Category Archives: Market Psychology

The Cat that Survives Curiosity

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So, what are the Joneses upto?

Or the Smiths?

Naths?

You know something, who cares?

You’re trading, right?

Fine, then just mind your own business, and focus on your return.

I mean, people, let’s just go beyond poking our noses into others’ businesses.

Don’t we have our own businesses to take care of?

Isn’t that enough for us?

If not, and if we start poking around, seeing what kind of return XYZ has made, or for that matter how many winning trades ABC has pulled off, well, we are doing ourselves a great disservice.

For starters, we don’t seem to have much confidence in our own trading system, if we’re poking around like that.

You should be pulling off the winning trades, you.

And XYZ’s or ABC’s performances should have no meaning for you.

They are trading according to their system. Let them be. What’s good for them is not necessarily good for you.

You are trading according to your system. Period.

Not minding your own business can seriously affect even a successful system which has temporarily hit a string of losing trades.

Random losses in a row happen. A winning system can well yield ten losses in a row, for example. Improbable, but not impossible.

Ask a coin, which functons at 50:50. On average, you’re flipping heads and tails equally. Nevertheless, you could land heads (or tails) ten times in a row over many, many coin-flips. Part of the game. Accept it.

Since you have a system, you’re functioning well beyond 50:50, right?

Thus, chances of a large number of losses in a row are even lesser for you.

Tweak at your system if you feel it’s lost its market-edge.

To remind you, an edge starts occurring when one functions beyond 50:50.

After a while, one gets bored, and tells oneself, that from now on, one wants to function at 55:45 and beyond (for example), come what may.

One then tweaks at one’s system, and raises the bar.

Tweak at your system if you feel the urgent need to raise the bar.

Keep raising the bar to your comfort level.

Leave other people alone. Don’t bother with their systems. Focus on your own trading.

Be the cat that survives curiosity.

Only the Lonely

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You are unique.

Are we still debating this?

No, right?

If we are, then sit yourself down.

Alone.

Reflect.

Please see how you are… unique, and that you are… unique.

Moving on, what does that mean for you?

Specifically, what does it mean for your market strategy?

A newbie starts off with very generalized market strategies.

What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander types.

Ones that treat donkeys and horses alike, to literally translate from Hindi.

Slowly but surely, you realize that you don’t want donkey treatment anymore. Mrs. Market has kicked you around and converted you from a donkey into an intelligent market player.

An intelligent market player requires a fine-tuned, risk-profile specific strategy.

That’s where you either step in or you don’t.

Choice is, as they say, now yours.

Do you want to continue with generalized, text-book level donkey strategies, or do you want to spiral up to the level of exclusive strategy tailoring and fine-tuning.

People who approach the market as a secondary or tertiary activity don’t generally spiral up. Most of them are unhappy with their returns, but since they already have primary (and probably successful) professions going for themselves, they choose to remain where they are as far as the markets are concerned, and they don’t aspire to rise any higher.

You see, they don’t have the time to take this spiral plunge.

Now it’s decision time for you, buddy.

Do you wish to remain at the average donkey level all your life as far as the markets are concerned? If not, read on.

You need to spend some alone-time, as long as it takes.

Go over all your market activity till date.

Develop a feel for your risk-taking ability.

What bothers you? What do you like? What kind of a “line” are you capable of stomaching? For how long? How do you react to a loss? To a profit? Are you emotionally stable? Can you remain stable for long? How long? What gets you on tilt? Once you make a rule for yourself, are you able to follow it? Or, do you keep second-guessing yourself? What kind on income are you looking for from the markets? Have you learnt to sit on cash? Can you stay invested for long periods? Can you let your profits run? Do you respect your stop? Do you know what a stop is? Do you know how to manage a trade? Have you fully understood basic money-management? After what level of income do you start functioning smoothly?

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Ask yourself these and many more such questions.

Let the answers come from within.

Listen to those answers.

Understand who you are.

Then, devise a unique and fine-tuned market strategy for yourself.

Keep working on this strategy, fine-tuning it till it is in tandem with your unique self.

At that point, it will become a successful strategy, and will yield above-average results.

Being above-average in the markets is a winning scenario.

Betting Your Monsters and Checking Ace-High

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Blah, blah, blah, I know, poker terminology yet again…

Can’t help it, people, it’s just so valid…

When you’re holding a monster hand, you bet out on the next street to build up the pot. Similarly, when a trade starts to run, you’re looking to load up some more on the scrip at the appropriate point.

When you’re holding air, or a mere bluff-catching hand like ace-high, you check it down through the river. Likewise, if the scrip you’ve just bought into stagnates, or moves a bit down, you do not double up on your trade. Instead, you just wait for your stop to be hit, or if before that your time-stop has run out, you square-off the trade.

An aggressive-passive style?

Who cares?

Recipe for winning in the long run?

Yes.

Right, then we’re taking it.

Two out of ten trades may start to run big. It’s taken you time, money and effort to identify those two. You are in the trade. You can feel the adrenaline pumping. Now’s not the time to sit passively. Spade-work’s all done. Right, put some more money on the winning scrip. Point is, when?

Additional points of entry are tricky.

I prefer a little margin of safety here. I like to double up at a point where there’s been some correction, and possibly when a Fibonacci level has been hit. After that, I want to see the scrip going up back through the level, and I’d like to see volume go up simultaneously. That’s my point of second entry.

You can be more aggressive, no one’s stopping you.

You can even choose to enter the second time above some kind of a previous high or above the breaking of a resistance with volume.

Risky?

Yes.

You do, however, stand a good chance of catching a big move in a very short time.

You see, at this particular point, where you’re choosing to enter, the scrip is pretty hot. People are plunging in. There is no resistance from above. Upward movement is smooth.

