أبو هاني الله يجزاك خير وهذه النصائح والخطوات الخمس المذكور في موقع ياهو وهي مهمة جدا ومختصره ومفيده لمن يركز عليها....
RealMoney
Five Simple Rules for Tough Trading Times
Thursday May 27, 9:11 am ET
By Charles L. Norton, Special to RealMoney.com
In the midst of a correction -- the first since the bull market began last March -- things just aren't as easy as they were when everything was going up. Geopolitical news from Iraq and the Middle East, soaring oil prices, rising interest rates, China's efforts to curb its growth and uncertainty surrounding the presidential election have combined to make the current stock market environment a bit more challenging.
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When times get tough like this, it's important to remain disciplined and unemotional. Emotions are your greatest enemy in making investment decisions; they cloud your judgment and keep you from doing the "right" thing. Sound trading rules keep emotions out of the investment process and provide unwavering guidelines to follow in both good times and bad.
Times like this call for adherence to your own set of sound trading rules. Below is a partial list of mine, which I've found helpful over the years.
1. Preserve your capital.
This is perhaps the most important rule. At some point, things will get better, and this rule will help ensure that you'll still be in the game when they finally do. Your capital base is what will allow you to be around to trade another day, so be careful to protect it. Managing your losses and waiting for the right opportunity to enter trades are critical: A 50% drawdown requires a 100% gain just to get back to break-even. The easiest way to preserve your capital is by keeping your losses small, patiently waiting for the best opportunities and reducing the size of your positions in difficult markets.
2. Never let a profit turn into a loss.
Investing isn't easy. If it were, we'd all be sitting on some beach right now, under umbrellas, with drinks in hand. Profits are hard enough to come by, so letting one slip away and -- even worse -- turn into a loss, is a sin. One way to avoid this is with a trailing stop, which is a stop order that is entered at some fixed percentage below the market price (for a long position). If the stock moves higher, the stop order moves up, or "trails," proportionately. However, the stop price doesn't move lower if the stock does, essentially putting a floor on where you'll sell the stock without limiting your upside.
That said, be sure to give your winners enough room to run. You don't want to get stopped out by average noise, so don't keep your stop too tight. Once you have a substantial gain, place a stop just at or slightly above your buy point.
3. Markets are never wrong -- opinions are.
No matter how big an investor you are, the market is bigger than all of us. In the end, the market is the final arbiter of right and wrong. Although you should have opinions, successful investors remain flexible, adapting their views to new information. I've personally witnessed managers go out of business because they felt they were always right and the market was wrong. Admitting that you're wrong is tough on your ego, but failing to admit you're wrong is even tougher on your pocketbook.
4. Never average down.
This goes hand-in-hand with realizing that the market may be telling you that you're mistaken. When you do extensive research and own a stock for a while, you tend to get attached to it. That's only human nature. However, despite all your hard work, you will still be wrong occasionally. Don't compound the error by adding to a losing position. I prefer to average up, adding to my position once the market has confirmed my idea.
5. Take big gains and small losses.
The famous investor William O'Neil once said, "The whole secret to winning big in the stock market is not to be right all the time, but to lose the least amount possible when you're wrong." I limit losses to 7%, and I take some gains when I am up 20% to 25% on a position. Different percentages may work better for you, but control your losses and lock in substantial gains.
It's important to have sound trading rules to fall back on, so that no matter what the market gives you, you can be consistent and methodical in your investment process, without emotions clouding your judgment. Instead of forcing trades when few opportunities exist, I prefer to keep my positions on a tight leash and spend time doing research and reinforcing my trading rules, which always seem to help me weather the tough times.
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