Essential Trading Principles Every Trader Should Know - Part 1

Firstly, I would like to wish all visitors a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! As the new year approaches, we would have made some resolutions to be achieved. And if profitable trading is one of your resolutions, then make sure you understand and acknowledge the following trading principles that I would like to share.

Over the many years of trading, I have found certain principles to be true. Understanding and using these basic principles provides an anchor of sanity when trading in a crazy world. Whenever I find myself under stress, questioning my judgement or my ability to trade successfully, I pull out these basic trading principles and review them.

Don’t Try to Predict the Future
I used to think that there were experts and geniuses out there who knew what was going to happen in the markets. I thought that these traders and market gurus were successful because they had figured out how to predict the markets. Of course, the obvious question is that if they were such good traders, and if they knew where the market was going, why were they teaching trading techniques, selling strategies and indicators, and writing newsletters? Why weren’t they rich? Why weren’t they flying to the seminars on their Lear Jets?

No One Knows Where The Market Is Going
It took me a long time to figure out that no one really understands why the market does what it does or where it’s going. It’s a delusion to think that you or any one else can know where the market is going. I have sat through hundreds of hours of seminars in which the presenter made it seem as if he or she had some secret method of divining where the markets were going. Either they were deluded or they were putting us on. I have seen many complex Fibonacci measuring methods for determining how high or low the market would move, how much a market would retrace its latest big move, and when to buy or sell based on this analysis. None has ever made consistent money for me.

No One Knows When The Market Will Move
It also has taken me a long time to understand that no one knows when the market will move. There are many individuals who write newsletters and/or books, or teach seminars, who will tell you that they know when the market will move. Most Elliott Wave practitioners, cycle experts, or Fibonacci time traders will try to predict when the market will move, presumably in the direction they have also predicted.

I personally have not been able to figure out how to know when the market is going to move. And you know what? When I tried to predict, I was usually wrong, and I invariably missed the big move I was anticipating, because “it wasn’t time.” It was when I finally concluded that I would never be able to predict when the market will move that I started to be more successful in my trading. My frustration level declined dramatically, and I was at peace knowing that it was OK not to be able to predict or understand the markets.

Market Experts Aren’t Magicians
Some of the experts that try to predict the markets actually make money trading the markets; however, they don’t make money because they have predicted the market correctly, they make money because they have traded the market correctly. There is a huge difference between trading correctly and making an accurate market prediction. In the final analysis, predicting the market is not what’s important. What is important is using sound trading practices. And if sound trading habits are all that is important, there is no reason to try to predict the markets in the first place. This is the reason strategy trading makes so much sense.

Successful Traders Have Trading Discipline
I have watched many market gurus continually make incorrect market predictions and still break even or make a little money because they have followed a disciplined approach to trading. It is these principles that make the money, not the prediction. To be a disciplined trader, you have to know how and why to enter the market, when to exit the market, and where to place your money management stops. You need to manage your risk and maximize your cash flow.

A sound trading strategy includes entries, exits, and stops as well as sound cash management strategies. Even the market gurus and famous traders don’t make money from their predictions, they make it from proper trading discipline. Over the years, they have learned the discipline to control their risk through money management. They have learned to take the trades as they come, and not forgo a trade because they are second-guessing their strategy or the market. These are the same practices that you must learn to include in your trading strategy.

Successful Traders Profit From Sound Money Management and Risk Control
Sound money management and risk control are the keys to being a profitable trader. I will say over and over again, it is not the prediction or the latest and greatest indicator that makes the profit in trading, it is how you apply sound trading discipline with superior cash management and risk control that makes the difference between success and failure. The key to profits in trading is not in the prediction or the indicator, but how well the trading strategy is designed and executed.

The ability to achieve risk control and cash management will make the difference between a successful trader and an unsuccessful trader. If you ever have the opportunity to watch a successful trader, you will see that they don’t worry about where the market is going or about predicting when the next big move will take place. They aren’t looking to tweak their indicator. They are worried about their risk on each trade. Is the trade being executed correctly? How much of their total account is at risk? Are the stops in the right place? And so on.

Successful Traders Do Not Have Superior Performance Numbers
If you want to have some fun, look at the performance of a successful market expert, one who is known for his or her market predictions and trading expertise. You will find that their performance numbers really aren’t any better than an average trading strategy. The percentage of profitable trades, the return on the account, average profit to average loss, number of losing trades in a row…all of these trading parameters are within the average trading strategy performance parameters.

Why is this? Because you can’t predict where the market will go and when it will move. But if you use correct strategic trading disciplines, you will make money whether you try to predict the market or just trade a good strategy. You might as well save yourself a lot of time, energy, and mental anguish and trade a good strategy.

Be In Harmony with the Market
We make money trading when we are in harmony with the market. We are long when the market is going up, and short (or out of) the market when it is going down. If we bring an opinion with us while trading, we will end up fighting the market. We keep trying to go long as the market is declining, or we keep shorting a market that it is in a bull phase.

Never Fight The Market
Fighting the market is not good for two reasons. First, we lose money. How much we lose depends on how well we are managing our money and controlling our risk. Second, fighting the market affects our judgment, and causes us to try to confirm that our judgment is correct, or persist in fighting a trend so that we will eventually prove to be correct. We figure that if we persist long enough, no matter how long it takes, we will eventually be right. Even if you ultimately make money fighting the market, it is not worth the price you have to pay, both financially and with peace of mind.

Let The Market Tell You What To Do And When
The correct attitude for successful trading is to let the market tell you what to do. If the market says to go long, buy, and if it starts to go down, sell. This sounds easy but it is much more difficult than you think. We always like to believe that we can be in control. We want to be in control of our trading and of the market. If you accept the notion right now that you cannot control the market, that all you can control is your execution of trades, you will take a great step toward being a successful trader.

Instead of trying to control the market, let the market tell you what to do. Let the market and your strategy take you long rather than you personally trying to predict or decide when to go long. Let your strategy take you out or get you short. Once you realize that you can’t understand the market, and that you can’t predict when the market will move, you will move into that detached state of mind where you let the market take you where it will when it wants to.

The Market Gives And Takes Away
To remove your personal biases and let the market tell you what to do is to give up control, to give up the notion that you are actually in charge of how much money you make. For profitable trading, you need to move into the mental state of letting the market determine the profits, not you. It won’t be whether you predict the market correctly that determines the profits, but whether your strategy is in a profitable mode or drawdown mode as determined by the market.

So, let the markets tell you what to do based on your strategy. Let it get you long and put you short. Let the market determine how much money you are going to make. Trade your strategy and let the market do the rest. And know that the market gives money and the market takes away money. Your goal should be to develop a strategy that gives you more money than it takes away.