Keith Kaplan's Tips For Managing Your Portfolio In Any Market: 'A Lot Of Traders Chase A Story'

This special presentation from Keith Kaplan is from Benzinga's first-ever virtual Benzinga Options Boot Camp on Saturday, April 18. Check back with Benzinga for more coverage of this all-day event with options trading experts who are giving traders of all experience levels real, dependable strategies for hitting the ground running or expanding an existing portfolio. 

Meet Keith Kaplan And TradeSmith

Keith Kaplan is president and chief product officer at TradeSmith, a fintech with a mission of providing traders with the knowledge and confidence to outperform financial markets.

TradeSmith assists traders in finding their winning edge with a suite of tools:

• TradeStops: Risk management solution.
• Ideas: Algorithmic trade-idea generator.
• Crypto: Cryptocurrency tracking and alert system.

Kaplan and TradeSmith work to teach traders how to properly analyze markets and execute portfolio maximizing strategies in any market environment.

Timing, Managing Behavior

“We are human beings. We have emotions that get in the way of our trading and investing,” Kaplan said. 

Common mistakes among traders are timing, risk and confidence, he said. 

During the Benzinga Options Boot Camp, Kaplan honed in on the notion that traders add risk when losing and de-risk when winning.

“We tend to buy more of a stock when it goes down. This is actually known as risk-seeking,” he said.

The reason buying more or averaging a position is not a winning short-term strategy is that the market tends to continue moving in certain directions on momentum, Kaplan said. New and existing traders add bets in the new direction, while old, losing traders liquidate positions, he said. 

Kaplan also highlights the importance of having an entry and exit strategy, which helps to define risk and reward in the market.

“A lot of traders and investors chase a story. They put way too much money into a risky stock and they don’t put enough money into low-risk stocks.”

Boot Camp traders traders heard more from Kaplan on how to manage their behavior and risks in the market to improve the consistency of timing and rewards. 

Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery from Pexels.