Author Archive for Jeff White

Trading Without Emotion

December 7, 2005 at 2:56 pm

Making and losing money in the blink of an eye while trading evokes all sorts of emotions. It’s so easy to get excited when a trade develops exactly like your plan. It’s equally easy to get frustrated and mad when a stock goes the wrong way and you know another trader is collecting on your mistake (that lucky chump!).

But when was the last time your emotions helped you in a trade? Has that positive excitement ever been costly to you, causing you to either book profits too early or stay in too long (feeling like it was easy)? Has your anger ever led you to put on grudge-trades, trying to “make back” your money quickly after a loss? It’s obvious to see that emotions are detrimental to your wealth!

I took up golf seriously when I was 13. My dad had always been a scratch player, so I had a great teacher for all aspects of the game. After I had been practicing and playing every day for several months, an important day arrived. He and I were playing golf one afternoon and on the 9th green, I had my first putt ever to break 40. It was about 2 ½ feet long and I should have been able to make it in my sleep. BUT, I was focused on my score rather than the process. I missed the putt, shot 40, and was mad the rest of the day. I wondered how long I’d have to wait for another chance at a meaningful putt like that. My Dad made some comments which helped me then and continue to help me now. He said I rushed my effort and was clearly thinking about score (results) rather than making the putt (the process). He suggested I implement a pre-shot routine, which is a mental and physical checklist to go through prior to each shot. Doing so would help me to focus on the process rather than the result. I broke 40 a few days later, excited about this new discovery.

Trading with a systematic approach can have the same positive effects on your profitability that my pre-shot routine gave me in golf. Even if you take discretionary trades, going through a routine and focusing on the process will let you execute your trading plan much better than watching your account balance fluctuate and having your emotions flutter just as often. This might mean that each evening you do some research or screen for chart patterns. It might mean you read a stock newsletter, scan the news, or set up conditional alerts as a safety net to your trading. Maybe it just means you go through the same routine each morning, adding some structure to your day and leveling out your emotions. Whatever it may mean for you, I highly suggest implementing some kind of trading routine to help combat the emotions that every one of us faces with trading. You’ll have time to do all of your celebrating later!

Jeff White
President, The Stock Bandit, Inc.
www.TheStockBandit.com

Downtrending Stocks – Don’t Buy!

December 6, 2005 at 4:32 pm

Everyone wants a great deal. If you don’t think so, just consider the day-after-Thanksgiving sales with people lined up outside the stores at 5am to buy merchandise on sale. We want things now and we want them cheap! When it comes to stocks, however, I know better.

They say to buy low and sell high. It’s a good concept if you can get it to work, but it implies that buying low is the first thing to do. Novice stock traders look to buy “cheap” stocks, whether it’s just a low-priced stock or a stock well off its highs. Remember, cheap stocks tend to be cheap for a reason!

Low-dollar stocks often fall into one of two categories: the former high-fliers which have split so many times and come down so far that they are simply too liquid and “thick” to make much of a move (LU, NT, etc.), and stocks which are cheap because they fizzled out long ago and no buzz has been generated since. These kinds of stocks don’t move enough for an active trader, unless you are as interested in trading so many shares that your broker makes as much in commission as you do in profits.

A downtrending stock is making lower highs and lower lows. Money is coming out of it. People are walking away in search of finding something more attractive. When you buy a stock, you want it to go up, so look for stocks with some buzz, some positive activity, and some momentum.

An example of how disastrous it can be to buy a downtrending stock is MOVI. This stock began trending lower many months ago, and has shed most of its value.

MOVI continues to trend lower, and buying a “cheap” stock would have been costly!

Consider the novice traders who wanted to buy a stock off its highs. They may have moved in to pick up shares in late June near $27 or so, which was more than $7 off the recent high. Those buyers never saw their trade turn profitable. What if they “averaged down” in the $20 area, hoping to catch a quick bounce to let them out? All they did was compound their losses. What about now that the stock is trading near $5.00? Would you feel like getting up and running after falling off a 20-story building? This stock probably doesn’t either. It’s best to stay away from chart patterns like this until the buyers regain control and the stock begins to build some upside momentum.

Buying stocks in downtrends is a recipe for disaster. Save your bargain-hunting for the retail stores and holiday shopping, but prepare to pay up if you want to buy a stock and turn a profit!

Jeff White
President, The Stock Bandit, Inc.
www.TheStockBandit.com

Welcome to TheStockBandit.net!

December 5, 2005 at 3:25 pm

Swing Trading With The Stock Bandit has been relocated to this new domain in order to provide more features and functionality! WordPress is now the backbone of this blog, allowing me much greater flexibility.

Please update your feeds and email subscriptions to this blog using the buttons (or e-mail field) in the sidebar to the right!

As always, interaction with readers is great, so don’t hesitate to post your comments and/or contact me whenever you like, and thanks for reading!

Jeff White
President, The Stock Bandit, Inc.