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HOW BELIEFS DRIVE TRADING

  
  Education
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What you believe, consciously or unconsciously, propels your trading in its many directions.  It might be so simple a matter as whether you believe a market is going up or down or nowhere.  Traders have biases that distort their perceptions and effect their actions, and they need to guard against these with various protections and bias detectors.

Other beliefs are more veiled and ubiquitous.  For example, you may consciously intend to make money, but you have a counter impulse that thwarts you due to unconscious beliefs that go against that intention.  Perhaps you unconsciously believe that money is the root of all evil, or that rich people are corrupt, or that there isn’t enough to go around and so you shouldn’t be greedy, or that you should be laying up your treasure in heaven, and not on this earth.  Perhaps on some level you believe you shouldn’t make more money than your parents.

When you want something, you have to really want it and not be ambivalent about it.  It has to be your desire, and not some alien value set by your parents or society.  The flower loves the sun, and stretches to receive its rays.  The plant loves water and digs its roots deep seeking the object of its desire.  If you want to make money trading, you really have to admire money and have good purposes for its use.  If you want to be a master trader, you have to be comfortable with that role, and not see trading as wasteful gambling, or an unworthy profession.

Perhaps you believe that you don’t deserve to make money trading, or that you have to work hard for your rewards.  Maybe you believe that only the big boys win, that the market is stacked against the ordinary trader.  Maybe you believe that it’s impossible to make money in the futures markets or, worse, any market.  Maybe you believe it’s possible to make money trading, but it’s not probable that you can keep your winnings.  All such ideas run in opposition to easy and effective trading.

Just as insidiously you may doubt that your system really works, or that it won’t work this time.  Some traders get superstitious: for example, they believe that they always, or tend to, lose money on Fridays, and so, of course, they do.  When any of their superstitious factors occur, somehow they manage to lose.

Strong emotions also get in the way of winning.  Underlying each emotion is some belief about what is happening.  The interpretations you give events color your reality. Underneath each interpretation is a rock core belief.  “That’s just the way it is.” you say. Such a statement flags a belief. Is it really the way it is?  Do you feel guilty, scared, angry, or depressed after a losing trade?  Perhaps you believe that you shouldn’t lose, that one losing trade implies you can’t trade, that one losing trade portends many more losing trades, or that you’ve jinxed yourself for the rest of the day or week.

Equally or possibly even more important are the positive conscious and unconscious beliefs that you hold about trading and investing.

To begin with, to do anything well, you need to believe that it can be done, that you can do it, and that you deserve to do it.  You’re in trouble if you doubt any of these three.  Your trading is at risk if you don’t firmly believe that money can be made trading, that you can make money trading, and that you deserve to make money trading. (more…)

Active learning is the key

  
  Education
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Research shows that you can learn more in few days than you can learn in a year. A focused approach to solving a problem where you put lot of efforts in short period of time leads to expansion of you ability to process and analyse information. That is survival mechanism.  
This is the principle used by armies to train people. Intense burst of 4-5 days of learnings lead to more learning than a long  drawn out plan. Once you get in to learning zone, you would learn more quickly. The more load you add to a learner more efficient he becomes in processing the information.
The most effective learning state is where you are loaded with more work than you can handle and you are continuously challenged. If you go back and look at your own intense learning phases you would see this. Goal of learning skills and procedural stuff is not knowledge acquisition but to change your perceived self efficacy belief.
Learning is complete when your self efficacy beliefs change. Self efficacy beliefs change if you experience mastery experience. When do you experience mastery experience ? When you stretch yourself.
The other pre requisite to experiencing a mastery experience is you have to be actively doing a task. That is why passive video based methods and trading guides and self paced programs, though popular do not work as well as bootcamp kind stretch sessions. Bootcamp style learning methods involve active participation and active learning style.
If you really want to improve your trading results you should look seriously at learning models and select a method which will enhance your skills faster. In a bootcamp kind of environment, you just have to focus like crazy  for  3-5 and try and keep up with the intense pace of learning. The grater demand put on learning capabilities in such methods results in enhancing your own efforts. As a result of that  you will find your abilities will improve dramatically in just days. 
There is abundance of information in public domain to learn trading in the form of books, curses, ebooks, videos, and so on. But most of it puts a trainee in passive learning mode.There is no active effort the trainee has to make . So it becomes like watching porn, it does not improve your actual sex life. 

When does trading become gambling?

  
  Education

When does trading become gambling?
1. IF you enter trades without a clear trading plan, you just might be a gambler.
2. IF you trade just to be trading, you just might be a gambler.
3. IF you’re bored and enter a trade, you just might be a gambler.
4. IF you look at potential profit before assessing potential loses, you just might be a gambler.
5. IF you have no impulse control, you just might be a gambler.
6. IF you have no methodology, you just might be a gambler.
7. IF you rely on others for your trading decisions, you just might be a gambler.
8. IF you do not take full responsibility for your trading outcomes, you just might be a gambler.
9. IF you increase your risk due to losses, you just might be a gambler.
10. IF you do not use stop losses or do not adhere to them, you just might be a gambler.
And my all time favorite
11. IF you get an adrenaline rush when your entering trades, you just might be a gambler.

This Happening with 95% Traders

  
Analysis, Education

“What is the biggest challenge I face after gaining a solid technical knowledge and skill base?  I think it’s frustration.  Most often:  1) frustration of not being able to explain to myself what’s going on with the market’s price action at a given time; 2) frustration driven by understanding what’s going on in the market, but not being able to make an execution because of poor risk/reward and/or absence of proper setup to enter; 3) frustration after making a dumb mistake and/or acting wrong while not in 100% mental shape.

This situation will be familiar to many active traders:  frustration intrudes during the trading process and threatens to interfere with our best decision-making.  As the perceptive reader notices, this can even occur when we are relatively self-aware and in touch with that frustration.  How can we move past frustration?
The key is recognizing that frustration occurs when we have a need and that need is thwarted.  If we eliminate or change the need, the frustration melts away.  If I’m a perfectionist, I create many artificial needs.  Perhaps I feel a need to be 10 minutes early for every appointment on my calendar.  That will create frustration when I am caught in traffic.  If I can accept that I will be just on time or even a bit late once in a while, the traffic is no fun, but it’s also no threat.  Frustration is a function of expectation–and perfectionism creates excessive expectations.
So what is our trader’s need?  It’s the need to trade, the need to make money.  If the market isn’t making sense, there’s no trade to put on and no money to be made.  If the setup isn’t there, the trade isn’t there and neither are the profits.  If a bad trade is placed, the fruits of a good trade are erased and there go profits.  That same dynamic can also make it difficult to step away from screens, even though the trader recognizes in real time the signs of frustration.  It’s not OK to miss opportunity.

Achieving Greatness as a Trader

  
  Education
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1) Much of performance learning is the cultivation of positive habit patterns – If you have to make efforts to follow trading rules, that is effort not devoted to tracking markets. The key to success is turning rules into habits, so that they can be followed without effort, preserving mental capital for analysis and decision-making.
2) The development of new habits opens the door to fresh ways of thinking and behaving – I’ve long noticed that successful traders periodically remake themselves and their trading, adapting to changing market conditions. They cultivate new habits, which aids them in developing new skills and ways of making money.
3) We will learn and perform best by making maximum use of our learning strengths – This is an extension of the notion of operating within a trading niche. If we’re engaged in a concerted program of learning and development, it makes sense to ground our efforts in learning competencies. (more…)

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