Alan Farley- "More Tips for Beginners"
3 mensagens
|Página 1 de 1
Obrigado D1as pelo elogio aos meus artigos.
Em relação ao realmoney, coloco aqui apenas uma infinitésima parte do que lá é escrito diariamente. É uma pena o site não ser gratuito, mas para mim (e para aquilo que faço, obviamente) é imprescindível e vale bem o dinheiro que gasto.
Sonho um dia termos assim em Portugal um site com aquela qualidade de analistas, onde (por serem muitos e bons) ao longo do dia aparecem inúmeros artigos interessantes e excelentes trocas de opiniões.
Para mim, é mesmo 5 estrelas e, sinceramente, acredito que em Portugal apenas quando existir um site com tamanha qualidade, será possível pensar que as pessoas irão pagar por aceder a um site financeiro.
Um abraço,
Ulisses
Em relação ao realmoney, coloco aqui apenas uma infinitésima parte do que lá é escrito diariamente. É uma pena o site não ser gratuito, mas para mim (e para aquilo que faço, obviamente) é imprescindível e vale bem o dinheiro que gasto.
Sonho um dia termos assim em Portugal um site com aquela qualidade de analistas, onde (por serem muitos e bons) ao longo do dia aparecem inúmeros artigos interessantes e excelentes trocas de opiniões.
Para mim, é mesmo 5 estrelas e, sinceramente, acredito que em Portugal apenas quando existir um site com tamanha qualidade, será possível pensar que as pessoas irão pagar por aceder a um site financeiro.
Um abraço,
Ulisses
-
- Administrador Fórum
- Mensagens: 31013
- Registado: 29/10/2002 4:04
- Localização: Aveiro
Alan Farley- "More Tips for Beginners"
"More Tips for Beginners"
By Alan Farley
Special to RealMoney.com
09/18/2003 11:00 AM EDT
"On Tuesday I addressed a wide range of questions posed by new traders. Today I'm following up with more of your legitimate concerns and inquiries. If you can't find what you need in this broad compilation, email me and I'll do my best to include your question in a future column.
New traders face so many challenges that even a little bit of help goes a long way. My most urgent advice if you're new to the game is to slow down and take your time. The markets are always open and will be waiting for you to play your hand, whether it's next week or next year.
I want to be a full-time trader. I understand it's feasible to make $500 to $1,000 a week for every $10,000 in the trading account. Is this accurate?
This is a very unrealistic and dangerous assumption. If you can make a 100% return on your capital in a year, you will be in a very elite group indeed. Sure, you can make $1,000 in a week on a $10,000 account, but at that risk level you'll wash out of the market quickly because of bad or unexpected losses.
New traders should start with very small positions and continue to trade small until they put together a decent track record. Then they should increase risk and exposure until their stomachs tell them they're trading too big. Don't worry about making money for a long time. Instead, worry about trading well. The biggest problem new traders face is the urge to trade. They jump in too quickly and get crushed.
Thousands of other traders out there have been doing this for years. These folks like to feed on new traders and their naiveté. Your job is to survive until you can become one of them. Their level of dedication is almost fanatical. Many pros spend more than 70 hours a week involved in the markets, one way or the other.
How can I tell if I'm suited to a career in trading?
To begin with, you have to be very talented and motivated. You also need to realize the goal is as tough as graduating from an elite school with a degree in hand. No one is printing money, and all the technical analysis in the world is just an introduction to real-life trading. You'll lose a lot of money before you learn to trade profitably. That's just the way it is. Most folks underestimate their reaction to losses until they're faced with big positions moving against them. This emotional hurdle is often the most difficult obstacle to a successful career in trading.
You said "newer traders suffer with larger positions because (a) they get so jumpy that good trades are exited too soon, or (b) they hold positions too long because they panic and get deer-in-the-headlights syndrome." Can you elaborate?
New traders don't really understand why stocks go up or down, so it's hard to make good decisions when their positions move against them. Of course, they're taught all kinds of risk-control methods, but that goes out the window as soon as they watch red ink growing in their equity curve. This confusion is reinforced over time, because they stop out of many positions just as they reverse. A tendency builds up to let price move past their stops. The end result is a lot more confusion and even bigger losses.
Should new traders paper trade first?
Paper trading is a good idea for beginners, but it has a built-in flaw. Real-life trading is far more complicated and stokes the emotional fires. Paper trading naturally gives you the best prices and the cleanest profits. The markets give you the exact opposite most of the time.
I'm a new trader and am having trouble using trailing stops. Can you help me?
I think using trailing stops is an advanced trading skill. New traders may be better off taking single direct moves, building up their equity, and dealing with trailing stops at a later date. Try to get one thing right when you start out, and take your profits quickly. Then worry about making more money as you gain experience.
