Social Icons

Monday, January 14, 2013

Analyst or Trader?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Trading is composed of two separate, but equally important tasks, namely market analysis and trading. Market analysis is the technical or fundamental analysis of a market's price movement, and trading is the placing of buy and sell orders to make trades. Most traders do not consider the difference between market analysis and trading (usually to their detriment), but being aware of the difference can make a significant improvement to your trading (or at least help you avoid making a significant mistake).

Most traders consider themselves to be traders, and perform their analysis and make their trades themselves, but not all traders are proficient at both tasks. Some traders are very good market analysts but are very bad traders, and vice versa, some traders are very bad market analysts but are very good traders.

Market analysis and trading are very different tasks and require different psychological traits. For example, market analysis as an isolated task is neither profitable nor unprofitable (i.e. market analysis itself neither makes nor loses trading capital), so it does not have any of the associated emotions (e.g. fear or greed). On the other hand, trading as an isolated task is either profitable or unprofitable (i.e. making a trade will either make or lose trading capital), so the emotions that are not applicable to market analysis are very relevant to trading.

It is therefore very possible (even likely) that one trader could be an excellent market analyst, but could fall apart under the pressure of making trades (i.e. placing and managing their orders), while another trader could be a terrible market analyst, but have a psychological profile that is well suited to making trades.

One solution to overcoming the differences between market analysis and trading is to find your opposite and form a (potentially very profitable) trading partnership. For example, if you are a market analyst (i.e. you can identify when and where to make profitable trades), forming a partnership with a trader (i.e. someone who is unable to perform correct market analysis, but can make and manage trades without succumbing to the emotional pitfalls) could be significantly profitable for both of you.

If you are an analyst, finding a trader could be as simple as finding a broker that will execute your instructions (e.g. make a long trade at this price, with this target, and this stop loss), because you will be one level away from actually making your trades. If you are a trader, finding an analyst could be as simple as subscribing to a trading service that provides analysis and / or trades that you can make yourself.


View the original article here

No comments: