It is interesting to me when people ask the question, “how to trade?”. Trading is one activity that no adult is unfamiliar with. In fact, I can venture to say that trading is one of the few things that we all know. To call a spade a spade, trading is literally buying something with cash and selling something for cash. In the simplest form, you can always imagine a wrongly priced bag of rice on the shelf of a supermarket and laughing about it. On the other hand, you must have had stared a Japanese melon or equivalent and feel it’s overpriced for something that is so small and insignificant to your life. These examples demonstrate the exact same scenarios in the market but the only difference is that the price of “items” sold on the market constantly changes to either tempt you to sell or buy it. In this post, I will focus on the difficulties when trading and how anyone can “master” it by not overcomplicating this simple activity.

Buying the right stock?

I got to admit that it is become increasingly difficult to invest and trade because there is just so much chatter about the few market index or stocks in the world. What about the rest? Actually, there are many good and bad performers that aren’t newsworthy however, there are actually gainers around the world that are comparable to those on the news. For example, when Tesla was shooting up to the moon, TopGlove, a counter listed on KLSE and STI was going up more aggressively. The point is not for you to spot such counters but rather to look for the counters that you feel are suitable for your capital’s opportunity cost.

Timing the market?

This is one thing that the experts will always tell you and that is to not time the market. That said, is it really unwise to time the market? Actually, there is a workaround, just wait for one of the following situations to happen. 1) Market retracement causing all counters to drop regardless of their recent performance. 2) Choosing a few counters instead of just waiting for one counter to increase the odds of hitting your desired entry price. 3) Buying a counter that you have researched sufficiently and have fallen recently because of a blunder or short-term shock to the company. These are sort of the best one-liner tips I can give anyone who is starting out. As for technical analysis tips, don’t be lazy, as there is a search function built into the site for you, so just search to your heart’s content.

Making the best of each market situation

I am sorry but there are limits to what you can do in any given situation. So what you can do will be the best thing that you could have done. If your funds are running low and you are unable to stomach any additional risk, then stop buying, vice versa. If you are happy with the profits and you feel the stock is about to retrace, sell it. It is that simple. If there is anyone who tries to complicate things for you, just gets them out of your life. Lastly, stay realistic and stop feeling the need to get into every “potential opportunity” in the market. There will always be times when you missed a falling knife (bad entry leading to heavy losses) as well, so execute as you have planned and ignore the tips from pseudo or self-proclaimed prophets on social media or even Reddit.

Closing Thoughts

So in a nutshell, the only way to master trading is to trade. The fees will eventually come in the form of paper losses the moment you feel cocky for just the right amount of time. That said, those humbling experiences gained will worth more than any 1-3 days scam courses or workshops you attend at a fancy ballroom shooting “HUAT AH” every few minutes to make you feel good. If you have been following the blog for some time, you would have realized that the style of writing is getting increasingly blunt but I can assure you all that it is written with good intentions. It is getting harder trying to stay objective in this world that is powered by hypes, rumors, and unfounded knowledge.