Downside is, that those who’ve been sitting on notional profits might start to book these anytime. When that happens, the scrip might plunge well below your high entry and hit your stop. That’s a risk you have to take, since you have decided to enter above a high.

No risk, no gain.

At my more conservative second entry point, the scrip is not as hot. It is meeting with overhead resistance from recent entrants who entered high to then find the scrip correcting, and who are now happy to exit at their entry points as the scrip retraces its upward move. So, I will have to wait longer for a possible second run of the scrip to develop, and this might or might not develop. That’s a chance I have to take. That’s the price of being conservative during second entry. I’m comfortable.

Staying in your comfort-zone at all times adds a lot of value to the rest of your life, even after you shut down your computer. One does carry over one’s emotions, and it’s best if these are under control when you reach home. By trading in your comfort-zone at all times, you make sure that you come home in an emotionally balanced state.

If you can take the second entry above a high or above a resistance while still remaining in your comfort-zone, by all means, please do so. It’s an exciting play, capable of yielding large and quick rewards. I’ve tried it at times, but cannot get a grip on the excitement levels. Thus, I normally choose the more conservative play mentioned above. It’s just a personal choice.

Similarly, I’m very comfortable checking my ace-high trades down through the river. If I’m in a trade and it’s not running, I don’t jump about trying to pull stuff out of a hat in an effort to make the trade run.

If it’s not running, it’s not running. Feed in a trigger stop and shut the computer.

Once you are alerted that the stop’s been hit, look for a new trade.

Keep it simple. That’s another recipe for winning.

Moments Before the Plunge

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A very common sight right through school and college was last minute cramming. It was an epidemic. I was more the odd one out, walking around without any books a day before any exam. Reason was, I was convinced that if I was unsure of myself a day before an exam, delving into course-material at that stage would make me feel even more insecure.

“Do you have any coffee?”, whispered someone. This fellow woke me up in the middle of the night, leaving with my entire bottle of instant coffee-powder. He was doing an all-nighter before some board exam. At the cost of not being super-prepared, I preffered to sleep the night.

Interestingly enough, I’ve had the chance to speak to some brides and grooms hours before the knot was tied. Jitters, man. Everyone was jittery, well almost. The most common feeling was “… what if this is the wrong step?” This was followed by “…what if we don’t get along?”

Seriously, people, why moments before the plunge? Why does the human being expose him- or herself to destabilizing thoughts just before pulling the trigger? There’s ample time much, much before, to sort all the destabilizing stuff out while deciding whether one goes ahead with a particular action. Similarly, there’s ample time to study for an exam if one starts from day one. Just an hour a day, throughout the term, and there’s no need for any all-nighters.

If you’re all sorted out and well rested to boot, you then have the best chance of seeing peak-performance emanating from your system.

And that’s what we are looking to be, just before opening a market position.

We’ve sorted out our worries and fears. We know how much risk we can handle, and have systems in place to manage this risk, i.e. we know what we have to do if our trade goes bad. Also, we know how to behave when a trade does well. We are aware about the size of the position we need to put on as an appropriate ratio to our stack-size. We’ve tuned in to the idea of position-sizing, and are practising it as we win more or lose more. Basically, we have our basics in order.

After that, we have to see whether we actually feel like trading. Even when our trading system identifies a set-up, the innate go-ahead to trade might just not come from within. There can be some reason for this. For example, there could be some tension prevailing at home. Sort out the external disturbance to the level of closure if you can, or it might constantly disturb trading.

So, internal sorting out, external sorting out, then comes a trade set-up, and one takes the trade. No jitters, here, there, anywhere. All jitter-causing avenues have been chewed up and digested. That’s when triggers can be pulled when they appear.

When Mrs. Market asks you to ride alongside her, your bag should be packed already. You can then jump on to her motor-bike without worries, for you’ve packed well for the trip.

Moving on to a Higher Table

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You’ve started to rake in regular profits on your poker table, or, if you will, on your regular trade-size.

Common-sense now tells you, that you need to scale it up a bit. After all, you’d still be risking the same percentage of your stack-size per trade. Simultaneously, if your win-ratio remains constant, you’d be allowing your stack to grow at a faster pace.

You move on to a higher table.

Welcome to the concept of position-sizing.

Those who position-size can evolve into huge winners in minimum time. Even though the idea of position-sizing is so central to trading, it is still one of the most under-discussed of topics. We need to thank Dr. Van Tharp for teaching this concept properly.

Think about it. When you win, your principal increases. On the next trade, you then put the same principal percentage at risk like you’ve always done. Because your new principal was more, it allowed you to buy more. Thus, you put yourself on the line to win more.

What’s essential here is also to down-size your position when you are losing. Taken a few bad beats in a row? Move down to a lower table for a bit, man. Allow your stack to recuperate at this lower level and then some before moving back higher. With that, when you’re losing, you start to risk less. Crucial point.

Of the different methods available to you to position-size, here, we speak about increasing trade-size when a new trade starts.

The advantage you enjoy when you’re doing pure equity is that on each new trade, your position-size can pinpointedly be adjusted according to your stack-size. Scale-up, scale down, trade upon trade, as the situation demands. Beautiful.

Why does this work out so beautifully for you?

You see, your system gives you an edge. You are opening your positions on high-percentage winners only. Period. Simultaneously, you are cutting your losses at your pre-defined maximum. You are also allowing your winners to win more. And, you are taking your stops. Even if your system then gives you a 55:45 edge over Mrs. Market, you’re doing great. Over a large sample-size (many, many trades, or for that matter many, many poker hands), your stack will increase with a high level of probability. As it goes on increasing, you keep turning on the heat by increasing your position-size further and further.

What happens then? What do you see?

Something beautiful happens.

