A portfolio that let you sleep at night

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Focus On Your Trading System & Techniques, Not On The Potential Profit/Money One Could Make....!

WORDS OF WISDOM FOR THE DAY : Focus On Your Trading System & Techniques, Not On The Potential Profit/Money One Could Make....!  

It takes a certain strength of character to trade successfully. One who can stay focused on the task at hand, and not be overly concerned with the outcome. You must simply enjoy trading for trading's sake, rather than be excessively interested in the money. Ask any successful actor, business person, athlete, etc. and they'll tell you they don't do it for the money. But that's easier said than done. When every trade represents money made or lost, how does one go about focusing on the trade itself, rather than the bottom line? Professionals do not sit and mentally calculate how much money they are making from moment to moment, so if you are doing this as a trader, you are focusing on the wrong thing.  

A losing trade is not necessarily a failed trade -- make that distinction right now. If you followed your trading plan, the trade went against you and you exited the losing trade quickly (as per your rules), then that trade was a successful trade. If you didn't follow your system, whether you won or lost money, that is not a successful trade. Do not fall into the trap of being inconsistent. Consistency is the key to successful daytrading. If you have the discipline to daytrade, you have the discipline to become a better trader and this simple process will go a long way toward that end.

Many aspiring traders fail to become consistently profitable because they put too much time into trying to get rich from equities trading and not enough time into the actual process of trading. The paradox of this behavior lies in the fact that the more you concentrate on how much money you want to make in the stock market, the less money you are likely to make. Becoming a consistently profitable stock trader is the result of discipline, passion, and a willingness to recognize and conquer your own personal mental faults. As you begin to focus less of your mental energy on how badly you want to make money from stock trading and more of it on the actual process of mastering your trading strategy and managing your risk, you will find that making money in the stock market becomes much easier.

WORDS OF WISDOM FOR THE DAY : Don't Get Greedy Or Feared, Let The Rules Not Your Emotions To Take Care Of Your Trades In The Stock Market....!

WORDS OF WISDOM FOR THE DAY : Don't Get Greedy Or Feared, Let The Rules Not Your Emotions To Take Care Of Your

Trades In The Stock Market....!

 

1) Learn to take a Profit When Market Signalled - As obvious as it may seem because let's face it, people only trade to make profits, hitting a trading target and closing the trade can be one of the single most challenging tasks a market speculator can face. We always hear about the emotions of fear and greed driving the markets and never is this more the case than when an individual is in a good strong trade and then sees it fall all the way back for a break even or small loss. Sometimes this will happen and I have personally had numerous trades fall short of their targets. As frustrating as this can be at times, I have also had plenty of trades that have hit their target perfectly and closed out for a great profit. All we can do is stick to our plan of action and don't let our feelings get in the way.

 

2) Learn to take a Stop-Out - As rudimentary as this rule may seem, it is surprising how many times it often takes a novice and even sometimes a seasoned trader, to realize that at no cost should this rule ever be broken. Once one has found the trade, marked off the entry and target and placed the stop-loss order, it should be set in stone. There was a phrase taught to me early on in my trading education which stated that my losses would always be far more important to me than my wins, and I have digested and lived by that rule ever since. I will always be the first to admit that taking a stop-out is difficult in the early days, mainly due to the feeling of being wrong. Combine that with the fact that you just lost a little bit of your money as well and it can be a bitter pill to swallow. However, we soon come to realize that losing small is a vital part of the game. If you don't have small losses, you can never have larger wins. Sure, sometimes you will take a stop-out, only to watch the trade go your way, but you also have to ask yourself the question: What if it had continued to go against me and I wasn't protected? How long do you think the accounts lasted of those people out there who bought previous lows and didn't protect themselves? Many people bought those lows, but only the professional traders who got out when they were wrong are still around right now. Take the stop on the chin and move on. Things won't always go your way in the stock markets, just as they won't always go your way in real life either.

