The Lazy Man’s Guide to Forex Trading; Let the Market Do the ‘Work’

When we think of a “lazy person” we typically imagine someone laying around at home watching TV on the sofa with a bag of potato chips in one hand and a cheap beer in the other. One thing that we almost never associate with a lazy person is success or wealth; in fact we usually imagine them as being poor, dirty and disorganized. However, today I am going to challenge these beliefs because I feel that in our modern society there’s an over-emphasis on doing “more” and being some workaholic control freak who simply lives for their job and little else.

The word “lazy” is often associated with negativity in most social circles, but depending on what you’re being lazy about, it can actually be a good thing. Saying someone is a “lazy person” is usually a gross generalization. You could be an athlete or a super fitness freak, but you might be lazy when it comes to investing, money and business; many people are lazy in some areas of life and the exact opposite in others. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it’s actually quite normal to be lazy at some things in your life. When it comes to trading or investing, it could even be said that being “lazy” or relaxed can actually increase your chances of success.

The lazy trader concept I am using for today’s lesson is simply a metaphor for trading in a manner that is relaxed and unemotional, but the theory behind it makes sense. Remember, I have been doing this for over 10 years and I have witnessed thousands of traders and the different ways they trade; I know what attributes make good traders and being lazy is probably in the top 5 essential attributes in my opinion. Relaxed, stress-free personalities tend to make more money in trading and investing, whereas the serious over-thinkers and obsessively dedicated personalities tend to lose!!!

Lazy traders aren’t glued to their charts all the time

The best traders I know don’t bother analyzing the market or watching their charts all the time. They know they can’t change where the market is headed, so they just set orders/alerts when certain prices are reached or they look at the market in the morning and in the evening briefly. Successful traders take a relaxed and no-stress approach.
The most profitable traders and investors don’t addictively watch their positions all night while they should be sleeping. They make a decision and let the market determine the outcome without interruption or interference. Some might call this “lazy”, I call it “smart” because it works and it’s the foundation of the set and forget mentality that I believe in.
To be a good trader, we almost have to do the opposite of everything that feels “right”. It feels “right” to sit there and watch the markets and watch your trades tick away. But this really accomplishes nothing except making you more likely to do something stupid like enter another position, close your position before it really gets moving, etc. It seems like you need to sit there and “analyze” the market for a long time, and especially after you enter a trade, but you don’t need to do this, actually you really need to do the opposite. Just leave your computer, be “lazy” about your trades and forget about them for a while, this way you really give your trading edge a fair shot to play out.

Lazy traders have bigger winners

How many times have you entered a valid trade setup from the daily chart time frame and then began watching the 4 hour or 1 hour chart after your trade was live? I’ll bet you’ve done this a lot, and I’ll bet it’s led to more than a few occasions where you exited that perfectly good daily chart setup only because you saw the market moving against you on the intra-day charts.
Lazy traders don’t sit there and watch their trades after they are live, thus they are not looking at every up and down move during the intraday session, and thus they eliminate most of the temptation to interfere with their trades. This leads to bigger winners and a higher overall risk reward return over the long run. The reason is simply because they are not being influenced and hypnotized by the short-term fluctuations in price that tend to cause traders to make emotional trading errors. The lazy trader is down at the beach having a  beer or spending time with his family, while the obsessed trader is crouched over his computer panicking and stressing over his open positions…which one do you think is more likely to make a stupid emotional trading mistake?

The Lazy trader goes to sleep whilst the obsessed trader is sleep deprived

Lazy traders are relaxed and calm; they get a good night’s sleep and let the market do its thing. When they wake up in the morning they turn on the computer and look at the overnight price action for a few minutes and then carry on with their lives.
The obsessed coffee-addicted trading junkie is sleep deprived because he has been up watching the market until 4a.m. crouched over his trading terminal…he is ultimately creating his own failure by taking trading way too seriously and over thinking every single decision. The longer you sit there and “think” about the markets and your trades, the more likely you are to make a stupid / emotional trading mistake.

Lazy traders develop confidence in their trading ability

One of the things that I see from the emails I get every day is that there are basically two types of traders; those traders who are happy trading around their current job and schedule and those who look at trading as their only option for income and put all their eggs in the trading basket right from the start. What this means is that one trader is starting from a point of no pressure or emotion and another trader is already putting pressure and emotion into the mix before they even make their first trade.
Putting pressure on yourself to make a lot of money from your trading right out of the gate is going to flood your mind and body with emotion and adrenaline which is naturally going to cause you to do stupid things like over-trading and over-leveraging your account. Whereas, if you take a lazy trader approach and just check the market before and after work each day, you will slowly but surely gain confidence and also have better longer-term results since you will have largely eliminated emotion from the mix.
The “true” market picture can easily be seen after analyzing the price action on the charts for just a few minutes at the close of each trading session. (end of day chart analysis).  However, when obsessed traders sit there and continue to analyze the market, they inherently make up all kinds of things that “could” happen and they manifest patterns and trade setups that are nothing more than low-probability random price movements. Thus, trading in this obsessive manner works to tear down your confidence as a trader and just makes you frazzled and frustrated in the end. The lazy trader develops a better “gut feel” for the market because he is just looking at what’s there and then moving on, rather than sitting there manifesting different combinations of things that could happen.

