If you ever have to ask someone else's opinion on a trade, you shouldn't be in it.
Perhaps my number one rule is: Don't try to make a profit on a bad trade, just try to find the best place to get out.
The good traders are the ones who can hold their ground the majority of the month and participate in that small handful of trades that are windfalls. The real skill is in not LOSING money!
Speech may be silver but silence is golden. Traders with the golden touch do not talk about their success.
Writing down your trades is the best exercise in the world.
The third important ingredient for achieving peak performance is attitude. Attitude is how you deal with the inevitable adverse situations that occur in the markets. Attitude is also how you handle the daily grind, the constant 2 steps forward and 2 steps back.
I believe that only short-term price swings can be predicted with any precision. The accuracy of a prediction drops off dramatically, the more distant the forecast time. I'm a strong believer in chaos theory.
Some of the best trades come when everyone gets very panicky. The crowd can often act very stupidly in the markets. You can picture price fluctuations around an equilibrium level as a rubber band being stretched -- if it gets pulled too far, eventually it will snap back. As a short-term trader, I try to wait until the rubber band is stretched to its extreme point.
There are too many unpredictable things that can happen within two months. To me, the ideal trade lasts ten days, but I approach every trade as if I'm only going to hold it two or three days.
I believe my most important skill is an ability to perceive patterns in the market. I think this aptitude for pattern recognition is probably related to my heavy involvement with music.
The truth is that once you get down on the trading floor, you find that the traders come from all walks of life. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a trader. In fact, some of the best traders whom I knew down on the floor were surf bums. Formal education didn't really seem to have much to do with a person's skill as a trader.
If you ever find yourself tempted to seek out someone else's opinion on a trade, that's usually a sure sign that you should get out of your position.
Imbalance or abnormity is never so dangerous as when it is widely perceived or accepted as being normal. The worst thing you can do is not to try.
I try to wait until things set up just right before I take a trade. Then, when I'm ready to take the trade, I slowly count to ten before I pick up the phone. It's better to have the wrong idea and good timing than the right idea and bad timing.