Your trading principal (what we’ve been calling stack-size all the time) starts to increase exponentially. Have you seen the progress of an exponential function as one travels from zero to the right on the x-axis (the x-axis here would stand for sample-size or the number of trades taken)? If not, check it out on the net.

A good system should give you a 60:40 market-edge. In the Zone, you’d probably trade at 70:30 or beyond. That’s 70 winning trades out of every 100 taken, and 30 losing ones. Imagine what that does to your trading principal over 1000 trades, if you adhere to position-sizing, let your winners ride and take your stop-losses.

The numbers will boggle your mind.

Go for it.

Going All-in Against Mrs. Market

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Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there.

And it backfired.

Luckily, my stack-size in those days was small. That’s the good part. The shocking bit was, that back then, I had defined my stack-size as my networth. Biggest mistake I’ve made till date in my market-career, and I was very lucky to escape relatively unhurt.

Wait a minute, why is all this poker terminology being used here, to describe action in the world of applied finance?

Well, poker and market action have so much in common. Specifically, No-Limit Hold-’em is deeply related to Mrs. Market. We’re talking about the cash-game, not tournament poker. It’s as if Hold-’em is telling Mrs. Market (with due respect to Madonna):

i’ve got the moves baby
u got the motion
if we got together
we’d be causing a commotion

A no-limit hold-’em hand is like one trade. Playing 20-50 hands a day is excellent market practice. You’ve got thousands of games available to you online, round the clock, and most of these are with play money. Even though the “line” is missing here because of no money on the line, this is a no-cost avenue for trade practice, and it’s entertaining to boot.

Back to stack-size? What is stack-size, exactly?

Well, your stack size is the sum of all your chips on the table. You play the game with your stack, and on the basis of your stack-size. The first thing you need to do before there’s any market action is to define your stack-size.

A healthy stack-size is one that allows you to play your game in a tension-free manner. My definition, you ask? Well, I’d start the game with a stack-size that’s no more than 5% of my networth. Segregate this amount in an account which is separate from the rest of your networth, and trade from this segregated account. That’s the wiser version of me speaking. Don’t be like the stupid version of yours truly by defining your entire networth as your stack-size.

In this 5% scenario, you have 20 opportunities to reload. It’s not going to come to that, because even if a couple of your all-in bets go bust, you will eventually catch some big market moves if your technical research is sound and if you move all-in when chances of winning are high.

Wait patiently for a good hand. Then move. One doesn’t just move all-in upon seeing one’s hole-cards. If these are strong, like pocket aces, or picture pocket pairs, one bets out a decent amount to build up the pot. Similarly, if a promising trade appears, and the underlying scrip breaks past a crucial resistance, pick up a decent portion of the scrip. Next, wait for the flop (further market action) to give you more information. Have you made a set on the flop? Right, then bet more, another decent amount, but not enough to commit you fully to the pot. Then comes the turn. The scrip continues to move in your direction. You’ve made quads, and you’re holding the nuts. Now you can commit yourself fully to the pot and move all-in. Or, you can do so on the river, checking on the turn to disguise your hand and to allow others to catch up with your nuts somewhat, so that they are able to fire some more bets into the pot on the river. Your quads win you a big pot. You fired all-in when the scrip had shown its true colours, when winning percentages were high. You exhibited patience before pot-commitment. You allowed others to fire up the pot (scrip) further, and you deservedly caught a big market move. Just get the exit right, i.e. somewhere around the peak, and you’re looking at an ideal trade strategy already, from entry to trade management to exit.

Fold your weak hands. If something’s not working out, give it up cheaply. Ten small losses against a mega-win is enough to cover you and then some.

Often, a promising trade just doesn’t take off after you enter. The underlying might even start to move below your entry price after having been up substantially. You had great hole cards, but didn’t catch a piece of the flop, and now there are two over-cards staring at you from the flop. Give up your trade. Muck your hand.

At other times, you move all-in and the underlying scrip tanks big against you in a matter of hours. Before you can let your trade go, you’re already down big. You’ve suffered a bad beat, where the percentages to win were in your favour, but the turn-out of events still caused the trade to go against you. Happens. That’s poker.

Welcome to the world of trading. Pick yourself up. Dig out another stack from your networth. Don’t allow the bad beat to affect your future trades. If you are thinking about your bad beat, leave the table till you are fresh and can focus on the current trade at hand.

And then, give the current trade at hand the best you’ve got.

Is This Blood?

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When there’s blood on the streets, that’s when you should go out and invest.

That’s an ancient proverb.

The 64 million dollar question is, IS THIS BLOOD?

I’m going to focus on India, because that’s my playground.

So ICICI Bank breached the 700 mark, did it? The 2009 low was around 250 bucks. At 700, it’s not blood. True, the banking sector is down. However, we are nowhere near blood levels. State Bank of India might have fallen around 50 % this year, but it’s still double the price of its 5 year low.

The Sensex shows an average price to earnings ratio of around 14. Remember 2008 and 2009? Average PE of about 9? Well, in my opinion, those are blood levels. These aren’t.

True, the mid-cap segment has taken a hammering. Let’s take Sintex Industries. At 75 levels, this stock has fallen big. Nevertheless, it’s still double the price of it’s 2009 low. At 98 rupees, Jain Irrigation has really fallen too. The PE ratio has come down from 35+ to around 14, and this looks attractive. Even Sintex’s sub-5 PE ratio looks very attractive, also because the company is aggressively pursuing water-purification and “green-innovation”. Agreed, attraction to invest is present, especially in the mid-cap arena, where you’re likely to find quality in management too, as opposed to the small-cap area, where this is less likely. However, to say that there’s overall mayhem here would be going too far.

The BSE small-cap index has halved since late 2010, but is again at double the 2009 low. Many small-cap stocks are bleeding badly, though. Most small-caps haven’t proven their pedigree yet. Thus, people are letting them bleed.

