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Forex Forex Psychology

What You MUST Know About Psychology In the Financial Markets

It’s cloudy. Every minute, the number of clouds doubles, and in 100 minutes the sky will be covered. How many minutes will it take the clouds to occupy half the sky? 50 minutes. It is the answer that is usually heard in this version of the riddle. However, if the clouds double every minute, when they cover the whole sky it means that the minute before they cover just half. So the correct answer is 99 minutes.

Fast and Slow Thinking

It wasn’t a complicated riddle. But to solve it you had to think slowly. In his excellent fast-thinking, slow thinking, D. Kahneman, father of behavioral finance, described the two ways we process information:

A quick, emotional and intuitive one. It gets stuck before problems that require evaluation and logic. Professionally known as System 1, colloquially Homer.

A slow and rational, requiring higher energy expenditure. Known as System 2 or Mr. Spock for friends.

We are Homer by default. It is enough for the day-to-day. With Spock in charge, it would take hours to solve simple operations, like buying food or choosing the color of the tie.

System 1 is efficient and consumes less energy. In return, it takes a series of shortcuts that cause mental traps. For example, how many times do you think you could fold a sheet of paper? It seems a simple task, but I bet with you you wouldn’t be able to do it more than 12 times. Just take the test.

In fact, it was thought impossible to fold a sheet more than 8 times until in January 2002, B. Gallivan explained how to get there at 12 in his book How to Fold a Paper in Half Twelve Times. You read it right: a book.

Incredible, isn’t it? If it wasn’t for the fact that mathematics assures you that it is, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s not something you can imagine: you have to do an exercise in faith in science.

We Are Fooled

Imagine that we found a way to bend it more than 12 times. For example, 20. What will be thicker: the pipe of a pipeline or our sheet?

A folio is about 0.1 mm thick. If we fold it in half, we will have 0.2 mm. We fold again and have 0.4 mm. At the seventh, the thickness will be similar to that of a notebook. Around 23 times we will reach 1 Km. In 42, our folded folio would reach the moon, in 52 to the sun. 86 folds later, it will be the size of the milky way and 103 folds the size of the universe. Math, son.

We can’t imagine it. Mathematics claims it’s true, but the mind resists it. Only with experience, knowledge, and the right tools will we know when System 2 needs to be implemented to reach successful conclusions.

Credit: Real Investment Advice

Confused by the Randomness

You will agree with me that any good operation is one that you would repeat time and again provided that certain conditions are met, regardless of the outcome of a particular trade. This statement implies that any operation, despite being perfectly planned, can end badly. That is to say, investment in financial markets requires us to face important doses of randomness.

And the bad news is that the deceptions of System 1 are multiplying in activities whose results are influenced by probability. Actually, Homer thinks he can influence her.

A few years ago, a BBC reporter showed that at many Manhattan traffic lights there is no connection between pressing the “green wait” button and the time it takes for the record to change color. Corroborated by the New York Times, it was noted that it occurred in other cities (e.g., London). As pedestrians feel they can control the situation, they tend to cross less in red.

This trap is known as the “illusion of control”: we believe we can influence things over which we have no power. For example, when we blow into the fist or shake the dice vigorously before throwing them. Or when we attribute to our superior analysis the winning operations and to the unlucky losers (something that also fits with another mental trap known as “attribution bias”).

In this sense, a 2003 study by Fenton-O’Creevy et al showed that traders more prone to the illusion of control had lower performance, worse analysis, and worse risk management.

Correlation, Causality, and Chance

This need for control leads us to look for cause-effect relationships to explain random phenomena. Unfortunately, Homer is not a scientist identifying patterns and there are few sites like financial markets to find ridiculous patterns. Thus, there are hundreds of published books that are authentic compendiums of false correlations.

It is important to understand that correlation does not imply causality and that it is not enough that a system has worked in order to extrapolate it to the future. The system, besides being useful, must make sense.

Chalmers, inspired by B. Russell, explained it well in his inductive turkey story. A turkey, from its first morning, received food at 9 o’clock. As it was a scientific turkey, he decided not to assume that this would always happen and waited for years until he collected enough observations. Thus, he recorded days of cold and heat, with rain and with the sun, until finally, he felt sure to infer that every day he would eat at 9 o’clock. And then, Christmas Eve arrived, and it was he who became the meal.