Lazy traders develop positive trading habits

The lazy trader flicks open a EURUSD chart, looks for something obvious to trade and either trades or passes on the opportunity. He is not worried about news events or what the media is saying; he is not over-thinking it and he does not care if he enters a trade or not. Trading in this manner develops positive trading habits because you are reinforcing a minimalist trading approach.
I am a minimalist myself and I keep things simple and clean when it comes to trading. I can’t stand being stressed or worried about what the market is doing, I can’t stand the thought of analyzing the market for hours on end, or anything for that matter. I don’t listen to financial news and I don’t over-think what I am doing in the market or in life. I would much rather be relaxing reading a book/magazine or watching a movie or entertaining my 3 year old son.
In fact, I would much prefer to do ANYTHING else but stress out about a trade or a trading decision.
It is often the case that the more serious and obsessed traders typically develop addictive and self-destructive personalities, or they already have these personalities when they start trading and they aren’t willing to change. They actually believe that they can influence or change what the market is going to do by focusing almost their whole life on the markets; however this couldn’t be further from the truth!

The key to lazy trading

Now that we’ve discussed a lot about why being a “lazy trader” can improve your trading, let’s talk about how to actually become a lazy trader…
Simply put, you have to genuinely not care about the outcome of any one trade and you have to eliminate the “itch” to be in the market all the time. The easiest way to really not care if you’re in the market or about the outcome of any one trade is to be sure you are totally OK with the money you are risking per trade and the money you have risked in your trading account. You should only be risking an amount that allows you to forget about the trade, when traders start risking more than they are comfortable with losing per trade they put themselves at a very high risk of becoming over-attached to their trades…and this is not the lazy trader approach, this is the obsessive / addictive approach that never works.
You also have to be confident in your trading edge and your ability to trade it. If you don’t really have a trading strategy or you don’t know what you’re doing, you aren’t going to be confident enough to just glance at the market a couple times a day briefly. Instead, you’re going to sit there for hours trying to manifest a signal simply because you aren’t really sure what you’re looking for in the markets. So, be sure you’ve mastered an effective trading edge like price action strategies and that you fully know how to trade it.

Lazy = better trading and a better life

Me and thousands of my followers who have made the transition to my “keep it simple” and minimalist trading philosophy, know firsthand its immense power. Not only do trading results improve by adopting the “lazy man” trading attitude…our life ultimately becomes less stressed and less cluttered with counter-productive thoughts, and then doors start opening in all areas.
Whether it’s business, trading, relationships or life in general, we often destroy them by trying too hard, doing too much, over-thinking, over-analyzing and simply stressing ourselves or others to death.
Do yourself a favor…start being a lazy trader! If you’re already a lazy trader, good for you! To the people who are not yet converted to “lazy trading tactics”… you need to stop trying so hard, relax and enjoy your life and you may find your trading will actually improve, not to mention your happiness level. It does not have to just be about trading, if you’re in business try removing the stress and stop thinking so much!
Don’t lock yourself in the office or in your trading room and think that the more hours you put in the better the outcome will be, that kind of thinking will destroy you, blow up your trading account and possibly destroy your relationships with others. Your wife/partner will probably notice a huge change in your personality if you make the commitment to be more relaxed.
If anything I have discussed in today’s article has turned on a light bulb in your head…I encourage you to pursue a change in your trading & life. It’s time to undo the damage you have already caused yourself and turn over a new leaf. Some people never wake up to the idea that they should be living a stress-free, relaxed and “lazier” trading life. Hopefully I have “saved” some of you today!
To learn more about my lazy-man’s trading tactics and how to trade stress free and get your life back…do yourself a favor and check out my price action trading course, it’s bound to help.

Daily Affirmations Will Improve Your Trading

This article is guaranteed to improve both your trading and your life.

Don’t believe me? Well I am living proof that the concepts in this article work. I am not just talking about trading here, I am talking about life, happiness, success and freedom. Everything I have achieved in my life or in business can be attributed to the concepts in this article in some way. So do yourself a favor and read this article twice.
Today I would like all of my readers to leave a comment and tell me how you plan to use these new powerful skills to improve your trading or your life, I want to hear from you.
Anything  you want to achieve in this world can be attracted to you by following the core principles in this article. For those reading this who have the goal to become a better trader – please take this knowledge, practice it and harness it’s power to improve your trading and your life.
An affirmation is defined as: “The assertion that something exists or is true”. Daily affirmations are a widely practiced method for attaining success and accelerating your ability to achieve goals.
Napoleon Hill is one of my favorite authors, and in my opinion he was the best motivational coach of all-time. He became famous by interviewing many of the most successful people of his time like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and others, and the one thing that they all seemed to have in common was that they “acted as if” what they desired most already existed before they had it. Indeed, this is the core philosophy of Hill’s work and is the main reason why daily affirmations are so important to long-term success in any field, including trading. Here’s my favorite quote from his work:
“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” –Napoleon Hill
This is perhaps the most famous motivational quote of all time, I have it on the wall in my trading office and I read it out loud to myself every day, I strongly suggest you do the same. After reading this article you can check out Napoleon Hills Videos here to learn more about his amazing work on personal development and attaining success.
Here is a list of 17 daily trading affirmations that you can incorporate into your trading plan and that you should read out loud to yourself every day. Doing this will work to keep you motivated to practice proper trading habits and generally stay on the path to Forex trading success:

1. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” – Napoleon Hill

This is the most important motivational quote of all time, which is why I have it listed again. If you haven’t read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich Book, I suggest you do so in the near future, it’s the single best piece of motivational literature ever written in my opinion, and it will likely have transformative effects on your trading and your personal life.

