.3443.

Now my immediate focus shifts to achieving the break even price. Few moments later the bid/ask spread has gone up to 1.3445/1.3447. Ahah! Now I have broke even! At this point, I continue to monitor the trade.

Some more moments pass and the trade has moved into the profitable zone and has gone up to say.. 1.3475. That is a 30 pip gain. Now, I immediately shift my stop loss up from 1.3415 to 1.3450 so that I LOCK IN MY PROFITS. What this ensures is now, I have totally eliminated the emotion of Fear and only have Greed to manage. No matter what happens next, even if the trade fell back down all the way, i would be stopped out at 1.3450 with a 5 pip profit already in my pocket GUARANTEED.

You see the psychological management in that move? Now i no longer have to worry about losing money because that move ENSURED I would make money no matter what. Now as the trade continues its up trend, I shift my stop UP accordingly. In an uptrend, the price moves from a Low to a High, retraces back to a Higher Low and then moves up to a Higher High confirming the uptrend. (See Chart attached)

How far up do I shift the stop is determined by where the previous low point in price is. I place the stop just a few pips below the previous low so that I give the price space to breathe when it retraces back before it continues its uptrend. I do this continually UNTIL a trend reversal takes place. By that time, the price would have been high enough and my profits would have run long and far enough. I just let the trend reverse and get stopped out in profit *wink* ;) So in effect, my stop loss has become my stop profit!

Advantages of this method include:

1. IF the trend continues, your profits are as good as unlimited. That is KEY, because you are in the business to cut your losses fast and let your profits run wild!

2. Once you have placed your stop at the break even point, you have effectively eliminated a potentially devastating emotion called Fear. With one less risk to manage, your psychology would strengthen and you can channel your focus to the next important thing - managing Greed & profits.

Disadvantages:

1. The initial phase of achieving break even needs time to monitor. It can take as long or short as it likes. If you don't have the time to do so, don't use this method of exit.


Here is the chart showing a nice uptrend. Most of the time, your chart may not show such a beautiful uptrend and that's just the way it is. If the markets were so organized and predictable, I'd have been a millionaire yesterday and a billionaire today. So don't be so rigid!

Once again recall:

First things first, achieve BREAK EVEN.

Secondly, PROTECT PROFITS as you make them. This is of VITAL importance if you are to become a consistently profitable trader; one who never allows profits to degenerate into losses ;)

That's it for now. Till then, trade smart, trade well ;)

Why Buying Dips In Uptrends & Selling Rallies In Downtrends Make PERFECT SENSE

The following is something I've learned much about and makes total sense to me when I trade.

Think about it for a moment. You are eagerly watching a stock price move on the chart and it is up trending. You are preparing to enter on a position but don't know when or where exactly.

Most amateurs dive straight into the pits as they see the price move higher and higher and they think they gonna miss the wave if they don't act now.

In trading, the hardest thing to do is WAITING for the right moment and not act on the impulse!

Typically, after the amateur dives in, the stock retraces down! And he is constipating a paper loss. Having very bad psychology management, the dip downwards gets his stomach churning sideways and under.

As it dips further, his psychology takes a whipping and he realized he made a wrong entry and proceeds to cut the trade at a loss. Seconds after he has cut the trade, the stock resumes its uptrend! And he kicks himself in the butt realizing his folly.

If you look at the stock chart attached, you will see 2 arrows. One in Red and the other in Black. The amateur would typically buy at where the black arrow is.. looking at it, logically it tells you that you are buying on a HIGH. And you don't wanna do that, because the whole idea is to Buy Low, Sell High for max profit. And because he doesn't know how to manage his emotions, he screws up by selling off at a loss and then later regrets when the price returns to the up trend. Double psychological whammy! Very very bad for the amateur.

But the prudent trader when he sees a good up trend, will not jump straight into it. He will wait for a pullback in the price, or what we call a dip in the up trend. Why is buying the DIP (red arrow) so sensible? A few reasons:

1. When the price dips, and you buy it, you are buying the LOW. It won't be lower than the previous low, but in trading, what matters is the forward movement of the trade. You can't trade the past. You can only trade what is before your eyes at that moment. Therefore, a LOW is a LOW no matter what.

2. Logically, after the price has dipped to its low and doesn't go any lower, where do you think the next likely direction would be? UP of course! (sometimes it goes sideways, but very unlikely in a strong trend)

3. The lower you can buy on the dip, the quicker your initial loss (from the bid/ask spread) turns into profit when the stock resumes its up trend. That way, you don't have to constipate paper losses or even so, it is minimal before you see the trade move in your favour. This ties in with point 1. A low bought, will always see a higher high in an uptrend. And therefore profit nonetheless.

All these work similarly when you are Selling the Rally in a DOWN trend. Aka Sell High, Buy Low.