In 1956, Neyman (later corroborated by Hofer, Przyrembel, and Verleger in 2004) showed that there is a significant correlation between the increase in the stork population in a given area and the birth rate in that area. Cause?

Depends on the Question

Most of the decisions we make are often influenced by how we are presented with information, or how the question is asked. For example, we will be more willing to sell a share priced at EUR 50 if we buy it for EUR 40. However, if the previous day’s closure was EUR 60, we will be more reluctant to do so.

Imagine you have to choose between these options:

800 USD with security.

Do not lose anything with 50% probability or -1,600 USD with 50% probability.

Although the expected value is the same (0.5 x -1,600 + 0.5 x 0 = -800 USD), the second option is usually chosen.

Let’s put it another way:

+800 USD with security.

Do not earn anything with 50% probability or +1,600 USD with 50% probability.

Many people will now choose the first option. By showing the same exercise as a gain rather than a loss, the mental process leads to different paths.

Aversion to the Loss

The above example also demonstrates the “loss aversion bias”. We are more pained by a loss than by a gain of the same magnitude. This is one of the causes of the well-known “disposition effect”: the tendency to close profits ahead of time and let losses run away.

We cannot avoid the Disposition Effect. In fact, it is rooted in our primate nature, as demonstrated by K. Chen and L. Santos of Yale University, studying a group of capuchin monkeys.

These monkeys had been educated to exchange small coins for fruits. When they “bought” a grape, one of the researchers would throw the coin in the air, and if it came out face up he would give it two grapes, if it was a cross, then only one. Another researcher, when given the coin, showed two grapes. Then he threw the coin in the air, and if it came out expensive, he gave both grapes, and if it came out, he gave one and kept the other.

On average, they received the same number of grapes with both researchers, but one showed them as a potential gain and another as a potential loss. Soon, the monkeys began to exchange only with the investigator who did not show the two grapes. The suffering of losing a grape was greater than the satisfaction of winning it.

We can’t help it. But L. Feng and M. Seaholes showed in a 2005 study how the experience allowed for significant attenuation.

Aversion to the Losses

Perhaps because we do not know how to decide in an environment of uncertainty, we do not know how to evaluate the decisions made by others. In a 1988 study, J. Baron and J. Hershey asked a subject to choose from:

  • Get 200 USD for sure.
  • Get 300 USD with 80% probability or 0 USD with 20% probability.

A priori, the most logical thing is to take risks since its expected value is 240 USD (300 x 80% + 0 x 20%), higher than 200 USD insurance. But what was sought was not to evaluate the wisdom of the one who chose, but how others valued the choice. Therefore, once the result was known, different people were asked what they thought about the decision taken, being -30 the worst and +30 the best.

The valuation was +7.5 when the subject took risks and won and -6.5 when he lost. This implies that the subject is valued not for making the most logical decision, but for its result.

External Influences

When we make decisions, we are also influenced by what others think, by what others expect of us, and even by what others order.

Asch showed the difficulties of going against the tide. In his classic study, he showed tokens with three lines of different sizes to groups of students. They were all in cahoots except one, the subject of the study. It was asked to select the largest line. The accomplices had to say sometimes right and sometimes wrong answers. When they said the right answer, the subjects did not usually fail. But when the group gave the wrong answer, the subjects failed almost 40% of the time, even though the lines were several centimeters apart.

Stanford’s terrible prison experiment shows the influence of what others expect of us. A group of young people were selected and randomly divided between prisoners and prison guards. Prisoners were required to wear robes and were designated by numbers, not by name. The only rule of the guards is that they could not use physical violence.

On the second day, the experiment went completely out of control. The prisoners received and accepted humiliating treatment at the hands of the guards.

Even more terrible is the study of Stanley Milgram, from Yale University. This experiment used three people: a researcher, a teacher (the subject), and a student (an accomplice actor). The researcher points out to the teacher that he must ask the student questions and punish with a painful punishment every time he fails. Initially, the discharge is 15 volts and increases for each failure for several levels up to 450 volts.

