• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

TraderGav.com

Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

  • Home
  • Start Here
    • Back to Basics of Trading
    • Resource For Traders – The Best Tools for Traders
    • Learn Trading Articles
    • Sierra Chart Resource
  • Blog
    • Blog Posts
    • Other learning resource
    • Dummy Collection
    • Harmonic setups
  • About Me

Trading Lessons

Trading Lessons I Have Learned This Year

by Gav Leave a Comment

[Update 2020]: I wrote this post back in 2009. It still provides valuable lessons to traders. I thought it will be useful to include this in the Back to Basics of trading series.

trading lessons learned

I am still managing a couple of open positions, and unlikely to open any new position next week. So, it is almost time to call it a year. And what a year! This post is not meant to be another “how many thousands of pips I’ve made in 2009′. Who cares?

I am thinking of writing up a summary of the trading lessons I’ve learned from experience, books, or interactions with other traders over the year. You might agree or disagree, again…that’s not my problem. Most of these are quotes from books or articles which I’ve collected. By no means, I am claiming my own.

Trading Lessons Learned

  1. You have to be able to lose in order to win.
  2. Always be realistic with your monthly target.
  3. It is absolutely OK, and most of the time, helpful to shut down all social networking such as Twitter, StockTwits, Facebook. Think about it, if your friend is affecting your work, tell him to come back later. Trading is about concentration, and definitely a personal and lonely business. To be a successful trader, we must walk alone in our days and do it alone.
  4. If you are really seriously addicted to twitter, try to challenge tweets who call trade, instead of following them. Always assume these people on twitter(including me) are wrong. The key is to NEVER FOLLOW A CALL on twitter.
  5. When your position is right, you have to do nothing instead of doing nothing when you are wrong! [constantly taking early profit will do you more harm than good]
  6. You must keep your losses small and take more small losses than small winners to come out ahead. You will become the best trader you can be by being wrong small, not right small.
  7. It is your job to know you are wrong and not the market’s job.
  8. You have to press your winners if you really consider yourself to have the ability to make a living or extra income from trading.
  9. When you place a trade, don’t ever think this is the only trade to make. There are thousands of trades you can make. You aren’t going to miss a move for long if you trade correctly. You aren’t going to chase markets if you trade correctly. You must have a plan to enter positions based on each market’s criteria.
  10. When a market doesn’t go up anymore, somewhere it isn’t correct to stay in the position, regardless of the expectations.
  11. Your trading career should be a long-term expectation on your part. You must look beyond one day in your trading career.
  12. We should concentrate on protecting what we have rather than what we expect to make first.
  13. If you want to win, you’ve got to know the rules; and also, you can’t win if you are not at the table.
  14. Gambling is taking a risk when the odds are against you; Speculating is taking a risk when the odds are in your favor.
  15. In order of importance: Preservation of capital. Consistent profitability. and the pursuit of superior returns.
  16. It is always better off to learn from observed mistakes.
  17. Traders have a choice: Either face the truth of trading or look for the nearest exit.
  18. The best loser is the long term winner.

The list can go on to hundreds..I am just quoting the lines I found to be helpful to me over the past year.

On a personal note, the most significant event I have observed this year is my active involvement in Twitter. There are times, reading tweets is a pure disturbance. And there are times, gems are found while interacting with some traders. So I’ve learned to shut down twitter at a certain time when I am trading or making a decision.

2009 has been an eventful year to me, on both personal life and trading. 2010 is definitely not going to be a dull year, and I am looking forward to another exciting and challenging year.

Here is to a great 2010.

Filed Under: Back to Basic Tagged With: Trading Lessons, Trading Quote

Studies of Bar Patterns

by Gav 4 Comments

barpattern_EWI_sample

Here is another great free resource from EWI.
EWI recently released a free report on Bar Patterns, in which I think it is worth to download and have a read. The report shows ways you can use common bar patterns to spot high-probability trading opportunities with 30 charts across 15 pages. Check it out while it is still free.

Here is the short summary of the report:
How to use bar patterns to spot trade setups

  • Double inside Bars
  • Arrows
  • Popguns

How to make bar paterns work for you

  • The Three-In-One Bar Pattern
  • Forward and Reverse
  • How to use an outside-inside reversal to spot trade setups

Full report here

    Have a good trading week!

    Filed Under: Trading Lessons, Trading Tools Tagged With: FX, Trading Lessons

    Quote from Victor Sperandeo

    by Gav Leave a Comment


    In his book Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master, Victor Sperandeo mentioned:

    As an aside, I want to point out that although this period of intensive study helped me immeasurably in my ability to call the markets, it cost me substantially in my personal life. My daughter, Jennifer, was at a crucial formative age (3 to 5), and I spent almost no time with her. I would get home from the office, eat, and go straight back to work in my study. When she came into my office, I would shoo her away impatiently, totally ignoring the fact that she needed her father’s attention and love. It was a bad mistake that both of us are paying for today. If I had to do again, I would draw out the study period and give Jennifer more time.

