Achieving Distinctive Trading Returns by Trading Distinctively

So let's say you wanted to start a grocery store in your community.

How are you going to succeed?

After all, the WalMarts of the world can buy in greater bulk and negotiate better prices with food companies than you could. You're not going to beat them on price.

The Wegmans of the world can build supermarkets that are super markets, complete with food courts, coffee bars, and more. You're not sufficiently capitalized to beat them on variety.

The 7-Elevens of the world can locate in multiple locations throughout communities and carry the products people most want to buy immediately. You don't have the resources to beat them on convenience.

So what are you going to do? If you open a small, generic grocery store, you will get a certain part of your anatomy handed to you.

I would argue that starting up as a trader is no different from starting up a grocery store in terms of the competitive dynamics.

You can't compete against the large institutions that have huge asset bases and can make money by investing across multiple assets with a variety of uncorrelated strategies.

You can't compete with organizations that spend millions of dollars annually on research, developing fast market-making algorithms.

If you want to make money in financial markets, you'd have to make money the same way you'd make money in the grocery business: by carving out a niche and being better in that niche than anyone else. You'd have to be unique--and you'd have to be superlatively good at what makes you special.

DeCicco's is a regional grocery chain in suburban New York. What makes its stores unique is a focus on craft beer. They have a large, well-curated selection of craft beers and several of their locations have craft beer bars within the stores. DeCicco's also places great emphasis on fresh foods, cheeses, and prepared foods. It's easy to go there, have a fresh pizza or prepared entree, sit down in the craft beer area, and enjoy a meal after doing your shopping. That experience cannot be readily duplicated by a competitor.

An independent trader similarly needs to find strategies that are unique, that exploit opportunities in the marketplace, and that cannot be readily duplicated. Taking a generic trading approach to a crowded, competitive marketplace is a sure way to not achieve distinguished results.

Not all unique strategies win, but all generic ones, over time, fail. Markets are simply too efficient to give awards to me-too's.

What is your unique edge as a trader? It's not enough to say you have great motivation, great intuition, great chart reading skills, great fundamental knowledge, etc. If you can't explain your specific trading edge clearly--if someone learning what you do doesn't have the reaction a first time visitor to DeCicco's has--you are almost certainly too generic.

In trading, as in life, do something distinctive or do something else. Life is too short and too precious for me-too.

Further Reading: Finding and Focusing on Your Edge
.

Benefits Of Healthy eating Turmeric every day for the body

One teaspoon of turmeric a day to prevent inflammation, accumulation of toxins, pain, and the outbreak of cancer. Yes, turmeric has been known since 2.5 centuries ago in India, as a plant anti-inflammatory / inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and also have a good detox properties, now proven to prevent Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Turmeric prevents inflammation: For people who

Women and children overboard

It's the Catch-22 of clinical trials: to protect pregnant women and children from the risks of untested drugs....we don't test drugs adequately for them. In the last few decades , we've been more concerned about the harms of research than of inadequately tested treatments for everyone, in fact. But for "vulnerable populations," like pregnant women and children, the default was to exclude them. And just in case any women might be, or might become, pregnant, it was often easier just to exclude us all from trials. It got so bad, that by the late 1990s, the FDA realized regulations and more for pregnant women - and women generally - had to change. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) took action too. And so few drugs had enough safety and efficacy information for children that, even in official circles, children were being called "therapeutic orphans." Action began on that, too. There is still a long way to go. But this month there was a sign that

Not a word was spoken (but many were learned)

Video is often used in the EFL classroom for listening comprehension activities, facilitating discussions and, of course, language work. But how can you exploit silent films without any language in them? Since developing learners' linguistic resources should be our primary goal (well, at least the blogger behind the blog thinks so), here are four suggestions on how language (grammar and vocabulary) can be generated from silent clips. Split-viewing Split-viewing is an information gap activity where the class is split into groups with one group facing the screen and the other with their back to the screen. The ones facing the screen than report on what they have seen - this can be done WHILE as well as AFTER they watch. Alternatively, students who are not watching (the ones sitting with their backs to the screen) can be send out of the classroom and come up with a list of the questions to ask the 'watching group'. This works particularly well with action or crime scenes with

Humor4u

Search This Blog