The student, as the downloads rise level simulates gestures and cries of pain. From 300 volts it stops responding and simulates seizures.

Normally starting at 75 volts, teachers would get nervous and ask to stop the experiment. If this happened, the investigator refused up to four times, noting:

  • Go on, if you please.
  • The experiment requires you to continue.
  • It is absolutely essential that you continue.
  • You have no choice. You must continue.
  • On the fifth attempt, the experiment stopped. Otherwise, it continued.

All subjects asked at some point to stop the study, but none passed five attempts before the 300 volts. 65% of the participants, although uncomfortable, reached up to 450 volts.

If you think that you would never fall for something like this, keep in mind that both studies have been repeated at different times with different modifications, reaching similar results.

What Can We Do?

Now you know. Your mind deceives you and conspires against you. You can’t help it, but you can avoid falling into its traps if you understand how you are deceived. There are hundreds of resources (books, articles, etc). Use them. And remember: to be brave it is indispensable to be afraid.

Categories
Forex Daily Topic Forex Education Forex Psychology

Guidelines for Successful Trading

Introduction

To achieve a successful trading profession is more than a couple of good trades, and a fancy template in the trading platform, nor a social media trader’s fashioned lifestyle.

In this educational article, we’ll present a set of guidelines to aid in building a successful trading plan.

The Right Trading Mindset

Trading in financial markets must be understood as a decision process, which, when developed systematically, tends to provide consistent results.

Robert and Jens Fischer, in their work “Candlesticks, Fibonacci, and Chart Pattern Trading,” define a list of rules or guidelines that can aid investors in its decision-making process. These guidelines are as follows:

Self-knowledge 

If the investor feels uncomfortable when it is in the market, this could be indicative of an incorrect positioning in terms of position size or market side.

Ego by a winning streak

An increasing ego encouraged by a winning streak, especially in the first trades, could drag the investor toward huge losses.

Hopping when things go wrong 

Many traders tend to let run the losses expecting a market reversal to the trade direction, and they usually close a winning trade too soon, with a small profit (fearing a loss), which is a recipe for disaster. To solve this issue, traders must plan every trade in advance,  with a pre.defined stop-loss and profit target before opening any trade.

Losses are part of the business 

Investors must be aware that it is impossible to have 100% of winning trades

Avoid Martingale position sizing

The increasing the size of the position when the market and the trade moves against you is the path to bankruptcy.

Trading systems could fail

There is no trading system that could provide 100% of winner trades. However, losses will increase when the investor jumps from one system to another. Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages. The profitability of any trading system will depend on the market conditions, and the investor must learn to live with the potential risk of his trading system.

Diversify the risk

Independent of the profitability associated with a trading product, the systematic diversification of risk could give the investor a smoother equity curve growth than when considering only a single trading asset.

Making Money by trading is a long road 

The consistent and profitable trading in financial markets is the result of a systematic work taking months or years where results obtained can confirm the rentability of each trading system.

The importance of a trading plan

Successful trading is not to make money quickly; it is related to the capability to make profits consistently long term, independently of changing market conditions.

A comfortable trading strategy

The trading strategy must provide the investor with similar results in real-time than on paper-money or in the back-test mode. If the approach does not offer the same results in real-time, the methodology must be revised.

The importance of discipline

The most important characteristic of successful traders is discipline because they limit their decisions to their established trading methodology.

The Importance of Number Three

In the financial markets, there exist a vast number of ways to analyze it technically, for example, chartist formations, Elliott wave, or candlesticks patterns. However, those ways to analyze the market have in common, and it is number three.

  • In Elliott wave analysis, when the price moves in a trend, this develops three movements in the primary trend’s direction. 
  • The most popular chartist pattern known as Head and Shoulders has three tops (or valleys) and two valleys (or tops.) When the price reaches its third valley, the price action tends to break below the previous two valleys and continue a downward (or upward) sequence.
  • An ascending triangle corresponds to a continuation pattern, in the bullish case, three valleys, and two tops. When the price action touches by the third time the top, the price surpasses the previous two highs and continues its earlier move and continues its primary trend.

In the following figure, we observe a set of patterns that follows the characteristics of “three.”