2. “I am a successful trader”

If you repeat to yourself everyday that you are a successful trader, it will make you a lot more likely to do the things that are necessary to become one. If you do not believe you are a successful trader, you will never become one, as with anything else in life, you have to believe in your cause or goal before you can make it a reality.

3. “I am consistently following my trading plan”

You need to approach Forex trading as a business and be strategic and logical in following your trading plan; don’t deviate. If you’ve taken the time to formulate a comprehensive trading plan based on your trading strategy, your trading will be the most effective when you follow your plan, since you were objective and clear-minded when creating it.

4. “I have a Forex trading journal and I use it”

If you have a Forex trading journal and you actually use it, you will be far ahead of most traders. It’s critical to keep a running track record of your trading performance so that you have a tangible piece of evidence that reflects your trading ability or lack thereof. A trading journal will also give you something to stay accountable too and help you remain disciplined and organized.

5. “I practice proper risk management”

It’s important to remember that trading success is defined over a large series of trades, not over one or two. This means that you should not give too much significance to any one trade, and the way to do this is by never risking more than you are comfortable with losing per trade. By that I mean, never risk an amount that keeps you up at night thinking about or watching your trades. Remember to take small losses and that you are going to have losing trades; it’s just part of doing business in the Forex market.

6. “I trade according to what the market IS doing, not what I think it ‘should’ be doing”

We want to trade what we actually see on our Forex price charts, not what we “think” should happen or what we “want” to happen. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you want the market to do; it’s going to do what it wants, so your job is to learn how to read its price action and take advantage of it, not fight against it.

7. “I will only take trades that give me a reward which clearly outweighs my risk”

The goal of any trader or investor is to make sure that the prospective reward of a trade clearly outweighs the risk involved. You need to gauge the market structure prior to entering a trade and make sure there is a logical reason for expecting that the risk reward on the trade is at least 1:1.5 or 1:2 or better.

8. “I will find other things to do besides watching my trades after they are live”

There’s nothing wrong with checking in on the market every 4 or 8 hours, but if you are sitting there addicted to your charts like a junkie, you are going to self-sabotage your own trades and probably end up losing a lot of money in the process. We have to learn to let the market “do the work” and just forget about our trades for a while after they are live. The set and forget forex trading strategy is something that I stand by and that I implement in my own personal trading, because meddling in your trades after they are live is an emotional decision and thus it’s usually the wrong thing to do. Find anything to do except watch your charts after you enter a trade.

9. “I am not emotionally affected by my profits or losses”

Both losses and profits have the ability to induce emotional reactions in us. A loss can cause us to want to take ‘revenge’ on the market and try and ‘make back’ the money we just lost. A profit can cause us to become overly-confident or even euphoric, which can cause us to deviate from our trading plan and take a trade that is lower probability than what we normally would take. Either way, you have to always be on guard against making an emotional trade immediately after a trade closes out, whether it was a winner or a loser. The best thing to do is to simply remove yourself from the markets for 12 to 24 hours after any trade.

10. “I try to trade with the dominant daily trend as much as possible”

I know you’ve heard this before, and I know it’s very cliché, but it’s also very true; the trend is your friend. I am often amazed at how many emails I get from traders telling me they are losing money in the markets and simultaneously asking me to comment on the chart they’ve attached to the email that shows a counter-trend trade on the intra-day charts. The easiest way to make money in any financial market is and has always been trading with the dominant trend. There are times when trading counter-trend is warranted, but until you’ve mastered trend-trading you should forget about counter-trend trading. Remember, don’t fight the dominant daily chart trend, instead, capitalize on it and ride the momentum until it ends.

11. “Instead of over-trading, I will be patient and let trading opportunities present themselves to me”

Don’t trade just because you feel like you have to or you want to…make sure there’s a real reason to do so and never trade when your pre-defined trading edge is not present. The downfall of most traders is over-trading, because most traders simply don’t have enough patience to trade forex like a sniper and not a machine gunner.

12. “I’m a professional trader and thus I will not engage in gambling my money in the markets”

Gamblers make random bets in casinos or elsewhere, and traders who don’t have trading plans or who don’t follow their trading edge are also gamblers. It’s really easy to click your mouse and put a trade on and hope to get lucky, kind of like pulling the arm of the slot machine at a casino. The difference is that you can actually develop and implement a high-probability trading edge like price action strategies when trading the markets. So, it’s up to you if you want to be a gambler or a trader.

