I’ve been reading a lot in Gann over the holidays, trying to make headway in understanding some of his obscure and bizarre ways of using numbers in his square of nine, etc. Regardless of what anyone thinks of that approach, the guy wrote some outstanding things about how to approach trading. I reread his 28 trading rules regularly. Here they are and we'd all do well to memorize and practice them in our trading.
1. Never risk more than 1/10th of your capital on one trade
2. Use stop losses
3. Never overtrade
4. Never let a profit run into a loss
5. Don’t buck the trend
6. When in doubt get out
7. Trade only in active markets
8. Do equal distribution of risks
9. Never limit your orders. Trade at the market
10. Don’t close out without a good reason
11. Accumulate a surplus. After a series of successful trades put some money into an account for emergencies
12. Never buy or sell just to get a scalping profit
13. Never average a loss. This is one of the worst mistakes a trader can make
14. Never get out just because you have lost patience or get in because you’re anxious from waiting
15. Avoid small profits and big losses
16. Never cancel a stop loss order after you placed it at the time you made the trade
17. Avoid getting into or out of the market too often
18. Be as willing to short as to buy. Let your object be to keep to the trend
19. Never buy because the price is low or sell because the price is high
20. Be careful about pyramiding at the wrong time. Wait until the asset is active and has crossed resistance levels before buying more and until it’s broken out of zone of distribution before selling more
21. Select the commodities that show strong uptrend to pyramid on the buying side and the ones that show definite downtrend to sell short
22. Never hedge. If you’re long one and it starts to go down, don’t sell something else short to hedge it. Take your losses and get out and wait for another opportunity
23. Never change your position in the market without a good reason
24. Avoid increasing your trading after a long period of success
25. Don’t guess at tops or bottoms. Let the market prove it. By following definite rules you can do this
26. Don’t follow another’s advice unless he knows more than you do
27. Reduce trading after the first loss. Never increase
28. Avoid getting in wrong and out wrong
Showing posts with label Gann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gann. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
A Gann Quote
I'm not trading this week because of illiquidity in the market due to the holiday season. What I am doing is cleaning my desk (awash in charts) and catching up on reading. I wanted to share this quote from Gann. It's in his Master Stock Market Trading Course and also other of his writings.
Many people believe it is wrong to buy at new high levels or sell at new low levels but it is most profitable...because when you do buy at new high levels or sell at new low levels you are going with the trend of the market and your chances of making profits are much better than any guesswork or buying and selling on hope or fear.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Ozzie and Guppy
You go, Ozzie! That’s what I feel like saying to this pair since it has broken out of its range yet again with a nice looking candle. But will it go? One encouraging sign is that it didn’t fall all the way back to the bottom of the consolidation range—it stopped well short of it which is bullish. The candles up since that point have been strong ones until the bearish piercing one that just completed. Note that it’s near the point where it fell back before some caution is warranted. It broke out overnight and in the early morning hours when I was sleeping so I didn’t take the trade on the breakout. What I’ll do now is see how it acts around this period before jumping in one way or the other. As I pointed out yesterday we’re still in an uptrend (since March) so the bias is to the long side. Here’s the three hour chart:
As far as the Guppy goes (GBP/JPY) it’s stuck in a small range as it tries to find its direction. In the chart below look at the beautiful symmetry of the moves and note that the second move up didn’t go as far as the length of the first one (I’ve marked the moves up with purple lines). I’m somewhat fanatical about proportion and symmetry because the market seems drawn to it as well. I’m still short in the pair (the tiny triangle marks where I took my short at 150.49). At this moment it’s at 135 pips profit. I still have my stop at a profit point of 80 pips at 149.69 and its high yesterday was 149.62 so that was a good stop. I may move it down a bit more since its high today so far has been 149.43. Whatever this pair now does, we know an important thing about it and that is that this narrow range of 148.06 (the low since I shorted it) to 150.49 is meaningful in some way. Otherwise it wouldn’t be hanging here. More to come. Note also how it rejects lower prices with long candle shadows in the past. It's not showing these here but that's not infallible. You have to combine things such as candles with support and resistance and other indicators before making decisions.
This is a frustrating week for me as a trader. Other committments keep demanding attention and I'm spending little time with the charts. But that's part of life and I'll be able to get back to it soon.
None of these are trade recommendations and trading involves substantial risk.
©Dianne L. Fecteau. No part of this can be excerpted without the author’s specific written permission.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Hedging
Sometimes traders, usually inexperienced or going through a period where fear is the prevailing emotion, decide to “hedge.” Using the case of the AUD/USD in my previous posting they might decide to take two trades—one long and one short in the same pair.
Is this a good idea? After all, if you have tight stops and it starts to run in one direction…
The answer is no.
First, this isn’t really hedging which has to do with exploiting inefficiencies across different markets. The kind of trader that would “hedge” this situation usually is one who has a few other walls to climb, e.g. they close out trades too quickly and don’t adhere to tight stops. You can’t make money this way. In fact, you can lose money.
Technical trading requires hard work; technical trading requires making an informed decision.
Gann wrote in How to Make Profits in Commodities, “Many traders have the idea…they can hedge and protect themselves. There is no greater mistake than this. It often turns out the trader loses on both trades. If you are in the market WRONG (Gann used the caps) and don’t know what to do, there is but one thing to do. Get out and wait until you know there is a definite trend….[Hedging] does not pay and you must avoid it.”
