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What is a trend?

wikipedia:
Market trends reflect the general direction of prices or rates in financial markets.[1] Participants in a given market use price charts to observe these trends, and to identify investment and trading opportunities.

…have been searching far and wide for a book, site, page, trader who can define a trend. Nothing and none have lived up to the task… I have read many books and none have been able to answer my question either.

Ed Seykota answered(?):

Part of the problem you may be having in defining a trend is that trends do not exist. Like the past and the future, a trend is merely an idea. There is no such thing in nature. Trend is an idea about the overall average historical direction of prices; trend is a convenient way to view history; trends do not indicate the direction of prices in the moment of now, or even exist in the moment of now. Furthermore, The methods you use to define trend (to view history) are entirely up to you, so you get to define trend any way you wish; everyone may have a different idea of “the” trend. Let’s say you make a graph the volume of air in your lungs. If you define trend by the one-second average, your air volume trend may change several times per minute. If you define trend by a 90-day average, then your air volume trend may gradually increase for several decades and then decrease.

From my side want to say I`ve also noticed a few trends in nature…

- oranges tend to be the color orange,
- lions tend to eat smaller animals when they get hungry,
- when grey clouds roll overhead there’s a strong tendency to rain,
- to sail around the world you need to trend in one direction to make it,
- to get into space the best way to go is in a straight line … UP.

We here are engaged in a grand psycho-social experiment. Traders, once a gregarious genus, fragmented into proto-individuality with the maturation of on-line trading. They reverted from a semiblance of pre-civilized tribal unity to the primal instinct to kill or be killed, to eat or be eaten. What are the impacts on libido, aggression, religion, ego, superego?
…
Agresivity. Think that the cause is suffering, as well. Somehow suffering doesn’t build character in a trader the way it supposedly does in other arenas of life. Perhaps because it is so easy to blame outside influences and not see the fault in ourselves.

Is trading that hard? What is hard about A-B-C, or 1-2-3? Trading is actually quite simple, and we only complicate it because we lack the courage to approach it simply. Some of the trading screens we see are astonishingly complex. And multiply redundant, IMO. I think that those who cannot approach the market confidently are like those who cannot approach a woman with confidence. Losers.

Note this isjust an opinion. there`s not an absolute truth…

Anxiety is a future oriented emotion. You never will get anxious about events that have already occurred. Suppose we had been anxious about a trade but now it’s over with profit hit or stopped out. We no longer feel anxiety - only feel nothing, or satisfaction, or remorse, or disappointment, or sorrow, or some other past oriented emotion.
Anxiety communicate a message that there’s something in our future for which we need to prepare. This is a vital, a self-protection message.
If you’re anxious about a trade, ask yourself, “What can I do to prepare for this evolution?” Fortunately traders almost everytime have to be prepared only for 2 major events - profit or lose. At a first glance my anxiety is related to a failure.. Only at first glance, cause there is no failure. There is only a lack of knowledge, technique, and experience.
If you’re anxious about your trade - ask yourself, “Is there anything else I need to do to clear this fear, and trust in me?” This might involve additional research, verification, something else. Don`t let the pressure of anxiety to affect you at a higher level. But although we know how pressure can affect us, we may not know how to deal with pressure of anxiety. Or what we do know, doesn’t always do the job.
When confronted with the anxiety in the trading, our natural self-defense system-called the fight or flee syndrome - jumps into action. Developed early in our history to confront the life-threatening problems our distant ancestors faced, like the attack of wild animals or natural disasters, our stress defense system stimulates certain regions of the body to react quicker than normal. The heart beats faster, breathing accelerates, and blood pressure increases. Two hormones are released, cortisol to mobilize additional energy and adrenaline to increase our reflexes, strength, reaction time of our mind. But there is a nail in my head: the same chemicals that speed up our physical responses also suppress the calm, rational parts of the brain.
The result? We tense up. Our emotions take over. We start talking to ourselves, worried that we’ll miss a note, lose track of the thoughts. A trader does not need al of this.
As a short resume: Disappointment, or the fear of disappointment, keeps many people from expecting success. The problem here is that I need to anticipate success in order to succeed. Can you imagine what would happen if a professional expected (was anxious all the time) to fail? Such a fear/thought just never crosses the mind of a truly good trader. An outstanding trader operates “in the zone” fully anticipating, creating in his imagination his own flawless performance.
Definitely, when I feel anxiety about a trade

Trading is about you. Your attitude towards the market and it is more valuable than any hyped system available these days. A system can be a compliment but can never be enough to trade the market successfully.

Take a deeper look and contemplate. We are not trading against the market but with ourselves. This would lead to a question of attitude towards the market. A million dollar question! The inner us. We have to expect this process is hard and painful some times. Trading is all about discipline, patience and heart. We live our lives based on beliefs. Our trading represents ourselves and our values and it takes a lot of inner work to change failure into success, and a lot of discipline to maintain success.
One must conquer himself to conquer the world, a trader must not want to conquer the world, no reason here.
Whoever said it, has gone through great experience and achieved the ultimate reward.

Self is the toughest obstacle to overcome in trading. And it’s the one area that is most avoided. How many sites regarding trading psychology are on the internet compared to the other analysis and trade calls sites? Now take that into consideration as you think about the golden rule of trading…. “ The vast majority of Traders lose.”