13. “I will not interfere with my trades without just cause”

This one is similar to number 8, but it’s so important I wanted to touch on it again. Interfering with trades is usually an emotional reaction born out of risking too much or over-trading, both of which cause you to become overly attached to any one trade, which in turn causes you to over-analyze your trades and meddle with them once they are live. There are times when there’s just cause to interfere with your trades, such as a giant pin bar reversal that forms counter to your position, or some other opposing price action. However these instances are rare and it takes time and effort to develop your discretionary trading sense to the point where you can “effectively interfere” in your trades.

14. “News and fundamentals will not influence my trading decisions”

Traders who fall into the temptation to over-analyze the thousands of Forex news variables that occur each day, usually end up losing their trading accounts pretty quickly. All market variables are reflected via the natural price movement of the market, so by analyzing and trying to “figure out” what’s going to happen by reading economic news or watching CNBC you’re simply adding unnecessary and confusing variables to your trading approach.

15. “I am happy to take a profit and I will not be greedy”

Take your profits when your targets get hit, don’t change targets in an effort to try and get “just a little bit more” profit…These attempts to get a “little more profit” are usually in vain, and they usually lead to you letting a winning trade turn into a losing trade. Traders with smaller accounts especially need to take logical profits as they come, in order to build their accounts up and their confidence. If you get a 1 to 1.5 or 1 to 2 risk reward, there’s nothing wrong with taking the money off the table. Don’t fall into the trap of hoping that every trade you take goes on a parabolic run in your favor, the markets ebb and flow, meaning they don’t go in straight lines for very long.

16. “I invest in my trading education & myself”

Investing in your own education is paramount to success in any field. Forex trading is no different; whether it’s a book on trading psychology or the knowledge of an experienced Forex trading coach, learning something each day to make yourself a better trader will only improve your edge in the markets.

17. “I believe in my trading strategy completely and whole heartedly”

It’s critical to your trading success that you learn and trade with a strategy that’s proven and that you personally enjoy trading with. You have to follow it without deviation by remembering the fact that one loss does not negate the whole trading strategy. Don’t jump from one strategy or system to the next just because you stumble upon a few losing trades; losing trades are a natural part of any trading method. The key lies in losing trades properly and making sure you are trading with a strategy that is both simple and effective, like price action.
I trust that you’ve learned something from today’s article and I hope you write down or print out the above daily affirmations and read them out loud to yourself every day before analyzing the markets. Eventually, they will become cemented into your thinking and will thus turn into a habitual part of your trading routine. At that point, you will have transformed yourself from a losing trader to a successful and confident one.
Remember To Leave Your Comments – Today I would like all of my readers to comment & tell me how you plan to use these new powerful skills to improve your trading or your life, I want to hear from you.
If you would like more information on my trading philosophy and price action trading strategies, check out my Forex price action traders’ course and members’ community here.

Tips from The New Market Wizards

Bill Lipschutz

I don’t think you can consistently be a winning trader if you’re banking on being right more than 50 percent of the time. You have to figure out how to make money being right only 20 to 30 percent of the time.

Everyone should read the above quote again, and again. I have preached the fact that you can lose on the majority of your trades and still make money in many articles, yet I still get emails everyday from new traders who seem to be looking for the “holy-grail”. The truth is, many pro traders are not winning more than 50% of the time, but because their money management is so good, and their understanding of risk reward is so deep; they still make a sickening amount of money in the markets. Once you can learn that winning percentage doesn’t really matter and throw your ego in the garbage…you will probably start doing a lot better.

Randy McKay

I never try to buy a bottom or sell a top. Even if you manage to pick the bottom, the market can end up sitting there for years and tying up your capital. You don’t want to have a position before a move has started. You want to wait until the move is already under way before you get into the market.

This quote by Randy McKay speaks to the fact that trying to pick the top or bottom of a trend is futile, yet many traders try to do it. Indeed, it almost seems to be a part of our evolutionary wiring to want to try and be the “hero” and constantly pick the top of a big up trend or the bottom of a down trend. It’s far easier and more lucrative to wait for a trend to get underway and then trade with the trend until it ends.

William Eckhardt

Either a trade is good enough to take, in which case it should be implemented at full size, or it’s not worth bothering with at all.

William Eckhardt was Richard Dennis’s trading partner and colleague for the Turtle Trader experiment. Eckhardt challenged Dennis’s belief that trading could be taught to anyone by saying that he thought trading success was more of an innate thing that could not easily be taught. Eckhardt admits in The New Market Wizards that he was wrong and Dennis was right; trading can indeed be successfully taught even to complete beginners.
In his quote above he is talking about something I have long believed in; either you take a trade or you don’t…I don’t like reducing my position size because I don’t fully believe in my trade. If I don’t fully believe in a trade setup than I simply don’t take it, and if I do believe in it then I risk my standard amount per trade.

I haven’t seen much correlation between good trading and intelligence. Some outstanding traders are quite intelligent, but a few aren’t. Many outstandingly intelligent people are horrible traders. Average intelligence is enough. Beyond that, emotional makeup is more important.

