Saturday, December 11, 2010

You Don't Have to Trade

There was not a lot setting up yesterday morning as the volatility had pretty much died after the first 40 minutes of the cash session. I think a lot of newer traders (and veterans alike) have this constant feeling like they NEED to be doing something. I thought I would share this series of tweets from the Intraday Alerts with the StockTwits community and hopefully drive home the lesson that "you don't have to trade".

Not much setting up...aggressive trades only
Market is sideways 6 days in a row...

Volatility is just not there. $YM_F in a 150 pt channel for 6 days and most of that has come overnight LOL = not much setting up.

If you take out the o/n moves market in a 50 pt cash session range.

When volatility contracts it leaves aggressive trades. You can force things but aggressive trades CAN lead to aggressive losses.

So many people feel the need to DO SOMETHING. I am content to sit back and WAIT for the market to come to me.

Notice that #1 is patience for a reason :) http://tradersmarts.blogspot.com/2010/05/qualities-of-top-traders.html

what do you do, specifically, to encourage/enforce that feeling of contentment to sit and wait?" This is so important. 



"My father says almost the whole world's asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says only a few people are awake. And they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Be aware. Choose to execute patience in your trading. Be awake. Choose to live life like a child "in a state of constant total amazement".

Here is the video:


Here is the link to the audio (I couldn't find the video) of the line from "Joe Versus the Volcano":
http://www.mindspring.com/~waponi/wav/awake.wav

Update: 10/13/2012 I found the video...

2 comments:

steve said...

Great points, totally true for swing trading. If you get an inside day in a trend it usually means 'leave it alone, there's nothing to see here'!
In climbing, I used to tell newer climbers (and myself) to focus on climbing, don't focus on falling.

I-Man said...

"Some days your strength is to sit still."

-Midnite