movement is a function of the relative balance or imbalance between two primary forces: traders who
believe the price is going up, and traders who believe the price is going down.
If there's balance between the two groups, prices will stagnate, because each side will absorb the force
of the other side's actions. If there is an imbalance, prices will move in the direction of the greater
force, or the traders who have the stronger convictions in their beliefs about
in what direction the price
is going. Now, I want you to ask yourself, what's going to stop virtually anything from happening at
any time, other than exchange-imposed limits on price movement. There's nothing to stop the price of
an issue from going as high or low as whatever some trader in the world believes is possible—if, of
course, the trader is willing to act on that belief. So the range of the market's behavior in its collective
form is limited only by the most extreme beliefs about what is high and what is low held by any given
individual participating in that market. I think the implications are self-evident:
There can be an extreme diversity of beliefs present in any given market in any given moment, making
virtually anything possible. When we look at the market from this perspective, it's easy to see that
every potential trader who is willing to express his belief about the future becomes a market variable.
On a more personal level, this means that it only takes one other trader, anywhere in the world, to
negate the positive potential of your trade. Put another way, it takes only one other trader to negate
what you believe about what is high or what is low. That's all, only one! Here's an example to illustrate
this point.
Several years ago, a trader came to me for help. He was an excellent market analyst; in fact,
he was one of the best I've ever met. But after years of frustration during which he lost all his money
and a lot of other people's money, he was finally ready to admit that, as a trader, he left a lot to be
desired. After talking to him for a while, I determined that a number of serious psychological obstacles
were preventing him from being successful.
One of the most troublesome obstacles was that he was a know-it-all and extremely arrogant, making it
impossible for him to achieve the degree of mental flexibility required to trade effectively. It didn't
matter how good an analyst he was. When he came to me, he was so desperate for money and help that
he was willing to consider anything. The first suggestion I made was that instead of looking for another
investor to back what ultimately would be another failed attempt at trading, he would be better off
taking a job, doing something he was truly good at. He could be paid a steady income while working
through
his problems, and at the same time provide someone with a worthwhile service. He took my
advice and quickly found a position as a technical analyst with a fairly substantial brokerage house and
clearing firm in Chicago.
The semiretired chairman of the board of the brokerage firm was a longtime trader with nearly 40 years
of experience in the grain pits at the Chicago Board of Trade. He didn't know much about technical
analysis, because he never needed it to make money on the floor. But he no longer traded on the floor
and found the transition to trading from a screen difficult and somewhat mysterious. So he asked the
firm's newly acquired star technical analyst to sit with him during the trading day and teach him
technical trading. The new hire jumped at the opportunity to show off his abilities to such an
experienced and successful trader. The analyst was using a method called "point and line," developed
by Charlie Drummond. (Among other things, point and line can accurately define support and
resistance.) One day, as the two of them were watching the soybean market together, the analyst had
projected major support and resistance points and the market happened to be trading between these two
points.
As the technical analyst was explaining to the chairman the significance of these
two points, he stated
in very emphatic, almost absolute terms that if the market goes up to resistance, it will stop and reverse;
and if the market goes down to support, it will also stop and reverse. Then he explained that if the
market went down to the price level he calculated as support, his calculations indicated that would also
be the low of the day. As they sat there, the bean market was slowly trending down to the price the
analyst said would be the support, or low, of the day. When it finally got there, the chairman looked
over to the analyst and said, "This is where the market is supposed to stop and go higher, right?"
The analyst responded, "Absolutely! This is the low of the day." "That's bullshit!" the chairman
retorted. "Watch this." He picked up the phone, called one of the clerks handling orders for the soybean
pit, and said, "Sell two million beans (bushels) at the market." Within thirty seconds after he placed the
order, the soybean market dropped ten cents a bushel. The chairman turned to look at the horrified
expression on the analysts face. Calmly, he asked, "Now, where did you
say the market was going to
stop? If I can do that, anyone can."
The point is that from our own individual perspective as observers of the market, anything can happen,
and it takes only one trader to do it. This is the hard, cold reality of trading that only the very best
traders have embraced and accepted with no internal conflict. How do I know this? Because only the
best traders consistently predefine their risks before entering a trade. Only the best traders cut their
losses without reservation or hesitation when the market tells them the trade isn't working. And only
the best traders have an organized, systematic, money-management regimen for taking profits when the
market goes in the direction of their trade.
Not predefining your risk, not cutting your losses, or not
systematically taking profits are three of the most common—and usually the most costly—trading
errors you can make. Only the best traders have eliminated these errors from their trading. At some
point in their careers, they learned to believe without a shred of doubt that anything can happen, and to
always account for what they don't know, for the unexpected. Remember that there are only two forces
that cause prices to move: traders who believe the markets are going up, and traders who believe the
markets are going down. At any given moment, we can see who has the stronger conviction by
observing where the market is now relative to where it was at some previous moment. If a recognizable
pattern is present, that pattern may repeat itself, giving us an indication of where the market is headed.
This is our edge, something we know. But there's also much that we don't know, and will never know
unless we learn how to read minds. For instance, do we know how many traders may
be sitting on the
sidelines and about to enter the market? Do we know how many of them want to buy and how many
want to sell, or how many shares they are willing to buy or sell? What about the traders whose
participation is already reflected in the current price? At any given moment, how many of them are
about to change their minds and exit their positions?
If they do, how long will they stay out of the market? And if and when they do come back into the
market, in what direction will they cast their votes? These are the constant, never-ending, unknown,
hidden variables that are always operating in every market—
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