Gartley wrote, “The first and most important part of this analytical procedure is the accurate determination of existing supply and demand conditions.” (Profits in the Stock Market) This requires study and hard work. He also wrote, “the technical approach also appeals to many persons because the vast majority are inherently lazy….[but] the technical approach…demands constant study and the application of reasonable judgment.”
Back in July there was brouhaha over the new NFA rules regarding hedging. People wrote posts on forums saying they were going to open accounts with brokers outside the USA because they could no longer hedge. Many of the brokers played into this misunderstanding of the ruling.
FXCM, in its communication to its users on this rule, wrote, “forex traders will no longer have the ability to selectively place stop-loss or limit orders on individual trades, nor will traders be able to modify or close trades from the “Open Positions” window.”
This is not what the rule said. The rule said FIFO—first in; first out.. The first trade you open must be the trade you close first. If you go long and then try to “hedge” by opening a short position, you must close the first long position out before you can open the short position. It has nothing to do with not being able to place stops on any given trade. It has nothing to do with not being able to set profit targets on a given trade. It also doesn’t say you can’t have two trades in the same direction. (Scaling in? Let’s talk about that some other time). Of course you can also have two accounts where you have a long in one and a short in the other in the same pair.
NFA defines hedging as “where customers take long and short positions in the same currency pair in the same account.” The people at NFA think you don’t “understand either the lack of economic benefit or the financial costs involved.” They think you won’t be able to be profitable with this kind of approach. They also think it, “increases the customer’s financial costs in several ways.”
They have a point. When you buy long and sell short on the same pair you pay the spread twice. In addition, while one would think that the interest paid or received on the two opposite positions would offset, this doesn’t seem to be reality in many cases. In part this is because of the squirrely ways some brokers deal with interest.
It’s not my argument that government should be regulating traders to death. Hey, maybe if people want to throw their money away they should be allowed to do so. Regardless of how you feel about that, this rule actually addresses something that gives people the allusion they’re in control. God knows, many of us felt out of control when we first started trading. Some continue to feel that way—buffeted by an irrational market; stops being gunned by the big players; that some system or guru somewhere has the knowledge so desperately needed.
But I digress. The idea of hedging the same pair isn’t for the trader who wants to learn to be successful. To this kind of hedging I paraphrase George Carlin: “It’s BS folks and it’s bad for you.”
Is this a good idea? After all, if you have tight stops and it starts to run in one direction…
The answer is no.
First, this isn’t really hedging which has to do with exploiting inefficiencies across different markets. The kind of trader that would “hedge” this situation usually is one who has a few other walls to climb, e.g. they close out trades too quickly and don’t adhere to tight stops. You can’t make money this way. In fact, you can lose money.
Technical trading requires hard work; technical trading requires making an informed decision.
Gann wrote in How to Make Profits in Commodities, “Many traders have the idea…they can hedge and protect themselves. There is no greater mistake than this. It often turns out the trader loses on both trades. If you are in the market WRONG (Gann used the caps) and don’t know what to do, there is but one thing to do. Get out and wait until you know there is a definite trend….[Hedging] does not pay and you must avoid it.”
Gartley wrote, “The first and most important part of this analytical procedure is the accurate determination of existing supply and demand conditions.” (Profits in the Stock Market) This requires study and hard work. He also wrote, “the technical approach also appeals to many persons because the vast majority are inherently lazy….[but] the technical approach…demands constant study and the application of reasonable judgment.”
Back in July there was brouhaha over the new NFA rules regarding hedging. People wrote posts on forums saying they were going to open accounts with brokers outside the USA because they could no longer hedge. Many of the brokers played into this misunderstanding of the ruling.
FXCM, in its communication to its users on this rule, wrote, “forex traders will no longer have the ability to selectively place stop-loss or limit orders on individual trades, nor will traders be able to modify or close trades from the “Open Positions” window.”
This is not what the rule said. The rule said FIFO—first in; first out.. The first trade you open must be the trade you close first. If you go long and then try to “hedge” by opening a short position, you must close the first long position out before you can open the short position. It has nothing to do with not being able to place stops on any given trade. It has nothing to do with not being able to set profit targets on a given trade. It also doesn’t say you can’t have two trades in the same direction. (Scaling in? Let’s talk about that some other time). Of course you can also have two accounts where you have a long in one and a short in the other in the same pair.
NFA defines hedging as “where customers take long and short positions in the same currency pair in the same account.” The people at NFA think you don’t “understand either the lack of economic benefit or the financial costs involved.” They think you won’t be able to be profitable with this kind of approach. They also think it, “increases the customer’s financial costs in several ways.”
They have a point. When you buy long and sell short on the same pair you pay the spread twice. In addition, while one would think that the interest paid or received on the two opposite positions would offset, this doesn’t seem to be reality in many cases. In part this is because of the squirrely ways some brokers deal with interest.
It’s not my argument that government should be regulating traders to death. Hey, maybe if people want to throw their money away they should be allowed to do so. Regardless of how you feel about that, this rule actually addresses something that gives people the allusion they’re in control. God knows, many of us felt out of control when we first started trading. Some continue to feel that way—buffeted by an irrational market; stops being gunned by the big players; that some system or guru somewhere has the knowledge so desperately needed.
But I digress. The idea of hedging the same pair isn’t for the trader who wants to learn to be successful. To this kind of hedging I paraphrase George Carlin: “It’s BS folks and it’s bad for you.”
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