Category: Trading Psychology

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TLC Weekly Update February 10, 2024

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Another week of S&P500 edging out a new high again but this time without Dow Jones Industrial Average doing the same. So where are we heading from here, you may ask. My guess is that FOMO is in full force now, so every small dip will be bought and when we run out of buyers, this melt up will turn into melt down.

David Hunter suddenly show up on my regular YouTube browsing. First of the 2 part interview can be found here. As a so-called contrarian, his view is always controversial. But then listening to what others are paying attention to can help one develop a more comprehensive view of the market environment we are facing. After all, markets are made of people.

Bryan Johnson has a new video on how he managed to regrow his hair. Personally I would not go that distance to regrow my hair. Maybe just the red light part so that I don’t lose as much that quickly… the more fascinating thing to me is that those products he listed in the video are all sold out now. The power of these super star influencers is amazing.

The latest rage in the stock market now are AI stocks. This interview of Alexander Wang can help many people who have no idea what “real” AI companies are to understand what kind of problems these companies are solving. My take is that those existing public companies claiming their AI involvement is no different from what happened back in 1999-2000 where all those scams claiming they are part of the internet revolution …

If you are a man who are reasonably fit but somehow not full of energy and can get tired quite easily, watch this short clip. Proper intervention without medications can make a huge difference in your life.

Lately I am tasked to look into some very exotic financial markets to see if my team can build trading algos for them. I can say that it is a real challenge and I like it. So back to work for me as usual.

Happy Chinese New Year!

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TLC Weekly Update August 20, 2022

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Another week of retail mob fomo buying the stock market up together with corporate buybacks at full force. Friday option expiration put a dent at the end but no serious damage was done. On one hand we have huge geopolitical risk and at the brink of global economic collapse. On the other hand we have “investors” telling the world that the US Federal Reserve will “pivot” and restart QE any moment now.

Here is my secret formula to know the exact timing of Fed’s actions. It is not what freaking models they use or what economic data they are looking at. In aggregate, it is always the stock market level that determines the start and the end of their rate hike and rate cut moves. If you don’t believe me, go back to the chart of the S&P500 and map that to their actions. When they say they are looking for 3-4% economic growth, it is not about the CPI or the PPI. Everything they look at actually come down to the long term expected return of the stock market.

As a greatly simplified example, at the end of year 2019, S&P500 closed at 3400. Assuming Fed thinks that was a reasonable level for S&P500 to close at at the time, the expected normal target for end of year 2021 at 6% compound (double that 3% “acceptable” growth) is 3820. And then for the end of year 2022 is 4050. As long as S&P500 is trading above 4050 this year the Fed will continue to raise interest rate.

And if the Fed is thinking of engineering a recession, they don’t care about the economic data either. It is the stock market level having a “true” negative return for two quarters. First quarter of 2022 does not count because it closed above the target they are looking for. Second quarter did it with a figure slightly below the target for the quarter. If by the end of the third quarter, S&P500 is willing to stay below 4000, then the Fed may consider taking a pause before more rate hikes because a “recession” has been engineered.

As long as the “animal spirit” among the “investors” are high, and money is pouring into the various gambling dens, S&P500 will stay above the Fed’s targets and Fed will have no choice but to continue to teach them a lesson …

Very important video with Peter Zeihan for everyone to watch here. I talked about this issue of population composition for years in my monthly newsletters for premium members. I also wrote about the breakdown of the global logistics in the survival article. This is a great summary of how fucked up the world is currently. Yep, we are doomed.

One thing I don’t agree with Peter Zeihan is that China does not need Taiwan. So if China is going to attack, the goal is to destroy the West by destroying an important part of their tech industry. What it means is flatten Taiwan to ashes will be the “go to” strategy. Once there is not even one living person exists in Taiwan, other countries can’t claim that they are going to support Taiwan because there is no one to support.

In the video, the movie Margin Call was mentioned. If you have never watched that, do it. It can help you understand what to expect in coming months.

A reader sent me this link to a video about the Inflation Reduction Act. Even though I am not a devoted Christian, I like the fact that he called this spin done by the US politicians as it is. Let’s go Brandon!

Here is a rare video with Jeffery Sherman talking about his thoughts outside of DoubleLine’s own videos. Great educational materials for everyone to prepare for the coming extremely difficult economic environment. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, my take from the video is that we probably haven’t seen shit hit the fan yet.

Back to working on my projects.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update August 6, 2022

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This NFP week was full of surprises. First, everyone keeps paddling that Fed will “pivot” very soon and economic data will be weaken so much that Fed may even restart QE again. Then on Thursday, people get all hyped when they see an unimportant economic data confirming their wet dreams. By Friday, the wet dream ended with a slap to their faces as NFP reported a figure that is almost double the estimate. Yet, the stock market recovered most of its losses by close.

