止损心理学兼驳 “止损是毒药说”

止损心理学兼驳 “止损是毒药说”

正确的看待止损非常重要。 请大家读一下下面的文章，Dr. Steenbarger的如何止损。 谁都不愿意看到自己的股票亏损， 关键是如何对待这个亏损，才是成功的关键因素。 诚然，止损不代表成功，不代表就能赚钱， 止损只是你整个投资策略的一个环节。 要赚钱还要有正确的投资方法。 可以说正确止损是你成功的必要条件，但不是充分条件。 你如果不止损，就是把自己的投资命运交给市场， 你就失去了主动权，失去了改正错误的机会。 如果因为侥幸的成功就认为我没有止损，结果证明我是正确的。 无数的投资者都掉入了这个陷阱。 大的如LTCM，小的如无数中国的散户投资者。 市场的不确定性导致没有人能永远正确。 如果没有正确的止损策略， 只要一次大的失误， 你可能被市场淘汰。 我喜欢下面一句话: If you lose all, you can not bet"
www.zztrend.com

How to Take a Loss
Brett N. Steenbarger, Ph.D.



There are quite a few books written on how to make money in the market. Some
of them are even written by people who have made money as traders! What you don’t
see often, however, are books or articles written on how to lose money. “Cut your losers and let your winners run” is commonsensical advice, but how do you determine when a position is a loser? Interestingly, most traders I have seen don’t formulate an answer to this question when they put on a position. They focus on the entry, but then don’t have a clear sense of exit—especially if that exit is going to put them into the red.

One of the real culprits, I have to believe, is in the difficulty traders have in
separating the reality of a losing trade from the psychological sense of feeling like a loser. At some level, many traders equate losing with being a loser. This frustrates them, depresses them, makes them anxious—in short, it interferes with their future decisionmaking, because their P & L is a blank check written against their self-esteem. Once a trader is self-focused and not market focused, distortions in decision-making are inevitable.

A particularly valuable section of the classic book Reminiscences of a Stock
Operator describes Livermore’s approach to buying stock. He would sell a quantity and see how the stock responded. Then he would do that again and again, testing the underlying demand for the issue. When his sales could not push the market down, then he would move aggressively to the buy side and make his money.
What I loved about this methodology is that Livermore’s losses were part of a
grander plan. He wasn’t just losing money; he was paying for information. If my
maximum position size is ten contracts in the ES and I buy the highs of a range with a one-lot, expecting a breakout, I am testing the waters. While I am not potentially moving the market in the way that Livermore might have, I still have begun a test of my breakout hypothesis. I then watch carefully. How are the other averages behaving at the top ends of their range? How is the market absorbing the activity of sellers? Like any good scientist, I am gathering data to determine whether or not my hypothesis is supported. Suppose the breakout does not materialize and the initial move above the range falls back into the range on some increased selling pressure. I take the loss on my onelot, but then what happens from there?
The unsuccessful trader will respond with frustration: “Why do I always get
caught buying the highs? I can’t believe “they” ran the market against me! This market is impossible to trade.” Because of that frustration—and the associated self-focus—the unsuccessful trader does not take any information away from that trade.

In the Livermore mode, however, the successful trader will see the losing one-lot
as part of a greater plan. Had the market broken nicely to the upside, he would have
scaled into the long trade and likely made money. If the one-lot was a loser, he paid for the information that this is, at the very least, a range-bound market, and he might try to find a spot to reverse and go short in order to capitalize on a return to the bottom end of that range.

Look at it this way: If you put on a high probability trade and the trade fails to
make you money, you have just paid for an important piece of information: The market
is not behaving as it normally, historically does. If a robust piece of economic news that normally sends the dollar screaming higher fails to budge the currency and thwarts your purchase, you have just acquired a useful bit of information: There is an underlying lack of demand for dollars. That information might hold far more profit potential than the money lost in the initial trade.

I recently received a copy of an article from Futures Magazine on the retired
trader Everett Klipp, who was dubbed the “Babe Ruth of the CBOT”. Klipp
distinguished himself not only by his fifty-year track record of trading success on the floor, but also by his mentorship of over 100 traders. Speaking of his system of shortterm trading, Klipp observed, “You have to love to lose money and hate to make money to be successful…It’s against human nature what I teach and practice. You have to overcome your humanness.”

