The stock market has been fairly flat since the beginning of December, and that means its a good time to assess your relationship with your investments.This is a good time to look at your entire relationship with the market. It doesn’t matter whether you trade stocks, options, commodities, or even Forex. It’s a good time for a little self reflection.
The first thing to do is determine what your actual motivation for trading is. Why do you use the strategy you use? Do you just hand your money to a major broker and pray they will make you money? Does that mean that your main strategy is to not deal with investing… to just give your money to someone else and let them hopefully make money for you. Maybe your strategy is to put your money with a company like Scottrade, eTrade, or Ameritrade and actually make the trades yourself. Are you doing that for the
excitement of winning and losing kind of like gambling? Maybe you like to awe your co-workers with your trading knowledge. It’s important that you be aware of your underlying motivations. The ones beyond the automatic response of wanting to make cash.
Now is the time to put together a winning trading methodology. Here are some ideas to help you be ready for the up swing in the market.
No matter what your motivation is for trading, you’ve got to separate your emotions from your investing. If you jump for joy when you make money and hang your head when you lose money, then you will discover that you lose and lose and lose.
Next, decide on your goals for trading. Here are some things to consider. How much time are you willing to invest in your investments? How much annual return do you want to make on your investments? How much risk are you willing to take on the money you invest… in other words, how much are you willing to lose? How much are you willing to spend on learning to invest? Come up with a statement of objectives in the form, “I am ready to invest ??____ dollars and I am looking for a ____ percent annual return on my investment where I spend ____ hours per week/month managing my investments after spending _____ hours and _____ dollars learning how to invest.”
Next, come up with your overall investment strategy for moving forward. Are you going to put your money in a bank? Are you going to put some money into guaranteed municipal bonds and some into mutual funds? Get specific about how you intend to reach your objectives.
Before you actually invest a dime, you need to have an investment plan. The investment plan defines when you will actually put your money into an investment and when you will withdraw. If you invest in a stock the plan tells you the price, the technical analysis features, and the fundamental analysis features that signal you should invest. Similarly, the plan tells you the conditions under which you should withdraw your money.
Now, the trick is to follow the plan no matter what happens in the market… and this is where the emotionless mind comes in. If you completed your plan correctly, then if you follow it to the letter you will get the results that you seek. It’s really strange though, that most people stop following their plan. You will only win consistently by following your plan.
After you exit the investment, then you need to do a de-briefing in your own mind. Take a look at what happened, how your plan served your objectives, and what you could have done better. With this simple analytical approach to investing you will be much more successful no matter what your overall investment strategy.