So, does NFP really matter?

Of course not. Crowd madness is real and when people want to believe the stock markets has already bottomed in June, they will only think of their potential gain and reject any idea that they could be wrong.

Another big name, Chamath Palihapitiya, joins the game of calling the bear market and global economic downturn. His argument is different from Dalio. I think it is worth watching.

Even though I don’t agree with everything Nassim says, this thread on Twitter is an important reminder for all investors and traders how to apply proper logical analysis when making a trading decision.

For chess enthusiasts, the Chess Olympiad 2022 is the ongoing biggest event now. This one particular game is very interesting, because, it tells us mistakes can be very costly.

This week my server at the ISP faced a major outage thanks to someone at the ISP changed the security rules of our server without approval from us. We have to scramble to figure out what happened. At the end, it is the experienced tech from our cloud firewall service that traced down the problem and gave our ISP instructions that eventually fixed the problem. Well, on the bright side, the servers are now working perfectly and better than before.

I have a lot of catch up to do with my projects after spending so much time to tackle the server incident.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update July 30, 2022

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Just gone through another hectic week with so many things to take care of and running out of time everyday.

Latest talk from Tony Robbins with Ray Dalio. Nothing much Dalio has not explained before. It is just an update of his views at this point in time. If you have not read his book on the subject or any other talks he gave on the subject, this is a great starting point.

For the aspiring traders, this interview with Gareth Soloway is a good one reminding you what you must master to becoming a good trader. The question Kevin raised on a bet, is nothing new. It is given to many people to see if they can answer this correctly. The problem is that in real life you can’t look at the question as if it is a pure probability question and Gareth gave the best answer I have seen.

Another video about Michael Burry’s bet with speculation on what he is really doing at the moment. Well, it is a speculation of what he may have done with the rest of his trading capital. What I find interesting is that this is the first time I have seen a layman video that paid attention to what Burry said about how expensive option premiums have become. That matters a lot in real life trading and that alone tells you how the market makers view the level of risk going forward.

Coming week we start with a new month that is jam packed with major geopolitical events. Just the US sending Pelosi to visit Taiwan is enough to trigger WW3. That coupled with Russia, China and many other countries going to do a military drill next to US west coast, I see these countries all walking on a dangerous path.

I pray that nothing bad happens … I still want to enjoy my summer.

Got to go.

Let’s have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update October 23, 2020

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Finally, the last US presidential debate is over. Now we just have to sit tight and wait for the outcome by election day. For traders everywhere, hopefully there will be a slow down of random news shock from the two camps. Giving the world a break until the results are in on election day would be nice. I am sure more chaos will follow after the election though …

Bitcoins is on the move again and the crypto traders are getting all excited about it. Although I don’t hold a lot of BTC anymore, it is nice to see more and more famous financial gurus willing to bet on the concept. The latest being Paul Tudor Jones. What he says 5 months ago and what he says yesterday. Of course, he is talking his book because he just bet $100 million (I can be wrong on the figure) on BTC in the beginning of the year.

Read a story about the old Nintendo NES Zapper. It is so interesting to see how game developers managed to overcome the hardware limitations back then. Since I have not played console games for a long long time, I wonder what kind of technology the current generation of shooting games uses for better gaming experience.

I encounter this question pretty much every week in random conversations all the time, “Why do people fail at trading?” All those “gurus” out there giving their personal accounts of determination and perseverance needed to win the game are pure bullshit. Some of them are the lucky ones belonging to the 4% I explained here, the rest are fake gurus who copy the answers from the others on the internet. Here is another take on the issue based on our physiology and that’s why I told everyone that they have to be awaken first before they stand a chance.

To be awaken is a process. High level of awareness is needed for anyone who want to accomplish real mastery in anything. It is a very easy task to do if you choose to practice awareness deliberately. The hard part is making it your second nature or making it effortless. Since majority of the population refuses to do anything that gives them a sense of defeat, thus people with high level awareness is very rare.

For those of you who really want to improve your awareness but lack the guidance, you can start with something easier to digest, like, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, so that you have some background understanding about human minds. From there you can progress to learn basic breathing techniques to control your mind. Once a slightly better foundation is built, you can then learn to observe yourself.

Just like anything that worth pursuing, you must be willing to transform yourself in order to stay the course.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update September 25, 2020

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Roller coaster ride in the stock market continues. Nasdaq 100 rallied 5% higher from Monday low and then fell back down to Monday low right after. Such high volatility can induce even higher volatility going into election month. Investors and speculators should be more careful in coming few weeks. Powell may have very limited power in popping up the market should some kind of panic kicks in …

Learned something new here on how ants decide when and where to build bridges. Sometimes things are far more simple then we choose to believe in. One good example is the microstructure of the stock market. People cannot help themselves to make things so complicated when they look at the price movements that ultimately leading them to make bad trading decisions.