How much time should a new trader spend looking at a chart? I believe you said if you have to look too hard, it isn't there.
I can spend less than a second looking at a chart for a trading opportunity. If I see something, the rest of the analysis takes only a minute or two longer. But newer traders shouldn't expect this kind of speed for many years. It is true that a good setup will engage both sides of your brain and elicit an emotional response immediately. That either happens very quickly or it doesn't happen at all.
Is the holding period flexible once I choose one for my swing trades?
Don't let a holding period be a noose around your neck, but realize the market is a 3-D chessboard. It's best to pick one holding period and learn to play it well before moving on to another.
Here's the problem: You adjust your time frame in midstream. It pays off. The next trade comes along, and you're now conditioned to change the holding period if things don't work out, so you start losing money and don't take your loss. Now you're in a lot of trouble.
Would you define sector rotation and how it impacts the daily trading environment?
Money chases opportunity in the markets. But there's only so much money to go around. Broad trading strategies take money out of sectors that reach price targets or achieve goals, and put it in new sectors as they come into vogue. Sometimes this is based on valuation; other times it's based on the technicals. In fact, there are as many reasons for sector rotation as there are institutions and traders. Again, "rotation" means money is being removed from one area of the market and placed into another.
Intraday leadership influences how sector rotation impacts the trading environment. The market searches for leadership each morning and can latch onto a variety of internal or external forces. Different sectors can rise to the surface at any time and become the leaders or laggards for that session. Quite often, market leadership affects sectors indirectly. Different types of leadership tell traders and institutions what's hot that day, and what's not.
What type of stop would you use when shorting a stock?
Don't differentiate between long and short positions when considering stops. Exit the position at the price where your reason for being in the trade has changed or been proven wrong. This "failure target" should be part of your initial trade analysis, based on support and resistance. Your stop-loss should then change as price action evolves. Keep a failure stop, a break-even stop and a profit-protection stop in mind, depending on how the market moves away from your entry. Personally, I don't like using either a flat stop-loss or a percentage stop-loss. There's no logic with either of them, as far as I'm concerned.
How do you manage market sentiment?
I start with a bias and then let the market show me what it wants to do. If price action supports my bias, I get more aggressive. If it's opposing my bias, I slow down and reconsider my point of view. You have to be careful with knee-jerk reactions to external events, such as "the market will probably go down today due to the earnings warnings." You have to consider the time period, intraday reversals, triple-witching effects, oversold conditions, etc.
Other traders hope you confine your analysis to just "up" or "down" for the day without considering all the twists and turns. If your opinions are rigid, professionals will position themselves against you, because you're unprepared to deal with an adverse outcome. To avoid this fate, use a continuous feedback mechanism that lets you adjust your expectations as soon as market conditions change.
You've written that it's impossible to make money using technical analysis. Isn't that what your column, book and seminars are all about?
There's an important distinction here. Swing trading and technical analysis are two different disciplines. Many folks are great at TA but terrible at trading. Everyone is an armchair technician, and this takes little effort or commitment. But putting your money on the line every day is another story entirely. I like to think I teach traders, not technicians. "
(in www.realmoney.com)
By Alan Farley
Special to RealMoney.com
09/18/2003 11:00 AM EDT
"On Tuesday I addressed a wide range of questions posed by new traders. Today I'm following up with more of your legitimate concerns and inquiries. If you can't find what you need in this broad compilation, email me and I'll do my best to include your question in a future column.
New traders face so many challenges that even a little bit of help goes a long way. My most urgent advice if you're new to the game is to slow down and take your time. The markets are always open and will be waiting for you to play your hand, whether it's next week or next year.
I want to be a full-time trader. I understand it's feasible to make $500 to $1,000 a week for every $10,000 in the trading account. Is this accurate?
This is a very unrealistic and dangerous assumption. If you can make a 100% return on your capital in a year, you will be in a very elite group indeed. Sure, you can make $1,000 in a week on a $10,000 account, but at that risk level you'll wash out of the market quickly because of bad or unexpected losses.
New traders should start with very small positions and continue to trade small until they put together a decent track record. Then they should increase risk and exposure until their stomachs tell them they're trading too big. Don't worry about making money for a long time. Instead, worry about trading well. The biggest problem new traders face is the urge to trade. They jump in too quickly and get crushed.
Thousands of other traders out there have been doing this for years. These folks like to feed on new traders and their naiveté. Your job is to survive until you can become one of them. Their level of dedication is almost fanatical. Many pros spend more than 70 hours a week involved in the markets, one way or the other.
How can I tell if I'm suited to a career in trading?