This quite is pretty self-explanatory; you don’t have to be smart to be a trader. Intelligence helps for sure, but emotional makeup and discipline is far more important.

The desire to maximize the number of winning trades (or minimize the number of losing trades) works against the trader. The success rate of trades is the least important performance statistic and may even be inversely related to performance.

In the above quote, Eckhardt is talking about how many traders tend to take small profits because they are more concerned with “winning” than with their long-term profitability. He also says that “While amateurs go broke by taking large losses, professionals go broke by taking small profits. The problem, in a nutshell, is that human nature does not operate to maximize gain but rather to maximize chance of gain”. In other words, it’s against our human nature to want to let our profits run into large winners, it’s easier and it certainly feels better temporarily to take smaller gains. This, of course, puts traders in a very tough position of having to have a high winning percentage of their trades to succeed long-term.

Monroe Trout

I don’t pull out any money. I rent my condo and I drive a cheap car.

The above quote by Mr. Trout is a good example of my minimalist approach to trading and life that I recently wrote about. Clearly, I am not the only person who has had this idea or who finds it appealing.

First, many people get involved in the markets without any edge. They get in the market because their broker told them that the market is bullish. That is not an edge. However, to tell the truth, most small speculators will never be around long enough to find out whether their system could have worked, because they bet too much on their trades, or their account is too small to start.

In this quote, Trout is right on in saying that many people begin trading without any edge. I get emails from traders everyday who clearly have not mastered any type of trading strategy (edge) yet are telling me they’ve already lost thousands of dollars in the markets. You have to have a trading method that gives you a high-probability edge in the market and you have to stick to it and not risk too much per trade, especially if you have a very small account. Otherwise, you won’t be around very long in the markets.

Stanley Druckenmiller

I’ve learned many things from him [George Soros], but perhaps the most significant is that it’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.

The above quote is reference to George Soros who mentored Druckenmiller for a while. This quote fits perfectly with an article I wrote recently about how you don’t have to be right to make money trading. Most traders get far too concerned about the number of winners they have compared to losers when really they should totally forget about that number and instead focus on their overall risk / reward. In other words, how much money are they making for every dollar they have risked.

Victor Sperandeo

When he finally got out, he felt a sense of relief – which is somewhat ironic since he had just lost 70 percent of his money. There’s nothing logical about this process. It’s all an emotional pitfall. Planning where to get out before putting on the trade is a means of enforcing emotional discipline.

In the above quote, Sperandeo is talking about the psychological process involved when a trader doesn’t have a predetermined stop loss and when the trade goes into negative territory and they keep thinking the market will turn around so they can get out at breakeven. He goes on to say that very often the trader exits when he feels the “onset of panic” and he can’t take anymore open losses against him…and typically it’s around that time or shortly after that the market reverses back in his favor. He talks about “emotional discipline” in other parts of the interview too, and it goes to underscore the fact that we need to take proactive steps to manage our emotions as we trade, otherwise they can very easily get out of control.

Tom Basso

My reinforcement came when my losses gradually became smaller and smaller. I was getting very close to the breakeven point. I also kept my losses at a manageable level. I always traded a very small account – an amount that I could afford to lose without affecting my life-style.

The above quote is one of the key points that I talk about in regards to money management and risk management; never risk more than you are emotionally OK with losing. Basso is saying that when he was starting out he traded a small account that even if he blew-out it would not affect him or his lifestyle. I see many traders coming into the markets risking money they clearly can’t afford to lose, and this puts them behind the curve right out of the gate because they feel a strong emotional attachment to the money and thus to every trade they take.

I would tell that trader to think of each trade as one of the next one thousand he’s going to make. If you start thinking in terms of the next one thousand trades, all of a sudden you’ve made any single trade seem very inconsequential. Who cares if a particular trade is a winner or a loser? It’s just another trade.

The above quote was Basso’s response to a question from Schwager about what he would say to a trader who says he can’t stand to lose. Learning that any individual trade is really inconsequential in the long-run, is one of the main realizations that will help you detach yourself emotionally from your trades. Also, if you really understand and believe this, you should not have any desire to over-leverage your trades…because you know that it’s the series of trades over time that matters, not any one in particular.

Linda Bradford Raschke

It never bothered me to lose, because I always knew that I would make it right back. I always knew that no matter what happened, I could go into any marketplace, with any amount of money, and make a living.

The above quote by Linda Bradford Raschke was the main one that I remembered from her interview when I first read The New Market Wizards about five or six years ago. It is really a very motivating quote, because it basically says that once you have mastered your trading strategy, you should have the ability to go into any market and make money. This is especially true for a price action trader, since price action strategies can be applied to any market; once you master them you really can trade any market you want.

Al Weiss

The essential element is that the markets are ultimately based on human psychology, and by charting the markets you’re merely converting human psychology into graphic representations. I believe that the human mind is more powerful than any computer in analyzing the implications of these price graphs.

In the above quote, All Weiss describes the essence of price action trading; trading from the “graphic representations” of human psychology in the market, as well as other variables that affect a market. These “graphic representations” of different market variables are what I call price action, and a market’s price action reflects all the variables that influence it.