 

Conclusions

In this educational article, we presented a set of guidelines to develop a trading mindset that can support a profitable trading methodology along time.
We also exposed a group of chart patterns that correspond to a simplification of three moves, which could support the analysis and generation of trading opportunities in the real market.
In the following article, we will present the basic principles of a trading strategy.

Suggested Readings

– Fischer, R., Fischer J.; Candlesticks, Fibonacci, and Chart Patterns Trading Tools; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2003).

Categories
Forex Daily Topic Forex Psychology

What does it take to Replicate Success?

Replicating something is done by taking a model and copying it. To become a successful trader, beginners should replicate, or model, a successful trader. But what does it take to replicate Success?

The Model

To replicate a model, we need first to define and subdivide it into sub-processes or tasks. According to Dr. Van K. Tharp, the needed subtasks required to master to become a successful trader are:

 The trading process

  1. The process of trading
  2. The process of developing a trading system that fits the trader
  3. The process of objective definition and risk management
  4. The process of a business plan as a document that guides decision-making.

Of course, to aim for excellence, we need to model the best traders in class. 

The first step is to subdivide the model into sub-tasks. Once the tasks have been defined, we need to attach beliefs, mental states, and mental strategies for each one. The purpose is to duplicate the way a successful trader thinks and acts. If we can achieve this feat, we are sure the results can be replicated.

The beliefs

According to Dr. Tharp, beliefs act as the first filter to transform the information coming from the world. Beliefs, meanings, categorizations, and comparisons determine how people perceive the real world. What a trader expects from the market depends largely on his beliefs about it. That which is called market sentiment is really “market beliefs.”

Since beliefs are filters to reality, it is wise to classify them, by asking ourselves the following

  • Where did this belief come from?
  • How useful is it?
  • How does it limit my actions?

This process helps us keep and improve valuable beliefs and get rid of un-useful ones.

Mental States

The next step to generate success is duplicating the mental state of top traders. It has to do with discipline and emotional control. When people carry their mental problems to trading their results usually come from an improper mental state, not suited to trading:

  • I’m impatient and always get in too early
  • I get mad at markets. They seem to know when I trade just to do the opposite
  • I’m afraid the market is against me now that I’m wining
  • I get too excited when I’m winning and don’t get out in time.

Controlling these states is not the solution to solve all problems. It is just one part of it. Dr. Van K. Tharp tells that in the ideal model to the trading success, each task has an optimal mental state attached to it. 

Mental Strategies

 A mental strategy is a sequence of thoughts that go from a stimulus coming any of your senses to output or action. Let’s create an example with two possible mental strategies for the same stimulus to better understand the concept.

Mental Strategy One:
  • perceiving a trading signal
  • realizing it is a known signal
  • Think about what can go wrong if you take it
  • Visualize the scenario
  • Feel afraid
Mental Strategy Two
  • Perceiving the Signal
  • Recognize it as part of your system
  • Feel good your system delivers you a new opportunity
  • Take it and trade

What do you think is the right strategy for trading? Could you take action and trade consistently using mental strategy one?

As in the case of the mental states, each trading task requires an optimal mental strategy to optimize the results.  That will be developed in future articles.


Further Reading: Peak Performance Course Book 1- How to use Risk, Van K. Tharp.

Categories
Forex Basic Strategies

Identifying & Trading The Bull Trap Pattern In The Forex Market

Introduction

A Bull Trap is one of the unique patterns that can be found in the Forex market. This pattern is comprised of two highs were the second high is failing to hold higher, and as a result, prices push to the new low. Unlike most of the patterns, a Bull Trap pattern generates false buying signals and indicate us to be cautious when we identify this pattern on the price charts. Hence it is also known as a whipsaw pattern.

The up-move that happens trick the buyers & investors into making bullish trades as they look identical to a buy signal. But the signal is not real, and they end up generating losses on long positions. Traders must seek confirmation after the breakout so that they can filter out these false buying signals and escape the Bull Trap. Bear Trap is the opposite of the Bull Trap pattern, which occurs when sellers fail to hold the prices below the break down level.

