As a former professional poker player, I'm very clear about the importance of psychology in investing/trading.

You can have a very solid strategy, but if the mental aspect fails, everything fails, no matter how good you are.

Thread 👇

In this thread I will briefly describe the most important aspects of trading psychology, and give some simple tips to try to improve them.

It's good to always be aware of these aspects, to be able to detect them and act in time.

1) FEAR

This is one of the most important. It can make you get out of a position at the wrong time.

One of the main reasons you can have fear is because you are putting more at risk than you are willing to lose.

Tip: reduce the size of your position until you are comfortable.

2) GREED

Greed can be even worse than fear. It leads you to be overpositioned and to destroy your average entry.

Tip: learn to conform to what you have. Practice gratitude for everything that comes your way. Remember that the most important thing is to stay in the game.

3) TILT

This is well known in poker. There are many reasons why tilt can appear (downswings, injustice, mistakes...)

Tilt takes you away from your perfect strategy. From your A game.

After a losing streak you may think that the market is being unfair to you.

How position sizing can affect your trading performance-

Assuming that you are trading a Trend-following system with Big RR and low win-rate.

For example, assume that you risk one percent per trade on a 100,000 account
and you have 20 straight losses.

That one percent is of your remaining equity and at the end of 20 losses, you would be down to 81,790.60.

Now if you got a 30R winner and you are risking one percent of your balance of 81,790.60, your new equity would be 106,327.9,

You’ve had 20 losses and one winner though you are still up 10Rplus your equity is up by 6.3R percent.

Now, let’s say you risk five percent per trade on your balance. At the end of 20 straight losses, you would be down to 35,772.89 or down 64 percent.

If you risk five percent on this amount and get a 30R winner, you would be up to 89,621.48. You are up 10R, but because of your position sizing, your equity is still down over 10 percent.

#positionsizing
#Trading
#nifty50

This is why position sizing is the most important factor in trading if you get it right and you have an edge, you will do good.

Thanks for reading till here.
@AnandableAnand @jitendrajain @quatltd @sohamtweet

A thread on Risk and Returns

Trader X -

Net-worth - 5 Cr
Trading capital - 25 lakh

Trader Y -

Net-worth - 30 lakh
Trading capital - 25 lakh

Trader X take risk of 2% per trade and he makes about 30-40 % Return on trading capital per month,

Whereas Trader Y only risk 0.25% per trade and he makes about 3-4 % on Trading capital per month.

Trader Y saw how much trader X is making with the same amount of capital that he has.

He is frustrated with his mediocre results as compared to Trader X, though he don’t know the fact that Trader X Is only trading with 5 % of his total net worth.

Trader X has much more risk taking ability in Rupee terms as compared to the Trader Y because he has higher net-worth.

Trader X will not have much impact when he goes into deep Drawdowns , 40-50% where as if the Trader Y goes below 15% DD , it will have deep psychological impact on him.

Even if the Trader X makes 100% return on his trading capital , turns 25 lakh into 50 lakhs ,

𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝
The entire thread summarizes some important rules with respect to investing. Inspired by legendary traders,these will not only help you to grow wealth,but also make a smart investor. Hope you would like the thread & shower some love

Rule 1: Bulls, Bears Make Money, Pigs Get Slaughtered so chose your category wisely
Rule 2: It's OK to Pay the Taxes,Dont just wait for a 10% LTCG always. Sometimes you know it won't pay you
Rule 3: Don't Buy All at Once,Have patience market will give enough opportunities

Rule 4: Buy Damaged Stocks, Not Damaged Companies. Understand the diff b/w undervalued stocks and no value stocks. Everything cheap is not bargain,it could be trap.
Rule 5: Diversify to Control Risk,make sure you don't put everything into one stock,one sector or one asset class.

Rule 6: Do Your Stock Homework. You spend 5 hours to buy a cream on Amazon but research for 1 hr based on buying a stock on twitter! Well,do your homework.

Rule 7: No One Made a Dime by Panicking .Invest 2-10% and leave rest. If it falls,pain will be low,if moves,no FOMO haunt

Rule 8: Buy Best-of-Breed Companies,This doesnt mean you have to invest in the most expensive companies,all it means is you need to buy co.s with good earnings,promoters and sustainability
Rule 9: Defend Some Stocks, Not All
Rule 10: Bad Buys Won't Become Takeovers,STOP hoping

Working on some execution optimisation related backtesting. I have so far been executing with market orders only. Going towards higher lot sizes, I'd like to optimise for minimal slippage.