Then there are stocks like Karuturi Global and KS Oils, that have been hammered down to penny-stock levels. One has problems getting into such stocks, because the underlying story can be shady. With penny stocks, there’s always the danger of oblivion, i.e. they might cease to exist down the line. Such stocks need to be traded at best, with small amounts and for the short-term. In their present conditions, they are not investment-grade stocks.

The picture that emerges is that there are selective attractive bets being offered by Mrs. Market. There are good investments to be made for long-term investors, if you possess patience and holding-power. I’m short on patience, so I like to trade India. That should not deter you. If you are a long-termer, and have what it takes, well, then you are a long-termer. And this market is offering you some good bets, so be very selective and go for it, but don’t bet the farm, since we’re not seeing all-out blood on the street yet.

Survival Basics – Building a Baseline

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Who are you?

Do you really know that?

What’s your core reaction to stuff, let’s say market stuff?

How do you react to a crisis? Do you freak out? How much do you plan to avoid a crisis? How do you feel after hitting a home run? Do you get over-confident and start doing irresponsible things?

What happens to you when the scenario is dull? Do you get depressed? Can you take it?

If you’ve dealt with these and more of such questions, well, bully for you, because you’ve already gone about building your market baseline. And that’s a really proper / solid approach to Mrs. Market.

A baseline is a basic point of reference. It tells you how you normally react to a particular situation. It also lists the emotions you went through, and the consequences you had to suffer owing to your actions. As experience piles up, the number of situations you can refer for also increases.

So, let’s say something unusual happens in the markets. Hmmm, let’s say Greece officially goes bankrupt, and let’s say that you are net-net long, and have been caught unawares. What do you do with your positions? With all the mayhem around you, right, what do you do?

Basics of survival in the markets – in a crisis, refer to your baseline.

Your baseline takes you back to the Lehman default. You remember being net-net long, being caught unawares. You remember ignoring your stops, waiting for a rally. Futures wiped out your principal, didn’t they, because you answered margin calls and waited? You remember the long period of depression after that. Worth it? Naehhh.

So, after referring to your baseline, you don’t ignore your stops. Taking the immediate loss, you bail out of your positions. A large portion of your principal is still intact, living to fight another day.

What about euphoria? How do you deal with euphoria? A position turns into a winner, and you are sitting on a 25% profit in a few days. You are feeling really kicked, and are walking with a swagger. What do you do next?

Basics of prosperity in the markets – at the onset of euphoria, refer to your baseline.

Your baseline tells you, that your behaviour during your last big-winning trade was far from exemplary. In your euphoric state of mind, you were already imagining all the things you would buy with your notional profits. Then, you panicked at the thought of losing any of those notional profits, and you squared-off the trade, taking those profits home, only to see the scrip soar another 80%.

Right! You snap out of your euphoria because of your baseline memory. Then, you install a trigger-stop 8% below the scrip’s current market price. Good. In an effort to capture even more profits, you have put a small part of your existing profits at stake. That’s exemplary behaviour, because now there’s a good chance of capturing a part of the scrip’s further rise.

And boredom? What do you do when Mrs. Market bores you? As in, stops being hit both ways, going nowhere, no market strategy yielding profits? Happens, sometimes for many months in a row.

Basics of maturity in the markets – when Mrs. Market goes nowhere, refer to your baseline.

Oh how you wished you hadn’t ruined that family holiday, right, by continuing to take pot-shots at Mrs. Market the last time she went nowhere. That’s what your baseline is saying.

You switch off, go on another (this time enjoyable) family holiday, and come back refreshed to see that Mrs. Market is now trending, ready to take you for a drive in one set direction.

There’s no limit to baseline referrals.

Systematic players build a baseline, and keep referring to it.

Later, we remember them as successful players.

Learning to Be

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Mrs. Market becomes an enigma, at times.

At such times, she’s very difficult to understand. She’s erratic and jumps around in an exaggerated fashion. She defies all logic, and flushes all analyses down the toilet.

I like such times.

Mrs. Market is not the only one who knows how to dump others. Over the years, she’s taught me the art of dumping. So, during incomprehensible stretches, I dump Mrs. Market.

The key to dumping her is learning to be. You need to be comfortable in just being. You roll out a few novels, or surf around, or even catch a few movies on your laptop. Or, you can close your eyes, envision something beautiful, focus on your breath, and listen to some music. At these times, there’s no need for any market- activity, and you’re not going to give her any.

Mostly, during these stretches, the rate of return in the debt segment is great. So, you identify safe debt instruments, park your funds, and go into hibernation mode. She’ll come around soon enough. Remember, you’re calling the shots and are not going to let her get into control mode. Otherwise, you’re fried.

Hibernation mode is a beautiful time. Your system recuperates. You even, perhaps, go on a holiday. Your off-spring enjoy the extra attention from you. And just because you’re not pushing Mrs. Market’s buttons for a bit does not mean you can bug your spouse that much more!

So, market people, learn to be. Nobody made a rule saying that one has to be market-active all the time. Do away with the norms, as long as you don’t injure anyone’s fundamental rights. Norms were made for average citizens. Are you satisfied being average?

The enemy of just being is boredom. You’re not going to get market-active just out of boredom. You’d rather wait for a conducive time to enter the market again.

In today’s world, there’s so much happening, that there’s no room for boredom. Thousands of hobbies are waiting to be tapped. Do something good for society. Help other people. Live life in a manner that you feel good about yourself. There are many ways to “just be”.

Or, just get acquainted with your inner-self and you’ll be amazed at the kind of avenues that open up.

Get with it people, dump your 24x7x365 market-activity compulsion, and just learn to be.

Burn-Out Notice

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Information overload.

Short circuit in the brain.