How To Trade Like The ‘Market Wizards’

The concepts and ideas discussed in this lesson are going to completely transform the way you think about professional trading. Hopefully the knowledge you learn here today will inspire you to change the way you trade, how you think and how you act into the future.  If you learn and apply these concepts, you will dramatically improve your trading performance.
This is by far one of the most inspirational and insightful articles I’ve written since  I started writing back in 2008. I have immensely enjoyed producing it and I must humbly thank my good friend Larry for his assistance with research as well as Jack Schwager and the numerous traders he interviewed, who are of course the true inspiration behind this article.

Enjoy…  Nial Fuller  – Australia.

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Today’s article was inspired by the Market Wizards Book Series by Jack D. Schwager; one of my favorite authors. In the Market Wizards books, Schwager interviews various pro traders and picks their brains about how they became successful. One of the most intriguing aspects of the books that Schwager discusses at the end of The New Market Wizards book is that despite having vastly different trading styles, there are “certain principles that held true” for all the traders he interviewed. We will discuss some of these principles and more from the Market Wizards books in today’s lesson.
There really is a lot to learn from these two books and much of what they discuss is relevant to the style of trading we practice here at Learn To Trade The Market, i.e., position / swing trading on higher time frame charts. There are also a lot of relevant and helpful points on money management and trader psychology, these parts of the books are what I found the most fascinating.
To write today’s lesson, I had to get reacquainted with much of what’s in both of these books because it’s been a while since I first read them. Note: this article is a lot longer than most of my lessons, so make sure you have an extra thirty minutes and your favorite coffee or energy drink before you begin if you want to read it one sitting.
Below, I have provided some of my favorite quotes from the pro traders that Schwager interviewed followed by a synopsis of what I feel are the most important points to take away.
In the preface to The New Market Wizards, Schwager says

“In conducting the interviews for this book and its predecessor, Market Wizards, I became absolutely convinced that winning in the markets is a matter of skill and discipline, not luck. The magnitude and consistency of the winning track records compiled by many of those I interviewed simply defy chance.”

This quote, and the ones that follow, should provide you with a lot of motivation and insight into how professional traders think.

Tips From The Market Wizards

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Michael Marcus:

“If trading is your life, it is a torturous kind of excitement. But if you are keeping your life in balance, then it is fun. All the successful traders I’ve seen that lasted in the business sooner or later got to that point. They have a balanced life; they have fun outside of trading. You can’t sustain it if you don’t have some other focus. Eventually, you wind up over-trading or getting excessively disturbed about temporary failures”

The above quote by Michael Marcus from Market Wizards, fits perfectly with our style of trading here at LTTTM. We focus on end of day trading methods and “part-time” trading. Essentially, what Michael is saying here is that if you let trading overtake your life, you will end up over-trading and getting too attached to positions. Just like anything else, you need a healthy involvement with trading, not an addiction to it.

Bruce Kovner

Position size. He traded much too big. For every one contract I traded, he traded ten. He would double his money on two different occasions each year, but still end up flat.

In the above quote, Bruce is talking about a trader he knew who he said was a “brilliant trader” but could never keep any of the money he made. He never kept the money he made simply because he traded too big of a position size for his account all the time. This leads to fear, greed and all kinds of emotional trading mistakes.

Whenever I enter a position, I have a predetermined stop. That is the only way I can sleep. I know where I’m getting out before I get in. The position size on a trade is determined by the stop, and the stop is determined on a technical basis.

Bruce is discussing the importance of having a predetermined stop loss in place whenever entering a trade. We talked about how to place stop losses according to the market structure in a recent article, and it agrees with what Bruce is saying that you should place your stop according to the technical picture of the market.

The problem with developing expert systems for trading is that the “rules” of the trading and investment game keep changing. I have spent some time working with expert system developers, and we concluded that trading was a poor candidate for this approach, because trading decisions encompass too many types of knowledge, and the rules for interpreting the information keep changing.

This quote supports the belief that humans make better traders than machines, or trading “robots”. In my article on the human mind vs computers in forex trading, we discuss how due to changing market conditions and other variables that are very difficult to put into computer code, humans still make the best traders. That is, at least until we develop some advanced form of artificial intelligence that can develop the type of discretionary chart reading skills that a human can, but to date that has not happened.

First, I would say that risk management is the most important thing to be well understood. Undertrade, undertrade, undertrade is my second piece of advice.

Kovner sounds like me in the above quote; I’m always preaching about trading less, not over-trading, simplifying your trading, etc. Clearly, this idea is not new, but beginning traders loooove to over-trade, and as you read on in this article you will see quotes from other market wizards who essentially preach the same “don’t trade unless there’s an obvious reason to” philosophy.

They personalize the market. A common mistake is to think of the market as a personal nemesis. The market, of course, is totally impersonal; it doesn’t care whether you make money or not. Whenever a trader says, “I wish,” or “I hope,” he is engaging in a destructive way of thinking because it takes attention away from the diagnostic process.

In the quote above, Kovner is basically saying that when you are “hoping” and “wishing” about a trade, it essentially means you’re trading with too much emotion and this clouds what should be an objective and logical chart analysis process.