First off, on NSE, if you place a market order, you get filled at the best bid/ask right?

If we want to optimise this, the first non-creative idea one can think of is, slicing the order into different lot sizes, and placing a limit order for each slice at the mid point of current best bid & ask.

But this requires your latency to be the least.

Why would latency affect it?

I looked at tick historical data, and there are more than 18-20 ticks in a second (auction and quote combined).

Even if you keep 10 ticks per second, your best bid/ask can shift from the time you place to the time exchange receives the order.

So, the next best thing that people can do is place tranches of orders every 1s, 3s, 5s, 10s, 15s - in their preferred time range, and get filled at the midpoint or best-bid+1/2/3/4/5 in the depth.

What you need is liquidity.

But if you're trading breakouts, then it's highly likely that your limit orders may not get filled if the action is too fast.

So, a retry mechanism is required in such cases.

If nothing works, you convert your orders to marketable and get filled at worse slippage.

30 books I wish I read before Investing my hard-earned money:

1. You can be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt
2. Common Stocks, Uncommon Profits by Phil Fisher
3. Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman
4. The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon
5. Winning the Loser's Game by Charles Ellis

6. The Zurich Axioms by Max Gunther
7. The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
8. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
9. The Intelligent Investor by B. Graham
10. A Zebra in Lion country by Ralph Wanger and Everett Mattlin
11. Learn to Earn by Peter Lynch

12.Poor Charlie's Almanack - The wit and wisdom of Charles T Munger
13.Speculative Contagion by Frank Martin
14. The Long and the Short of it by John Kay
15. More than you know by Michael Maubossin
16. Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

17. The Psychology of Judgment and Decision making by Scott Plous
18. The Real Warren Buffett by James O'Loughlin
19. Devil take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor
20. Risk Intelligence by Dylan Evans
21. The Emotionally Intelligent Investor by Ravee Mehta

22.Accounting for Value by Stephen Penman
23. Common Stocks and Common Sense by Edgar Wachenheim III
24. Big Money Thinks Small by Joel Tillinghast
25. Memos from the Chairman by Alan C Greenberg

Life is a continuous journey of going through peaks and troughs of Happiness and struggle.

We can only see the Happy part of other lives, but ignore what they might have gone through to achieve that.

But let me tell you, even if someone is at ease right now, doesn't mean that he will continue to be at ease for their whole life.

The struggle will come again and we will have to go through it ,whatever we do, whoever we are , we have to cross that river of pain.

Even,In trading there are times when nothing works out, you go through long time and money draw-downs.

Even if you think you are a master, you have to go through it.

If you are struggling right now, don't lose hope as the tables will turn.

But remember to work as hard as you can and do as much good work as you can in your ease or Joyful time of life, because the tables will turn again.

Thank you for reading.

Trader knight.

Like humans , stocks too have different nature and if you are trading every stock the same way then this thread may be for you.

A thread on Nature of stocks and how it can help you to improve your trading results.

First start with what is the nature of stocks ?

I broadly categorize stocks in two categories-

1. The momentum stocks-

These are the stocks where most of the moves are swift in nature, or we can say that the pullbacks in a trend are smaller.

2. The AKBC stocks-

These are the stocks where most of the trending moves comes with deep pullbacks.

Examples-

So the purpose of categorizing these stocks, is that we Trade those stocks/instruments which are more suited to our style.

Say if you are a mean reversion player and you are trading in the momentum stocks category then you are more bound to lose over large number of trades.

"90% of the traders lose money, But do they lose it all the time?"

Most of them do make money, its just that they give it all back.

Lets analyze why and how a trader makes and loses money
[Thread]:

Below is the equity curve which is most traders dream.

This is equity curve of an average trader:

Most traders do make money, but they give it back to the markets .

Because of trading errors.

What are trading errors?

Trading errors are those errors which happen because of wrong Position sizing, Leverage , etc.

I am not making this up, check your P&L, 90 % of your losses would have come from less then 10% trades.

Most of these happen because of No knowledge, No plan, bad position sizing .

Now, we know what's the problem, lets talk about the solution.

1. Learn the Basics first-

If you don’t get the basics clear then how can you make money?

Learn How to use Support and resistances
Learn How to use trend lines
Learn about trend, it will solve 90% of your problem

Thread on 'no stop loss', 'adjustments' and 'Risk'
----------------------------------------------------

Wanted to share my thoughts on this topic for a long time but this email sent by someone yday woke me up from slumber

Pls read the email 1st before delving into thread

(1/n)

In the past 1-2 years, there has been a sudden surge of traders who just talk about theta decay, option selling, adjustments and stuff like that..

