{"id":25798,"date":"2011-12-06T11:33:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T16:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/?p=25798"},"modified":"2011-12-06T11:33:12","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T16:33:12","slug":"why-good-traders-make-90-of-their-profits-from-10-of-their-trades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2011\/12\/06\/why-good-traders-make-90-of-their-profits-from-10-of-their-trades\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Good Traders Make 90% of Their Profits from 10% of Their Trades"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insideinvestingdaily.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Written by Sara Nunnally, Editor, Inside Investing Daily, insideinvestingdaily.com<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n<p><em><strong>If you&#8217;re looking for that single investment that is going to create the majority of your wealth&#8230; here it is.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Jobs data on Friday added a nice pop to U.S. markets. According to the BLS, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6% as the economy added 120,000 jobs in November.<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t uncork the champagne just yet&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We know this number is manipulated to put the best face on the picture. Not included in this number is the fact that 315,000 people <strong><em>stopped<\/em><\/strong> looking for a job last month. Also, retailers added the most jobs of any sector at 50,000.<\/p>\n<p>Can you think of any reason why they would lead the charge?<\/p>\n<p>Seasonal shopping, anyone?<\/p>\n<p>Now, a job&#8217;s a job, especially to someone who&#8217;s been out of work for a while with a family to take care of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But investors need to watch for a possible drop-off in January, after the holidays.<\/p>\n<p>Add to that consumers are expected to spend less this holiday season, and you&#8217;ve got a nice little setup to short some retailer come January. Bankrate.com&#8217;s Financial Security Index poll found that 42% of those surveyed said they were planning on spending less this year.<\/p>\n<p>Only 10% said they were planning on spending more.<\/p>\n<p>This index survey also asked folks how secure they felt in their jobs. Only 13% said they felt more secure than last year &#8212; the second-lowest level of the year.<\/p>\n<p>All this is not very soothing to investors&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s a lot of opportunity in all this uncertainty and volatility.<\/p>\n<p>It has to do with being able to control risk and attack profitable investments head-on. Some of the best traders in the world make 90% of their profits from 10% of their trades.<\/p>\n<p>This is the 90\/10 Phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>What that means is two things: That these guys are making big bets when it counts, and they&#8217;re limiting risk by spreading out their investments.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of betting the house on a hunch, the best traders have their fingers in a lot of small pots. This doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean &#8220;diversification.&#8221; These guys do their research to find the best possible investments wherever they are.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re waiting for their research to pan out.<\/p>\n<p>When circumstances start to turn their way in one particular trade, they ratchet up their investment&#8230; incrementally increasing their exposure while not tipping the scale with undue risk.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s how the best traders get big paydays&#8230; like George Soros&#8217; billion-dollar win against the British pound in 1992.<\/p>\n<p>When volatility increases in the market, these traders start cleaning up.<\/p>\n<p>This could be one of the best times (outside of the dismal lows back in 2008-2009) to start building your fortune. More millionaires were created during the Great Depression than any other time in our history.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at two &#8220;small pots&#8221; with big potential&#8230;<\/p>\n<h3>Global Infrastructure<\/h3>\n<p>I talked about this briefly at our Money Crisis Survival Summit in September. India is expected to surpass China in population by 2025. And by 2050, 75% of the world&#8217;s population will live in urban areas.<\/p>\n<p>That means huge building projects &#8212; water, sewer, electricity, airports, road and bridges&#8230; not to mention energy corridors to pump oil and natural gas to refineries and power station. Demand for industrial commodities is going to soar.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re talking about copper, steel, concrete and all manner of other building materials.<\/p>\n<p>We could see pipelines and power stations go up at an alarmingly fast rate.<\/p>\n<p>I really like this industry &#8212; and the building and project management companies might fare better than the commodities themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Companies with projects in growing markets (and growing populations) like India, China and Latin America will do well.<\/p>\n<p>And if they&#8217;ve been hit by the slowdown in Europe and the U.S. valuations might be very attractive right now.<\/p>\n<h3>Currencies<\/h3>\n<p>This investment category shouldn&#8217;t scare you. It should get you drooling&#8230; We&#8217;re seeing the possible death of a major currency in real time! The euro is like a cornered rabbit right now. There&#8217;s no good way to flee, and it could end up on somebody&#8217;s dinner plate.<\/p>\n<p>For traditional investors, currencies can seem pretty exotic, but access to this market &#8212; one of the biggest in the world with trillions of dollars&#8217; worth traded every day &#8212; is getting just as easy as investing in stocks.<\/p>\n<p>There are a number of exchange-traded funds that will give you exposure to a variety of currencies.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing you must remember, though, is that every currency play is two-sided. That means the currency is only valued in comparison to something else. For the exchange-traded funds, that &#8220;something else&#8221; is the U.S. dollar.<\/p>\n<p>You will have to take this factor into account when investing in currencies. For as bad as the euro&#8217;s prospects are, the <strong>CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE:NYSE)<\/strong> ended last week higher&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Because of the cheap U.S. dollar.<\/p>\n<p>That said, currencies will be a huge area for investors to clean up. It was with currencies that George Soros made his billion-dollar trade. He bet big that the British pound sterling was going to tank, and he was right.<\/p>\n<p>These two &#8220;small pots&#8221; are very interesting areas with a lot of potential for wealth-builders to start dabbling in. But just remember, the best traders aren&#8217;t arbitrary. They do their homework, start small, have a strong working plan and invest accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>And they&#8217;re ready to move once the gears get going.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s Note:<\/strong> The idea that the world&#8217;s best traders make 90% of their profits in just 10% of their trades is part of what Sara calls the Trader&#8217;s Key. It is an idea she discussed in great length in last week&#8217;s emergency teleconference. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidersstrategygroup.com\/video-alerts\/ISG\/isg-teleconference-iidem.html?sub=SID\" target=\"_blank\">If you haven&#8217;t listened to it yet&#8230; it&#8217;s FREE.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insideinvestingdaily.com\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Written by Sara Nunnally, Editor, Inside Investing Daily, insideinvestingdaily.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Sara Nunnally, Editor, Inside Investing Daily, insideinvestingdaily.com If you&#8217;re looking for that single investment that is going to create the majority of your wealth&#8230; here it is. Jobs data on Friday added a nice pop to U.S. markets. According to the BLS, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6% as the economy added 120,000 &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2011\/12\/06\/why-good-traders-make-90-of-their-profits-from-10-of-their-trades\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Good Traders Make 90% of Their Profits from 10% of Their Trades&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}