Black-out.

You want to move your left hand, but the right one reacts.

Your body needs re-wiring, and rest.

This set of circumstances comes with the territory of trading. Often.

Imagine plugging into the complex matrix of erratic market play. That’s what happens when your trade gets triggered. Your poor nervous-system then deals with a lot of load, which doesn’t recede till well after the trade. Joy at profits, sorrow at losses, life is one big emotional pendulum. And this is just one trade. A sluggish trader might take one trade a week. The over-active one could trade many times in a single day.

What are we dealing with here?

Basically, the writing on the wall is quite clear. If you’re not able to regularly offset the damage to your system due to trading, you’re looking at early burn-out. As in, very early burn-out.

Your method of recuperation needs to bring your system back to its base-line, and then some. Your recuperation savings account needs to be in the black, as much as possible. That’ll ensure longevity in the trading arena.

What happens if you are drained, and the next trading opportunity comes? For me, the answer is crystal clear. Don’t take the trade. Rest. Recuperate. You would have played it wrong anyway. You were drained even before the trade, remember?

Sometimes, periods of recuperation can be long. At these times you need to stop comparing yourselves to other traders who find unlimited energy to keep trading, from God knows where. You are you. They are they. Who gave you the right to compare? Why are you judging others playing to a different plan with different energy and time-set parameters. If you really want to judge, then judge yourself. That’s it.

So, if a prolonged recuperative time-frame announces itself, respect it.

Your system will last longer in the game.

Trading is about sticking to the ground-rules, and then lasting. Your market-edge plays out only over a large number of trades taken over a long time-frame. Over the long run, your market-edge makes you show winning numbers, because the sample-size is big enough, and the time-frame under consideration is sufficient for many big-hitter trades to occur. Your big-hitter trades give a tremendous impetus to your numbers.

Even the best of edges can show a loss over a small sample-size (i.e. number of total trades taken in one’s trading career). It’s statistically very possible to suffer ten losses in a row, for example. You can call a coin-flip wrong ten times in a row. Possible. And that’s a 50:50 shot per flip. Your market-edge gives you a 60:40 shot, or maybe even a 70:30 shot. Still not good enough to not suffer a losing streak.

Winning streaks occur with time, and with supportive sample-sizes. Because of your edge, the winning streaks outnumber the losing streaks.

In the world of trading, if you want to win, you need to last.

Watch Out for Bottomless Pits

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A shareholder-friendly management?

Forget about it.

Very difficult to find, nowadays.

Gone are the days where you’d see an Azim Premji driving his 800, or a Narayana Murthy travelling economy class.

These legends believed in increasing the shareholder’s pie. And this they did, big time. Ask any Wipro or Infosys shareholder. These legends were very clear about one thing: there was no question of pumping in useless expenditure into their public limited company at the cost of the shareholder.

The norm, btw, is totally opposite. Public limited company managements live it up at the cost of the shareholder. Very few promoters are actually bothered about their shareholders. It is the norm to put medical bills, day to day living / wining / dining / entertainment costs, personal property purchases etc. into the company. Why should the promoter bear such costs when there is the public limited company to put these and such costs into? Logical?

Don’t expect too much from your average promoter. He’s not in the game for you.

Where does all this leave you, by the way?

Firstly, you need to look out for, and avoid bottomless pits. These are companies that bear huge amounts of expenditure emanating from the whims and fancies of the promoter. For example, the total sports sponsorship bill for Kingfisher Airlines is staggering. Then there’s this huge red flag in their balance sheet – the company is in under a mountain of debt. On top of that, this company just reported almost a 100 million USD Q2 loss. Math doesn’t add up for you to be investing in such bottomless pits, does it?

In your search for idealistic and shareholder-friendly managements, you might come up with a handful of names. Next you’ll find that it’s no secret. If there’s an idealistic and shareholder-friendly promoter around, people can see this in his or her deeds and of course in the balance sheet of his or her company. Savvy early investors make a beeline for such companies, with the result that by the time you get there, the concerned share-price is already quite inflated. You’ve identified a good investment, but you are not going to enter at an expensive price. If you do, you’ll not be able to sit on your investment for the long-term. Even slight volatility will shake you out of it.

Instead, you choose to wait for the right price to arrive, and then you enter. Well played.

The deal is, that more than 90% – 95% of managements don’t play it like an Azim Premji, or a Narayana Murthy, or an Anu Aga for that matter. However, shareholder-unfriendly promoters sometimes own companies that are lucrative investments. This can be due to niche, cycles, technology, crowd mentality, whatever. When do you buy into such companies?

As a long-term investor, you wanna be buying such companies at a deep discount to real value. My thumb-rule is a single-digit price to earnings ratio. You can have your own thumb-rule. You might have to wait a long time to get this kind of a price, but that’s what long-term investing is about.

As a trader, you buy into such a company with the momentum. You can buy after a resistance is broken. Or after a high is taken out. Or upon a substantial dip after the first burst of momentum. As a trader, what is far more important for you is to know when to let such a company go. Know the level by heart below which or at which you will exit such a company. In trading, exits are far more important than entries.

The mistake you don’t want to be making is to invest in a bottomless-pit, no matter how cheap the share price is.

As Ponzi as it Gets

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Charles Ponzi didn’t dream that he’d become one of the most copied villains in the History of mankind.

Ponzi was a financial villain. His ideology was so simple, that it was brilliant.

Lure the first set of investors with promises of huge returns. Transfer the first few return payouts. Lure more and more investors as the news spreads about the scheme with great returns. Transfer few more return payouts to old investors from the investment principal of new investors. Lure a peak level of investors ultimately. Then vanish with all the collections.

As Ponzi as it gets.