Sometimes brand building can be very bizarre because human nature is – crashing two trains to make a train company famous. As suggested by one of my staff, that I should record my trading computer 7/24 so that they can produce ASMR videos for those trading addicts on YouTube. Been thinking about it and may give it a try.

In case you do not know what ASMR videos are, you can search for “What is ASMR” on youtube to knock yourself out.

With all these riots and emotional “heated debates” among people with different viewpoints of things happening around us, maybe it is time to remember that Socrates hates democracy. My point is, you don’t need to have an opinion on things you don’t know. You don’t need to make a call on what is happening around you as if you are an expert of the subject. Listening too much to the news, which are by design to focus on extreme events to get your attention, is bad for your health.

Lately I’ve heard a lot of talks of the inevitability of the financial system breaking down. For example, Ray Dalio publicizes the idea that eventually the Fed will hit a wall with what they are doing. And some people are already thinking about bartering if “shit hits the fan”. Bartering has been around ever since human existed. Only after cash being accepted as the default form of medium for transactions that barter became less popular over time. So pay attention to the rise of bartering will give you a clue how close we are from that “wall”.

So much to get done this weekend again, got to run.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update August 28, 2020

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A very productive week coming to an end while leaving me quite happy and exhausted. For one, finally closed a deal that has a marathon run of six months of negotiation. On trading side, I am making great progress with MultiCharts automated trading. Persistency and being patient have again proven to be useful when you want to accomplish something that worth the effort.

I am learning how to take night sky pictures lately. It is very different from taking regular photos due to the need of long exposure and other complicated settings. Will post some of the results here when they are reasonably enjoyable. Since I don’t have anything good yet, I have to use a stock photo this time.

Here is an interesting story on why the Sistine Chapel does not allow people taking pictures. I have been to Rome many times and stayed there for quite a bit in the past. Never thought of the reasons behind the no picture rule are so obscure.

For those of you who are trying to do intermittent fasting, you should read this good research paper on fasting from Japan. It will add to your understanding and help you stay the course.

I found a good video on YouTube with Jeff Gundlach talking about the problem of finance illiteracy. There is a link to the complete interview in the description as well. The fully interview is long but it is a very enjoyable one covering many aspects of his life. It is like reading his biography uncensored. I found the part on astrology about him very fascinating. As someone like myself who have a similar scientific background and beliefs, yet accepting the fact that astrology can be useful and helpful to people.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update July 31, 2020

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An interesting week of wild market actions that left many traders puzzling what to expect next. Well, take it one day at a time is probably the best advice I can give. There is no point to engage in trading when you do not have an understanding of the context. Take a break could be a good idea too so that you can clear your mind from fixation of specific narratives of the market.

Rarely do I find CNBC makes meaningful videos. This video is an exception – watch it to understand why Amazon has no competition in the cloud storage arena. The fight is ongoing to be the leader in this field but the second place player Microsoft has a long way to get near Amazon’s market shares.

Good read about Ida Wood, one of the most interesting persons of her time. I like the fact that she was able to handle her husband’s gambling addiction in such subtle way that otherwise the wealth would never have been preserved. As a trader, it is in fact important to learn from this lesson and save our winnings systematically so that we do not lose all our money back to the markets.

Robert Greene has been interviewed by many people but he did not have a Youtube channel until now. His first video, The Crisis Generation, is a good one. It is about 30 minutes though so enjoy it over a long break when you get the chance.

I have re-written a script for my video lesson the third round already. Still not satisfied with the result. So members of DaytradingBias may have to wait a little longer.

The week was so hectic that I did not even know that it is Friday already. Having all these phone calls from Asia to Europe scheduled at odd hours is really messing up my sense of time. My goal to build this trading power house is taking shape though. Exciting time!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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TLC Weekly Update July 3, 2020

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Today is a US market holiday making this a long weekend for me. Many of my friends in Toronto find it odd that I rarely take a break on Canada Day (July 1st) while enjoying my time the weekend after. Well, they are not aware of my trading mainly deal with US markets so my holiday schedule is really the American one.

Just heard the latest podcast Tim Ferriss Show with Hugh Jackman this time. A very interesting podcast packed with a lot of details that is never disclosed before. Tim Ferriss did an amazing job getting his guest to spill his guts. Enjoy the show if you have 2 hours to kill. And in case you prefer to listen to it on Youtube, here is the link for that.

A short clip with Ray Dalio summing up perfectly the kind of financial markets we are dealing with. It is difficult environment to navigate if you do not have a big picture understanding of what is going on. Mr. Dalio summary can help you pay attention to what matters most at this point in the economic cycle.