 

3) Learn to take the Trade - You need to learn to take all of the trades which meet your plan! Essentially, this could be one of the most overlooked aspects of consistently successful trading I have ever come across. What most new traders make the mistake of doing is attempting to look at too many counters and then try to cherry-pick the best trades across the bunch. There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking for trades with the best probabilities going for them, but we also have to be very cautious about missing out on trades which met the plan and were not taken. Typically, when you attempt to cherry-pick, you end up picking the losers and not taking the winners! A simple solution for this outcome is to just divide your maximum risk across the board and get involved with all the stocks you are looking at, or simply, look at less counters and just focus a handful one. The very worst thing a trader can do is pass on a trade which matches their trade plan because they fear another loss. This can often result in passing on a quality setup which could have greatly turned the overall profit and loss situation around and impact the final results and consistency. The idea is simple: If a trade comes up which meets the criteria for the plan, then it must be taken; no questions asked. Remember that you have to be in it to win it. Passing on a trade opportunity due to emotional setbacks is not objective practice.

The above 3 rules may be basic in nature, but they can be powerful and effective in action. Let your rules be both easy to understand and simple to master and the rest will come with a little time and patience. I hope by sharing my own trading experience with you will helps your own personal trading journey in the stock markets go a little bit smoother and profitable over time.

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Leap Motion gesture control technology hands-on

By Michael Gorman posted May 25th, 2012 at 8:00 AM



Leap Motion unveiled its new gesture control technology earlier this week, along with videos showing the system tracking ten fingers with ease and a single digit slicing and dicing a grocery store's worth of produce in Fruit Ninja. Still, doubts persisted as to the veracity of the claim that the Leap is 200 times more accurate than existing tech. So, we decided to head up to San Francisco to talk with the men behind Leap, David Holz and Michael Buckwald, and see it for ourselves. Join us after the break to learn a bit more about Leap, our impressions of the technology, and a video of the thing in action.

Leap motion control technology hands-on










Before diving into the more technical details of the device he created, Holz told us about the genesis of his idea to create a better way for humans to interact with their computational devices. The idea to do so came during his days acquiring a Phd in mathematics from UNC and while working in fluid mechanics. You see, there's a problem with creating and manipulating 3D models using a mouse and keyboard --it's a needlessly complicated operation involving clicks and drop down menus. Holz wanted a way to make "molding virtual clay as easy as molding clay in the real world." After four years of research and many iterations of hardware, the Leap was finally finished.



NICE VIDEO HERE
http://www.viddler.com/v/a1e9118d?secret=77031550



We asked both Holz, and Buckwald about the underlying technology that enables such high-fidelity controls, and were told that it's an optical system that tracks your fingers with infrared LEDs and cameras in a way unlike any other motion control tech. This new method of motion sensing is why the Leap can be made so cheaply and come in such a small package. It can track hundreds of thousands of points at a time (note: point tracking isn't how it functions), and because its precision scales up or down according to the hardware it's connected to, it only uses one to two percent of a CPU's capabilities to work. To protect all of the IP inside the Leap, the firm has a slew of patent applications in the pipeline, which is why, despite our efforts, we couldn't extract more info about the hardware and its workings.



In practice, the Leap is impressive. As anyone who's waved at Kinect or held a Wiimote in hand can attest, mass market motion controls are far from precise... Leap Motion's technology isn't. We tested it out using one of the company's prototype units, which is a bit larger than the final version, but Holz assured us that the user experience with each is identical. Using the Leap is easy, simply connect it to your computer via USB and install Leap's software, wave your hand in the space above the sensor, and it starts tracking any finger pointing at the screen. Whether we were slicing watermelons in a Fruit Ninja demo or drawing minuscule curlicues in a 3D-drawing app, the Leap followed our phalanges' every move on all three axes with nary a hiccup. The company touts the system's incredibly low latency -- faster than a monitor's refresh rate and below the threshold of a human's ability to sense it -- and we can confirm that there was zero perceptible lag during our demo. Because Leap works with any machine that has touch drivers onboard (whether for trackpads or touchscreens) using it is quite intuitive, and means that the technology is backwards compatible with existing apps. Naturally, Holz and Buckwald are keen to see developers create custom applications to take full advantage of the technology, and we gotta say, so are we.

What's next for Leap Motion? Well, Holz and Buckwald told us that while the technology is initially available in peripheral form, the plan is to get it baked into laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets, too. Because the hardware is so small, it can easily be stuffed into such devices. And, it'll work even better when embedded because there's greater flexibility in the placement of the hardware relative to the user's hands, and multiple sensors can be included to create a larger virtual workspace. We asked when we could expect to see Leap-enabled laptops, and were told that the company is in talks with several big hardware manufacturers to do just that. So, in the not-so-distant future, it seems we may all be waving our hands in front of screens instead of swiping and tapping on them.