Paul Tudor Jones

That was when I first decided I had to learn discipline and money management. It was a cathartic experience for me, in the sense that I went to the edge, questioned my very ability as a trader, and decided that I was not going to quit. I was determined to come back and fight. I decided that I was going to become very disciplined and businesslike about my trading.

In the above quote, Paul Tudor Jones is reflecting on a very bad trade that he lost a lot of money on and how it drove him to be more disciplined and focus more on money management. You don’t have to wait until you have a near account-blowout trade (or an account blowout) to start managing your money properly and being disciplined. You can learn from other traders and start treating your trading as a business today.

The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense. Every day I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. I do that so I can define my maximum possible drawdown. Hopefully, I spend the rest of the day enjoying positions that are going my direction. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out.
Don’t be a hero. Don’t have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don’t ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead. My biggest hits have always come after I have had a great period and I started to think that I knew something.

The above quote talks about how Paul Tudor Jones focuses more on defending his capital and managing risk than on how much money he can make. If you focus on risk first then the profits will tend to take care of themselves. Also, in the second quote, he is talking about how becoming over-confident or arrogant after a series of winning trades is often the kiss of death for traders.

My major problem was not the number of points I lost on the trade, but that I was trading far too many contracts relative to the equity in the accounts that I handled. My accounts lost something like 60 to 70 percent of their equity in that single trade.

In the above quote, Tudor Jones discusses how if you risk too much relative to your account, you can lose almost all, or all of your account on one single trade. So, you’re not alone if you’re losing money, even the pros lost money while they were learning and improving. The difference is, will you learn from your big losing trades or will you continue to make the same mistakes? Pro traders like Paul Tudor Jones and others don’t typically make the same big mistake twice.

Richard Dennis

It was an intellectual experiment. We trained them as well as we could. That was the way to do the experiment right, I thought. I tried to codify all the things I knew about the markets. We taught them a little bit about probability, money management, and trading. It turned out I was right. I don’t say that to pat myself on the back, but even I am surprised how well it worked. It’s frightening how well it worked.

In the above quote, Richard Dennis is referring to the famous “Turtle Traders” experiment conducted by him and his trading partner William Eckhardt in the 1980s. Dennis is saying that the experiment proved that you could indeed teach complete beginners how to trade successfully with a simple set of trading rules and some insight from their mentors. This is more confirmation that forex trading can be taught successfully to people who are willing to be disciplined, even complete novices.

The key is consistency and discipline. Almost anybody can make up a list of rules that are 80 percent as good as what we taught our people. What they couldn’t do is give them the confidence to stick to those rules even when things are going bad.
On any individual trade it is almost all luck. It is just a matter of statistics. If you take something that has a 53 percent chance of working each time, over the long run there is a 100 percent chance of it working. If I review the results of two different traders, looking at anything less than one year doesn’t make any sense. It might be a couple of years before you can determine if one is better than the other.

In the above two quotes, Dennis is referring to the fact that many traders give up on their trading method the minute they hit some adversity. One thing you can’t do is ditch your trading method just because you hit a few losers. Any method or system will have losing trades, you measure the success or failure of a particular trading method over a large series of trades, not 3 or 4. So, you have to give any legitimate strategy enough time to play out before you cast judgement on it. Not having the discipline to stick to a trading plan or a trading method drives many traders to their trading “graves”.

I’ve certainly done it – that is, made counter-trend initiations. However, as a rule of thumb, I don’t think you should do it.

Richard Dennis was famously a very successful trend-trader and in the above quote he is stating his feelings on trading counter-trend. Interestingly, this is pretty much how I feel about trading counter-trend; sometimes it’s warranted, but most of the time it’s not, and it takes a skilled trader to be able to trade counter-trend successfully.

Ed Seykota

The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system. There are old traders and there are bold traders, but there are very few old, bold traders.

The quote above by Ed Seykota refers to the fact that you won’t stick around very long if you continue to trade too “bold”. By “bold” he basically means risking too much per trade and / or over-trading…you can only be overly bold in the markets for so long…it will eventually catch up to you.

Fundamentals that you read about are typically useless as the market has already discounted the price, and I call them “funny-mentals”.
I am primarily a trend trader with touches of hunches based on about twenty years of experience. In order of importance to me are: (1) the long-term trend, (2) the current chart pattern, and (3) picking a good spot to buy or sell. Those are the three primary component of my trading. Way down in a very distant fourth place are my fundamental ideas and, quite likely, on balance, they have cost me money.

In the above quotes, Seykota is talking about how he doesn’t really use fundamental data to make his trading decisions; he is almost purely a technical trader. I agree with this totally and my price action trading strategies and trading philosophy reflect the belief that all fundamentals are factored into price and you can save a lot of time and stress by just learning to analyze price and avoiding forex news and fundamentals.

I prefer not to dwell on past situations. I tend to cut bad trades as soon as possible, forget them, and then move on to new opportunities.

Essentially, Seykota is saying “Don’t become emotional about losses”. Dwelling on a lost trade is only going to cause negative emotions and tempt you to try and “make back” the money you lost. Forget about your last losing trade and move on.

