Passage from :Trading in the Zone


Traders who have learned to think in probabilities are confident of their overall success, because they commit themselves to taking every trade that conforms to their definition of an edge.

They don’t attempt to pick and choose the edges they think, assume, or believe are going to work and act on those; nor do they avoid the edges that for whatever reason they think, assume, or believe aren’t going to work. If they did either of those things, they would be contradicting their belief that the “now” moment situation is always unique, creating a random distribution between wins and losses on any given string of edges. They have learned, usually quite painfully, that they don’t know in advance which edges are going to work and which ones aren’t. They have stopped trying to predict outcomes.

They have found that by taking every edge, they correspondingly increase their sample size of trades, which in turn gives whatever edge they use ample opportunity to play itself out in their favor, just like the casinos. On the other hand, why do you think unsuccessful traders are obsessed with market analysis. They crave the sense of certainty that analysis appears to give them. Although few would admit it, the truth is that the typical trader wants to be right on every single trade.

He is desperately trying to create certainty where it just doesn’t exist. The irony is that if he completely accepted the fact that certainty doesn’t exist, he would create the certainty he craves: He would be absolutely certain that certainty doesn’t exist. When you achieve complete acceptance of the uncertainty of each edge and the uniqueness of each moment, your frustration with trading will end. Furthermore, you will no longer be susceptible to making all the typical trading errors that detract from your potential to be consistent and destroy your sense of self-confidence.