The following is a guest post from EarningsBreakout.com:
"I find that Annie Duke’s tips on poker are directly applicable to trading.
Skills needed to be a good poker player (trader)
-grasp of math, probability, and game theory
-have to have “a lot of heart.” The ability to understand not only what the right play is, but to follow through with it (when you have a good trading setup, GO FOR IT)
-what separates the good from the great, is that the good know the right answer, but they don’t follow through with it
-it’s not about winning right now, but making the right decision to win in the long-run (process over specific outcome)
-be a very good reader of people and bet pattern analyzer (read what the market is discounting)
What makes a successful poker player
-someone who manages their money really well (use rational position sizes and cut losses)
-bankroll requirement for certain game (asset size), how much you can risk in a certain game (position size)
-someone who has a lot of control over the emotional aspect of the game
-poker players lose a lot because there is variance to the game. Being able to emotional handle the losses and to not allow those to affect your play going forward is KEY (don’t get emotional over losses and then try to gamble/over-trade your way back to break-even)
-there are lots of players out there who have more talent in their pinky than my whole entire body, but they’re broke and I’m not
-you work with the skills that you have and recognize the games you should be playing in (what stocks and sectors do you know? what’s your circle of competence)
-don’t play in games where other players are better than you, which is ego-driven (trading sectors and stocks you don’t know)
-manage your money well and manage your emotions well will make you successful
-no-one wants to hear you moan. what productive thing is coming out of moaning? do something constructive. analyze your hand (trade), should I have been involved in first place? don’t focus on the one piece of bad variance (bad luck)
-don’t get emotionally invested on anything at the table (be rational in trading decisions)
-you take what the opponent has done in the past hands. are they conservative? are they wild? how have they bet good/bad hands? how did they behave? constantly update that based on what they do (look for patterns in the market after news)
-come up with best strategy to efficiently and precisely take someone’s chips. she is always willing to flirt with someone on the table (just win baby. making money is the only goal)
"
Thanks to EarningsBreakout.com for the great post as there are definitely a ton of parallels between poker and financial markets and you can often apply methodologies to either. And, as we've covered before on the blog, hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital is a poker player and has competed in the World Series of Poker.