    After reading this paragraph, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I’m not sure if this is a common mistake among traders, I, sometimes, make the similar mistake. We know this business requires a lot of time, effort, attention, but our loved ones require more.

    Just being a little bit emotional. Anyway, this book is really a good read. If you haven’t done so, go and get one.

    Filed Under: Life, Trading Lessons Tagged With: Life, reading, Trading Lessons

    A blog post and something about stocktwits

    by Gav 13 Comments

    I read a recent blog post on TraderFeed. This caught my attention, echoing my mind.

    Traders need to develop ways of seeing markets that are unique to them, that make sense for them, that fit their risk tolerance and lifestyle, and that best make use of their skills and talents. Simply giving traders ideas could actually stunt their development, much like doing a child’s homework for them.

    An important challenge in trading is that there is typically more valuable information streaming from markets than a single individual can reasonably process on their own….

    full post here.

    That is the main reason why I hardly, or never use service like Stocktwits. OK, I am not against Stocktwits. It is a brilliant idea from some entrepreneurs. But, is it really useful for trader’s development? Well, Caveat emptor. Personally, I do not find it to be useful for my own development. To me, it is just a stream of random tweets, good or bad of so called ‘trading ideas’, valuables and junks, marketing of premium services, repeated links etc.  But, this is just me. I believe, some users are finding it to be helpful to them. By all means, go for it. I’ll leave it to you to decide, and please, do not try to argue in the comment why I am wrong. I don’t care.

    Instead of wasting time following somebody, I guess, it will be better off for trader to be away from social networking, and develop his own view, own way of seeing markets.  With that skills, then the streams of tweets might give you some good ideas.

    Filed Under: Trading Lessons, Trading Tools Tagged With: Trading Lessons, Trading Psychology

    About managing trades

    by Gav Leave a Comment

    I came across Tim Morge's articles on MoneyShow.com which he talked about how successful traders manage their trades. Though he quoted median line trades in the articles, he did point out some important tips for trade management. I thought it might be helpful for my readers as well. Check it out.

    The clearest thoughts you'll have about a potential trade is before you enter it; once you enter the trade, the clarity of your focus declines for many reasons:

    1. You have been staring at the screen for some time, stalking the trade (and of course, once you enter the trade, you are watching the screen even more intently, so the longer you are in the trade, the more focus you have spent).
    2. Once you enter the trade, you have a financial interest in the trade; in many traders, that heightens their interest, but at a cost of burning their available focus at a faster rate.
    3. Once you have a financial interest in the trade, you feel the weight to make money (some call this the fear and greed factor). You feel elated with each tick in your favor and you feel depressed by each tick that goes against you.
    4. As a trade progresses, you are pulled by the price action to intervene and change your original idea; with each ebb and flow of price, a new way to improve your original trading plan pops into your head.
    5. If a trade heads towards your stop loss, you become more and more certain you have taken a losing trade and the internal pressure to intervene and cut the loss quicker increases. Even if you have learned to hide your stop loss orders behind market structure, you feel the pressure from these urges to exit these trades earlier, at a smaller loss, even though many of your trades that travel into losing territory often would have survived by a few ticks (because of your use of market structure as protection).
    6. As prices move in your favor, you feel the urge to lock in profits at the slightest slowing of price in your favor. You need a win and the thought that this trade may back up and turn into a loser weighs on your mind, clouding your judgment.

    Filed Under: blogs, Learn Trading Tagged With: Trading Lessons

    My interview with TASC

    by Gav 36 Comments

    tascFinally, after waited for weeks, I managed to grab a copy of Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, June 2009 issue. Yes, it is a little difficult to get the latest U.S magazine in Melbourne, Australia. Well, that’s not the point of this post.

    I was interviewed by Jayanthi from TASC. I shared about my experience, how did I start up, and some routine of my trading day. Here is the scanned version of my interview.

    Interview with Gavin – TASC

    [gview file=”https://tradergav.com/wp-content/Photos/2009/06/TASC_Interview_TraderGav.pdf”]

    Filed Under: blogs, Links, news, Trading Journal, Trading Lessons Tagged With: FX, Links, Trading Journal, Trading Lessons

    • « Go to Previous Page
    • Page 1
    • Page 2
    • Page 3
    • Page 4
    • Page 5
    • Page 6
    • Go to Next Page »

    Primary Sidebar

    Best Tools For Traders

    Recommend FX Charting

    Footer

    Recommended FX Charting

    Recommended Training

    FXSAnalytics
    Price Action Course for Professionals

    Copyright © 2025 · Affiliate Disclosure · Privacy

    We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok