Thursday, August 30, 2012

mantra Trader Continue

I think I have mentioned before that nobody have a crystal ball. However, you can trade in the direction of the information you have available and often new information coming out supports your current data and when more and more data is not supporting it anymore you must re-evaluate your view.


Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live. If we apply this to trading then it makes sense to answer certain questions.

There is a saying that the strongest force in the universe is the force exerted by a man who knows where he is going.

Many of us decide to trade not knowing where we want to be we only have a vague idea that "I will have lots of free time...whohooo" What will we do with this free time? Use money during this free time? Then we have to make more again...Vicious circle that one...We do a 9-5 work so we can drive a nice car and live in a nice house...after a while we upgrade and not long we HAVE TO WORK so we can afford the nice car and house. So do we work because we enjoy it or do we work because we have to pay bills? If your motivation to become a trader is to have "lotsa free time" then maybe you should think twice. If you are a trader you wont want to move away from the market it becomes the air you breathe and the reason for your existance.

What is your motivation for trading? The money you are going to "easily" make. I don't think so, you know by now the failure rate of aspiring traders so do you really think you are going to be the one in a million? What are you doing to be the number 1? Dreaming of all your free time? The car you are going to buy?

Maybe you can just sit for a moment and close your eyes and imagine in your minds eye that you are ALREADY a successful trader. Where do you live? What do you drive? Do you have a wife? How do you treat your child? How do you feel knowing that the world is your oyster? Can you visualise exactly where you will be when you are successful one day? Not many people can. Tell me, the car you just dreamt up...what colour is it? Automatic? manual? If you don't make it real in your mind it won't become real...

My motivation was to see if I can do it. If I can overcome my emotions. I already had some money so that wasn't a motivation and I have had all the free time I needed when I was younger and at varsity so no motivation there. I knew I had issues surrounding emotional control and it really urked me that something was bigger than me and I couldn't control myself when confronted by it. So it was a really tough uphill battle for me and my motivation was to be a better person on the other side. I'll be honest to mention that it really nearly killed me but as soon as I realised the emotions I was going through was as a result of the environment I was brought up in I could start to fight it. I visited a sport psychologist and what I went through was very similar to what great sportsmen go through when they hit a period of losing matches. I thought I had a fear of failure but when I went in deep I had to admit that I was self-sabotaging myself as well into doing silly things. I always had this thing with being right. So if I'm up a pip I take the money and run because I now proved that my "system" is right so I am right. The fact that a single loss wiped a months worth of work meant nothing just as long as I could say "95% of my trades are profitable", I felt great! Once this was pointed out as a fear of failure combined with a fear of success it was as if the clouds lifted and I could accept that change was necessary. It was a great learning experience for me and I think I went through something not many people have the privilege to experience.

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