In conclusion, never get hasty on an entry to trade. If conditions are not favourable, DON'T TRADE.

WAIT for the right moment to enter! If the moment passes you by, don't go chasing after it! Let it go. Wait for another good moment to enter. That's life.

Happy trading and don't do anything stupid :)

Back With A Vengence

I'm back! Well as the title of my blog post suggests :D Yeah i'll be doing more of this in time to come.

Well it's been a long long time since i last traded! I stopped in late Dec, and I only started again in early Feb~ More than a month now!

I've not been slacking around of cos :) The reason i stopped trading was this: I was recalibrating myself while going thru my intensive trader's course. So i avoided trading altogether as suggested by my wonderful coach Mr Conrad Alvin Lim. Check him out at www.conradalvinlim.com.

This in turn helped me in focusing on learning. So in essence I opened my mind towards learning and i stopped trading in case i was reinforcing wrong habits. So a good one month away from trading helped ALOT.. Having learned all that I can learn (well not really all, and I'm still 2 more lessons from graduating), I came back to trade once more. This time, back with a vengence hahaha!

Armed with new found knowledge, an arsenal of tools and a better understanding of how trading works, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the results of my best ever performance in trading yet! In a total of 2 trading weeks, or 10 actual trading days, God did amazingly above and beyond. I made a net profit of 176% plus :) From $100k to $276k plus.

How did that happen? Well, basically I kept things at the bare minimal. Rule One is K.I.S.S or Keep It Simple Stupid is truly wat works in trading. More often than not, traders overwhelm themselves with so much information that we suffer from wat is known as Analysis Paralysis ;) So a golden rule in trading is this: Keep It Simple Stupid! I was amazed just how true that worked out to be.

I applied whatever I had learned about technical analysis from class and researching about market sentiment and what not. Having a better understanding, i was much equipped to better succeed at making trades. Rule Two is know what you are trading. Do everything you can to get a clearer understanding of the markets you are trading in. If it is currency, find out what is driving the sentiment of the economy of that currency. If stock, find out everything u can about the sector, industry, fundamentals of the stock etc.

And finally, the hardest of them all, Rule Three is know yourself. When push comes to shove, every trader will find himself fighting against himself, his own psychology. When you are in a situation where you need to cut losses fast, but you hang on hoping the price will make an about turn. What truly stops you from doing the most sensible things is your own weakness of psychology. Do you know that success in trading lies largely on one's own psychological makeup? The percentage attributed to psychology for success in trading is 60%-70%.

Some Sun Tzu quotes are extremely applicable to what I have experienced over the past 2 weeks.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete."

"Victorious commanders seek the conditions to win first, then fight. Losing commanders fight first, then seek victory."

Check out the 3rd quote. It's one that truly applied in my latest experience in this past 2 weeks of trade. No victory comes without planning how to win first. Likewise in trading, we seek high and low to find ways to reduce risk and increase reward BEFORE we enter a trade ;) To enter a trade first, and then plan and hope for it to move in your favor is asking for trouble, asking for defeat. Trade (Gamble) like that and you will lose every bit of your capital. Some have lost their lives over this. Think about that.

Here are the results of my latest trades. Just 2 panels:

 

 

As you can see from the table, I made a total of 32 trades in half a month. 30 winners vs 2 losers. Each of the two losers were trades of about 5k plus and not more. But I have a total of 8 winners which profits numbered in the tens of thousands, the smallest being S$10,480.41, and the largest amount being S$24,865.06. 

How did I manage to only make 2 losing trades and kept them at a minimal while yet have 8 huge winning trades? The answer lies in risk management. The golden rule is to cut losses quick and let profits run their course. The moment i saw those 2 losing trades move against me, I did not hesitate to cut them. That allowed me to preserve my bulk of capital. After cutting, I simply shrugged off the losses, regrouped my thoughts, focused my psychology, and moved on with life to the next winning trade. 

You can see that on the 10th after I made that losing trade of S$5,197.57, I did the above and went on to a huge winning trade of S$17,298.23 the very same day. That was a trade which i prematurely cut and that move paid off.

The 2nd losing trade on the 16th was a little different. It was a case whereby I had placed my stop loss too shallow and thus got stopped out. Together with this loser, I had 2 other trades which were losing as well but had deeper stops. After I got stopped out, the other trades turned back in my favor and went on to be profitable.

I've learned a lot from this latest experience. And i wanna drill down my account to about 10K and start trading from there and use the same techniques and knowledge which i have acquired over the past 2 months. If i can make 276K from 100K, i'm sure that i can make 27.6K from 10K. The scale will be down 10 times and so will be the margin I am able to trade with. But i know dat if i keep my leverage within my risk threshold, I will be able to pull of a great trade.

I look forward to my next trade and in the meantime, here's wishing everybody a Happy and Prosperous Lunar New Year! Stay safe and don't gamble! :)