Psychology Behind The Bull Trap Pattern

The markets will be in a downtrend printing brand new lower lows & lower highs continuously. The price action then hits the major resistance level and starts pulling back. When the pullback begins to struggle, some of the aggressive traders and investors tend to take their long positions. Then, suddenly, one strong candle breaks the resistance line with power.

At that stage of the market, emotions are on a peak point, so as a result, most of the traders take buy entries believing the breakout. The market then prints one red candle, and the price action respects the resistance level and starts to hold below the resistance level. At this point, most of the trader will be hoping for the market to go up, but the prices roll into the sell-side.

How Does The Bull Trap Occur?

Example 1

As we can see in the below 15-minute EUR/JPY Forex chart, price action hits the resistance line twice, but both the times it failed to break the line. However, the third-time, price action broke the major resistance line with power. This would have resulted in most of the traders taking their long positions. When the four small candles held above the resistance line, it gives extra confirmation to the traders to buy this currency pair, but that was just a trap by the sellers. After some time, the price action dropped back, and that would affect most of the traders’ emotions negatively.

This kind of situation is common, and sometimes novice traders tend to immediately jump to the opposite side. But for professional traders, their emotions never play a role in decision making. So never take the opposite trade if that is not a part of your plan. In the above chart, we shouldn’t be going short unless the second or third bearish candle is formed after the beginning of a downtrend.

Example 2

In the below EUR/GBP chart, the pair was in an overall downtrend. During the pullback phase, when price action reached the major resistance area, most of the amateur traders visually see that as a bullish market. Price action respects the resistance line twice, but on the 25th of Nov, when strong buyers broke the resistance line, it creates the illusion of a buy signal in this pair.

But the buyers failed to hold the price higher, and the very next candle pushed the price below the resistance line. When the price broke the resistance line, amateur traders activate their buy trades. Still, technical traders will always wait for the prices to hold above the resistance line and take the buy entry only after the confirmation. In this example, prices never held above the resistance line, so there was no trade buy trade for professional traders. On the other hand, inexperienced traders end up booking losses.

Trading The Bull Trap Pattern

In the above examples, we discussed how to identify the Bull Trap pattern. Now, let’s understand how to trade this pattern. In the below EUR/AUD Forex chart, the price action tried to break the resistance line twice, but both of the time buyers failed to perform. On the 3rd of Jan, buyers broke the resistance line with some strong power. After the break, inexperienced traders would have activated their buy positions. But always keep in mind that the breakout never confirms the buy entry. We should be keeping a close look at the price after the breakout and only trade once we get the confirmation.

As you can see in the above chart, after the breakout, many candles held above the resistance line. After watching close to fifteen candles, we can confirm that the resistance has turned to support. The hold after the breakout confirms that the sellers failed to take prices lower.

Entry, Stop-Loss & Take-Profit

When buyers held the prices above the resistance line for a while, it is a clear indication of a buy signal. So now we enter the market as soon as the confirmation is done. We have decided to go for a smaller stop-loss because the hold confirms that the sellers left the ground.

Our take-profit is at the higher timeframe resistance area. We can see the price dropping back right after our take-profit level as the price tested the resistance line. Interestingly, a bull trap pattern is formed again above our take-profit order. This is the ideal way to trade this pattern, and most of the professional traders follow the same. Patience is the key to trade the Forex market. If you are patient enough to follow all the rules of the game, you will win for sure.

Conclusion

Bull Trap occurs when the prices fail to hold above the breakout. It could happen for various reasons. Some of them are buyers not being interested in pushing the prices higher, or they might have been booking the profits. On the other hand, professional sellers might have jumped into the market to take sell trades. As a result, they end up dropping the prices below the resistance levels, which will eventually result in triggering the stop-loss orders of the trapped buyers.

The best way to identify the Bull Trap pattern is to analyze the momentum of the buyers in the Forex market. If the buyers fail to hold the prices above the breakout, do not take long positions and never let the emotions drive your decision making.

Categories
Forex Psychology

The Importance of Mastering Trading Psychology

Introduction


As traders, we tend to learn the technical stuff and focus our attention on improving our technical analysis. Which is ok, but often, learning trading psychology is neglected. And at the end of the day, it is you who’s in charge of decision making, and you are the one entering your orders.

