Trading the right way means not letting your emotions govern your buys and sells like a hyperactive kid cranked out on extra sugar and Red Bull (most of the audience who BELIEVES in Jim Cramer). Trade “right” (hint: trend following) and emotionally unnerving impulses will not govern your day to day decision-making, whether the market is going up, down or sideways. No more, “I feel like a victim!” sob stories after your trade plan is revealed as counting astrological signs or plain ole gambling. Trend followers have a REAL plan. That plan includes knowing that they will not win every day, week, or month. Amateurs actually think that they can walk into the market game and say, “My goal is to make 10% a month.” If anyone ever tells you that they can make 10% a month regularly, hide your wallet. You are either facing a con or an idiot.

‘Interesting’ times usually follow trend following drawdowns. Stay tuned!

The NASDAQ stock exchange hit it’s all-time high point on March 10th, 2000 at 5132.52. Now it is at 2,151.19. We are close to the 10 year anniversary of the high.

-58%

A great line about the United States:

Something is fundamentally wrong. All we have are government policies that are short-term [which] encourage people to make a little money and spend, and then what do we do? We buy Chinese goods and all the money goes overseas instead of creating jobs here. The money [Obama has] spent is all short-term thinking…it’s all expenditures, not investments that would change the competitive advantage of the U.S.

The video:

I don’t think this is really related to one particular President. It is related to the people of America. Americans are short term thinkers now.

Feedback in:

As a long-time professional in the futures industry, I was greatly impressed by both of your books and the wealth of information on your site. Job well done! I have recommended your materials to our clients. In August of 2008, we published a white paper to send to our clients. At the time, markets seemed to be breaking out to new all-time highs every week. We are a commodity brokerage firm and we noticed that many of our traders/clients, drunk on a lethal combination of adrenaline and large paper profits, were leveraging up to their eyeballs and disregarding the risks they were assuming. It was very much like the tech stock bubble of the late 90s! So we decided to write a little article on risk management (Read PDF). It proved timely as it coincided with the reversal of the commodity bubble, although the principles of risk management are universal truths that apply regardless of market conditions. I hope you enjoy a copy of our ‘white paper’. The bottom line is this: always take you trades based on the probable, but manage the risk based on the possible!
Regards,
Jason Pearce
Managing Director
Pearce Financial, LLC

I caught this line in a link sent from a reader. It made a promise:

This is NOT about day trading 10 hours per day and losing your health and family in the process of finding gold at the end of the “technical analysis” rainbow.

While the full offer in question was over the top, that particular line was very true about trend following. Trend following does not involve sitting in front of a screen all day. I still remember being in Dunn Capital’s office for the first time back in 1996. An alarm went off in the office. It was an entry signal to call the broker. Someone in the office walked over, looked at the screen, and made a quick call to place the trade as dictated by the system rules. That was it. Now of course “more” went into the system thought process and design, but the execution, the day to day, was amazingly simple and uncomplicated.

I don’t see how watching the news could ever help improve that process.