Illusion

dice-illusionIf you have the feeling that the market has a split personality, one day out to shower you with peace and blessings and the other to punish mercilessly, it can only mean that on some level you are still taking it personally. Think of it this way – there are too many players with too many conflicting ideas about market direction for it to ever form one cohesive personality. The only exception I have witnessed to this rule is when fear clearly dominates the scene, and ironically these are times that are the easiest to trade. The highest attainment for a traders developing psychology is to achieve what has been called “intellectual purity” – that is the state free from emotional reactiveness to market behavior; the ability to accept both reward and punishment with equanimity and understanding. That said, we know that big players perform ‘market sweeps’ to take out stops at sitting duck levels, so we can at least attempt to protect against that. The main point though is to struggle against any dimly forming impression of the market being a single entity with a personality. That is an illusion.