Trading and Emotion, page-11

Hi Micklin...........

By the quality of your post and your ability to define your problems, something tells me you may do OK. I don't mind sharing some thoughts as, a) it helps me crystalize my own thinking, and b) as this is my really first highly successful year, I don't mind helping out.

The first thing I will tell you is if you do stick it out, it has the ability to open your mind and thinking to all other areas of your life that you may not think possible. It does this by teaching you to be fully responsible for your own actions. Your balance sheet cannot lie to you. In a world full of spin, blame shifting, passing responsibility on and so forth, you will learn to see through all that, and think and act independently for yourself. As an example, now, whenever I am out at dinners or with people, I no longer have an opinion on anything unless I can back it up with facts. BS doesn't cut it. And surprisingly, my opinions are often sought after and appreciated. This didn't happen until I started trading. Your self esteem should go up along with your account over time, which in turn, will help with all those concerns you have listed.

Now my first word of warning. The books you read, the blogs you follow, the opinions you seek, just bear in mind that they are from different areas of trading. Both Brett Steenburgan and Dr Alexander Elder often speak to, and reference techniques, that apply to large fund managers and traders that manage large accounts. Their methodology is different. They can't pull funds out of, say, a large company like BHP the way you can. They would most probably collapse the market. You have the advantage of being small and hence nimble. Many books fail to draw the distinction between the two methods and as there are very few real private traders, most don't pick up on this in the books. You will only see this if you are experianced. Not knowing this can lead to some confusion.

And now for my first hint. Try and think like a good Doctor, whom I'm told make good traders if they learn. I go to a very experienced Dr (rarely I might add), but she often answers questions with a 'maybe', 'should do', 'it seems that way,' 'more than likely' and so on. She has perfected the art of thinking probabilities because she does always not know how folk respond to all treatments in all cases. That's how trading can be. Contrast that with an engineer. If a bolt has to be 3/8's of an inch, than that's it, nothing else will do. It's absolute. In this way, both your job and education can affect your learning ability to trade. Realise this.

The other thing is it does take time and it goes something like this........At first you struggle going two steps backwards and one step forward. After a couple of years at this, you sit up in your chair after a succesful trade and go A-haa!, Ive got it. But you haven't got it, you only think you have. (OK, so YOU may not sit up in your chair but simply lounge back and say, Hmmm, so that how it's done.) In any case you carry on for a year or so more, this time going two steps forward, and only one step back. You then go A-haa again, realising that this time you really have it. Except of course you haven't really got it, but at least you are now well and truly on your way. After another while, you go A-haa! again, but this time you realise that it's not the individual A-haa's! moments, but the culmination of all of them. And now you are really on your way, hopefully to returns that you never thought were possible. You now realise it's a never ending endeavour to increase your skills and knowledge. And that's how it is.


Another hint....try and disown the trade. Treat it like a business. Don't say that you lost on a trade...but simply, that the trade did not go your way. There are many more strategies like this for you to research.

And finally, trying and failing is not the mistake....the mistake is not trying at all.

Good luck!

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