Dr. Doug is proud to introduce Gateway to Great, a new online resource that helps people put the principles of his new book, 8 Ways to Great, into practice.Great is a place that exists inside of you and the Gateway to Great, is a new free resource that helps you find your way there. Head over to this newsection of the websiteto learn more about what Gateway to Great has to offer.
Today, we posted a new video in our video blog section of our blog. The topic is "Nailing a Job Interview". We hope that you'll take the time to watch it (especially if you're currently looking for a new job or if you have an interview coming up).
(Watch The Video Online: Market coach Doug Hirschhorn, PhD, discusses athletes, hedge fund traders and gaining an edge.)
There are two things I love most in life: trading and baseball. Historically, peak performance in baseball involved finding something that gave players an edge over their opponent. Some used amphetamines. Others thought steroids gave them the edge.
Maybe that’s what gave some players the ability to hit monster home runs. And while there may be a lot of gray areas and there haven’t been any firm convictions that have come down, there is suspicion about what goes on.
Now look insider trading. Insider trading is kind of the trading world’s version of steroids. Look at some of these hedge funds, these banks. What gives them an edge? How are they outperforming the markets?
At the end of the day, I think it’s somewhat naive of us to believe steroids haven’t been in sports for a long time. It’s also naive to think information that wasn’t publicly available didn’t exist in the trading world.
That doesn’t mean the world’s corrupt. It doesn’t mean Wall Street’s going to fall apart. What it does mean is that you have to look at things objectively, analyze the situation, and find your own edge. To draw conclusions the whole system is awful and bankrupt and there’s no way to fix it misses the point.
(Watch The Video Online: Market coach Doug Hirschhorn, PhD, discusses how to gain a competitive edge in a post-Galleon world.)
With everything that’s going on these days, we may find ourselves asking, “What is edge?”
Rules are changing when it comes to the way we used to think about having competitive advantages and making the right trades at the right time. As the Galleon situation plays out before our eyes, we no longer know if it’s ok to access certain information and to actually trade on that information. And as people at the top of the pyramid are questioned and challenged, it causes us to all rethink our strategies.
Well, here are some things to think about.
First, you may want to consider technicals as indicators. You may also want to look at price action. There’s more than one way to make money in the market. Pick the right strategy and you don’t really even have to worry about missing out on all that information.
Start to look inside yourself. See how your emotions react to the market. See how your personality matches up with your trading style. If you do those types of things, you can find an edge and take your trades to the next level.
(Watch The Video Online: Market coach Doug Hirschhorn, PhD, discusses why earnings don’t mean as much as we think they do.)
We’re smack dab in the middle of earnings season. Many investors get hung up on earnings — they spend way too much time thinking about what the numbers really mean. But here are four good reasons why, if you’re a typical investor, you might want to re-think an investment strategy based on earnings data.
You snooze, you lose If you’re waiting to find out the earnings before you make an investment in a company, you’re already too late the party.
Listen to what the market is saying by watching what it’s DO-ing Successful trading is about watching the price action and reacting to it. It’s far less about trying to outsmart the markets.
TMI (Too Much Information) Earnings season is exciting to watch and fun to talk about, but so what? It just creates more confusion than clarity. My Advice: Pick a few companies in play and focus on them rather than spreading yourself too thin.
Mix it up a bit Here’s a news flash: Just because you have always traded US equities does not mean you should only trade them. In reality, there are lots of different ways to make lots of money, like metals, oil and currencies.
Sometimes as a trader, the less comfortable you feel about a product, the more objective your decisions are. My advice, for Q4? Think outside the box.
Market coach Doug Hirschhorn, PhD, discusses how traders make money and, more importantly, manage to hold on to it in a volatile market. View the video online now.
The reality is, making money is not hard, it’s keeping it that’s a real challenge. And that’s why many of the world’s top traders maintain three beliefs when it comes to money management.
Their fear of losing money is greater than their fear of missing out.
They have a “build” rather than a “make” mentality. They seek to build days to make weeks, weeks to make months, and months to make years.
They Consistently stay within 10% of their high-water mark. In other words, as they’re making more and more money and start to give some back, they quickly cut losses, never giving back more than 10 percent off their highs.
Anyone can master these techniques by looking at the risk of a situation to help determine the risk of a trade. There are low, medium and high risk situations. Risk can be anything from volatility in a certain market, to opportunities that do or do not exist, to the uncertainty around you.
In high risk situations, you want to use small positions. And in low-risk situations, that’s when you want to size up and get big. If you use risk to determine position size, you’re well on your way to trading like the top traders.
Stick to this process and you’ll not only make money, but you will finally learn how to hold on to it!