In my mind, mastering trading psychology is more important than learning chart patterns, complex wave theories, Fibonacci levels, etc. Even a layman can spot a trend, but then the decision has to be executed – do you buy or sell?

Our emotions govern decision making as they impact our rational thinking. You can do an exceptional technical analysis, but you may still lose money. You can do a poor technical analysis and still earn money.

The question imposes: why are traders who are knowledgeable about technical analysis still lose money?

The answer lies in the difference between real life and the markets and the ways we are conditioned to behave in real life vs. the mindset that is needed to be profitable in the markets.


Real-life vs. the markets


Cutting your loses 

In real life, people are not accustomed to losing. If your finger gets trapped inside the elevator hole, you would probably turn on the alarm, stop the entire building from using the elevator and call the fire brigade to help save your finger, right? You wouldn’t just cut it off and continue with your day because, in real life, fingers don’t grow back.

In the market, if your finger gets caught and you try to save it with your other hand, the other hand will get trapped as well, and you will lose both hands. So the solution would be to just cut your finger, as in the markets, fingers do grow back!

As you may have figured, the Finger analogy is when your position is starting to go against you. If you sit there and wait for it to bounce back, hoping you wouldn’t lose your money, you will lose more money. And the only solution is to cut your losses early on and have confidence that you will be in profit next time when you will be compensated for your losses and be in profit overall.

So this response has to be learned, as we have been conditioned to behave and think differently.

You shouldn’t be right, you should be in profit. 

Traders often feed their ego with their good analysis. Your ego tends to think that you should always be right and that being wrong is a very, very bad thing. That can sometimes create a bias rationale. For example, you have done tons and tons of research, and your fundamental and technical analysis; so, you have concluded that it’s a buy. You put your buy order.

After a day or two, you are in profit, good. But on the third day, the trade is starting to go against you. You keep saying to your self “it’s only a correction” I have done my research, and this can’t go down further. But it does. Even though you see you are losing money, you tend to keep your position opened. Why is that? Your brain creates a bias. It can’t even see an alternative bearish scenario, so you become loyal to yourself, as your ego also keep you congruent.

In real life, loyalty and congruency are great. If we didn’t have those traits, we would all be unreliable and spinless beings, and society as we know it would fall apart. But in the markets, you have to be able to adapt.

This is not about being right, you are not a fortune teller, you are a trader.

Numbing your emotions and the difference between knowledge and behavior 

Expanding your knowledge about financial markets and the ways of analyzing them is great, but you have to internalize it into your behavior patterns. For example, I smoke cigarettes, and I know that they are harmful. The knowledge about the harmful effects of smoking is not overpowering my internal emotions of the desire to smoke.

Another example is exercise. We all know that we should eat healthy food and exercise. But the fast-food tastes good, and our emotions are governing our decision making, and we end eating that burger. Our laziness chains us to our beds, and we hit that snooze button and sleep an extra hour, leaving us without any time to run in the morning.

That is why we, as traders, need to suppress our emotions of greed and fear that can impact our decision making.

Patience

In the modern-day world, we are bombarded with information through social media. If something doesn’t appear interesting, we are hesitant to watch it to the end. That conditions us to follow our attention and not to be in charge of it. And that’s ok in real life, as our attention is limited, and with so much out there, it would be impossible to keep track of everything.

But in the market, you have to leave that urge behind to know if it is a buy or sell, and get it over with. Trading is an activity.


Conclusion


The market environment is diametrically different from the real-life environment – it’s totally unpredictable, and we need a totally different mindset to overcome the challenges of surviving in that environment.

In real life, you would go to a train station ask a clerk where the next train is going, and if you like the direction, you would sit on that train, take a nap, and when you wake up, you would arrive at your desired destination. It is predictable, and we are accustomed to that predictability, and our behavior has been built around that predictability.

You would check your indicators in markets, make your projections, ask people what they think, where the train is heading, and still won’t have a definitive answer.

That’s why mastering trading psychology is so important. It is the way to help you find the right mindset to manage the unpredictable nature of the markets, and here at Forex Academy, we are here to help with our services.