I hardly read the financial newspapers. Technical trading finds news to be more of a burden. Earlier, I used to gauge sentiment from the news. Now, my Twitter-feed is an excellent gauge for sentiment. Also, with time, one starts to gauge sentiment in the technicals. Candlesticks are a great help here.

Yesterday, in a loose moment, I picked up the Economic Times. Normally, it’s not delivered to our house. Yesterday, a supplement of the ET was included in our normal newspaper. Probably a sales gimmick. Anyways, I glanced through it. Was shocked to find that 25 recent Ponzi schemes had been unearthed in India alone.

What is it about us? Can we not understand what greed means?

The sad fact was that all the investors who were trapped were retail small timers.

Education, people, education. Are you financially literate? If not, please don’t enter the markets. No amount of regulation can save you from being duped if you are financially illiterate.

When you’re putting your money on the line for the long term, you’re looking for quality of management. A track record is something you want to see. Average returns are great returns if they promise safety of the principal.

Where there’s promise of huge rewards, there are also proportionate risks. If you really want the thrill of very high returns, all right, fine, go ahead and risk a miniscule percentage of your portfolio size in a risky, high yielding scheme. Tell yourself that the principal might or might not come back, and for heavens sake, don’t bet the farm here.

These financial times are as Ponzi as it gets, people, so TREAD CAREFULLY.

What U Gonna Do When They Come For U?

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“Bad Boys Bad Boys, what u gonna do…

what u gonna do…

… when they come for you?”

Lots of bad boys floating around.

They make a beeline for an underlying, for example Gold. Hike up its price. Entice you to enter at a peak. They cash out. You, the slow poke, are left high and dry.

Then the bad boys gang up and short the underlying simultaneously. Price tanks. From one day to the next, you are sitting on a large loss. You get out, disgusted.

Don’t make yourself vulnerable to such bad boys. Get your strategy right.

Buy at strategic points. If you are buying at dips, do so at pinpointed levels, like Fibonacci ones. You can also buy when a resistance is broken. Or, you can buy when a high is taken out with volume. Don’t buy above that. Meaning to say, that’s the vulnerability cut off. After that, you expose yourself to the bad boys, because you don’t have any margin of safety after that point. Through your actions, you activate bad boy zone.

On the short side, go short at strategic points in a rally. That’s where margin of safety is maximum. You can also short when a support is broken. Or, you may go short when a low is taken out with volume. Below that is bad boy zone.

At times, the human being likes the thrill of being in bad boy zone. Got me there, I like it too. Only sometimes. In bad boy territory, you need to be light. Don’t carry too much cash in your pockets when they come for you. In bad boy territory, do options. Options are your best friends here.

The advantage of operating in bad boy territory is that every now and then, there’s a jackpot for the taking. There’s no telling how far bad boys take an underlying in a particular direction. Where there’s risk, there’s reward. Out of ten option trades you put on, at least two or three should hit the pot if your research is good. That’s all you need.

In bad boy territory, the only position you want to be in is about showing the jackpot in the one hand and the finger from the other. By default, your losses must be small here, and they are, because you are doing options. Period. With that, you’ve shown the necessary aggression that is required in this territory, and you’ve also shown proper backfoot (defence) strategy. That is winning behaviour in bad boy territory. That’s the language understood by bad boys, telling them to lay off. Now, even if they try to come for you, they’ll not get you. Ever.

The Sweetest Spot

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In the markets, we often lose our balance.

Then we find it. Only to lose it again.

The key is maintaining this balance over long periods of time.

There’s a spot, where everything, suddenly, goes into balance. I like to call it the sweetest spot. What are its characteristics?

Firstly, at the sweetest spot, health is intact, on the physical as well as on the mental level. Then, one has identified a trade, entered it, and the trade is in the money. At this spot, the spouse respects you and your profession, because neither you nor your profession are bothering him or her for space. Relationship with him or her is harmonious. At the sweetest spot, you find time for your children. You’ve got a rapport going. Your off-spring learns from your every word and action.

Phew, sounds amazing!

Wait, there’s more!

At the sweetest spot, one is debt-free. Neither is one under-trading, nor is one over-trading. Reactions to market events are sharp, and one turns with the market, i.e. one is in the Zone. As profit levels increase, so does position-size, proportionately. You are getting your strategy basics right, one after the other.

At the sweetest spot, goodness wells inside the human being, and he or she does an extra bit for the benefit of society.

Life, profession, existence…it’s all one smooth, harmonious, automatic flow.

Then, in a flash, the spot is gone. One or more of the many factors mentioned tend to go haywire. That’s quite normal.

Which only means, that you start looking for the sweetest spot again.

Whenever you find it once more, your primary goal is to maintain it as long as possible, again, and again and again (to the power of n, with n > 1).

Before you realize it, you are then staring at financial freedom. You are there, financially independent of any other factor or being. You have arrived.

Some things in life are really sweet, and worth striving for.

Making the 99% See Reason

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Hey 99%,

Fine, fine, #OccupyWallStreet and all…

To be honest, this needs to be more about brains than brawn. The 1% are where they are because they’ve used their devious and canniving brains to become super-rich. Now you need to use yours to first extract yourself from your debt-trap situation and then to work towards financial freedom. Something like this can only work long-term. Using brawn, you’ll probably break the law and land up in jail, simultaneously exacerbating your predicament.

The first step is to SAVE. That’s what your forefathers did. They saved. They made your country a super-power because of their SAVINGS. If you’re not in a position to save, please get yourself into such a position. There’s no way out. To attain financial freedom, you have to start saving.

Tear your credit cards into two. Don’t consume. Don’t use and throw. Use, repair and reuse. Eat less if you have to, but extract yourself from the debt-cycle at any cost. There’s no other way.