Long weekend is often a good time to reflect and contemplate what to do next. Many people tend to imagine too much and try too hard to develop a plan that they can never follow. I am a true believer in the accumulation of results. Or as Steve Jobs’ famous speech put it, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Dive deep into one subject or topic at a time and do your best to learn as much as you can is a very empowering experience. Don’t tell yourself you are “trying to learn as much as you can”. That framing of “to try on something” already put you in a state of not learning, or, in a state of rejecting whatever coming out of the experience. Words have power and programming yourself with the wrong words have consequence.

For those of you struggling with trading over the past few months, maybe it is time to dig deep and refine your skills related to trading. 10% better in one area within a month may not do much. But after getting better by 10% (or more) in several areas of your trading can be a game changer to your overall performance. There is always room for more improvement in our line of business, and in life too.

Have a great long weekend all!

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My Journey to Fully Automate My Trading: The Extreme Volatility Challenge is Blessing in Disguise

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It is the end of second quarter of year 2020, I am so busy with so many things I could not really sit down to write something for this series for months. Since this series is a documentary, I guess I should write something so that looking back, I have what happened on record. After contemplating on several ideas, I decided to talk about the impact of extreme volatility on my trading strategies.

There it was, March 2020, the fastest and steepest decline in S&P500 in its history. And then even more amazing, was the miracle rally from that swing low pushing S&P500 back up to almost unchanged for the year. Nasdaq 100 has even made new all time high now.

So many of you have asked whether my trading models are doing fine? I can detect the undertone even though English is not my native language. My guess is that they are wondering if I lost a lot of money during this time.

In short, I am doing fine. If I were trading mostly discretionarily, I will not be. The automated trading strategies saved me from making major trading mistakes many times during this period. I am so glad that I managed to convert about 50% of my trading method to fully mechanical trading models right before the start the extreme trading environment.

What Went Right

The strategies managed to avoid most of the trading days that has extreme swings. Some of you may wonder why avoiding those days. Isn’t it the purpose of day trading to capture the intraday movements?

Yes, day trading strategies are designed to capture the intraday price movements based on the microstructure for which price would move a certain way given certain pre-conditions are met. However, when the volatility is way too high, even if you are on the right side of a move, the strategy will still be stopped out easily thanks to the extreme swings every few minutes.

Of course you can increase the size of the stop losses to participate in the game. But my research shows that is absolutely counter-productive. First, increasing the overall risk taken per contract means you need to reduce the total size of each trade to protect the trading capital from an overall risk management perspective. Second, the equity swings can be nerve wrecking which can disable you from take care of your everyday tasks. In other words, you see extreme swings in your equity and likely ended up doing almost nothing.

One very good thing that stands out is the data and order server stability with all these firms I work with. Comparing to the financial crisis back in year 2008 and 2009, the experience is so much better. Back then we have so many outages making trading nearly impossible. Just the fear of being trapped in an open position was bad enough. Again, the advancement and maturity in technology and infrastructure with these firms are something I greatly appreciated.

What Went Wrong

I was caught off-guard several times when the brokerages made sudden announcement to change the margin requirements. There was once that the change was made in the middle of a trading session. These sudden changes caused me to miss several trades due to the orders being rejected by the brokerage system.

Not happy with these incidents mainly because the missed trades are all winners. LOL

And I learned from this experience that the brokerages are reacting to the situation very differently. For example, Interactive Brokers and Tradestation at times raising their day trading margin requirement to full exchange overnight maintenance margin while some pro shops just double up their promised day trading margin requirement. What the brokerage firms do is not to protect their clients. What they are doing is protecting themselves. This shows that the pro firms understand their clients are professionals so there is no need to exercise extreme caution.

The worst part of the experience so far is the next to none support from many firms as the lock-down due to COVID19 forced many to operate remotely with very limited access to their staff. So anything that requires human intervention or help becomes not available or that the waiting queue is so long that you just have to give up. Can’t complain about that since this will probably become the new normal if the outbreak continues for a prolonged period of time.

What Could Be Improved

Technically, highest priority is the integration of position size into some of my trading strategies so that they can change the order size should there be a sudden margin change. This is not difficult but takes time to develop and test the code. Just one more project on the table that jumped my long queue of other things I need to get done.

I already have remote control of everything setup so that is not a problem. The remaining disaster scenario is that we have some form of global internet outage while I have an open position. For this scenario, I am still working on a way to minimize its impact.

What’s Next

The time I saved from manual trading gave me the freedom over the past few months in completing a few business deals. The main benefit, however, is that I have more time to spend on automating even more of my trading strategies. It is just fun watching these bots going live and doing their things.

It feels like playing Legos when I was very young or playing SimCity as a teenager. The satisfaction coming from the accomplishment is very hard to describe.

As I mentioned in my weekly blog, the success I have achieved so far with the conversion process has given me the confidence to keep going until everything is automated. One fund manager who is a long time friend sum it up nicely – once you have converted to automated trading, you will never go back.