I feel my success comes from my love of the markets. I am not a casual trader. It is my life. I have a passion for trading. It is not merely a hobby or even a career choice for me. There is no question that this is what I am supposed to do with my life.

Whilst you don’t need to be glued to your screen all day and night, you do need to have some passion and interest in trading and markets, otherwise you will be forcing yourself to trade just because you want to make money. People who succeed at trading are those that have a genuine interest in the markets and in the art and skill of trading.

Having a quote machine is like having a slot machine on your desk – you end up feeding it all day long. I get my price data after the close each day.

Here, Seykota is talking about end of day data. I’ve been teaching traders the power and simplicity of trading “end of day” for years. It’s the perfect option for most traders, especially those first starting out or those who want to trade successfully with a day job.

Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.

Seykota is talking about how people tend to indirectly let their emotions control their trading. He talks about one trader who “seems to get in near the start of every substantial bull move and works his $10 thousand up to a quarter of a million in a couple of months. Then he changes his personality and loses it all back again. This process is repeated like clockwork.” Many traders don’t even know that their emotions are guiding their trading more than logic or rationality, thus, they cannot keep their winnings or control their losers…because they are doing what feels good…thus they are “getting what they want”, if only temporarily.

Larry Hite

While the speculator doesn’t have the product knowledge or speed, he does have the advantage of not having to play. The speculator can choose to only bet when the odds are in his favor. That is an important positional advantage.

In the above quote, Larry is referring to the fact that smaller retail traders have the advantage of being able to sit out an wait patiently for the best opportunities. Bigger institutional traders have to trade more and whilst they might have a speed advantage, the retail trader has to use his advantage of being able to trade like a sniper to its fullest.

Frankly, I don’t see markets; I see risks, rewards, and money.

The above quote stresses the importance of seeing each trade as a risk reward ratio, rather than just a potential profit opportunity. Pro traders calculate their risk first and then their reward, if the risk reward ratio of a trade doesn’t make sense then they don’t trade.

Marty Schwartz

 I always laugh at people who say, “I’ve never met a rich technician.” I love that! It’s such an arrogant, nonsensical response. I used fundamentals for nine years and got rich as a technician.

In the above quote, Marty is clearly supporting the use of technical analysis over fundamental analysis. At the time the Market Wizards books were written; late 80′s early 90′s, technical analysis was not as widely accepted as it is today. As Schwartz said “I got rich as a technician”….it’s because all the fundamentals are factored into price, as I mentioned earlier.  As most of you know by now, I strongly believe traders should study charts and should avoid trading news & fundamentals like the plague.

Learn to take losses. The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand. Also, don’t increase your position size until you have doubled or tripled your capital. Most people make the mistake of increasing their best as soon as they start making money. That is a quick way to get wiped out.

Learning that you HAVE to take losses and HOW to minimize them are two very critical lessons you have to learn before becoming a pro trader. Also, I think what he says about increasing position size is interesting; it supports my view on measuring risk in dollars, not percentages…and he is also saying that you shouldn’t increase your position size too soon..build your account up a bit first.

James B. Rogers, Jr. (Jim  Rogers)  ‘The man in the bow tie’

One of the best rules anybody can learn about investing is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, unless there is something to do. Most people – not that I’m better than most people – always have to be playing; they always have to be doing something. They make a big play and say, “Boy, am I smart, I just tripled my money.” Then they rush out and have to do something else with that money. They can’t just sit there and wait for something new to develop.

I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime. Even people who lose money in the market say, “I just lost my money, now I have to do something to make it back.” No, you don’t. You should sit there until you find something.

I really like the part above where Jim Rogers says “I just wait until there is money lying in the corner…” because that really sums up what I try to teach my students as well as my own personal trading style. Rogers is dead on with the above quotes; most traders do WAY too much…there is nothing wrong with doing nothing if there isn’t anything to do! In other words…don’t force a trade if an obvious one isn’t there, it’s better to save your capital for a solid opportunity that’s just around the corner.

Mark Weinstein

It is experience and gut feel. I use all forms of technical analysis, but interpret them through gut feel. I do not believe in mathematical systems that always approach the markets in the same way. Using myself as the “system,” I constantly change the input to achieve the same output – profit!

In the above quote, Market Weinstein is referring to his style of trading which is based on technical analysis combined with “gut feel”. I talk about gut feel and discretionary trading skill and it’s really an important thing to develop as a trader. As you learn price action or any other strategy, you will naturally develop more “gut feel” and discretionary skill for applying that strategy in the market. Over time, this will increase your ability to select winning traders over losing trades.

Dr. Van K. Tharp

The top traders that I’ve worked with began their careers with an extensive study of the markets. They developed and refined models of how to trade. They mentally rehearsed what they wanted to do extensively until they had the belief that they would win. At this point, they had both the confidence and the commitment necessary to produce success.

When I read the above quote, the first thing I thought of was demo trading and learning to master your trading strategy before you try to trade it live. People who can apply more patience and discipline in learning and mastering their trading method before they go live will naturally have a far easier time making money in the markets than those who just jump in head-first with no plan of action.