How To Thrive In Your Trading Career

Let's face it: Most traders if they are lucky manage to survive, very few thrive. In fact, I am certain most traders don't even know what thriving means.

To thrive in your trading career is about much more than making it to the end of the trading day. I am not even talking about the money you may or may not be making. That will happen automatically when you learn to self actualize instead to react.

If you can make this quantum leap from reacting to self actualising your entire trading life will change for the better.

We are reactionary creatures by default

By this I mean that your brain has been trained to react by default. Impulse reactions drive the markets after a big news event like NFP, or the FOMC meetings.

There are trading bots which take advantage of these trading patterns which exaggerate the moves in the markets, but that is another story for another day.

The point I want you to get is this:

Your trading mind operates on reactionary auto pilot.

This is not in your interest because your mind is like an untrained monkey. The untrained mind is all over the place and thinks in dualistic terms. Good or bad and right or wrong. This thinking puts immense strain on your entire body. It causes stress and anxiety.

Such emotions fuel dualistic thinking and reactionary behaviour

In order to thrive in your trading career your have to learn techniques to distance yourself from your emotions.

There are only two ways in which you can do this:

Learn about yourself, how your brain works and how the universe works and learn how to apply this knowledge in your trading life. You will soon discover that most of your thoughts are actually meaningless.

When you learn to stay out of reaction you have a chance to thrive in your trading because your brain has spare capacity it now can use to, you guessed correctly design strategies that work for you.

This is what self actualization is all about:

When you have the spare capacity in your mind to allow new information in you will expand. You become more mindful because you are open to seeing new things about yourself, about the world the markets and so on which you had never seen before.

Imagine how the ability to stay out of reaction to anything you experience will set you free. Imagine how much better you feel. More energy fuels creativity and vision. You need both to thrive in your trading career and in your life in general.

Isn't it time that you started to thrive today?

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Stock Market Investment: Reliable or Gambling

There is an old metaphor saying, "Money makes money". This can be literally applied now a days to capital generation through stock market investment. Generally, people have savings in the form of cash or jewelry. But it is going to do nothing if the economy gets hit with inflation or currency value falls. So, what can be a safe investment which is reliable as well as productive? Well the answer is stock market investment. 

The stock market comprises of a system where partnership or shares of publicly trading companies are bought, issued and sold. But for a few people it is no better than a dark chasm and nebulous casino of savings gambling. Contrary to the common thinking, the stock market is a far better investment option than classical investment areas like fixed deposits and gold bonds.

Basics one should learn before starting stock market investments

It is a great pain to lose money and that's why nobody wants to lose their savings collected by hard work. Moreover, some people have a greater investment threshold than others. If a person is considering to divert his/ her savings as stock market investment and he is upset about the loss that might occur, he shouldn't have invested in the first place. However, before investing one should have his mind clearly on a few things.

Here an investor sells any particular security owned by him too, another who is interested in buying it. Since both the investors cannot be absolutely correct, it can be called an adversarial system. For better understanding we can assume that, one investor will be profited and the other will definitely suffer loss.

The opinion of major investors, natural calamities, political and social instability, demand and supply, risk, and the abundance of or lack of alternatives. These factors compile with the relevant information released, which create a general sentiment (i.e. Bearish and bullish) thus influencing corresponding buyers & sellers.

Real profit lies in the price gradient of buying and selling a stock. The best time for buying is when other investors are pessimistic. Concurrently, the best time for selling is when other investors are optimistic.

Pros and cons of stock market investment

Similar to any other investment option, the stock market has its advantages and disadvantages too.

Advantages

1. Great opportunity of extremely good returns in a short time window.

2. Minority ownership. It may sound like exaggeration, but putting money in the stocks of a reputed company also makes the person a part owner of the firm. It doesn't matter if the investment was large or small.

Disadvantages

1. Brokerage commissions. Every time a person trades his shares, he becomes liable to pay a certain amount to the stockbroker's commission and it kills the margin of the profit.

2. Time consuming. Investing in the market is not same as putting money to win a lottery. Here one has to fulfill multiple formalities, hence it becomes time consuming.

The stock market is a volatile place where your hard earned money could either appreciate in value or you could suffer losses. You should take the help of a guru in stock market investment to safeguard your hard earned money and attain success in your investment decision

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Bonds are an integral part of every Canadian's portfolio for good reason. Bonds carry the "promise" of fixed income with regular stable cash flows. But with interest rates hovering at all-time lows, the pressure to make every cent count has never been greater. Creating such exposure smartly can make all the difference in the returns.

A portfolio for the average Canadian probably contains fixed income securities, otherwise known as bonds. Bonds are particularly attractive to those investors at or near retirement as they look to replace their regular and stable salary with a similar certain stream of interest income.

Unfortunately purchasing bonds in Canada is not as easy or as cost effective as purchasing stocks. Unlike equities which trade on an open stock market exchange with fully transparent bid and ask prices, bonds in Canada have to be purchased through a 'dealer network' which effectively removes all the efficiency and transparency of a fully functional liquid market.

This is where it gets unpleasant for the retail investor. Compared to gigantic financial institutions who invest billions of dollars with pooled assets, it is extremely challenging for the retail investor to purchase a bond with the similar efficacy as these large behemoth financial institutions.

The only thing that might be worse than purchasing bonds through Canada's dealer network is purchasing a bond mutual fund. The average expense ratio on a Canadian bond mutual fund is close to 1.75%. In an interest rate environment where long term yields are hovering around 3.5%, that's like sharing my hamburger with a stranger and him taking half of it in one bite. I don't think so!

So how can the retail investor get the fixed income exposure with a handsome seniority and a tight bid ask spread? The average investor should consider Bond ETF's to create the fixed income exposure in their portfolios.

ETF's are managed by big financial institutions, and trade on any number of stock exchanges just like your favorite stock. The benefits to the average investor are numerous.

A bond ETF, is basically a bunch of different bonds bundled up in a portfolio and traded in the stock market. Unlike the individual bonds themselves, there is substantially more liquidity in bond ETFs, which makes for a tighter bid ask spread. Basically, investors can easily exit their position at any time without the cost of large transaction fees.

This advantage alone is all retail investors should need to convince themselves that bond ETFs are the most efficient way to gain exposure to the fixed income market. In addition, these Bond ETFs have huge amounts of assets under management and have superior purchasing power. For example, total assets under management for the major Canadian Bond ETFs is in excess of 2 trillion dollars. Guess what - that gives these ETF companies huge leverage in negotiating with the best bond issuers. Not only are they able to trade in and out of bonds at much better spreads than you or I could ever get, but they also have access to the best issuers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9606126