Once you’ve started to save, you’ll need to learn how to manage your savings. Don’t ask the 1% to manage them for you. Instead, learn how to manage them on your own. With that, you’ll be putting yourself into the business of money- and asset-management, and then you can truly and totally boycott the 1%. That would be a message to the 1% that could make them scramble for survival. Believe me, to survive, they’ll be forced to change their ways. They don’t understand your brawn. It just aggravates them.

There’s enough material on the web available, that’ll get you going. The best thing is, most of it is free of cost. Go for it. Learn how to manage your savings on your own and make them grow. You can start by reading this very blog.

Continuous savings, over years and years, and the intelligent and independent management of these savings – these two acts will lead you towards financial freedom. Perhaps you will be too old to fully benefit at that time, but your children will benefit.

There’s no point beating about the bush – this is a long-term pursuit. No short-term effort or remedy is going to solve it.

Do it for your children.

When Cash is King

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I don’t like crowds.

The last thing I ever want to do is to conform to crowd behaviour.

That’s one goal defined.

What does this mean?

Very clearly, for starters, it means singing one’s own tune, i.e. defining one’s own path.

It also means not listening to anyone. That requires mental strength, and the power to resist. Very tough.

In life, generally, one likes to be in tandem with the Joneses. And then, smart cookies that we are, we like to go one up on the Joneses, which would be the cue for the Joneses to catch up and then overtake us. Hypothetically, this is how the Joneses and the Naths could blow up all their cash.

It doesn’t stop there. To keep up, the average citizen doesn’t think twice before leaping into debt.

Bottomline is, when cash is king, hardly anybody has cash. In fact, most people owe money at that time.

This is the age of black swans. Crisis after crisis, then a bit of recovery, then another crisis, then some recovery, followed by a mega-crisis.

When a master-blaster crisis ensues, cash becomes king. Quality stuff on the Street starts to sell so cheap, that one needs to pinch oneself to believe the selling prices. Margins of safety are unprecedented. Now’s the time one can salt away a part of one’s cash in Equity, for the long-term.

That’s if one has cash to spare. This is report card time. How have you done in your REAL investment exam? Have you learnt to sit on cash? Have you learnt to buy with margin of safety? The Street doesn’t care for your college degree, in fact, it vomits on your college degree. Your college degree has no value on the Street, it’s just a piece of paper.

Learning on the Street happens everyday, with every move, every investment, every trade, every observation. Unless and until your own money is on the line, this learning is ineffective.

Get real, wake up, so that when cash is king, you feel like an emperor!

An Elliott-Wave Cross-Section through a Crowd Build-Up

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At first, there’s smart money.

Behind this white-collared term are pioneering investors who believe in thorough research, and who are willing to take risks.

Smart money goes into an underlying, and the price of this underlying moves up. Wave 1.

At the sidelines, there are those who have been stuck in this underlying. As the price moves above their entry level, they begin to off-load. There’s a small correction. Wave 2.

By now, news of the smart money has perforated through the markets. Where is it moving? What did it pick up? Who is behind it? Thus, more investors following news or fundamentals (or both) enter. The price moves past the very recent short-term high of Wave 1, accompanied by a surge in volume.

This is picked up on the charts by those following technicals, who enter too. By now, there are analysts speaking in the media about the turn-around in company so and so, and a large chunk of people following the media do the honours by entering. Wave 3 is under way.

Technical trend-followers latch on, and soon, we are at the meat of Wave 3, i.e. the middle off the trend.

Analysts on the media then speak about buying on dips. All dips are cut short by a surge of entrants seeking to be part of the crowd.

The first feelings of missing the bus register. The pangs of these cause more people to enter.

Meanwhile, the short community has been getting active. Large short positions have been in place for a while, and they are bleeding. Eventually, the short community throws in the towel, and there’s massive short-covering, causing a further surge in price.

Short-covering is sensed by gauging buying pressure despite very high price levels. It is the ideal time for smart money to exit. That’s exactly what it does, without any dip in the price of the underlying whatsoever.

Short-covering is over. Smart money starts boasting about its returns of X% in Y days, openly, at parties, in the media, everywhere. This causes pangs of jealousy and intense feelings of missing the bus in those still left out. Some enter, throwing caution to the wind.

The price has reached a level at which no one has the guts to enter. Demand dries up. With no buying pressure, the price dips automatically. Bargain hunters emerge, and so do shorters. The shorters sell to the bargain hunters right through a sizable dip. This dip happens so fast, that most of the crowd still remains trapped. Wave 3 has ended, and we are now looking at the correcting Wave 4 in progress.

At this stage, technical analysts start advising reentry upon Fibonacci correction levels. Position traders buying upon dips with margin of safety enter, and so does the second-last chunk of those feeling they’d missed the bus. The price edges up to the peak of Wave 3 and past it. That’s the trigger for technical traders to enter.

We now see a mini-repeat of Wave 3. This is called Wave 5. Once Wave 5 crosses its meat, the last chunk of those still feeling they’d missed the bus makes a grand entry with a sharp spike in the price. These are your Uncle Georges, Aunt Marthas and Mr. Cools who know nothing about the underlying. They cannot discern a price to earnings ratio from an orangutan. They desperately want to be a part of the action, since everyone is, at whatever the price. And these are the very people that traders sell to as they exit. With that, the crowd is at its peak, and so is the price. There are no more buyers.

What’s now required is a pin-prick to burst the bubble. It can be bad news in the media, the emergence of a scandal, a negative earnings report, anything.

The rest, they say, is History.

Dealing with Distraction

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I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.

The stand-out quality I admire about Holmes, apart from his mastery in observation and deduction, is his ability to switch off.

In the midst of the most engrossing case, Holmes will switch off for half a day or more, and will visit the museum, or will play the violin. While having switched off, there will not be a single thought on his mind concerning the ongoing investigation. He will be fully and totally involved in the recreational activity. Of course he switches off at a juncture where he knows that nothing of consequence is happening for the next so many hours, but that’s not the point.

The ability to switch off is a huge asset to the trader. It allows the trader’s mind and body to recuperate. Also, it does away with overtrading. If a position is showing good profit, the trader who installs a trailing stop, and then switches off, opens the window for still larger profits.

At many times, one is distracted. It is potentially dangerous to trade while distracted, just as it is dangerous to drive while communicating on the cellphone. While distracted, the trader needs to switch off. As long as it takes. Till the source of distraction is nullified, at least in the trader’s mind.

Just a minute, forget about the trader. Investors need to be experts at switching off too, after having entered into an investment. If they don’t have this ability, they’ll be thinking about their investment day in, night out, for years at a stretch. The investment will eat into their life. If we’re looking at the average investor with 10 to 20 investments and without the ability to switch off, we’re also looking at a mental and emotional wreck.

Traders and investors both need to learn how to switch off from Sherlock Holmes.

Taking Compulsion Out of One’s Trading Equation

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Mr. Cool’s next trading cameo starts a few months after his last blow-up. He keeps coming back, you’ve gotta give him that.

This time around, his girl-friend wants a fur coat. Cool is determined to buy a fur coat for her from his trading profits.

Thus, Mr. Cool has put himself in a position where he is compelled to trade. Compulsion adds pressure. A trader under pressure commits basic blunders. There’s no question of getting into the Zone while pressure mounts.

Sure enough, Cool overtrades. Apart from that, he fails to cut his position-size after the first run of losses. These are two basic mistakes. They are being caused by compulsion. Mrs. Market is ruthless with players who commit basic blunders. As usual, Cool blows up, yet again. The fur coat is not happening. In fact, there’s no girl-friend anymore.

Meanwhile, Mr. System Addict has been evolving. He’s achieved a large-sized fixed income by ploughing previous profits into safe fixed-income products. He’s under no compulsion to trade. His fixed income allows him to live well, even without trading. He has a lot of time to think. Often, he gets into the Zone, where he’s moving in tandem with the market, and is able to swing with the market’s turn. What makes him get into the Zone so often?

It’s the lack of pressure. He’s comfortable. A free mind performs uniquely. There’s no question of making basic mistakes, because full focus is there. Addict is a human being who is aware. He knows when he is in the Zone. That’s when he doubles up his position-size and logs his trade. His win : loss ratio is 70:30 by now. His trading income surpasses his fixed income for the year.

Is Commodity Equity Equal to Commodity?

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Rohit likes Aarti, but has no access to her.

Priya wants to be friends with Rohit. Priya looks a bit like Aarti and behaves like her too, at times.

Rohit and Priya become friends.

Is Priya = Aarti?

Can this question be answered with a resounding yes or no?

Of course Priya is not equal to Aarti. Priya is Priya and Aarti is Aarti. Ask Rohit about it during one of Priya’s temper tantrums.

And, at other times, Priya is just like Aarti. At still other times, Priya is as calm as the Pacific Ocean. Even calmer than Aarti. At those times, Rohit feels he is even better off with Priya than he would have been with Aarti.

After this short diversion into human relationships, let’s study the correlation between commodities and commodity equity.

The average working individual does not have access to commodities as an asset class. He or she is not a farmer, and doesn’t have the time or the nerve to play futures and options, in an effort to put some money in commodities.

Is there any avenue such a person can access, to invest a piece of his or her pie in commodities.

It’s time to study the world of commodity equity.

For example, we are talking about agriculture stocks, precious and non-precious metal mining stocks, oil and natural gas stocks etc. etc.

Do such stocks always behave as their underlying commodity?

Can one put one’s money in commodity equity, and then feel as if one has put the money in commodities?

These questions can be answered in terms of correlation.

There are times when Gold moves x%, and Gold equity also moves x%, in the same direction. At such times, the correlation between Gold and Gold equity is 1:1.

At other times, the levels of movement can be mismatched. For example, the correlation can be 0.8:1, or 1.2:1. Sometimes, there is even a negative correlation, when Gold moves in one direction, and Gold equity in the other. At still other times, one moves, and the other doesn’t move at all, i.e. there is no correlation.

You see, Gold equity first falls under the asset class of equity. It is linked to the mass psychology of equity. When this mass psychology coincides with the mass psychology towards commodities, here specifically Gold, there is correlation. When there is no overlap between these psychologies, there is no correlation. When the public just dumps equity in general and embraces commodities, or vice-versa, there is negative correlation. These relationships can be used for all commodities versus their corresponding commodity equity.

What does this mean for us?

Over the long-term, fundamentals have a chance to shine through, and if there is steady and rising demand for a commodity, this will reflect in the corresponding commodity equity. Over the long term, the discussed correlation is good, since truth shines forth with time. That’s good news for long-term investors.

Over the medium-term, you’ll see correlation at times. Then you’ll see no correlation. You’ll also see negative correlation. Position traders can utilize this information to their benefit, both in the long and the short direction.

Over the short-term, things get very hap-hazard and confusing. It would be wrong to look for and talk in terms of correlation here. In the short-term, for trading purposes, it is better to treat commodity as commodity and commodity equity as equity. If you are trading equity, a gold mining stock or any other commodity equity stock might or might not come up in your trade scan. When such a stock does get singled out for a trade as per your scan, well, then, take the trade. Don’t be surprised if at the same time your friend the commodities trader is trading oil futures instead, or is just sitting out. That’s him or her responding to his or her scan. You respond to your scan. In the world of short-term trading, it is hazardous to mix and correlate commodities with commodity equity.

Phew, that’s it for now. It’s taken me a long time to understand commodity equity, and I thought that I’d share whatever I understood with you.