It is all fair as long as the trader knows what he's doing. But the reality is far from what we see/perceive...

(2/n)

Many of these folks were told that one can 'adjust' their way out of any situation. Any sane options trader know that you cannot come out of any situation by adjustment

One of my friend used to do that(he is famous in options selling desi fintwit) for a long time until..

(3/n)

..he realized that one cannot possibly do that and its gonna burn him one day. He's pretty smart and hence, he put a portfolio level SL & when that hits, he will stop dancing, gets out and calls it a day

So, risk is managed at account level and he is quite clear about it

(4/n)

Unfortunately, 1000s of traders who does option selling(with adjustment) dont have this risk mgmt in place.

They think (i dont know if i had to call it false confidence or ignorance) their skills in 'adjusting' will take them ashore 😅

(5/n)

If you really want to make MONEY in markets:-

Instead of finding SUPPORTS to BUY in Bearish Markets, try to SELL near RESISTANCE in PULL BACKS.

Instead of finding RESISTANCE to SELL in Bullish markets, try to BUY near SUPPORT in PULL BACKS.

You are all set to make MONEY!!!

How even after knowing everything about your work, a series of emotional judgments can place you in a difficult situation.

A thread on how loss Aversion causes us to take irrational decisions-

An experiment by professor Bazerman of Harvard.

On the first day of class, Professor Bazerman announces a game that seems innocuous enough. Waving a twenty-dollar bill in the air, he offers it up for auction.

Everybody is free to bid; there are only two rules. The first is that bids are to be made in $1 increments. The second rule 30 The Swamp of Commitment is a little trickier.

The winner of the auction, of course, wins the bill. But the runner-up must still honor his or her bid,

while receiving nothing in return.

In other words,this is a situation where second best finishes last. Indeed, at the beginning of the auction, as people sniff out an opportunity to get a $20 bill for a bargain, the hands quickly shoot up, and the auction is officially under way

A flurry of bids follows. As Bazerman described it, "The pattern is always the same. The bidding starts out fast and furious until it reaches the $12 to $16 range." At this point,

Objectivity- Undistorted by emotions or personal bias.

What is objective Trading?

Trading in which decisions are taken on pre-decide rules, decisions in objective trading are not decided by Feelings or opinions.

What is subjective trading?

It is discretionary trading, in which one uses his intuitions and Analysis to take trading decisions.

Is one superior to other?

The rules in a mechanical system are going to be decided by you, the plan is going to be made by you,

the positions sizing and all other aspects are going to be made by you.

So your psychology is going to filter the information coming towards you, even in a mechanical system as well as in discretion.

WHATS THE USE OF OBJECTIVITY-

I am a Discretionary - Rule based trader.

So, I take trades based on my analysis, my entries are discretion based, but the exits , position sizing and Risk management rules are pre decided.

WHY USE SUBJECTIVE TRADING?

The biggest benefit that objective trading do is that it makes the chances of you thinking less during the time of taking an execution decision.

As a beginner trader you will not have much experience, and you will inevitably do a lot of mistakes.

"Start your Trading day with a fresh and empty mind."

Ever faced stress and strong emotions after having loss day and under-performance for a long time after that?

Thread on Emotion and how to control them with help of trading journal

Poker players calls it TILT.

Tilt is pretty much any reason for you to trade sub-optimally.

Greed and fear are tilts in trading.

When normally you have a stressful day (not in trading) and you go to bed with a bad mood, the next day you wake up fine without much stress .

So where did the emotion go?

The brain absorbs and digests all the emotions.

But, when you have a big emotional and loss day , and then a sleepless night, the brain cant digest those emotions as easily.

The next day you wake up to trade , you don’t feel quite right, you feel fear.

So, now you are not starting with an empty cup.

Now your tilt threshold level ( the level where your decision making ability reduces and you take bad decisions ) decreases.

Now, you will be angry a little faster then normally and feel fear more then you do.

So,how to empty your mind after having a bad or even a good day?

By using a Trading journal.

When tops are formed , two things happen The public is buying and the big boys are selling, and vice-versa when bottoms are formed.

In simple words Volume climax is the last "AHA" movement for the public before the stock make a top or bottom.

Thread-

What is Volume climax?

• Volume climax appears at the extreme of a trend, or when top or bottoms are formed.

• Most of the time volume climax appears when breakouts happens after a long extending move, and then fails to hold at higher levels.

• In this, at time of breakout we see big volumes (atleast 2-3X more then normal volume) coming in stock when the stock is already extended.