To begin with, you have to be very talented and motivated. You also need to realize the goal is as tough as graduating from an elite school with a degree in hand. No one is printing money, and all the technical analysis in the world is just an introduction to real-life trading. You'll lose a lot of money before you learn to trade profitably. That's just the way it is. Most folks underestimate their reaction to losses until they're faced with big positions moving against them. This emotional hurdle is often the most difficult obstacle to a successful career in trading.
You said "newer traders suffer with larger positions because (a) they get so jumpy that good trades are exited too soon, or (b) they hold positions too long because they panic and get deer-in-the-headlights syndrome." Can you elaborate?
New traders don't really understand why stocks go up or down, so it's hard to make good decisions when their positions move against them. Of course, they're taught all kinds of risk-control methods, but that goes out the window as soon as they watch red ink growing in their equity curve. This confusion is reinforced over time, because they stop out of many positions just as they reverse. A tendency builds up to let price move past their stops. The end result is a lot more confusion and even bigger losses.
Should new traders paper trade first?
Paper trading is a good idea for beginners, but it has a built-in flaw. Real-life trading is far more complicated and stokes the emotional fires. Paper trading naturally gives you the best prices and the cleanest profits. The markets give you the exact opposite most of the time.
I'm a new trader and am having trouble using trailing stops. Can you help me?
I think using trailing stops is an advanced trading skill. New traders may be better off taking single direct moves, building up their equity, and dealing with trailing stops at a later date. Try to get one thing right when you start out, and take your profits quickly. Then worry about making more money as you gain experience.
How much time should a new trader spend looking at a chart? I believe you said if you have to look too hard, it isn't there.
I can spend less than a second looking at a chart for a trading opportunity. If I see something, the rest of the analysis takes only a minute or two longer. But newer traders shouldn't expect this kind of speed for many years. It is true that a good setup will engage both sides of your brain and elicit an emotional response immediately. That either happens very quickly or it doesn't happen at all.
Is the holding period flexible once I choose one for my swing trades?
Don't let a holding period be a noose around your neck, but realize the market is a 3-D chessboard. It's best to pick one holding period and learn to play it well before moving on to another.
Here's the problem: You adjust your time frame in midstream. It pays off. The next trade comes along, and you're now conditioned to change the holding period if things don't work out, so you start losing money and don't take your loss. Now you're in a lot of trouble.
Would you define sector rotation and how it impacts the daily trading environment?
Money chases opportunity in the markets. But there's only so much money to go around. Broad trading strategies take money out of sectors that reach price targets or achieve goals, and put it in new sectors as they come into vogue. Sometimes this is based on valuation; other times it's based on the technicals. In fact, there are as many reasons for sector rotation as there are institutions and traders. Again, "rotation" means money is being removed from one area of the market and placed into another.
Intraday leadership influences how sector rotation impacts the trading environment. The market searches for leadership each morning and can latch onto a variety of internal or external forces. Different sectors can rise to the surface at any time and become the leaders or laggards for that session. Quite often, market leadership affects sectors indirectly. Different types of leadership tell traders and institutions what's hot that day, and what's not.
What type of stop would you use when shorting a stock?
Don't differentiate between long and short positions when considering stops. Exit the position at the price where your reason for being in the trade has changed or been proven wrong. This "failure target" should be part of your initial trade analysis, based on support and resistance. Your stop-loss should then change as price action evolves. Keep a failure stop, a break-even stop and a profit-protection stop in mind, depending on how the market moves away from your entry. Personally, I don't like using either a flat stop-loss or a percentage stop-loss. There's no logic with either of them, as far as I'm concerned.
How do you manage market sentiment?
I start with a bias and then let the market show me what it wants to do. If price action supports my bias, I get more aggressive. If it's opposing my bias, I slow down and reconsider my point of view. You have to be careful with knee-jerk reactions to external events, such as "the market will probably go down today due to the earnings warnings." You have to consider the time period, intraday reversals, triple-witching effects, oversold conditions, etc.
Other traders hope you confine your analysis to just "up" or "down" for the day without considering all the twists and turns. If your opinions are rigid, professionals will position themselves against you, because you're unprepared to deal with an adverse outcome. To avoid this fate, use a continuous feedback mechanism that lets you adjust your expectations as soon as market conditions change.
You've written that it's impossible to make money using technical analysis. Isn't that what your column, book and seminars are all about?
There's an important distinction here. Swing trading and technical analysis are two different disciplines. Many folks are great at TA but terrible at trading. Everyone is an armchair technician, and this takes little effort or commitment. But putting your money on the line every day is another story entirely. I like to think I teach traders, not technicians. "
(in www.realmoney.com)
-
- Administrador Fórum
- Mensagens: 31013
- Registado: 29/10/2002 4:04
- Localização: Aveiro
3 mensagens
|Página 1 de 1