The proper psychological mindset will not over come bad trading, but the best setup, pattern etc… cannot be traded successfully without some self-control or discipline.

Which is why so many want to automate a system. But this brings up the underlying problem. Responsibility for ones actions. The Herd wants to do what everyone else is doing and when the herd loses, you hear about Brokers running stops, Bad trades from the call services…

Winning in this business is for the most part a lonely place.

Just a loser thoughts.
Between, last couple of weeks seen a nice up period here…

GOD Bless!

A boring day today and I want to write down few lines about losing trades and losing streaks. In fact, actual for me is “last trade of the week” syndrome (my term). It is happening to me from time to time, after a succesfull week – last trade, usualy on Friday is a losing one; is actual for last 2 weeks, happen before. Re-readed “The secrets to Emotions Free Trading”.

…The biggest reasons people get into losing streaks while trading is because they confuse their losing trades with themselves, you conclude that because you had a losing trade(s), you’re a loser.

The important thing to remember here is that I am not losing trades. Losing trades are PART of TRADING. There is not a single trader in the world that doesn’t have losing trades. The only way to avoid them is not to trade in the first place. I can not be a successful trader until I take mistakes and losing trades for what they really are. They are simply by-products in the trading game and need to be used to gain learning and understanding. No way do they define as a person. But that is where the big problem comes in. Many people let their losing trades and mistakes to define them. If they’re having trouble and have had a series of losing trades, they start to think of themselves as a loser. They continually think of themselves that way, this kind of thinking will just bring on more of the same.

Forgiving yourself completely is the only way to avoid this trouble. You are not your mistakes and losing trades.
You must put the past behind you and go forward.
Holding a grudge against you only hurts yourself. This is actual for ALL THE THINGS happening in your life and what is an actual rule for your life can not be unactual for your trading.
Forgive yourself, trace a line, close that book, it’s the only way to be successful.

Proven again last week ;-).

Adapted to me,
And inspired from “The secrets to Emotions Free Trading”, thanks to Larry Levin

The hypotheses are as follow:

I. Exchange of market related information. (Learning?)
- Is a community where posters choose to come and go. Psychological ideas, techniques of relevancies, and student/teacher style advice are some of them.
- Looking for latest trader thoughts, insights, spontaneously mind meld, expect the unexpected thread. It’s like turning on TV flipping all channels until something catch your eyes.
- I am there to read mostly, but trading is a lonely business, so it’s good to interact with traders. It’s also nice to be able to help when I can and to be helped.

II. Place to meet people from same “category” trying to solve same situations.
- For a solitary trader: Reading the forums and sometimes contributing to them makes me current and I feel I am a member of a community. During the last 5 years, I mostly read market related forums for entertainment value, not the arguments and nonsense, but because no one else I know outside of computer-platform has a clue about trading. And forums is addictive for some reason. Also an excuse not to work, i guess.
Personal broker, software, data reviews, psychology, individual triumphs and failures, etc. Where else would you find info like that? A lot of people seem to be frustrated about not being able to quickly find an easy and profitable system, so they can make money right now. I think that they should ease up on finding answers from someone else and get to work.

III. Entertainment purposes.
- Is a place to hang out with like kind. This is the closest to a 24 hrs coffeeshop/bar/restaurant gathering of fellow peers I’ll ever approach.
- I few things of character I learn there are that many feel they are in a dueling competition and feel the need to compete by trying to discredit others, some like to bash stupid questions, and some have an overall negativity. I read these for entertainment as well as to give myself an idea of all the walks of life. Allowing me to choose who to be a role model, who I feel sorry for, learning how I want my character as a trader to be.
- There are so many posters that actually live out their trader fantasies. There’s a psychology dissertation somewhere amongst all their posts. The great thing about the Internet, anyone can be anything at anytime even with markets related themes.

Independent minded trader

Independence of your mind is essential for trading success.
Why you have to be independent? If you`re not independent on your thoughts you`ll feel yourself uncomfortable without approval of your actions, support and confirmation or even disapproval from somebody else. Markets won`t always provide you with confirmation for your decisions. It is difficult to trade in the short term if you wait for confirmation and require a sense of certainty. If you wait for a classic chart pattern to materialize completely, for example, you may be too late. Staying ahead of the masses requires you to think independently. Let’s suppose that you wait for a head and shoulders pattern to develop. It may take some time, and, most of the cases you`ll be late - you may end up selling as everyone else is also trying to sell. There are times when it is vital to anticipate the crowd and try to stay ahead of them.
Today i started buying USD/GBP, got stopped, noticed today is a USD day, went short, closed the position on small profit for today, knowing this pair have 90% probability to hit 1.9912 today. Fear of a trending up of the price won a battle to my independent mind. Fear + the point to not overtrade + something else.
I`m not sad as long as:
1. Good stop placed for first position (USD/GBP long).
2. Without any doubts shorted this pair later according to the plan.
3. Market followed its way and i was there.
4. Closed second position on good profit for today.
5. The price dropped 90 pips more without me, again i`m not sad here ;-).

Conclusion: Independent mind + good entries (long and then short) - fear - patience.