A: To be successful in trading controlling your losses is even more important than hitting more winners than losers. A good trading plan is crucial to your success as a trader. Face it - without a plan and a rules-based approach to trading, you are simply trading by the skin of your teeth. It may seem to work for a while, but self-doubt and/or greed will ultimately get in the way of being consistently successful. The good news is, it’s fairly easy to create. The following steps may help you get started.
A good trading plan is simply one where you make money. It doesn't matter two hoots what system you use, a pin thrown at the FT is fine but if you run your losses and cut your profits you will lose money. Money management is 75% of the game, finding a system that works is the other 25% but there's nothing wrong with 'gut' and fundamentals do not rule of technical analysis or vice versa. Until you can grasp how to play the odds in your favour, stay out.
In this it is simply a case of shifting your odds in your favour:
If you can get a system of indicators that is gives better than 50-50 results you have an edge.
If you can play each trade by cutting losses and letting wins run such that an average winning trade makes more than an average losing trade loses you have a bit more edge.
In this instance the use of stops and limit orders will help you stick to your trading plan. If you can manage your money such that the losing runs don't knock you out of the game you can continue trading and probably make a profit.
Money management (for me at least) is a massive key to trading, working with an auto stop (set on entering a trade), each trade being only allowed to take a set % of account capital i.e 1% to 3 %.
Each trade should have a plan with pre-defined entry/stop/target (target has to take into account the risk-to-reward ratio...something that seems a tad harder at the moment) and obviously a reason why any possible trade (which may or may not be taken) should be short listed onto your watchlist in the first place.
EXAMPLE ONLY PLAN - BUY
When constructing a trading plan ask yourself:
Using your answers, write out a short but detailed plan of action. Stick to your plan. Here, it helps to keep a diary of all your trades as it will force you to follow your rules and avoid impulsive trading as much as possible.
EXAMPLE ONLY PLAN - BUY
A sell example would be the opposite to this. A person using the trading plan above would know what they would be doing before having entered the trade and they would know exactly what to do while in the trade.
Having said this, there is no type of trading that doesn't carry an element of risk. I have never known of anyone who knows where the markets are going. Through sound technical and fundamental analysis a trader can make a more informed judgment on which way price will go, but the market has a way of frustrating even the best of traders. After sound analysis, the only way a trader can combat the risk that is presented on each trade is through discipline and money management with the best trades being the ones with a favourable balance of risk and reward.
P.S. Don't forget to define your nature as a trader. Are you patient, tranquil, careful, knowledgeable, and realistic? How much capital do you have? What are you profit and loss targets based on your capital? What is your entry and exit strategy? Is your capital sufficient to allow you to enter multiple trades to gain experience? Do you adequately understand the markets you are trading? Do you treat trading as a business? How much time do you have for trading?...etc Once you make this self-assessment, recognise your weak spots and work on correcting them. Yes, this may take you sometime but it is absolutely necessary.
A: Ok indicators...I've spent a lot of time in the past testing/making logic of various ones and believe in some cases they can be helpful but alone they are not the key, in some cases they can provide a good confirmation, a lot are very simple to understand how they are calculated so that allows one to understand the logic which I think is fairly important.
Using the example of moving average crossovers (which I like) they are super when they do work, I've had some great runs with that simple tactic, of course (like most trading tactics) this will not work all of the time. Inspecting your past trades will also reveal a lot of valuable information on what has worked and what has failed to work and helps you identify times in the market when your indicators have a better possibility of working - it is this sort of research that I believe helps one become a more experienced trader.
A: I have several strategies, rules, and principles which I try my best to adhere to when trading. You need an edge in the markets - research a market which interests you until you notice patterns, and then devise rules for trading those patterns. Back test and paper trade your system until you are confident that it has a positive expectancy, and then trade it. Remember, you do not need to know what will happen next to make a profit on a trade.
Also, you will never know the outcome of any trade with any certainty. Just remember that if you are trading a system which has an edge over time, trade the system correctly and over a large enough sample size (i.e. enough trades) you should make a profit corresponding to your edge. A casino has an edge in roulette, but it has no way of knowing the result of any given spin. It does know that over a long enough time period and a large enough sample size (i.e. bets) it will make a profit according to the size of its edge.
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