11/29/2018

The number one secret to trading success

Self-efficacy refers to an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments . Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social environment.



The most important determinant of your

 success in trading or in your personal 

life is your self efficacy beliefs.

If you study successful traders and talk to them deeply , you will see that they have very high confidence in their own trading abilities and setups.

One of the most compelling reason why they are successful is they have high self efficacy beliefs.
It is not their unique setup or scan or entry or exit or position sizing that can explain their success.
One thing that clearly separates traders who succeed and stay in game for decades is their strong self efficacy beliefs.
Because of their self efficacy beliefs they figured out profitable ways to trade. No one gave them a 1000 pages manual on trading or held their hands when they were taking baby steps in trading. They figured out things for themselves. And they continue to tweak their approach to date.
Almost every successful trader I know of has developed their unique style on their own.
Which is true of most Stockbee members also.
The days, the months , and the years they spent trying out different things and failing at it or losing money further enhanced their beliefs in their own capabilities.
Yes they borrowed from some other traders ideas or books or courses but that is not the key to their success. Thy are self made traders.

The most important determinant of your trading success will be your self efficacy beliefs.

It might take some few days to understand that and some years. But once your self efficacy beliefs about trading change things start to happen.
Once that is in place your self talk will change to "hey I can do this", "hey I don't have all the answers but I am confident of finding the answers", "hey I know how to bounce back from setbacks" .
When you attempt trading some find early success and some find early setbacks. That experience sets your self efficacy beliefs.
Some people give up believing markets are too difficult or manipulated or beyond my understanding . Their self efficacy beliefs dictate their behavior.
In the beginning year I spent almost 18 to 20 hours trying various things going through hundreds of trading books, testing hundreds of ideas.
The intense effort ultimately started paying off as more and more market and setup clarity started to show up and then I put my own method together and over the years modified it.
The same story repeats for most successful traders.
If you read the Jesse Livermore book it details how he developed his unique style after several efforts.
The Darvas book again details his struggle to develop his own method.
Every trader goes through same phases as Livermore or Darvas or any other market wizards or successful traders like George Soros, Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller have also gone through same learning curve and figured things on their own.
In the Stockbee Advance Bootcamp several traders presented and it is same story for Stockbee members.
Once your self efficacy beliefs specific to trading change you will start experiencing success.
That does not mean you will not have setbacks. If you have high self efficacy you will find a method. If you don't have it, even the most profitable method will not work for you and you will keep finding faults with methods.

Self efficacy beliefs is the biggest determinant of your trading success.

Unless you work on self efficacy you will find many inhibitors and will be constantly dissatisfied with any method, guides, videos, or instructions, or site. You will constantly chase new methods, new scans, new claims, new gurus, new newsletters, and so on.

Psychologist have found that self-efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will be in the face of adverse situations. The higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience.

Profitable trading involves all these challenges.
You need to put in lot of effort to understand and internalize key concepts like equity selection, entries, exits, risk, risk/reward and then put it all together.
In the process you will have several setbacks and false starts. If you have enhanced self efficacy beliefs you will persist in face of such adversities.
If you have high sense of self efficacy beliefs then you will spend time mastering trading software, and mastering trading setups and make them work. Absent that you will abandon your effort at first hint of failure.
Learning to trade is not an easy task. It is one of the most challenging task you would handle in your life. Some are lucky and they find success instantly. For rest it is a big battle.
People with a strong sense of self efficacy beliefs approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided. They have greater intrinsic motivation. That helps them to engage for long periods in activities and helps them overcome repeated obstacles. They do not have discipline problem.
People with high self efficacy beliefs set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them, and heighten and sustain their efforts in the face of failure.
People with high self efficacy beliefs quickly recover their sense of efficacy after failures or setbacks, and attribute failure to insufficient effort or deficient knowledge and skills that are acquirable rather than external circumstances.

Your self-efficacy beliefs also influence your thought patterns and emotional reactions.

This is critical in trading. You should not be overly excited by profit on single trade and same way not get depressed by loss on single trade. At the end of the day trading is probability game. High self-efficacy helps create feelings of serenity in approaching difficult tasks and activities and activities where outcome is uncertain.
If you have low self-efficacy beliefs then often you believe that things are tougher than they really are. As a result this belief that fosters anxiety, stress, depression, loss of discipline, over trading and a feeling of being lost. You are unable to solve your own trading problem.

Psychologists believe that self-efficacy beliefs influence the level of accomplishment that one ultimately achieves.

Self-beliefs can also create the type of self-fulfilling prophecy in which one accomplishes what one believes one can accomplish. This further enhances self efficacy beliefs. This leads to higher performance this in turn leads to higher effort and higher accomplishment which in turn further enhances self efficacy.
The goal of this site is to constantly challenge you to enhance your self efficacy beliefs. To constantly goad you to keep working on your self efficacy beliefs. To challenge your existing beliefs. To provoke you to examine your current beliefs. To offer you a template for enhancing your self efficacy beliefs.
If you do that then you will achieve your trading goals. And you will not need this site, or alerts, or alerts with sound effect.

Everyday think of how you can enhance your trading related self efficacy beliefs.

What to look for in good anticipation and breakout setup


Stock did not correct during correction. Had tight 3 to 4 days pre breakout. Had breakout early today and so far has held gains.

Several breakouts

With a big move in index , it is no wonder we had large number of breakouts. Here are some good b/o ideas.
















If you have well thought out trading setup, trading ideas show up regularly. 

11/28/2018

What to look for in current conditions on long side



When markets and stocks undergo corrections like we are witnessing , you will at some stage see bottoming attempt. These kind of action dominates near lows for correction or lows for stocks or sectors.

See these examples from our 20% plus winner scan:










All these stock show up in 4% breakout or dollar breakout scans.

While selecting stocks from the scans I look for the one down most or one with highest downside momentum.

Similarly for anticipation focusing on stocks near low is better under these conditions. For example NFLX from yesterday which gave me 9 dollars move in less than an hour. The stock was near low and had narrow range day. That put it on my radar.

BA was another stocks like NFLX where I anticipated a bounce and it worked out well.

As market phase changes you have to change your tactics.


11/01/2018

If you want to make millions trading study stocks up 20% in a week everyday

This is the single best thing you can do to improve your trading.
If you want to catch fish , you study fish behaviour.
If you want to be leader, you study other leaders daily.
If you want to make money, study people who make money.
If you want to be happy , study happy people.
Same way if you want to capture explosive momentum bursts study momentum burss of 20% plus or 10 dollar plus in 5 days.
Study top 25 stocks up most YTD.

You can do this easily by scanning for stocks up or down 20% in a week or up and down 10 dollars in a week. 





If you study these stocks for months you will understand how explosive momentum burst happen and what kind of scan will find them on first day .

I study this everyday and has been doing it for over 18 years. All my setups are based on such studies. 

If you want to make millions trading study the fastest moves daily and then design a method to catch them.