My trading style, a repeat!

I get asked a lot about my trading style. To be honest I haven’t really set out to develop one specifically at all, but after 30 years trading markets, I have realised a lot of what not to do.

First I tried fundamental trading, poring over statistics, money supply, interest rates unemployment numbers etc etc. When the Berlin wall fell, every economist predicted that unifying East and West Germany would cost billions and take decades. This was bad for the Deutsche Mark, and so on the fundmentals anyway the DEM was a sell. And yet we saw a huge and prolonged rally in the DEM, purely on the exuberance of the reunification of Germany. So fundamentals clearly did not always work, and emotions sometimes do.

Then I switched to charting and did the lot. Point and Figure, Moving averages, Stochastics, Momentum, Elliot wave, Fibonacci, you name it, I tried it. Bought the books, did the studies, bought the models etc etc. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes the pattern was so clear after the event, and rarely did it repeat.

Then I tried money management, and stop loss orders, take profit levels, risk analysis etc etc. I followed the reasoning that it was better to run your profits and take losses quickly etc etc.

But it was when I was watching really rich people in the markets that I realised the real truth:

It’s best not to care about the trade at all.

I have seen people with bad positions. They don’t panic. They don’t get out. They just wait. If the reason for doing the trade is still valid then they just wait. If the reason is not valid then they get out, whether a profit or a loss is realised or not.

The old adage still works: Money makes money. If you don’t care about it then you are unlikely to panic and get out at the bottom or the top . You just wait.

So I started out with small positions that I could ignore, and built up from there. I realised that all the styles are only tools to help you make a decision, and that it was my own fears that I had to understand really.

My style is to decide a trade and take a position and then just wait. I decide on fundamentals, charts, gut feeling, and a mixture of all the above. But I only get out when it feels wrong, not when some specific chart or fundamental stat starts going the other way. And even then I am reluctant to quit a trade quickly. I have seen people get very rich just by waiting for the cycles to turn again, and they do eventually.

I take long-term currency positions on a whole raft of factors. It is a little bit like Lonely Traders Knotty Warhol stance, see here. But he is much more detailed and technical than me. If asked I can’t really point to why I like a trade, it is really a whole range of factors, of which sometimes none of them stack up on their own.

I take great care not to get fixed on one school of thought. If I have learnt anything, it is that once I have worked out what is driving the markets, it isn’t happening anymore because others have worked it out too, and the drivers have therefore changed as a result.

So I keep shifting what matters to me, and I don’t get too hung up on any one thing, be it technicals or levels or even fundamentals, it is really a cooking pot of ideas and out of that I get a “sense” of what to do. My view if you like. I read a great deal, Reuters, CNBC, CNN, many newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites and my “world view” is something I tend 24/7 with great passion.

It drives my trading and it also drives my advice to my private client base. I guess I can sweep a lot of articles, given that I could actually write some of them. I guess that is why I dislike many articles out there as rubbish.

But this blog was never about giving advice to anyone. It is all about making me write stuff about my views to sort out my own mind. I really don’t care if no one reads it or many do. I rarely react to other market views, but they do go into the pot and sometimes may colour the thought process.

I am not interested in what is going on right now. That is the bulk of commentaries. I am interested in what is going to happen next, which is much harder to do, with any commentaries on that non-existent. After all, if you could do that regularly, why work anywhere, and even less, why tell anyone?

My track record over many years has been a good one. But again I don’t feel the need to justify myself…I ain’t selling anything! On this blog I have traced the trading since August 2007, as it has happened, and you can follow all the posts if you want or if you care, I’m not fussed either way. I rarely make a long-term loss, although I can be and have been in the crap for some months at a time over the years. Strong capital base is key!

In the past I have traded all time frames and hate day trading, although I was a currency spot trader at a bank once, didn't like it, with my style much more comfortable with long term strategic positions taken over weeks and months. This means that fundamentals will always have a higher weighting in my thinking. I generally (but not always, see rule above) have a dim view of charts as most chartists that I have met over many years have crashed and burned eventually and gone back to working for someone somewhere or left the markets entirely.

So that means that any charts used will be dailies or weeklies, and maybe an hourly to finesse adding to a position. But my basic stance is if you have decided to take a trade, and are looking for 10 cent moves then the level on the day is really small beer.

So I always take a long, long, long term view.....

....and in between watch a lot of cute blondes!!