• More volume is not always good, though retail traders doesn’t distinguish between them.

• After the Volume climax we may see a top/bottom or at-least the trend becomes sideways.

• The best setups are those in which we see full reversal candles with big range.

Example of volume climax-

1. The stock was in Uptrend, And has give a quite good run , Stock was giving a big move as you can see in last 2 candles, they were super extended.

2. But at the top candle, the bulls lost the control and the stock closes with a weak candle,

AN IMPORTANT THREAD 🧵👇

What is Ascending Triangle ??

A Detailed Thread on Ascending Triangle as continuation pattern with graphical examples.

Retweet to help others and beginners and if you want it every weekend !
@caniravkaria

1) Ascending triangle occurs after Bullish trend which shows continuation in the prevailing trend.

2) It can be assumed as tug of war between Strong bulls and cautious bears which is clearly evident.

Ascending Triangle as breakout continuation pattern 👇

3) It's a continuation pattern / an indication of continuation of bullish trend which depicts continuation in the up move.

4) It's key feature is its rising support and flat resistance which signifies power of bulls over bears. simply put, buyers are wining the battle.

5) It's the most commonly occuring pattern in classical patterns.

6) it can occur as clear breakout Ascending Triangle or Pullback Ascending Triangle.

Happy reading !

Ascending Triangle as pullback continuation pattern 👇

Why 90% of the traders even after winning 90% of the times gives it back to the markets?

Has this ever happened to you, That you are up 10% on the month and you feel crazy, but the next morning you give it all back to the markets?

What Causes You to Give It All Back?

Thread-

1. Euphoria-

It is the state of mind in which we can not perceive risk, In state of euphoria nothing can go wrong.

So when you are in this state of mind, you feel invincible and there is nothing in the world which can stop you from making money.

That’s why when most of the traders after a winning streak put a Huge position and then Boom, all the luck goes for a toss.

Think about it why most of the traders loose big money when the market starts to go in bear mode from bullish mode, because

when the markets are in a bull market, even if you take trades based on your neighbor recommendation most of them will be right

"Felling too good is not good for your trading"

Winning gives you dopamine rush, And when you trading to get right often you are just feeding your ego

The evolved trader recognizes that winning simply means that you landed on the right side of probability. That’s all. There is no reason to get excited.

It’s just probability and you have an edge that gives you an advantage in the randomness of probability.

50 rookie mistakes to avoid as a stock market beginner - a thread.

1. Watching CNBC and acting on the recommendations provided by the "analysts", "experts" and "fund managers" who appear on TV.

Remember, most of them don't even beat the benchmark index on an annual basis.

2. Giving too much importance to Moneycontrol articles and recommendations. Moneycontrol profits off of noobs. They depend on you to make their money. They get paid by buy side firms who want to dump their positions, and sell side firms whose clients want to sell.

They also get paid to propagate rumours (albeit subtly) about stocks that the buy-side firms want to buy (albeit at lower prices) and sell-side firm clients want to buy. So, if you see a recommendation on moneycontrol, that marks the distribution phase (most of the times).

3. Listening to colleagues, friends, and family on what to invest on, where to invest, what stocks to buy. Usually these are also people who have no real expertise, but started a year or few months ahead of you. They only talk about their winners, you get very excited.

4. Listening to social media "experts". People on Twitter, Youtube, etc., even if they look like they are trading crores, or managing hundreds of crores, have different reasons for trading/investing in something. Typically, following them is the path to the butcher's shop.

1/ I used to think that the biggest gains had to come from stocks that no one knew about

One of the harder lessons for me to internalize has been that oftentimes, unknown stocks stay unknown for a reason and you can still earn attractive returns from stocks everyone's bullish on

2/ While I’m not contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian, I do think it’s important to question everything.

When I started out, I would buy "quality" stocks like FB or TSLA without doing much research.

But an opinion being consensus doesn’t make it the truth.

3/ So owning the most popular stocks made me nervous. If a winner is so obvious then either it's priced in or maybe I'm missing something?

I preferred owning stocks that others weren’t aware of or were bearish on for the wrong reasons (more room for upside surprises).

4/ But there are degrees

Despite being widely popular, stocks like SHOP have been some of the best performers because they exceeded even the most bullish projections

And some stocks like TSLA are partly popular because they are great consumer products which is an important sign

5/ On the other hand, while the biggest winners can be found in micro-caps, many of which started out very undervalued with no analyst coverage, on average, they tend to underperform larger caps

Picking out the big winners earlier on is very difficult and there is no set formula