understanding the stock market, trend trading stock

When I was a kid, my mother used to tease me saying: "Patience is a virtue possess it if you can; often found in women, but never found in men." Perhaps that is the reason why women often make better traders than men. Impatience can definitely be the enemy when trading the market. All too often, I have seen students rush to begin trading with real money. I regularly receive e-mails from subscribers inquiring about making real money trades using strategies they have never attempted before. Invariably, my advice is to learn the strategy first by paper trading and only after the paper trading is successful should they consider trading real money. In these cases, impatience is fueled by greed. Forgetting that positions can be losers as well as winners, the trader just can't wait to put money at risk. A little patience can go a long way. Knowledge can go a long way in making a successful trader. Knowledge can only be gained through patient study. You have probably heard, and I have often said, if you are willing to do for six months what others won't, you may be able to do for the rest of your life what others can't. That approach requires patience.

For the trader, the need for patience manifests itself in many ways. A good trader will wait for the right entry. If a stock, for example, is still moving down it is probably not the right time to buy it. Instead, the patient trader will await an upturn before entering a position. When a stock is moving down, no one knows when the direction will change. Why not wait until it does and you then have at least some information indicating a reversal up. Trying to catch a falling piano is not a good idea.

Inexperienced or unsuccessful traders may also be impatient to find a trade to enter. Isn't it better to wait until the chances for success are greater than to make a trade just for the sake of making a trade? While there are good trades available every day, not every trader is capable of finding them. In order to achieve success, the trader must learn strategies and when to apply them. The impatient trader is unwilling to devote the time to learn the strategies let alone when to apply them.

Impatience can also be the enemy when exiting a trade. That is particularly true when a position is making money. All too many traders become impatient and take their profits way too early They see a move in their direction followed by a little retracement and immediately bail out. Often times after the bail-out they watch the former position skyrocket to significantly greater profits. The impatience is kindled by fear; fear that they will lose the profits already gained. The patient trader realizes that there will be retracements and follows the position with some rational exit strategy whether it be a stop loss, a stop alert, a contingent stop, or a trailing stop. By utilizing those types of orders, the successful trader removes the emotion from the decision-making process. Good decisions are made out of the heat of battle so that both emotion and impatience are removed from the trading equation.

Just because someone, anyone, likes a particular trade, do not jump in without understanding and agreeing with the reasons for entry yourself. Again, as my mother used to say: "if Danny jumped off a cliff would you jump off a cliff too?" For the majority of us, our money is important to us. No one cares more about it than we, ourselves. If we are going to invest intelligently, we must be patient in selecting the vehicles in which we are going to invest, in determining our entries, in learning our strategies, in setting are exits, and in managing our money. Failure to exercise patience in any of these areas can lead to some very unhappy results. While the exercise of patience, alone, is no guarantee of success, it is certainly more likely to lead to good trades then is impatience.

Good Trading!
Bill Kraft

Mr. Kraft's past articles are posted on our website for your review.

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