My new podcast episode is out

Brett Steenbarger — The Spirituality of Trading

You may find this interesting. Mike strongly emphasizes "the mental game."

Forbes
The Spirituality of Trading
Brett Steenbarger | Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY; performance coach for hedge fund portfolio managers and traders, and author of several books on trading psychology

Back on track. Forex: 4 months, 50 trades, ZERO losses.

I am back on track. My Forex trading over the past four months has seen 50 trades with zero losses. It's all technique. It's all in my trading appoach that I teach in my course (with some new adjustments).

It's all about "gaming." (That's technique plus the mental aspect.) That MMT stuff has been either reduced or, applied in the correct way now. (Hint: it wasn't the case before.)

I've made some adjustments and I think the results speak for themselves.

Four months, 50 trades, ZERO losses.

New, "live" online course coming soon. Stay tuned.

-Mike Norman

Bill Gross needs "Mental Game"

I know what you are thinking: it's incredibly presumptuous and cocky of me to even suggest that I can offer something to Bill Gross, particularly something in the "trading skills/attributes" category. After all, Gross is a billionaire, I am not. He founded, built and then ran, for a long time, the largest bond mutual fund in the world. I did not.

Yet, in the past few years we have seen him falter. We saw the bizarre, "Who's gonna buy them now?" tweet back in 2011 where he fretted publicly, on Twitter, that there'd be no buyers for Treasuries when the Fed stopped it's QE program at the time. Matt Franko and I started to think he was losing it. We referenced Gross's comments many times here on MNE.

Then we watched his losses and client defections mount while at Pimco. FYI that, too, was predicted here before it ever happened. After that the messy breakup with Mohamed El-Erian (who is no particular trading prodigy himself--"new normal?" Seriously?) and finally, the move to Jeffries (of all places) where he got an account to manage, which was about 1/200th the size of the one he was managing at Pimco.

Personally, I think Gross should have retired; stepped out of the game while still on top, maybe not performance-wise, but reputationally.

So in the past month or two he's made some calls: "Short the dollar is the best trade all year" and "Short the German bund is the best trade of a lifetime."

On both of these his timing was pretty good. He could have made some money. On the bund trade it was excellent: the moment after he said it there was a meltdown.

Now it turns out he lost money. He got the calls right (at least for a trade), but lost money.

You know what that is? That's mental game that just is not there. How do I know? Because I used to do it all the time early on in my trading career. I was always a great analyst, but never really made any money. I got the market direction right, the timing right...everything right, then ended up making nothing or worse, losing.

That's where Gross is right now. He's burnt. His mental game is nowhere to be found. It sounds like the height of arrogance and cockiness when I say that if Gross wants to stay in the game he has to re-sharpen his mental game. Who am I? I'll tell you who I am; I am a guy who's been through it, only on a smaller scale.

If Gross does not get his mental game back he will lose, lose, lose and suffer a really ignominious end. Trust me when I say this.

I teach mental game in my course. I have said to students that you can be the best analyst in the world, have all the best information, indeed...even have inside information, but if your mental game is not right then you won't make any money at all. You will fail as a trader.

On the other hand if you have the right mental game you can throw money at a dartboard and make money. I am being absolutely serious.

I've had fun making jokes about Gross, but now I am really sad for him. The guy had stature and he really made it big. He's not going to listen to what I say, that's obvious, but I wish him the best. If he doesn't get his mental game back  he's really going to go down in flames.

Let it be a lesson to all. No matter how big or successful you are or once were, the big guys can fail, too. And it's not that the markets are great humblers. The markets couldn't give two shits about you; they're not alive, they have no feelings or soul.

In the end, success or failure, we make it ourselves.

My podcast from yesterday

This podcast was cut short for some reason so here it is again.

-Mike Norman

Podcast for Dec 3, 2014

$80,000 in profits in two months on a $100k account!

With another $7,000 profit today on a position I just closed out in USD/CAD, that makes $54,000 total profit for April. Add that to the $26,000 profit in March and that $100 grand client account that opened up two months ago has now grown by $80,000.

An 80% return in two months. No losses. Not bad.

Market Composition + MMT + Mental Game

My journey to trading success and why the mental game is everything. And introducing, "Norman's Law."

I have been trading for 35 years. I've been a member of four exchanges, a floor trader, prop trader for a major international bank, commodity trading advisor, trader for a major hedge fund and all around money manager.

With all this experience I can tell you positively, unequivocally, that the secret to successful trading is mental. One hundred percent mental. No systems, no charts, no quants, no algorithms...just mental. Once you understand that; once you can master the YOU in trading, you can trade pretty much continuously with uninterrupted profitability.

So why don't people do it?

Trading is 100% mental

It took me years to realize this (I started trading in 1979), but trading is 100% mental. With the proper mental game you can literally throw darts at a dartboard and make money. On the other hand insiders could give you the most secret, invaluable, inside information and you will still not make any money.

Nearly all traders are on an endless and futile search for the Holy Grail of systems, strategies or indicators, but they will never find it and even if they did, it will not help them to be successful. It's all about the mental game--trading is 100% mental and if you don't understand that or, if your mental game is not trained in a way that will make you money, you won't make money. Period. Successful traders ALL have the proper mental game.

Losing is a choice; it's not inevitable or unavoidable.

That's the most important thing I teach. Ask any of my former students. (Will be happy to provide names.)

Just closed out long yen trade for a 20% gain!

I just closed out a long yen trade that I put on last week when everyone was selling. Last week all you heard were bearish comments about Bank of Japan "stimulus" and "yen printing" and this and that. MMT said it was all wrong. The clueless sold...I bought and closed it out today with a 20% profit.

The account that I am managing for a client (a well known person) that was opened on Feb 25, is now up nearly 80%! (Started with $100 grand.)

The account I use to teach my trading course is up 140% in 11 months.

ZERO LOSSES for any of the accounts I trade.

Market Composition + MMT + Mental Game.

It's what I teach. It's what works.