Klipp’s system was quick to take profits (hence the idea of hating to make
money), but even quicker to take losses (loving to lose money). Instead of viewing losses as a threat, Klipp treated them as an essential part of trading. Taking a small loss reinforces a trader’s sense of discipline and control, he believed. Losses are not failures.

So here’s a question I propose to all those who enter a high-probability trade:
“What will tell me that my trade is wrong, and how could I use that information to
subsequently profit?” If you’re trading well, there are no losing trades: only trades that make money and trades that give you the information to make money later.
Brett N. Steenbarger, Ph.D. is Director of Trader Development for Kingstree Trading,
LLC in Chicago and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. He is also an active trader and
writes occasional feature articles on market psychology for a variety of publications.

The author of The Psychology of Trading (Wiley; January, 2003), Dr. Steenbarger has
published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on short-term approaches to behavioral change. His new, co-edited book The Art and Science of Brief Therapy is a core curricular text in psychiatry training programs. Many of Dr. Steenbarger’s articles and trading strategies are archived on his website, www.brettsteenbarger.com


附 反对止损的帖子

我对技术分析的看法是，一对我没用，二如果沉迷其中就成不了大器。
　　我不能说技术分析没用，这样太托大了，大的道理我也不想说太多，就举一个例子，说一说技术分析的主流之一形态分析。我刚入行的时候，和现在大多数年轻人一样，觉得技术分析神奇有效，值得好好学习，而且也乐此不疲，如饥似渴。后来有一次，我们在讨论一个股票，从a点要拉到b点，怎么个走法。然后我就在纸上画了许多可能性。画着画着，我觉得无论我怎么画，最后一笔总要画到b点，而且看看我画好的几幅图，什么旗型突破，楔型突破，三角整理突破，上升通道，箱形整理突破，或者往下做个双底再突破，等等，都被我画出来了。怎么都是教科书上的经典图形阿？至此我明白一个道理，形态分析里的各种形态都没错，凡是上涨的股票都会走出其中一种形态来。但是哪个是本？哪个是标呢？不是因为走出这样的形态才使股价从a点到b点，而是因为股价必然会从a点到b点，然后其运动轨迹出现经典形态。形态是必要条件而不是充分条件。而想通过形态分析，得出股价会从a点到b点，逻辑上就是错误的。实际上效果也不好。效果好的时候是因为你正好碰上了。其实很多评价技术分析的文章都谈过这个问题，我只不过是说一个实际的例子，现身说法。形态分析是如此，那波浪理论呢，太高深了，不敢评论。
　　其实我想告诉一些年轻朋友的是，如果你把投资当作一项事业，那沉迷于技术分析是成不了大器的。经过严格的技术分析训练，我相信你会变得敏感，对细节把握很好，但无论你怎么去缩小k线，或者换成周线、月线、年线，你都无法跳出其中的起起伏伏，以更大的气魄和眼光去看市场。你对技术分析运用的越纯熟，你对投资的认识越接近自身的局限，你可以成为一个很好的“匠”，但成不了“师”。这说的还是好的情况，糟糕的情况就是你浸淫几年后，脑袋里越来越迷糊，最终被市场淘汰，你最后发出的感叹是，我不适合做股票。这些东西要靠你自己领悟，还有些话，我在后面的内容中会补充。

　　从技术分析延伸开去，再说点别的。
　　近几年散户受到的专业化教育中，最深入人心的我觉得是两个字，“止损”。这两个字被不断强调，重要性日益提高，最后俨然成了投资中头等重要的大事。有一次我面试一个学生，他说，只要做好止损，做股票挣钱很容易，我亏了10次都止损了，一次挣个够。cut the lose shor,let profit run。中毒太深。
　　我不否认止损的重要性，但要时刻牢记，止损只是一个辅助的手段。如果你买一个股票，让你心安的是，大不了我止损，那你最好不要动，你这是给人送钱去了。
　　还是举一个例子。有一次，我给几个交易员每人500万的额度，让他们自己做做看。后来都亏了。我看了看他们买的股票，不应该亏损阿。原因是他们都在波动中止损了。问他们为什么止损，他们说心里没底，对这个股票又不了解，单纯从技术分析的角度看，破位就应该止损。
　　所以，投资中最重要的事情是什么，不是止损，是选一个好股票。要在深入了解这个股票的基础上再来谈风险控制，谈止损。否则你会越止越瘦。