Top trading rule

[Ninja]

I guess we all have our rules we live and die by, but what is the number one trading rule that can never be broken? In my opinion it is protect capital at all costs. ( This includes never ever trade without a stop loss in the system and be patient, you can't trade every day.)

[TOPIX]

Average up but never average down. If you are buying, then each new buy price must be higher than the previous buy price. If you are selling, then each new selling price must be lower.

[Levitt]

Always use a Stop Loss. Never trade on emotions.

[SimonPB]

knnow your exit strategy before youu enter .. park youur biases and ego at the door ..

[#5]

be consistent. You are working with a system that will work x percentage of the time, but you will never know which side of hte win/lose ratio each individual trade sits. So you have to act every time, in the same way

[Pluto]

Know what rules get you into a trade, what rules keep you in the trade and what rules gets you out.

[Quakedog]

Never sell and always keep adding!!!

[Whatsup]

Sometimes you are the windscreen and sometimes you are the insect, accept it, safeguard with stop losses. Wealth creation is about time, very few people get it right to shoot the lights out over night, give yourself a time horizon of 20 years to create your pot of gold and don't dip into the piggy bank to fund "other" things.

[doomsdayza]

how do you realise profits / losses if you don't sell? can't eat paper.

[richardw]

Companies with good div yield. Buy 'em now and within 10 years compound growth will sort out your income. Why is this so ignored as a strategy?

[#11]

Never give up - too many people new to trading/investing directly into the market give up after paying 'school fees'.

[#12]

be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy

[#13]

Very very wise words.

[doomsdayza]

even warren buffet sells his junk. never is a long time.

[richardw]

Totally agreed, but mainly he tries to avoid any stock that could every become junk. Almost always focused on earnings, not price. The railway he just bought - going to be a long time before he worries about selling that.

[#16]

Keep school fees to a minimum. Start small. You can learn the same lessons with R 100 000 that you learn with R 1 000 000.

[doomsdayza]

richard you currently short anything?

[richardw]

Yup, put on an ALSI short Monday. Did well today :) Sadly I'm very wary of holding it because the buy-the-dippers could decide it's time.

[doomsdayza]

short IMPs, watching for 20000 then 19500. waiting for an EMA crossover on the TOPI, would also put me short. like the liquidity of those futures contracts. and there's no spread. :D\ gl

[richardw]

Agreed - for trading, they're definitely better than poking around waiting for individual stocks to make sense.