Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Secret to Trading/Investing

One word
Discipline.
This is for the guys. This market is going to remain choppy.

If you're too addicted to trading take a break!! If this really is a w4 on monthly then any trend following system is going to get slaughtered over the next 6 months.
So for all adrenaline junkies I would suggest finding something else too get rid of the adrenaline addiction.

Here's my latest pastime.
http://www.iwantsixpackabs.com/home_my_story.html
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Six-Pack-Abs
Currently up to a 4 pack from a 2pack.
6 pack in another 8-10 weeks.
We all know we can have a gr8 body if we eat healthy and exercise. How many of us do?
We all know that the key to trading is to cut losses and let profits run. How many of us manage to do that?

Its all about discipline. I wasn't even trading in the drop from 6.4k-4600 and my portfolio lost nearly 50% because I didn't take profits at the right time. Luckily for me I had a fresh infusion of funds near nifty 5k so I've just bought a lot more stuff near 5k. Now I get to hold. Even if this market goes down. The strategy is simply to hold the delivery positions.

I'm invested right now, not excessively leveraged around 1.2x. can take a drawdown till 3k nifty.
might have to break a fixed deposit if we go under there. Not seeing any such trouble just yet.
Now I just gotta hang on. Thats the discipline part. I've made some investments which I believe are made at bargain prices and there is nothing to do but hold.
The most important part of investing/trading is probably position sizing/risk management. When trading u gotta worry about where your stoploss is and figure out the right size of your position based on % risk to capital.
With investment usually the risk is 100% on every position. i.e stoploss is 0.
So if sl is 0 and you wanna manage risk, try not to invest >10% of equity in one stock.
If a stock moves too far up compared to the rest of your portfolio you get to take profits and invest in something new.

For now I am trading tiny positions. Will resume trading bigger positions as soon as I see some profits on those delivery positions and I see some stability in this market.

If trading I would stick with the brokers/telecom/power/punterstocks in bull moves because this market seems to be lacking breadth. relcap showed gr8 strength past few days. Rcom/bharti might outperform going forward.
550-600 is a good investment area for rcom for a target of 950 in 1 year. (Merryl Lynch)